“Strangely Fertilising”: Henry James’ Venice and Isabel Archer’s Rome

In his preface to the New York Edition of The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James describes “the house of fiction” possessing a “million” windows, each of which affords the observing “figure” a unique perspective on “the spreading field, the human scene.” He concludes this famous passage by stating, “Tell me what the artist is, and I will tell you of what he has been conscious.”¹ As the first two paragraphs of the preface emphasize, what James himself had been most immediately, tangibly “conscious” of as he completed writing The Portrait was the grand spectacle of Venice. He recalls laboring on the novel amid the alluring sights and sounds outside his fourth floor rooms on Riva Schiavoni during the several months he resided there in the spring and early summer of 1881; rereading certain pages of his novel makes him “see again” the view from his windows and revives vivid impressions of the “Venetian footfall and the Venetian cry” he experienced some twenty-seven years earlier.² His recollection triggers a complex meditation on the dynamic, enduring relationship between the artist’s surroundings and the work created. James considers how such “beautiful places,” those “romantic and historic sites” that are so “rich in their own life,” may help or hinder the artist’s effort. In his case, rather than providing the inspiration for “some better phrase” or “the next happy twist” of plot, the Venetian scene rebuffed the writer who appealed to it for assistance during “the fruitless fidget of composition.”³ Instead of aiding him, the rich beauty and animated life outside his windows proved to be “a questionable aid to concentration” by distracting James as he struggled with some “small question” of authorship. Although the scene refuses to supply the imagination with “the particular thing it wants,” he acknowledges that Venice does “speak in general” powerfully and abundantly; what the city so “magnificently gives” may enrich the artist’s endeavor with an enormous “profit.” James contends that the Venetian milieu exerted a potent influence on The Portrait: “Strangely fertilising, in the long run, does a wasted effort of attention often prove.” While diverting his attention from the minor technical problem of the moment, the splendid city impregnated and fecundated his artistic sensibility, effecting a fusion between mind and place. Enkindling his imagination, the setting imbued James’ “literary effort” with a distinctive quality that made it “better” (3–4).

Excepting the brief mention of Henrietta Stackpole’s newspaper reports from Venice, none of the action in The Portrait takes place there, and the city is not the apparent subject in any scene. However, James claims the ambience of Venice so imprinted itself on the novel that the two are inseparable. Permeating the artist’s consciousness as he worked on his novel, the location’s distinctive qualities somehow shaped the narrative depiction of his heroine. The preface therefore prompts the reader to consider the nature of this connection and influence. What elements of the Venetian scene does The Portrait reflect? How did the author’s physical surroundings affect his creative portrayal of Isabel Archer and her experiences? How did the beautiful and historical location enhance his “book” to make it “better”? How does the novel evince a relationship between place and thought, setting and artistry, corresponding to “the history of the growth of one’s imagination” sketched in the preface (8)? Addressing such questions, this essay examines the subtle yet powerful influence of the Venetian setting on James’ consciousness and the making of his novel.

Although commentators frequently cite James’ Venetian reminiscence as an eloquent and nostalgic testimonial of his affection for the city, this remarkable passage has not received the critical scrutiny it deserves. David M. Lubin’s deliberate analysis is an exception. Lubin argues that the discussion of Venice in the preface’s opening paragraphs “metaphorically” presents James’ “theory of characterization, of portrayal.” According to Lubin, the passage depicts the artist’s endeavor to transmute “the flux of any external reality” into “a much reduced version of that reality.” He describes this process as a “dialectic” involving “the productive conflict...