In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Henry James and Forrest Reid by Arthur Sherbo, Michigan State University The Soho bibUography of Henry James lists two letters from James to Forrest Reid, the Ulster novelist; both are quoted in Reid's autobiographical Private Road. The first of these (26-27) is James's criticism of Reid's novel, The Kingdom of Twilight, and is quoted, in large part, in Leon Edel's fivevolume life of James (V, 199). There is no mention in Edel's biography, however , of the second letter, its occasion, and what foUowed thereupon. Indeed, Edel, no doubt for good reasons, did not select either letter for inclusion in his edition of the letters, so that one would have to go to the Soho bibliography to leam of their existence. Further, the text in Edel's biography is only a partial one and hence does not do justice to James's criticism. The interested reader wiU wish to see the fuU text. I should point out, before quotation of the letter, that there evidently was a letter from James to Reid that antedates the two I have mentioned . Buriingham writes of Reid that he was "a delightful letter-writer, and his beautiful clear hand, open and regular and unhurried (for aU his life he wrote with the old-fashioned dipping pen) made the letters as easy to read as they were pleasant to receive," adding, in a footnote, "Henry James, in his first letter (20 December 1900) made gratified reference to 'a legibihty so exquisite and admirable'"(21, n.l). Wltile the letter about The Kingdom of Twilight is undated , it is possible to assign it an approximate date, for Edel (V, 199) notes that a "few months after the Belchamber incident, James received a novel by the young Forrest Reid—The Kingdom of Twilight." James had written four letters to Howard Overing Sturgis about the latter's yet unpubüshed novel Belchamber, the last of the four dated Dec. 7, 1903 (HJL IV, 295-96); hence the letter to Reid would faU in the early months of 1904. Dear Mr. Forrest Reid, I am obliged to you for your offering of The Kingdom of Twilight , with its accompanying letter (in so beautiful a hand!), and am happily able to tell you that I have—and not otherwise than promptly —read your book, and with interest and attention. The very comThe Henry James Review 13 (1992): 82-87 © 1992 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Henry James and Forrest Reid 83 mendable source of its interest seems to me to be that, up to the middle at least, you see your subject where it is—in the character and situation of your young man—that is, in the development and spectacle of these; and that, so seeing it, you stick to it with artistic fidelity and consistency. I confess, however, that after the middle, you strike me as losing your subject— or, at any rate, I, your reader, did so. After the meeting of the woman by the sea—certainly after the parting from her—I felt the reality of the thing deviate, felt the subject lose its conditions, so to speak, its observed character and its logic. There are too many things I don't follow, and, I can't but think, too many aberrations and perversities of proportion. However, it is not of your young, your airy and enviably young inexplicitness that I wished to speak—for many of these obviously you will leave behind you. There are elements of beauty and sincerity in your volume that remain with me, and I am very truly yours, Henry James (26-27) Reid wrote in Private Road that James "was now [at the time of The Garden God] the supreme object of my admiration" (29), and that "every Printed Une the Master had written was in my possession. ... I knew his work inside out" (31). James was the writer who most influenced Reid, the writer whom he imitated, consciously or unconsciously, having, as he said, read everything James had written, even certain tales "buried in the files of extinct American periodicals" (31). Although the two men never met, to Reid's everlasting regret, even...

pdf

Share