BOOKS.
THE B 0 STONIAN S.*
Ma. HENRY JAMES calls The Bostonians "a novel," and as we suppose that the characters are fictitious, and as the work is one in three volumes, perhaps he may be justified by convention in so terming it. But anything less like the ordinary novel than The Bostonians has not appeared in our day,—even from his own pen. The Bostonians is a wonderfully clever book, so clever in many parts even in execution, and so original in conception, that one can almost pardon the unquestionable tedium of a large portion of the second and third volumes, from which we get the impression that a comparatively slight study has been put under a microscope, and rendered in all the extended dimensions of an artificially magnified image. Only the opening and the close of the book are really effective, and they are almost as effective as it is possible for such a study as this in novel situations and novel characters to be. But between the opening and the close are long tracts of carefully studied delineation, in which the reader does not seem to get any further, but only to traverse again and again the same rudely pioneered and yet half desolate track,—a track of thought curiously blending half-matured ideas and aspirations with elaborated earnestness and refined passion, a track of enthusiasm going quite beyond the bounds of any kind of wisdom, though quaintly mixed with elevated and even delicate sensibilities. And all these elements are combined in Mr. Henry James's picture with a very graphic delineation of spurts of Yankee shrewdness and vulgar ostentation. The Bostonians consists chiefly of a truly wonderful sketch of the depth of passion which has been embodied in the agitation of woman's wrongs and woman's rights,—a depth of passion which it is hardly possible for us in England to associate with anything short of religious fervour. Miss Olive Chancellor is the central figure of this agitation. She herself has nothing of the agitator in her, except so far as the real passion which burns in her makes her willing to devote herself wholly to the righting of those real or fancied wrongs. She herself is proud, sby, and refined, profoundly sensible of the disgust which all the vulgarities of organised movements and largely advertised philanthropies are calculated to excite in such minds as hers, but none the less eaten up with the notion that if women could but become what they ought to be in society and the State, all the worse evils of our day would have disappeared at once: It is hardly possible to speak with too much admiration of this powerful sketch of a refined, passionate, reserved woman, loathing the vulgar side of publicity, and yet so eager for what she thinks the great reform of the age, that she is launched into the vulgarities of the trading Yankee philan- thropist against her will, and in spite of the most lively sensa- tion of horror and reluctance. Her consuming desire for a friendship that should amount to a passion, her steadfast and • The Bostonians. A Novel. By Henry James. 3 vols. London : Macmillan and Co.
self-forgetting devotion when she finds such a friendship, her deep and fierce jialonsy when it is threatened by her friend's lia y to a stronger passion, and the tragic collapse both e tie and of the great mission on which the two friends had embarked, beneath the fighting influence of this stronger love, are painted with a force and originality such as even Mr. Henry James has never before exhibited in an equal degree. The contrast, too, between Olive Chancellor, one of those women who "take life hard," and Verena Tarrant, one of those women who "take life easy" and who yet reflect so meekly the stronger wills with which they come into contact, that they are liable to present the false appearance of sharing the deeper passions and embodying the fanatical enthusiasms of their friends, is very powerfully drawn. The reserved, reticent, enthusiastic, passionate girl, of perverse culture and misdirected zeal,—the true Bos- tonian of illuminate earnestness and neological enthasiasm,—is contrasted on the one side with her own sister, a sister of the light-minded, fashionable type, and on the other side with this charming, sparkling, eloquent, easy-going friend of hers, who has a sort of gift for attractive elocution and vivid fascination, and who, as the other hopes, will become the medium for utilising and popularising all her own fervour and knowledge. And again, there is a fourth feminine, or quasi-feminine, figure, intended to furnish us with a contrast to both Olive Chancellor and Verena Tarrant, —the lady-doctor, Dr. Prance, whose matter-of-fact, dry intelli- gence is portrayed with all Mr. Henry James's humour and subtlety. All four are genuine Bostonians,—Olive Chancellor, a Bostonian of that most remarkable type in which the fiery Calvinism of old Massachusetts has undergone an intellectual transformation into one of the hybrid social enthusiasms of this half-baked century ; Mrs. Luna, a fashionable, selfish Bos- tonian, who has a horror of these intellectual and moral knight- errantries ; Verena Tarrant, a Bostonian formed to some extent by the atmosphere of public movements and progressist excite- ments, of whom the habit of the platform has taken a superficial hold, without in the least derogating from the softness of her womanly heart ; and Dr. Prance, a Bostonian of the rigidly scientific type, whose dry intelligence despises all the Quixotisms of the day, while her Yankee shrewdness warns her that it is hardly safe publicly to denounce them. Of these four figures, Olive Chancellor's is much the most original and powerful, but Doctor Prance is the most effective and finished. Here is the preliminary sketch of her :—
" Basil Ransom had already noticed Doctor Prance ; he had not been at all bored, and had observed every one in the room, arriving at all sorts of ingenious inductions. The little medical lady struck him as a perfect example of the Yankee female,'—the figure which, in the unregenerate imagination of the children of the cotton.States, was produced by the New England school-system, the Puritan code, the ungenial climate, the absence of chivalry. Spare, dry, hard, without a curve, an inflection, or a grace, she seemed to ask no odds in the battle of life and to be prepared to give none. But Ransom could see that she was not an enthusiast, and after his contact with his cousin's enthusiasm this was rather a relief to him. She looked like a boy, and not even like a good boy. It was evident that if she had been a boy, she would have cut' school, to try private experi- ments in mechanics or to make researches in natural history. It was true that if she had been a boy she would have borne some relation to a girl, whereas Doctor Prance appeared to bear none whatever. Except her intelligent eye, she had no features to speak of. Ransom asked her if she were acquainted with the lioness, and on her staring at him, without response, explained that he meant the renowned Mrs. Farrinder. Well, I don't know as I ought to say that I'm acquainted with her ; but I've heard her on the platform. I have paid my half- dollar,' the doctor added, with a certain grimness.—' Well, did she convince you ?' Ransom inquired.—' Convince me of what, sir ?'— ' That women are so superior to men.'—' Oh, deary me !' said Doctor Prance, with a little impatient sigh ; ' I guess I know more about women than she does.'—' And that isn't your opinion, I hope,' said Ransom, laughing.—' Men and women are all the same to me,' Doctor Prance remarked. don't see any difference. There is room for improvement in both sexes. Neither of them is up to the standard.' And on Ransom's asking her what the standard appeared to her to be, she said, Well, they ought to live better ; that's what they ought to do: And she went on to declare, further, that she thought they all talked too much. This had so long been Ransom's conviction that his heart quite warmed to Doctor Prance, and be paid homage to her wis- dom in the manner of Mississippi—with a richness of compliment that made her tarn her acute, suspicious eye upon him. This checked him ; she was capable of thinking that he talked too much—she herself having, apparently, no general conversation. It was german to the matter, at any rate, for him to observe that he believed they were to have a lecture from Mrs. Farrinder—he didn't know why she didn't begin. ' Yes,' said Doctor Prance, rather drily, ' I suppose that's what Miss Birdseye called me up for. She seemed to think I wouldn't want to miss that.'—' Whereas, I infer, you could console yourself for the loss of the oration,' Ransom suggested.—' Well, I've got some work. I don't want any one to teach me what a woman can do !' Doctor Prance declared. She can find out some things, if she tries. Besides, I am familiar with Mrs. Farrinder's system ; I know all she has got to say.'—' Well, what is it, then, since she continues to re- main silent?'—' Well, what it amounts to is just that women want to have a better time. That's what it comes to in the end. I am aware of that, without her telling me.'—'And don't you sympathise with such an aspiration ?'—' Well, I don't know as 1 cultivate the senti- mental bide,' said Doctor Prance. There's plenty of sympathy with- out mine. If they want to have a better time, I suppose it's natural; so do men too, I suppose. But I don't know as it appeals to me— to make sacrifices for it ; it ain't such a wonderful time—the best you can have !"
And to this quadruple sketch of Boston womanhood there is added yet a fifth, in some respects the most pathetic of all,— that of the good, misty-minded, self-forgetful, worked-out old philanthropist, Miss Birdseye, who has believed in so many progressive movements that she has lost almost all bold on individual character, and goes about tendering her aid indis- criminately to almost every society which asks it in the name of what seem to be benevolent and progressive principles. Mr. Henry James has rarely presented us with anything more beautiful than the last scenes of this innocent old lady's life.
His touch is usually more or less cynical ; but while he makes some fun of Miss Birdseye when he first introduces her, the last scenes of her life are full of beauty and true pathos.
We could not give any adequate illustration of the cultivated fanatic and of her eloquent friend in any one extract, and
must refer our readers to the book itself for the very powerful study of this pair of characters. But we must say that Mr. Henry James has fallen so deeply in love with his own study, that he is tempted to dwell on it and almost maunder over it, till it bores his readers ; and it is not till we get to the second half of the third volume that the picture of the struggle between the fanatic friend and the imperious lover, for the heart of Verena Tarrant, rises to the highest point of interest and power. The close of the book is singularly effective, though, as usual, Mr.
Henry James snuffs out the light of his story with a disagreeable sort of snap in his last sentence. He has apparently almost repented himself of having thrown so much true feeling into the death-scene of Miss Birdseye, and he makes up for it by breaking-off, with perhaps even more than his usual brusquerie, the love-story of Verena Tarrant. On the whole, though we can truly say that we have never read any work of Mr. Henry James which had in it so much that was new and original, we must also say that we have never read any tale of his that had in it so much of long-winded reiteration and long-drawn-out disquisition. Perhaps that, too, is in its way a reflection of the thin, long-drawn elaborateness of Bostonian modes of thought.
Previous page
