The Imagistic Evolution of James’s Businessmen

The Imagistic Evolution of James's Businessmen EVELYN J. HINZ When in The Ivory Tower, his final but unfinished attempt to treat "the magnificent theme en disponibilite" 1 - the portrait of the American businessman - Henry James introduces two dying millionaires, the one, Frank Betterman, who renounces his wealth and denounces it as the poison which has "sickened him," and the other, Abel Gaw, who clings to his money, like a "ruffled hawk, motionless but for his single tremor, with his beak, which had pecked so many hearts out, visibly sharper than ever, yet only his talons nervous," 2 there can be no doubt that James's concept of the capitalist has undergone a radical change since his portrait of Christopher Newman as The American. Hence the importance of survey studies like those of Michael Millgate and Jan. W. Dietrichson, 3 for not only is the developmental approach essential to a legitimate definition of James's concept of the business type but also an adequate appreciation of James's attitude toward such controversial figures as Adam Verver depends upon a recognition of his location in the general context. The purpose of the present study is also to explore the development of James's presentation of the businessman but this time through an examination of his use of a particular type of imagery to characterize him. Common to allof James's portraits of the capitalist, I hope to demonstrate, is imagery associated with II appetite" in a broad sense, while the changes in his attitude toward the type are discernible in his progressive alterations in this specific image pattern. 4 What in general I hope to trace is the way the vulgar aesthetic taste of a Christopher Newman becomes the ruthless gourmand appetite of an Adam Verver who in turn prepares the way for the vulturous Abel Gaw. While Christopher Newman is James' s first full-scale attempt to portray the business type, in the short story "Travelling Companions" (1870) one finds an early portrait of the commercial mentality in the person of Mark Evans. As becomes typical of James' s method of dealing with the capitalist, we never see Mr. Evans at work. Instead of being informed about how he made his money, we are asked to read the fact from his features, the most striking of which is the mouth: "He was bald and THE CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES VOL. III, NO. 2, FALL 1972 grizzled, this perfect American, and he wore a short-bristled white moustache between the two hard wrinkles forming the sides of a triangle of which his mouth was the base, and the ridge of his nose, where his eyeglass sat, the apex11 (II, 173). In the process of the story, this mouth comes to be associated with three things: first, Evans' lack of aesthetic taste, second, his physical appetite, and third, his commercial ability. The story begins, for example, with Evans and his daughter before the picture of Leonardo's "Last Supper 1 11 but Evans is more concerned with the copyist than with the original (II, 173). The 11 merits of absinthe," a "capital hotel," and "tho!:lejolly gondolas" are the things that make Venice attractive to him, but he would rather be in a northern climate, since the heat of the Italian summer has caused him to lose " 'five pounds in three days' " (II, 184, 197, 172). In depicting Evans in this manner, James of course is not being explicitly critical of the business character; rather he is trying to capture the essence of the type, which for him at this stage consists in a blend of unsophistication and self-determination, with strength of character redeeming vulgarity. Evans is force personified and unquestioned: "with his clear, cold gray eye, with that just faintly impudent, more than level poise of his chin, with those two hard lines which flanked the bristling wings of his gray moustache, with his general expression of unchallenged security and practical aptitude and incurious scorn of tradition, he impressed the sensitive beholder as a man of incontestable force" (II, 198). Christopher Newman is obviously of the same "national stamp" and natural nobility. To a large extent he is simply...