resentation of
anc
s
e i
ocial
n
the eighties and s
actuali
til
ty.
l more markedly in the nineties there were
artistic, intellectual, and even aristocratic groups which were closely
involved with the anarchists.
T
IV
he great revolutionary of The Princess Casamassima is Hoffendahl, whom w
In his
e
p
nev
reface
er s
to The Princess
ee although w
in the
e feel his
New York Ed
real
ition, Jam
existenc
es
e.
tells us of a certain autobiographical element that went into the
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73
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creation of Hyacinth Robinson. "To find his possible adventures
ing to kill the Duke as a step in the destruction of the ruling class,
interesting," James says, "I had only to conceive his watching the
_
Hyacinth is in effect plotting the murder of his
fath
same public show, the same innumerable appearances I had myself
�wn_
�r; and
one reason that he comes to loathe the pledged deed 1s his belief that,
watched and of watching very much as I had watched."
by repeating poor Florentine's action, he will be bringing his mother
This, at first glance, does not suggest a very intense connection
to life in all her pitiful shame.
between author and hero. But at least it assures us that at some
It is as a child that Hyacinth dies; that is, he dies of the withpoint the novel is touched by the author's fantasy about himself. It drawal of love. James contrives with consummate skill the lonely
is one of the necessities of successful modern story that the author
circumstance of Hyacinth's death. Nothing can equal for delicacy
shall have somewhere entrusted his personal fantasy to the tale;
of ironic pathos the incidents of the last part of the book, in which
but it may be taken as very nearly a rule that the more the author
Hyacinth, who has his own death warrant in his pocket, the letter
disguises the personal nature of his fantasy, the greater its force
ordering the assassination, looks to his adult friends for a reason of
will be. Perhaps he is best off if he is not wholly aware that he is
love which will explain why he does not have to serve it on himwriting about himself at all: his fantasy, like an actual dream, self, or how, if he must serve it, he can believe in the value of his
is powerful in the degree that its "meaning" is hidden.
deed. But the grown-up people have occupations from which he is
If Hyacinth does indeed express James's personal fantasy, we are
excluded and they cannot believe in his seriousness. Paul Muniment
led to believe that the fantasy has reference to a familial situation.
and the Princess push him aside, not unkindly, only condescend
James puts an insistent emphasis upon his hero's small stature.
ingly, only as one tells a nice boy that t�ere are certain things he
Hyacinth's mere size is decisive in the story. It exempts him from
cannot understand, such things as power and love and justification.
certain adult situations; for example, where Paul Muniment over
The adult world last represents itself to Hyacinth in the great
comes the class barrier to treat the Princess as a woman, taking so
scene of lust in the department store. To make its point the crueler,
full an account of her sexual existence and his own that we expect
James has previously contrived for Hyacinth a wonderful Sunday of
him to make a demand upon her, Hyacinth is detached from the
church and park with Millicent Henning2; Millicent enfolds Hyasexual possibility and disclaims it. The intention is not to show cinth in an undemanding, protective love that is not fine or delicate
him as unmanly but as too young to make the claims of maturity;
but for that reason so much the more useful; but when in his last
he is the child of the book, always the very youngest person. And
hunt for connection Hyacinth seeks out Millicent in her shop, he
this child-man lives in a novel full of parental figures. Hyacinth
sees her standing "still as a lay-figure" under Captain Sholto's gaze,
has no less than three sets of parents: Lord Frederick and Florentine,
exhibiting "the long grand lines" of her body under pretense of
Miss Pynsent and Mr. Vetch, Eustache Poupin and Madame Pou.
2 The reviewer for The Athenaeum remarked it as "an odd feature of the book
pin, and this is not to mention the French-revolutionary grandthat nearly all the action, or nearly all of w_hich the _date is indicated, tak_es place on father and the arch-conspirator Hoffendahl; and even Millicent
Sundays." The observation was worth making, for 1t s�ggests how certain elements
of the book's atmosphere arc achieved: what better setting for loneliness and doubt
Henning appears, for one memorable Sunday, in a maternal role.
than Sunday in a great city? And since the action of the book must depend on the
working schedule of the working-class characters, who, moreover, live at consider
The decisive parental pair are, of course, the actual parents, Lord
able distance from one another, what more natural than that they should meet on
Frederick and Florentine, who represent-some will feel too sche
Sundays? But the reviewer thinks that "possibly a London week-day suggests a hfc
too strenuous to be lived by the aimless beings whom Mr. James depicts." The '_'aimmatically-the forces which are in conflict in Hyacinth. Undertak-less. beings" note was one that was struck by most of the more-or-less liberal
reviewers.
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75
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"modeling" a dress. And as Hyacinth sees the Captain's eyes "travel
what was not robust in the same way he was. Henry, we may be
up and down the front of Millicent's person,'' he knows that he
sure, would never have wanted a diminution of the brotherly
has been betrayed.
frankness that could tell him the The Bostonians might have been
So much manipulation of the theme of parent and child, so much
very fine if it had been only a hundred pages long; but the remark
interest in lost protective love, suggests that the connection of Hyaand others of similar sort could only have left his heart a little sore.
cinth and his author may be more intense than at first appears. And
When, then, we find Henry James creating for his Hyacinth a
there is one consideration that reinforces the guess that this fantasy
situation in which he must choose between political action and the
of a child and his family has a particular and very personal relation
fruits of the creative spirit of Europe, we cannot but see that he
to James in his own family situation. The matter which is at issue in
has placed at the center of his novel a matter whose interest is of
The Princess Casamassima, the dispute between art and moral acthe most personal kind. Its personal, its familial, nature is emtion, the controversy between the glorious unregenerate past and the phasized by Alice James's share in the dispute, for she and William
regenerate future, was not of merely general interest to Henry
were at one against their brother in aggressively holding a low view
James, nor, indeed, to any of the notable members of the James
of England, and William's activism finds a loud and even shrill echo
family. Ralph Barton Perry in his Thought and Character of
in Alice, whose passionate radicalism was, as Henry said of her,
William fames finds the question so real and troubling in William's
"her most distinguishing feature." But far more important is the
life that he devotes a chapter to it. William, to whom the antithesis
father's relation to the family difference. The authority of the elder
often represented itself as between Europe-art and America-action,
Henry James could be fairly claimed by both his sons, for he was
settled in favor of America and action. Henry settled, it would
brilliantly contradictory on the moral status of art. If William could
seem, the other way-certainly in favor of art. But whether Henry's
come to think of art as constituting a principle which was antagooption necessarily involved, as William believed, a decision in favor nistic to the principle of life, his father had said so before him. And
of the past, a love of the past for, as people like to say, the past's
Henry could find abundant support for his own position in his
sake, may be thought of as the essential matter of dispute between
father's frequent use of the artist as one who, because he seeks to
William and Henry.
create and not to possess, most closely approximates in mankind the
The dispute was at the very heart of their relationship. They had
attributes of divinity.
the matter out over the years. But in the having-out William was
The Princess Casamassima may, then, be thought of as an inthe aggressor, and it is impossible to suppose that his statement tensely autobiographical book, not in the sense of being the author's
of the case did not cause Henry pain. William came to suspect that
personal record but in the sense of being his personal act. For we
the preoccupation with art was very close to immorality. He was permay imagine that James, beautifully in control of his novel, domihaps not so wrong as the cliches in defense of art would make him nant in it as almost no decent person can be in a family situation, is
out to be; his real error lay in his not knowing what art, as a thing
continuing the old dispute on his own terms and even taking a
to contemplate or as a thing to make, implied for his brother. His
revenge. Our imagination of the "revenge" does not require that
suspicion extended to Henry's work. He was by no means without
we attribute a debasing malice to James-quite to the contrary, insympathy for it, but he thought that Henry's great gifts were being deed, for the revenge is gentle and innocent and noble. It consists,
put at the service of the finicking and refined; he was impatient of
this revenge, only in arranging things in such a way that Paul
-
-
-- --- -- -
-
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The Princess Casamassima
77
,__.._ . ..-,-··-·--··-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-··-·•-•11-••-·-··
Muniment and the Princess shall stand for James's brother and sisclose to the secret center of things when the man of action is quite ter and then so to contrive events as to show that, at the very moment
apart from it. Yet Hyacinth cannot carry out the orders of the people
when this brilliant pair think they are closest to the conspiratorial
who trust him. Nor of course can he betray them-the pistol which,
arcanum, the real thing, the true center, they are in actual fact
in the book's last dry words, "would certainly have served much
furthest from it. 3 Paul and the Princess believe themselves to be
better for the Duke," Hyacinth turns upon himself. A vulgar and
in the confidence of Them, the People Higher Up, the International
facile progressivism can find this to be a proof of James's "impotence
Brothers, or whatever, when really they are held in suspicion in
these very quarters. They condescend to Hyacinth for his frivolous
would seem that a true knowledge of society comprehends the
concern with art, but Hyacinth, unknown to them, has received his
reality of the social forces it presumes to study and is aware of conletter of fatal commission; he has the death warrant in his pocket, tradictions and consequences; it knows that sometimes society offers
another's and his own; despite his having given clear signs of lukean opposition of mot-ives in which the antagonists are in such a warmness to the cause, he is trusted by the secret powers where his
balance of authority and appeal that a man who so wholly perceives
friends ·are not. In his last days Hyacinth has become aware of his
them as to embody them in his very being cannot choose between
desire no longer to bind books but to write them: the novel can be
them and is therefore destroyed. This is known as tragedy.
thought of as Henry James's demonstrative message, to the world in
general, to his brother and sister in particular, that the artist quite
as much as any man of action carries his ultimate commitment and
V
his death warrant in his pocket. "Life's nothing," Henry James
We must not misunderstand the nature of Hyacinth's tragic fate.
wrote to a young friend, "-unless heroic and sacrificial."
Hyacinth dies sacrificially, but not as a sacrificial lamb, wholly in
James even goes so far as to imply that the man of art may be
nocent; he dies as a human hero who has incurred a certain amount
of guilt.
3 When I say that Paul and the Princess "stand for" William and Alice, I do not
The possibility of misunderstanding Hyacinth's situation arises
mean that they are portraits of William and Alice. Ir is true that, in the conditioning
context of the novel, Paul suggests certain equivalences with William James: in his
from our modern belief that the artist is one of the types of social
brisk masculinity, his intelligence, his downright common sense and practicality,
innocence. Our competitive, acquisitive society ritualistically conmost of all in his relation to Hyacinth. What we may most legitimately guess to be a representation is the ratio of the characters-Paul :Hyacinth : : William :Henry. The
demns what it practices-with us money gives status, yet we con
Princess has Alice's radical ideas; she is called "the most remarkable woman in
Euro
pe," which in effect is what Henry James said Alice would have been if the full
sider a high regard for money a debasiog thing and we set a large
exercise of her will and intellect had not been checked by her illness. But such
value on disinterested activity. Hence our cult of the scientist and
equivalence is not portraiture and the novel is not a family roman a clef. And yet
the matter of portraiture cannot be so easily settled, for it has been noticed by those
the physician, who are presumed to be free of the acquisitive imwho are acquainted with the life and character of Alice James that there are many points of similarity between her and Rosy Muniment. Their opinions are, to be sure,
pulses. The middle class, so far as it is liberal, admires from varying
at opposite poles, for Rosy is a staunch Tory and a dreadful snob, but the very
distances the motives and even the aims of revolutionists: it cannot
patness of the opposition may reasonably be thought significant. In mind and pride
of mind, in outspokenness, in will and the license given to will by illness, there is
imagine that revolutionists have anything to "gain" as the middle
similarity between the sister of Paul and the sister of William and Henry. There is
class itself understands gain. And although sometimes our culture
no reason why anyone interested in Henry James should not be aware of this, provided that it not be taken as the negation of Henry's expressed love for Alice and says that the artist is a subversive idler, it is nowadays just as likely
William-provided, too, that it be taken as an aspect of his particular moral imagination, a matter which is discussed later.
to say that he is to be admired for his innocence, for his activity is
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THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
The Princess Casamassima
79
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-••-•-••-•-•-•-•-••-•-••-••-••-••-••-••-•-••-••-•-••-••-•-u-11
conceived as having no end beyond itself except possibly some belast dictation what purported to be an autobiographical memoir by nign social purpose, such as "teaching people to understand each
Napoleon Bonaparte.
other."
But so great an aggression must carry some retribution with it,