FICTION.
UNFINISHED STORIES BY HENRY JAMES.f
IT is tantalizing to be presented with two unfinished stories by the late Henry James, neither of which is carried far enough to show how the author would have worked out the main situation. Yet as literary curiosities the two volumes are interesting, for the fragments of the stories are followed by the informal and argumentative notes which he used to dictate in order to make things clear to his own mind before Betting to work on a new book. Henry James'. faithful readers know well enough from his later novels how subtle were the workings of his literary consciousness, but his notes, especially those on the extremely difficult and obscure problem which lie attacked in The Sense of the Past, surpass in subtlety oven The Golden Bowl. It is not surprising that as he gradually devoted himself to the study of psychological questions for which the ordinary resources of the English language are inadequate, he should have developed the highly involved style which renders his laid, hooks repellent to noisy who have a sinner., liking for his earlier and simpler work, like The American. These sceptics would find many an apt quotation for their purpose in The Ivory Toner, such as tlds :—
" He had much less remembered the actual than forecast the inevitable, and the huge involved necessity of Its all showing as he found it seemed fairly to about in his ear. Ho had brought wide him a fine intention, one of the finest of which he was capable, and wasn't it, he put to himself, already working t Wasn't he
• Eutaw, Poem, sod Letters of Burford PiU. London Francis Edwards, SSA Engl. Street, Marylebose. Its. ed. net.] t The leery Tower. The Sense of the Past. By }teary Jame. London Colts., Sons, mad Co. Ida net each.]
gathering in a perfect bloom of freshness the fruit of his design rather to welcome the impression to extravagance, if need be, than to undervalue it by the breadth of a hair ? Inexpert he couldn't help being, but too estranged to melt again at whatever touch might etske him, that he'd bo hanged if ho couldn't help since what was the great thing again but to hold up one's face to any drizzle of light 1 "
Yet it is Worth while to persevere with Henry James's tortuous sentences, clinched so often with a touch of slang as if the literary language had in tho end failed him, for they build up, little by little, strange modern characters such as ono does not find elsewhere in fiction—portraits, one might say, as Pater said of the " !donna Lien," " into which the aoul with all its maladies has passed." It cannot be said that either of these two 'unfinished stories will add materially to the author's fame. Dail., Dural Boomed to promise a greater Thackeray than Esmond had revealed ; Stevenson was inspired as never before in his unfinished Weir of Hermiston : but Henry James, a mach older man, bad no such reserves of strength to draw upon. All that wo need say is that The Ivory Tower is, so It stands, an interesting study of rich America, in the author's later meaner, and that The Sense of the Past would probably have been a failure unless it had boon redeemed by miraculously adroit handling at the close.
The Ivory Tower concerns Gray Graham, a young man of modest means who has spent most of his life in Europe, and who is sum- moned home, at the intervention of his friend Rosanna Caw, to bo reconciled to a wealthy uncle lying on his death-bed at Newport. The uncle had been old Caw's partner, but they had quarrelled long ago. Gaw Inman( was desperately ill, but was resolved to outlive his enemy out of curiosity to know how much his estate would be worth. Gay, unhappily for himself, was also curious to see Graham, and was so much upset by Graham's cheerful announcement of his uncle's probable recovery that ho collapsed and died from heart failure, a few hours before his ex-partner. The shrivelled-up little Caw, who said nothing and did nothing but sit in a rocking-chair and meditate on figures, is a grotesque creation in Mr. James's most whimsical vein. There is humour, too, in the delight of Graham. uncle at finding the young man entirely unlike his old associates' n Wall Street and profoundly ignorant of (induce and commerce ; these negative merits seem, in the old mart's mind, to mark out Graham as the right poison to inherit his fortune. Graham's bewilderment at finding himself a rich man in the woll.known resort of American millionaires is rather comical at first, but is allowed to become tedious. His old acquaintance Horton, whom his calls in as adviser, and who, we gather from the author's note, was afterwards to cheat him, is not a very erodible typo of the young man who aims both at commercial and at social triumphs. Rosanna', the plain, amiable young woman who is the maker of Graham's fortunes, is elaborately portrayed, and yet remains elusive. We prefer the minor characters, like the clashing society leader, Mrs. Bradham ; or the highly competent and capable nurse, Miss Munuby, who had travelled everywhere and had a very poor opinion of any country but her own ; or Mr. Crick, the family lawyer, " who insisted on having no more personal identity than the omnibus conductor stopping before you but just long enough to -bite into a piece of pasteboard with a pair of small steel jaws," and who " was of ouch a common commonness as he had never up to now seen so efficiently embodied, so completely organised, as securely and protoctcdly active." The fragment ends before the plot has begun to develop, but it abounds in those witty touches.
The Sense of the Past is a far more ambitious effort in the fantastic, and at the outset is more lucid and vivacious in style, as if the author wore keenly interested in the new theme. Ralph Pendrel, a young New.Yorker of studious habits, has written an Essay in Aid of the Reading of History. This little book partly causes the handsome widow whom he admires to reject him, but it also induces a childless kinsman in London, whom he has never seen, to bequeath to Pendrel Ike old family home in " Mansfield Square," of which; lie fools sure, the American will be a fitting custodian. Ralph, wandering about the house in the twilight, sees, or thinks he sees, a mysterious portrait of a young man come to life, with features like his own, and imagines that ho exchanges personalities with this American anceidor of the year 1820. There is high comedy in Ralph's hasten- ing to call on his Ambassador, to inform him of the transference of identity—a statement which the Ambassador receives with superb gravity, before accompanying Ralph to tho door of the house in " Mansfield Square." When Ralph re-enters, he steps back into the family circle of 1820, but with a very imperfect knowledge of the circumstances in which his double had been placed. Again and again ho seems on the point of betraying that he is in reality the young man of three generations later, and yet his sense of the past is so acute that he passes muster. He is welcomed with rapture by the older girl to whom he seems to be engaged, but he has difficulties with the brother, and ho is finding later that the younger girl is his true affinity, when the story breaks Off. We can gather from the notes how Henry James wanted to complete it, but as the transition from 1910 to 1820 is net very satisfactorily contrived, we qiwation Whether the bringing hick of the hero to
his own time could have been an artistic success. The pages describing the romantic youth roaming about the Pismire's' mansion, and chinking in the memories which the old furniture and the old family portraits evoked, are the most notable in a disappointing book.
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