James, Trollope, and the "Vulgar Materials of Tragedy"

100 The Henry James Review the fate of the book first in a cable, then in a letter. In turn, Uncle Henry is upset by the realization that he has, as he says, only "succeeded in making" Harry "misunderstand" his intentions; he is so upset, in fact, that he struggles "to raUy," to recover, "from the effect" of Harry's letter. At great length, James then explains what he had eartier written to Pinker, that the only workable solution for the two volumes is that the book of subjective memories be pubUshed first, the book of WiUiam's letters second. He further enlists Harry's help in selecting a titie for the second volume that wiU harmonize with the first. James is relieved that "the whole situation has cleared itself up in the most helpful way." But once again his anxiety and regret are profound. "Meanwhile I could shed bitter tears over my having so clumsUy or so superficiaUy expressed myself as to lead you to suppose that I am not becoming, at every step of my process, more intensely 'Family' even than at the step before." The rest of this excessively apologetic, twenty-nine page letter—the one written September 23-24—constitutes James's attempt to iUustrate how loyaUy he is serving the famUy with his art. And in spite of the fact that he is annoyed with his Uncle, Harry writes to assure Uncle Henry that he has complete faith in his work on the books (for evidence of Harry's suppressed anger, see my '"Absolutely Acclaimed,'" HJR 8 [1987]: 136). In the meantime, however, James has been stricken with shingles, an affliction caused, he explains in a letter to WiUiam's widow, "by a bad cbiU, a bad 'shock,' or a 'bad worry.'" Has his anxiety over Harry's reaction to his autobiographical act literaUy made him "sick" and "paralysed"? In the past, Howard Feinstein explains, James paid an emotional, indeed a physical price to get his share of the "family resources" even as he maintained the angelic appearance of the scrupulously dutiful son. Now, in the present, James may have paid a similar price not only for taking more than his share of the family reminiscences but also for having to maintain to Harry the appearance of remaining as scrupulously dutiful, as "intensely 'Family,'" as ever. Here in his old age James stUl suffers from the psychological legacy of the family system created by Mary and Henry James, Sr., namely the difficulty of reconciUng the claims of the self with the claims of the family, of achieving autonomy within a family that penalizes an individual for asserting the self. I am grateful to Alexander James, to the Houghton Library, Harvard University , and to the Bienecke Library, Yale University, for permission to quote unpublished letters by Henry James to Henry James, Jr. (6/5/1912; 6/11-16/1912, 9/23-24/1912) and to Alice Howe Gibbons James (10/29/1912) [Houghton] and to J. B. Pinker (9/9/1912) [Bienecke]. Donald D. Stone—James, Trollope, and the "Vulgar Materials of Tragedy" On her visit with Kate Cray to Kate's déclassé sister in Chelsea, MiUy Theale tries to comprehend the EngUsh class system in terms of her readings in Victorian fiction: "a mixed wandering echo of TroUope, of Thackeray, perhaps most of Dickens." Few James novels are so rich in literary associations as The Wings of the Dove; and the Dickens and Thackeray echoes are easy to spot. Kate's prodigal father caUs to mind the parasitic fathers in Dickens, while her Aunt Maud contains at least a touch of Thackeray's Aunt Crawley (in Vanity Fair). Kate herself strikes MiUy as being a "Thackerayan character," a penniless Selected Papers on Henry James 101 Becky Sharp forced to rely on her wits. My subject today is the "wandering echo of TroUope" in James, a connection easier to miss than the relations between James and Dickens or Thackeray. The relationship extends beyond the borrowings of characters or incidents: beyond, say, TroUope's invention of the "international theme" (the plot involving an American girl wooed by an English aristocrat) or the two authors' habits of...