Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (148 page)

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BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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1898
The Turn of the Screw (serialized in
Collier's
Jan.April; published with Covering End under the title
The Two Magics
) proves his most popular work since Daisy Miller. Sleeps in Lamb House for first time June 28. Soon after is visited by William's son, Henry James Jr. (Harry), followed by a stream of visitors: future Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mrs. J. T. Fields, Sarah Orne Jewett, the Paul Bourgets, the Edward Warrens, the Daniel Curtises, the Edmund Gosses, and Howard Sturgis. His witty friend Jonathan Sturges, a young, crippled New Yorker, stays for two months during autumn.
In the Cage
published. Meets neighbors Stephen Crane and H. G. Wells.
1899
Finishes
The Awkward Age
and plans trip to the Continent. Fire in Lamb House delays departure. To Paris in March and then visits the Paul Bourgets at Hyères. Stays with the Curtises in their Venice palazzo, where he meets and becomes friends with Jessie Allen. In Rome meets young American-Norwegian sculptor Hendrik C. Andersen; buys one of his busts. Returns to England in July and Andersen comes for three days in August. William, his wife, Alice, and daughter, Peggy, arrive at Lamb House in October. First meeting of brothers in six years. William now has confirmed heart condition. James B. Pinker becomes literary agent and for first time James's professional relations are systematically organized; he reviews copyrights, finds new publishers, and obtains better prices for work (the germ of a new career). Purchases Lamb House for $10,000 with an easy mortgage.
1900
Unhappy at whiteness of beard which he has worn since the Civil War, he shaves it off. Alternates between Rye and London. Works on
The Sacred Fount.
Works on and then sets aside
The Sense of the Past
(never finished). Begins
The Ambassadors. The Soft Side,
a collection of twelve tales, published. Niece Peggy comes to Lamb House for Christmas.
1901
Obtains permanent room at the Reform Club for London visits and spends eight weeks in town. Sees funeral of Queen Victoria. Decides to employ a typist, Mary Weld, to replace the more expensive overqualified shorthand stenographer, MacAlpine. Completes
The Ambassadors
and begins
The Wings of the Dove. The Sacred Fount
published.
 
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Has meeting with George Gissing. William James, much improved, returns home after two years in Europe. Young Cambridge admirer Percy Lubbock visits. Discharges his alcoholic servants of sixteen years (the Smiths). Mrs. Paddington is new housekeeper.
1902
In London for the winter but gout and stomach disorder force him home earlier. Finishes
The Wings of the Dove
(published in August). William James Jr. (Billy) visits in October and becomes a favorite nephew. Writes The Beast in the Jungle and The Birthplace.
1903
The Ambassadors, The Better Sort
(a collection of eleven tales), and
William Wetmore Story and His Friends
published. After another spell in town, returns to Lamb House in May and begins work on
The Golden Bowl.
Meets and establishes close friendship with Dudley Jocelyn Persse, a nephew of Lady Gregory. First meeting with Edith Wharton in December.
190405
Completes
The Golden Bowl
(published Nov. 1904). Rents Lamb House for six months, and sails in August for America after twenty-year absence. Sees new Manhattan skyline from New Jersey on arrival and stays with Colonel George Harvey, president of Harper's, in Jersey shore house with Mark Twain as fellow guest. Goes to William's country house at Chocorua in the White Mountains, New Hampshire. Re-explores Cambridge, Boston, Salem, Newport, and Concord, where he visits brother Bob. In October stays with Edith Wharton in the Berkshires and motors with her through Massachusetts and New York. Later visits New York, Philadelphia (where he delivers lecture The Lesson of Balzac), and then Washington, D.C., as a guest in Henry Adams' house. Meets (and is critical of) President Theodore Roosevelt. Returns to Philadelphia to lecture at Bryn Mawr. Travels to Richmond, Charleston, Jacksonville, Palm Beach, and St. Augustine. Then lectures in St. Louis, Chicago, South Bend, Indianapolis, Los Angeles (with a short vacation at Coronado Beach near San Diego), San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Returns to explore New York City (the terrible town), May-June. Lectures on The Question of Our Speech at Bryn Mawr commencement. Elected to newly founded American Academy of Arts and Letters
 
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(William declines). Returns to England in July; lectures had more than covered expenses of his trip. Begins revision of novels for the New York Edition.
190608
Writes The Jolly Corner and
The American Scene
(published 1907). Writes eighteen prefaces for the New York Edition (twenty-four volumes published 190709). Visits Paris and Edith Wharton in spring 1907 and motors with her in Midi. Travels to Italy for the last time, visiting Hendrik Andersen in Rome, and goes on to Florence and Venice. Engages Theodora Bosanquet as his typist in autumn. Again visits Edith Wharton in Paris, spring 1908. William comes to England to give a series of lectures at Oxford and receives an honorary Doctor of Science degree. James goes to Edinburgh in March to see a tryout by the Forbes-Robertsons of his play
The High Bid,
a rewrite in three acts of the one-act play originally written for Ellen Terry (revised earlier as the story Covering End). Play gets only five special matinees in London. Shocked by slim royalties from sales of the New York Edition.
1909
Growing acquaintance with young writers and artists of Bloomsbury, including Virginia and Vanessa Stephen and others. Meets and befriends young Hugh Walpole in February. Goes to Cambridge in June as guest of admiring dons and undergraduates and meets John Maynard Keynes. Feels unwell and sees doctors about what he believes may be heart trouble. They reassure him. Late in year burns forty years of his letters and papers at Rye. Suffers severe attacks of gout.
Italian Hours
published.
1910
Very ill in January (food-loathing) and spends much time in bed. Nephew Harry comes to be with him in February. In March is examined by Sir William Osler, who finds nothing physically wrong. James begins to realize that he has had a sort of nervous breakdown. William, in spite of now severe heart trouble, and his wife, Alice, come to England to give him support. Brothers and Alice go to Bad Nauheim for cure, then travel to Zurich, Lucerne, and Geneva, where they learn Robertson (Bob) James has died in America of heart attack. James's health begins to improve but William is failing. Sails with William and Alice for America in August. William dies at Choco-
 
Page 894
rua soon after arrival, and James remains with the family for the winter.
The Finer Grain
and
The Outery
published.
1911
Honorary degree from Harvard in spring. Visits with Howells and Grace Norton. Sails for England July 30. On return to Lamb House, decides he will be too lonely there and starts search for a London flat. Theodora Bosanquet obtains two work rooms adjoining her flat in Chelsea and he begins autobiography,
A Small Boy and Others.
Continues to reside at the Reform Club.
1912
Delivers The Novel in
The Ring and the Book,
on the 100th anniversary of Browning's birth, to the Royal Society of Literature. Honorary Doctor of Letters from Oxford University June 26. Spends summer at Lamb House. Sees much of Edith Wharton (the Firebird), who spends summer in England. (She secretly arranges to have Scribner's put $8,000 into James's account.) Takes 21 Carlyle Mansions, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, as London quarters. Writes a long admiring letter for William Dean Howells' seventy-fifth birthday. Meets André Gide. Contracts bad case of shingles and is ill four months, much of the time not able to leave bed.
1913
Moves into Cheyne Walk flat. Two hundred and seventy friends and admirers subscribe for seventieth birthday portrait by Sargent and present also a silver-gilt Charles II porringer and dish (golden bowl). Sargent turns over his payment to young sculptor Derwent Wood, who does a bust of James. Autobiography
A Small Boy and Others
published. Goes with niece Peggy to Lamb House for the summer.
1914
Notes of a Son and Brother
published. Works on The Ivory Tower. Returns to Lamb House in July. Niece Peggy joins him. Horrified by the war (this crash of our civilisation, a nightmare from which there is no waking). In London in September participates in Belgian Relief, visits wounded in St. Bartholomew's and other hospitals; feels less finished and useless and doddering and recalls Walt Whitman and his Civil War hospital visits. Accepts chairmanship of American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in France.
Notes on Novelists
(essays on Balzac, Flaubert, Zola) published.
 
Page 895
191516
Continues work with the wounded and war relief. Has occasional lunches with Prime Minister Asquith and family, and meets Winston Churchill and other war leaders. Discovers that he is considered an alien and has to report to police before going to coastal Rye. Decides to become a British national and asks Asquith to be one of his sponsors. Receives Certificate of Naturalization on July 26. H. G. Wells satirizes him in
Boon
(leviathan retrieving pebbles) and James, in the correspondence that follows, writes: Art
makes
life, makes interest, makes importance. Burns more papers and photographs at Lamb House in autumn. Has a stroke December 2 in his flat, followed by another two days later. Develops pneumonia and during delirium gives his last confused dictation (dealing with the Napoleonic legend) to Theodora Bosanquet, who types it on the familiar typewriter. Mrs. William James arrives December 13 to care for him. On New Year's Day, George V confers the Order of Merit. Dies February 28. Funeral services held at the Chelsea Old Church. The body is cremated and the ashes are buried in Cambridge Cemetery family plot.
 
Page 896
Note on the Texts
This volume, one of five collecting the complete stories of Henry James, presents in the approximate order of their composition 17 stories that were first published between 1884 and 1891. All of these stories were published in periodicals and later collected, with revisions, in book form. For all but three of the stories, the first English and American book versions were published by the same firm, Macmillan and Company, from the same typesetting. In the cases of Georgina's Reasons, A New England Winter, and The Path of Duty, James had different publishers in England and America, with resulting variation between the English and American versions of the stories; James was living in England at the time, and the English book printings contain James' latest authorial revisions. The texts printed in this volume are taken from their first English book editions.
The following list gives the first periodical, first American, and first English book publications of the stories included in this volume. (James later included II of the stories in the 19079 New York Edition of his collected works: Louisa Pallant, The Liar, The Aspern Papers, A London Life, The Lesson of the Master, The Patagonia, The Pupil, Brooksmith, The Marriages, The Chaperon, and Sir Edmund Orme.)
Georgina's Reasons.
New York Sun,
July 20 and 27, August 3, 1884. Collected in
The Author of Beltraffio
(Boston: James R. Osgood, 1885) and in
Stories Revived
(London: Macmillan, 1885).
A New England Winter.
Century Magazine,
AugustSeptember 1884. Collected in
Tales of Three Cities
(Boston: James R. Osgood, 1884), and in
Tales of Three Cities
(London: Macmillan, 1884).
The Path of Duty.
English Illustrated Magazine,
December 1884. Collected in
The Author of Beltraffio
(Boston: James R. Osgood, 1885) and in
Stories Revived
(London: Macmillan, 1885).
Mrs. Temperly.
Harper's Weekly,
August 6, 13, and 20, 1887, with the title Cousin Maria. Collected in
A London Life, The Patagonia, The Liar, Mrs. Temperly
(London and New York: Macmillan, 1889).
Louisa Pallant.
Harper's New Monthly,
February 1888. Collected in
The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Modern Warning
(London and New York: Macmillan, 1888).
The Aspern Papers.
Atlantic Monthly,
MarchMay 1888. Collected in
The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Modern Warning
(London and New York: Macmillan, 1888).

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