“The Lives of Others”: Motoring in Henry James’s “The Velvet Glove”

Henry James’s depiction of an impressionable author whirled around Paris by a glamorous female motorist has long been acknowledged an “in” joke between himself and Edith Wharton. My reading of “The Velvet Glove” (1909) expands upon the tale’s irony, and redirects its context, demonstrating how John Berridge’s vicarious fixation with the adventures of mobile strangers can be linked to experiences made possible by the motorcar. This essay argues that the car is not merely a detail linking the tale to Wharton, but itself a trope for confidential meaning, as the car’s uncanny identity in Edwardian England and unique contact with private life lent itself to verbal disguise and innuendo. In James’s and Wharton’s correspondence, the automobile assumes personhood through suggestive nicknames and pronouns, enabling oblique references to Wharton’s affair with Morton Fullerton. The motorcar’s conspicuous appearance in popular fiction likewise informs and satirizes the tale’s construction as a romance.