Henry James Rides Again

This essay explores Henry James's friendship with Alice Bartlett, a favorite companion in equestrian adventures during James's 1873 residence in Rome. Reading James's travel essay "Roman Rides" in the context of the mutual friendship of James, Bartlett, and the Emersons suggests that Bartlett profoundly influenced James, albeit in oblique, unacknowledged, and sometimes belated ways. "Roman Rides," to which Bartlett provided impetus, presents a textual response to the Roman Campagna that reflects James's early engagement with Emersonian Transcendentalism. This response reverberates, in transmuted form, in the fiction of the late, modern James, as revealed in the tale "The Great Good Place."