The Portable Henry James (54 page)

But there were indications that James eventually regretted the wholesale task of revision, and the revenues from the
New York Edition
were sufficiently disappointing to explain some bitterness concerning that effort. In a 1943 reminiscence, Compton Mackenzie recalled that James was appalled when he learned that the young writer was planning to “rewrite” his own successful 1912 novel,
Carnival.
According to Mackenzie, the Master responded as follows: “ ‘I wasted months of labour upon the thankless, the sterile, the preposterous, the monstrous task of revision. There is not an hour of such labour that I have not regretted since. You have been granted the most precious gift that can be granted a young writer—the ability to toss up a ball against the wall of life and catch it securely at the first rebound . . . I on the contrary, am compelled to toss the ball so that it travels from wall to wall . . .’ here with a gesture he seemed to indicate that he was standing in a titanic fives-court, following with anxious eyes the ball he had just tossed against the wall of life . . . ‘from wall to wall until at last, losing momentum with every new angle from which it rebounds, the ball returns to earth and dribbles slowly at my feet, when I arduously bend over, all my bones creaking, and with infinite difficulty manage to reach it and pick it up.’” In
Henry James: A Life in Letters,
Philip Horne cites a letter from that same year, where, in reference to a Uniform Edition of some of his tales, James states, “I shall not ask to see the proofs—I hate so reading over my old things!” (545).

The following collation provides a very small sampling of extensive revisions made for the
New York Edition.

 

1879
“Oh, blazes, it’s har-r-d!” he exclaimed, pronouncing the adjective in a peculiar manner.

NYE
“Oh blazes; it’s har-r-d!” he exclaimed, divesting vowel and consonants, pertinently enough, of any taint of softness.

 

1879
He had a great relish for feminine beauty; he was addicted to observing and analysing it. . . .

NYE
He took a great interest generally in that range of effects and was addicted to noting and, as it were, recording them. . . .

 

1879
Certainly she was very charming; but how deucedly sociable!

NYE
Certainly she was very charming, but how extraordinarily communicative and how tremendously easy.

 

1879
Winterbourne stood looking after her; and as she moved away, drawing her muslin furbelows over the gravel, said to himself that she had the
tournure
of a princess.

NYE
Winterbourne stood watching her, and as she moved away, drawing her muslin furbelows over the walk, he spoke to himself of her natural elegance.

 

1879
“They are very common,” Mrs. Costello declared. “They are the sort of Americans that one does one’s duty by not—not accepting.”

NYE
“They are horribly common”—it was perfectly simple. “They’re the sort of Americans that one does one’s duty by just ignoring.”

 

1879
“Of course she’s pretty. But she is very common.”

NYE
“Of course she’s very pretty. But she’s of the last crudity.”

 

1879
“Well, if Daisy feels up to it—,” said Mrs. Miller, in a tone impregnated with a sense of the magnitude of the enterprise.

NYE
“Well, if Daisy feels up to it—,” said Mrs. Miller in a tone that seemed to break under the burden of such conceptions.

 

1879
“Yes, it would be lovely!” said Daisy. But she made no movement to accompany him; she only stood there laughing.

NYE
“Yes, it would be lovely!” But she made no movement to accompany him; she only remained an elegant image of free light irony.

 

1879
But he saw that she cared little for feudal antiquities, and that the dusky traditions of Chillon made but a slight impression on her.

NYE
But he saw she cared little for mediaeval history and that the grim ghosts of Chillon loomed but faintly before her.

 

1879
This announcement, instead of embarrassing Mrs. Miller, seemed to relieve her.

NYE
This proclamation, instead of embarrassing Mrs. Miller, seemed to soothe her by reconstituting the environment to which she was most accustomed.

 

1879
“My dearest young lady,” cried Winterbourne, with eloquence, “have I come all the way to Rome to encounter your reproaches?”

NYE
“Dearest young lady,” cried Winterbourne, with generous passion, “have I come all the way to Rome only to be riddled by your silver shafts?”

 

1879
“She’s very crazy!” cried Walker. . . .

NYE
“She’s very reckless,” cried Walker. . . .

 

1879
“Who is Giovanelli?” “The little Italian.”

NYE
“And who is Giovanelli?” “The shiny—but, to do him justice, not greasy—little Roman.”

 

1879
. . . the riddle had become easy to read. She was a young lady whom a gentleman need no longer be at pains to respect.

NYE
. . . the whole riddle of her contradictions had grown easy to read. She was a lady about the
shades
of whose perversity a foolish puzzled gentleman need no longer trouble his head or his heart. That once questionable quantity
had
no shades—it was a mere black little blot.

 

1879
Mr. Giovanelli’s urbanity was apparently imperturbable. He looked on the ground a moment, and then he said, “For myself, I had no fear, and she wanted to go.” “That was no reason!” Winterbourne declared.

NYE
Giovanelli raised his neat shoulders and eyebrows to within a suspicion of a shrug. “For myself I had no fear; and
she
—she did what she liked.” Winterbourne’s eyes attached themselves to the ground. “She did what she liked!”

 

1881
Deprived of this advantage, however, Isabel’s visitors retained that of an extreme sweetness and shyness of demeanor, and having, as she thought, the kindest eyes in the world.

NYE
Deprived of this advantage, however, Isabel’s visitors retained that of an extreme sweetness and shyness of demeanor, and having, as she thought, eyes liked balanced basins, the circles of “ornamental water,” set, in parterres, among the geraniums.

 

1881
Miss Stackpole directed her gaze to the Constable again, and Ralph bespoke her attention for a small Watteau hanging near it. . . .

NYE
Miss Stackpole directed her gaze to the Constable again, and Ralph bespoke her attention for a small Lancret hanging near it. . . .

 

1881
. . . something told her that she should not be satisfied, . . .

NYE
. . . something assured her there was a fallacy somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition—as
he
saw it— even though she mightn’t put her very finest finger-point on it; . . .

 

1881
There was something too forcible, something oppressive and restrictive, in the manner in which he presented himself.

NYE
There was a disagreeable strong push, a kind of hardness of presence, in his way of rising before her.

 

1881
Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to her own again; they wore an expression of ardent remonstrance.

NYE
Caspar Goodwood raised his eyes to her again; they seemed to shine through a vizard of a helmet.

 

1881
She was an excitable creature, and now she was much excited.

NYE
Vibration was easy to her, was in fact too constant with her, and she found herself now humming like a smitten harp. She only asked, however, to put on the cover, to case herself again in brown holland.

 

1881
“I’m afraid there are moments in life when even Beethoven has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they are our worst moments.”

NYE
“I’m afraid there are moments in life when even Schubert has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they are our worst.”

 

1881
Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, which was arranged with picturesque simplicity.

NYE
Madame Merle had thick, fair hair, arranged somehow “classically” and as if she were a Bust, Isabel judged—a Juno or a Niobe.

 

1881
Isabel heard the Countess say something extravagant.

NYE
Isabel heard the Countess, at something said by her companion, plunge into the latter’s lucidity as a poodle splashes after a thrown stick.

 

1881
To like her was impossible; but the intenser sentiment might be managed. Madame Merle managed it beautifully.

NYE
She mightn’t be inhaled as a rose, but she might be grasped as a nettle. Madame Merle genially squeezed her into insignificance.

 

1881
Into this freshness of Madame Merle she obtained a considerable insight; she saw that it was, after all, a tolerably artificial bloom.

NYE
Into this freshness of Madame Merle she obtained a considerable insight; she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical, carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed and bridled like the “favorite” of a jockey.

 

1881
His face wore its pleasant and perpetual smile, which perhaps suggested wit rather than achieved it; . . .

NYE
Blighted and battered, but still responsive and still ironic, his face was like a lighted lantern patched with paper and unsteadily held; . . .

 

1881
“Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way from London. I tell him he’s the last of the Tories, and he calls me the head of the Communists.”

NYE
“Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way from London. I tell him he’s the last of the Tories, and he calls me the King of the Goths—says I have, down to the details of my personal appearance, every sign of the brute.”

 

1881
The finest individual she had ever known was hers; the simple knowledge was a sort of act of devotion.

NYE
The finest—in the sense of being the subtlest—manly organism she had ever known had become her property, and the recognition of her having but to put out her hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of devotion.

 

1881
Her eye had lost none of its serenity, her toilet none of its crispness, her opinions none of their national flavour.

NYE
Her remarkably open eyes, lighted like great glared railway-stations, had put up no shutters; her attire had lost none of its crispness, her opinions none of their national reference.

 

1881
She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive, simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and regret, that if her spirit was haunted with sudden pictures, it might have been the spirit disembarrassed of the flesh.

NYE
She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive, simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and regret, that she recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures couched upon the receptacle of their ashes.

 

1881
“To get away from you!” she answered. But this expressed only a little of what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. It lifted her off her feet.

NYE
“To get away from
you
!” she answered. But this expressed only a little of what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. She had believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the desert, at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere sweet airs of the garden. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her feet, while the very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid, and strange, forced open her set teeth.

 

1881
His kiss was like a flash of lightning; when it was dark again she was free.

NYE
His kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and it was extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his face, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and made one with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked and under water following a train of images before they sink. But when darkness returned she was free.

III

TRAVEL

James once wrote to his publisher and friend Frederick Macmillan that, “Like the German woman of letters mentioned by Heine, who always wrote with one eye fixed on her MS. & the other on some man—I too pass my life in a sort of divergent squint. One of my orbs of vision rests (complacently enough) on the scenes that surround me here; the other constantly wanders away to the shores of Old England.” Having made his first trip to Europe—in the company of his parents and older brother William—before his first birthday, James remained a traveler all his life. He took the genre of travel writing seriously and produced a fine book of essays on each of the four countries that provided the settings of his fiction.