Henry James's Letters to Jessie Allen

Henry James's Letters to Jessie Allen Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, University of Venice Editor's note: This article is the full version of a paper read by Professor Zorzi at the Henry James Sesquicentennial Conference "Redefining Henry James's Place in Culture," June 4, 1993. The first thing any James scholar must acknowledge is the unparalleled importance of Professor Edel's achievement in publishing his four volumes of James's letters. After Professor Edel's fundamental work, it is most important to continue, for letters by a writer such as James was—as we all are aware of here— cannot but provide unending reward to any James scholar. May I also add that it was Professor Edel who suggested to me that I should read James's unpublished letters to Miss Jessie Allen? For this specific suggestion, and also for his very generous encouragement, I am deeply grateful to Leon Edel. There are several different reasons that make James's letters to Miss Allen interesting, but I will limit myself here to three aspects: in the letters one can find what may be called a "Venice story"—and I will try and trace it briefly; one can find the story of a dear friendship, where the two friends seem to communicate their anguish—over illness, death, old age—with a wonderful openness and trust; finally, there is a striking use of imagery, ranging from vampires to food to cannibalism. These are the letters of a true friend and of a great writer.1 The Henry James Review 14 (1993): 273-83. © 1994, The Johns Hopkins University Press 274 The Henry James Review The Venice story" Henry James first met Jessie Allen, an English lady, at Palazzo Bárbaro in Venice in the spring of 1899, when the novelist and Miss Allen were both the guests of the Curtises, the owners of the Gothic palace on the Grand Canal that Ruskin had admired.2 There, at Palazzo Bárbaro, under the eyes of the eighteenthcentury stucco putti and cherubim, in front of the vast paintings by Piazzetta, Ricci and Balestra, with the gleam of the Grand Canal reflections playing on the ceiling, Miss Allen and James met "socially"; this acquaintance soon became a friendship that lasted until James's death.3 If Miss Allen was not a writer with whom to discuss literature, as with other ladies corresponding with James, such as Mrs. Wharton ("the Other" in these letters), Miss Allen no doubt was a very vivacious correspondent; if James called her "the very nightingale or skylark of the epistolary inkpot."4 The friendship born in Venice continued in London, nourished by teas at 74 Eaton Terrace, and theatre, but also by letters; it remained, throughout, somehow always connected to Venetian things. By 1899 most of James's work on Venice had been done: only one supreme novel partly set in Venice was still to be published, The Wings of the Dove (1902), where the very Bárbaro became the "germ" for the Palazzo Leporelli. Another book was to come out in 1903, where Venice was to play a part, though a minor one, as compared to the major role of Rome and Italy. William Wetmore Story and his Friends, the "biography" of the (to James) uninspiring sculptor, became in fact a foray into remembrance and a subjective reconstruction of an Italy belonging to the previous generation of American writers and artists.5 Of course more than one Venetian reminiscence was to come up in the Prefaces.6 James had been several times to Venice by 1899; he was to go back to Venice only once, in 1907, on a visit that he perceived as his very last one, with anguished clarity, writing to Miss Allen: "I must tell you...of the new heartbreak it is just only to feel this enchantress (I allude now to the terrible old Venice itself!) weave her spell just again supremely to lose her" (HJL 453). We know that James's first idea for The Wings of the Dove was annotated on November 3,1894; three days later "the scene of the action" was identified as "Nice or Mentone—or Cairo—or Corfu," a string...