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Reviewed by:
  • Henry James: The Young Master
  • Alfred Habegger
Sheldon M. Novick. Henry James: The Young Master. New York: Random, 1996. 550 pp. $35.

When a scholarly reviewer assesses a volume that has been before the public for some time, it would be silly to ignore whatever illumination has already been produced by the clash of controversy. With The Young Master, I see no point in wasting anyone’s time by demonstrating once again that Novick has no evidence for his strange and improbable claim that in the spring of 1865, both in Cambridge and in his parents’ home in Boston, James “performed his first acts of love” (109)—physical, sexual love—with Oliver Wendell Holmes. Stipulating that the question concerns not James’s homosexuality in general but this one wild claim, I think the only other thing that need be said here is to remind readers of two admissions made by the biographer in his exchange with Fred Kaplan in Slate. On January 12, 1997, Novick chose to declare what he privately imagined the Young Master’s act of love to have been: “. . . I think (but can’t be sure) that one evening in the spring of 1865, James jacked off (since we are talking dirty) his young friend. . . .” Two weeks later, on January 23, Novick went on to make a far more damaging confession concerning his working assumptions: “Sure, I’m guessing, if you like to call it that; anything one says about history is a guess” (emphasis mine).

As to the kind of guessing game that Novick’s book plays with readers, Millicent Bell’s review in TLS for December 6, 1996 is quite helpful. Bell may have been the first reviewer to discuss Novick’s astonishing practice of taking verbatim passages from James’s fiction and then, with different names substituted—and with an endnote reference but no quotation marks—presenting them as factual episodes from his life. Her case in point is the scene Novick imagines as taking place in the spring of 1856 as James’s family prepared to move from London to Paris, leaving behind the boys’ tutor, Robert Thomson:

“Do you like my father and mother very much?” Harry asked him, familiarly. [End Page 89]

“Dear me, yes, they’re charming people.”

Harry received this in silence, and then unexpectedly, but affectionately, remarked, “You’re a jolly old humbug!” For some reason, the words made Thomson change color, whereupon Harry turned red himself, and the pupil and master exchanged a longish glance. . . .

(49)

Chances are, readers who don’t have a detailed acquaintance with James’s work will assume there must be some sort of evidence for scenes like this and continue reading. The few who turn back to the endnotes will find an ambiguous and noncommittal acknowledgement, “See especially ‘The Pupil,’ 136,” followed by a brief mention of what are said to be “similar exchange[s]” in some of James’s other works of fiction. The rare reader who persists in running down these references is in for a curiously bifurcated discovery: on the one hand, the exchanges that are said to be “similar” prove to be anything but; on the other, the scene from “The Pupil” turns out to be a great deal closer to Novick’s passage than anything that strategically vague “see especially” encourages one to expect. I give the scene here:

They were silent a minute; after which the boy asked: “Do you like my father and mother very much?”

“Dear me, yes. They’re charming people.”

Morgan received this with another silence; then, unexpectedly, familiarly, but at the same time affectionately, he remarked: “You’re a jolly old humbug!”

For a particular reason the words made Pemberton change colour. The boy noticed in an instant that he had turned red, whereupon he turned red himself and the pupil and the master exchanged a longish glance. . . .

(CT 420)

Only if one bears in mind the biographer’s admission that all history is guesswork can one imagine his rationale for presenting this fictional transaction as a moment in James’s life. Jolly old humbug, indeed! It is not just a question of the dubiousness of the assumption that...

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