Pater in The Portrait of a Lady and The Golden Bowl, Including Some Unpublished Henry James Letters

Pater in The Portrait of a Lady and The Golden Bowl, Including Some Unpublished Henry James Letters by Adeline R. Tintner Henry James never published any critical essay on Walter Pater, but there is enough evidence from his fiction that Studies in the History of the Renaissance had a profound effect on him. We do, however, have access to six letters in which he expressed his private opinion of Pater, four of which have never appeared in print. The first, to Sir Edmund Gosse, recently published, is dated August 10, 1894, shortly after Pater's death on July 30, 1894; in it James expresses his regrets at not having attended Pater's funeral and adds, What is more delicate than the extinction of delicacy—and what more in place than that of "discretion"—in respect to the treatment of anything that might have happened to Pater—even the last thing that could happen? It presents itself to me—so far as I know it—as one of the successful, felicitous lives and the time and manner of the ' ι death a part of the success. In the next letter, to Arthur Symons (dated September 7, 1894 and hitherto unpublished), James refuses to contribute to a memorial volume on Pater. The letter is here given in its entirety: 34 De Vere Gardens Sept. 7th. '94 Dear Mr. Symons. Please forgive my too considerable delay in answering your note about the memorial volume to W. H. Pater—or at any rate set it down to anything but indifference to your inquiry. It has in fact sprung from the opposite cause—the wish to think over your proposal at my ease combined with the coincidence of a week of high pressure to finish a promised piece of work. As regards the plan you indicate, I am glad of any movement to do something commemorative of Pater's beautiful genius; but reflection has not made me feel that I can safely promise you a contribution to the book—if there is to be one- -even in terms the most contingent. The "note" of such a volume can only (properly, gracefully,) be the strain of eulogy, of affectionate insistence; and the only thing I can fancy myself writing about Pater would be a thing for which absolute freedom of literary portraiture would be indispensable. That sounds as if I had in mind particular restrictions—which is far from being the case; for I have the greatest admiration & appreciation of his exquisite work. But, uttered 1. Letter from Henry James to Sir Edmund Gosse, from 34 De Vere Gardens. W., Friday [10 August 1894]. Henry James Letters, ed. Leon Edel, III (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1980), 483-84. THE HENRY JAMES REVIEW 80 WINTER, 1982 in the real spirit of criticism, there might be a single line that wd. be a false note in a collection of the kind you mention—& yet that line might be the very one to which one wd. hold most. I am speaking too much however as if I could fancy myself writing about Pater at all--at present—or at any time. That is the real difficulty —that I can't—for reasons too numerous to bore you witu. I am preoccupied for a long time to come, & the sort of thing his memory would render imperative is a sort of thing that I am able to attempt to produce but rarely & that I never produce with any facility—only with mortal slowness & infinite pains. It ought to be very, very good & I shouldn't, calculably, have time to make it good enough. Perhaps your idea will not arrive at actuality. There are some reasons I think, why such tributes are not absolutely desirable for the first-rate men—as Pater was—as they are often happy for the less proved & admitted. I almost hope it won't—for then I shan't suffer from being out of it.—I left St. Ives the other day just when Horatio Brown was looked for. But I hope none the less to see him. Venice I left, alas, in July. Believe me yours very truly o Henry James The third letter (published in Lubbock's edition of...