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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Iowa Research Online Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 20 Article 38 Issue 2 Spring-Summer 1990 Henry James's Boston Alexander Theroux Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Theroux, Alexander. "Henry James's Boston." The Iowa Review 20.2 (1990): 158-165. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.3902 This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Henry James's Boston Alexander Theroux IN SEPTEMBER 1862 Henry James journeyed from Newport to Cam as a at was bridge and registered student the Harvard Law School. He an nineteen years old. He took lodgings inWinthrop Square, old market area near now between Winthrop and Mt. Auburn Sts., what is Grendel's was new to was not Den. Boston, the famous old Puritan cap?tol, him. It center only the of culture, "the concentrated Boston of history, the Bos ton of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Ticknor, Motley, Prescott, and Parkman," but at the time the focus of American industrial fortunes in the nineteenth century?overseas trade, was banking and investments, railroads, real estate, and textiles. It also, in narrow to spite of its refinements, and provincial. According his biog never to rapher, Leon Edel, James could "reconcile himself the gentility of or manner to the Brahmins, the inwhich New England considered culture an a be arduous duty rather than joy of life and civilization." at His brother, William, studying medicine the Lawrence Scientific was at at corner School, living Miss Upham's boarding house the of Kirk was a land and Oxford Sts. Cambridge small, village of leafy elms, solitary on cows on commons. was a houses long slopes, grazing the Harvard itself college of only 1000 students and thirty teachers. James considered himself a "singularly alien member" of the law school. The subject bored him. Lowell's literary lectures were of much greater interest. next For the six years he stayed on, becoming fully acquainted with life was in Back Bay and Cambridge. The Civil War raging, and Boston was at the height of Abolition fever, fueled by local firebrands like Thoreau, LydiaMaria Child, andWendell Phillips. Harriet Beecher Stowe's father, Lyman Beecher, was minister of the Park St. Church where Sen. Charles Sumner earlier had given his great oration, "The War Systems of a Nations." On New Year's Day James joined multitude at the Boston Music Hall celebrating Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. On the was crowded platform reading his "Boston Hymn" Ralph Waldo Emer once met as son, held in esteem by young James, who'd him in New York, one "the first, and the really rare, American spirit in letters." At 22, Henry James moved to 13 Ashburton Place?behind the State now House?where his parents lived, having themselves traveled to Bos 158 University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org ton was a by way of Albany, Europe, and Newport. It here in house of red brick that he began his writing apprenticeship, setting up "the small ink at to pot," he later wrote, "in which I seemed last destined dip." His first signed tale, "The Story of aYear," appeared in theMarch 1865 issue of the Atlantic editor was the T. But Monthly, whose illustrious James Fields. part must to of 1863 have been given writing "A Tragedy of Error," his first which was in The Continental for story, published anonymously Monthly, soon February 1864. In any case, the young writer found himself in the most as company of distinguished literary lions, of them middle aged, such Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, and Julia Ward Howe, the "Boston Muse," a at who in house 241 Beacon St. wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Repub lic," the official song of the fighting Union troops. never an Young James, incidentally, fought in the Civil War because of ?some a "obscure hurt" think sexually crippling one?which he suffered at some a eighteen helping volunteer firemen fight fire. In 1866 the James family made a final move to 20 Quincy St. in Cam a bridge, large comfortable house facing the Harvard Yard, just about now where the Harvard faculty club stands. And here for the next three years he worked, writing book reviews, travel sketches, and art notices for over the Atlantic, since taken by William Dean Howells, and the North American Review, edited by Charles Eliot Norton who lived at ShadyHill. was a on as It restless period for James. He describes life Quincy St. being as as "about lively the inner sepulchre." Friends had gone away. New were to a friends hard find. And Minny Temple, close cousin he adored, had moved away to Pelham, New York for her health. Cambridge to James seemed tiny and pinched. It hadn't the magnitude was no means or he would have liked. It by destitute of culture institu tions or a sense of civilization. There could be found then the identifiable we Victorian ramparts know today?the Harvard Yard, the Avon Hill at section off Linnaen St., the Public Library 449 Broadway, and the Old Cambridge City Hall inCentral Sq., and so forth?but feeling hemmed in contacts. he yearned for wider was a At the time Boston busy and venerable old city. James could write admiringly of its "famous old-world crookedness." There were hotels were with marble-paved lobbies and the glare of white gaslight. There museums. Trinity Church. The Public Library, completed in 1895, James as nor on didn't like and described "neither exquisite the way to become 159 was a course were to seen so." It fairly cosmopolitan city. And of there be everywhere vast irregular buildings, browns tones, for the most part, with towers bays, turrets, and of elaborate decorations, imposing facades, and slate roofs with all sorts of turns and effects. were new But there and rather undefined outreaches, especially facing west. In James's youth about the only building visible, looking in that di was steam en rection from the Common, the Arlington St. Church. The we were gine had been invented, mustn't forget, and excavations being was to made in the Back Bay. What later become Dartmouth St. and Cop was one vast a ley Sq., that whole area, in fact, construction site, landscape gutted like amoonscape with fill being carted in day and night and emp to tied into the mephitic tidal flats. James would often walk Boston from mean Cambridge. He describes crossing "the long bridge that spans the ?a a mouth of the Charles mile of wooden piles supporting brick pave a a over ment, roadway deep in mire, and rough timber fence, which the a new pedestrian enjoys view of the frozen bay, the backs of many houses, a and big brown marsh." was to use as Henry James Cambridge and Boston the setting for several - of his short stories "Europe" (1899), "Four Meetings" (1877), "The Point of View" (1882), to name a few. "The Ghostly Rental" (1876) deals with a haunted house inMedford ?the Hillside area, I believe? where a man now demented having cursed his daughter receives rent from her an ghost. And his first short novel, Watch and Ward (1878), is the story of effete Bostonian who wears lavender gloves and consoles himself for fail ure a in love by adopting 12-year-old girl. The title of the novel, which to so to makes reference the well-known reform society, alludes by doing Boston's stuffiness and rectitude. a Boston, in many ways, amused James. It was city of blue-nosed pro ? roast as once vincials "cold Boston," T. G. Appleton described his birth was a one in place. It place with foot Europe, big snows, and everyone mum on sex. the sentiment of People reputedly married only their was a cousins. It tight little world of old ways and regimen and formality. even Behind lofty windows, where rich velvet drapes hung tight with fu men ate nereal gloom, unimaginative every day got up and their oatmeal, were although they hated it. Its citizens fierce sectionalists and often meant suffered from acute over-refinement, what James usually by the was word "genteel." There social arrogance and intellectual snobbery. 160 "At Boston, you know," says Mrs. Westgate in the story, "An Inter to an at national Episode," "you have pass examination the city limits." Much of what he found in Boston embodied for James?who had lived for periods in Paris and London by then ?the parochialism of America. He was on on bitterly attacked in Boston for emphasis in his book Hawthorne the provincial quality of New England life. In his stories he gave characters names like Roger Lawrence, Louis Leverett, and Harvard Tremont! And course of there's Mrs. Nettlepoint in the story, "The Patagonia." She lives an on out on arm sea in elegant house Beacon St., "looking the little of the which is so pretty at night reflecting the lights of Cambridgeport and Charlestown." She has opinions and condescends to tell the narrator of the to a note story of her willingness travel, striking "more specifically Bos as to tonian," however, she points her fan the Back Bay and adds, "I shall see more over ?a nothing charming than that there, you know" remark once echoing the Boston lady of legend who said, "Why should I travel? I am already here." Jamesian Boston is located in, but not limited to, the area around Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and the "recreative expanse" of the Common and Public Garden.
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