THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701100660
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BERNICE GROHSKOPF
LENGTH: 75 lines
HENRY JAMES THE YOUNG MASTER
SHELDON M. NOVICK
Random House. 550 pp. $35.
It is difficult to imagine Henry James, eminent man of letters, as young, but Sheldon M. Novick's new biography provides a full-dimensioned portrait of the artist as child and as young man. Henry James The Young Master is the first of a projected two-volume work on James, whose life has been amply documented in Leon Edel's five-volume biography, and more recently by Fred Kaplan (1992).
As a child Henry was subjected to the whims of Henry Sr., a self-centered, controlling man whose independent income enabled him to write unread philosophical treatises, while hauling his wife and five James children from country to country in search of the ``perfect'' school. The result was that the children grew up to be a neurotic lot, subject to psychosomatic ailments. Father rightly sensed that his two older boys, William and Henry, would bring glory upon him; he used his daughter Alice as his handmaiden, and this brilliant young woman's tragic life has been documented by Jean Strouse. A biography of the two younger boys by Jean Maher is appropriately titled Biography of Broken Fortunes.
Henry's career as a writer was uncertain at first. But after early rejections, his literary criticism and short stories began to be accepted, and by age 26 he'd gained enough confidence to set off for Europe. Following the restless pattern of his childhood years, he moved from country to country: London, Paris, Rome, Florence, back to the United States, before finally returning to, and eventually settling in England. He worked diligently, writing travel essays, book reviews, short stories, but earned scarcely enough to live on. His father had to supplement his income; brother William tried to persuade him to come home and get a proper job. Henry, nevertheless, persisted.
Realizing the importance of ``establishing lines of connections'' in Europe, he managed to get letters of introduction to the ``right'' people, and before long he was meeting leaders of society and distinguished writers such as Tennyson, George Eliot, Turgenev, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Hardy; he was elected to the Reform Club in London, and during the winter of 1878-79 he noted that he'd dined out more than 100 times.
Despite his busy social life, occasional bouts with depression and periodical physical ailments, James never ceased to be productive. By the end of this volume, it is 1881; James is 38 years old. In the three previous years he had published four novels, a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, a volume of short stories, nearly 100 essays and reviews. Portrait of a Lady had just been published. He was a celebrity.
In this work, Novick, author of a fine biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes, has set out to correct errors of his predecessors, claiming, ``The time for a new biography is right.'' Approaching his subject like a novelist, conscious of pacing and setting, he skillfully weaves all available sources: James' fiction, his notebooks, autobiographical writings, historical records and letters. He notes every instance in which James' life is echoed in his fiction. Extensive footnotes enhance the text.
Unlike previous biographers, Novick has been forthright about James' homosexuality, placing no more emphasis on that aspect of his life than on any other. Although James had close relationships with several women, he considered himself an ``amiable bachelor.'' His early, brief, homosexual relationship with Oliver Wendell Holmes, important to Henry, was dismissed by Holmes as insignificant. Henry later fell in love with a Russian painter, Pavel Zhukovsky, whom he met in Paris.
Novick touches lightly on the complex relationship between Henry and brother William, dwelling on the negative aspects, portraying William in an unflattering light, and failing to note the deep affection between the brothers. Like all James' biographers, Novick has, unfortunately, been infected by the writer's tendency toward excess of detail, but he has traced every available source on James' life, and has done so with scrupulous concern for accuracy. The result is creative biography at its best. MEMO: Bernice Grohskopf is a free-lance book reviewer in
Charlottesville who specializes in 19th century British literature.