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The Floating Press - Henry James

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103 pages

English

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Written during his convalescence as James recovered from an illness, the stories collected in The Finer Grain embody the strengths of the author's late period. Though not quite as hauntingly complex as novels such as The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove, these shorter pieces stand as a testament to Henry James' significance as a major literary force in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

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Short story

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776534074
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE FINER GRAIN
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HENRY JAMES

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The Finer Grain First published in 1910 Epub ISBN 978-1-77653-407-4 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-408-1 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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"The Velvet Glove" I II III A Round of Visits I II III IV V VI VII Crapy Cornelia I II III IV V The Bench of Desolation I II III IV V VI
"The Velvet Glove"
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I
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HE thought he had already, poor John Berridge, tasted in their fulnessthe sweets of success; but nothing yet had been more charming to himthan when the young Lord, as he irresistibly and, for greater certitude,quite correctly figured him, fairly sought out, in Paris, the newliterary star that had begun to hang, with a fresh red light, overthe vast, even though rather confused, Anglo-Saxon horizon; positivelyapproaching that celebrity with a shy and artless appeal. The young Lordinvoked on this occasion the celebrity's prized judgment of a specialliterary case; and Berridge could take the whole manner of it for one ofthe "quaintest" little acts displayed to his amused eyes, up to now, onthe stage of European society—albeit these eyes were quite aware, ingeneral, of missing everywhere no more of the human scene than possible,and of having of late been particularly awake to the large extensions ofit spread before him (since so he could but fondly read his fate) underthe omen of his prodigious "hit." It was because of his hit that hewas having rare opportunities—of which he was so honestly and humblyproposing, as he would have said, to make the most: it was because everyone in the world (so far had the thing gone) was reading "The Heart ofGold" as just a slightly too fat volume, or sitting out the same as justa fifth-act too long play, that he found himself floated on a tide hewould scarce have dared to show his favourite hero sustained by, founda hundred agreeable and interesting things happen to him which were all,one way or another, affluents of the golden stream.
The great renewed resonance—renewed by the incredible luck of theplay—was always in his ears without so much as a conscious turn of hishead to listen; so that the queer world of his fame was not the mereusual field of the Anglo-Saxon boom, but positively the bottom of thewhole theatric sea, unplumbed source of the wave that had borne himin the course of a year or two over German, French, Italian, Russian,Scandinavian foot-lights. Paris itself really appeared for the hour thecentre of his cyclone, with reports and "returns," to say nothing ofagents and emissaries, converging from the minor capitals; though hisimpatience was scarce the less keen to get back to London, where hiswork had had no such critical excoriation to survive, no such lesson ofanguish to learn, as it had received at the hand of supreme authority,of that French authority which was in such a matter the only one to beartistically reckoned with. If his spirit indeed had had to reckon withit his fourth act practically hadn't: it continued to make him blushevery night for the public more even than the inimitable feuilleton had made him blush for himself.
This had figured, however, after all, the one bad drop in his cup;so that, for the rest, his high-water mark might well have been, thatevening at Gloriani's studio, the approach of his odd and charmingapplicant, vaguely introduced at the latter's very own request by theirhostess, who, with an honest, helpless, genial gesture, washed her fatbegemmed hands of the name and identity of either, but left the fresh,fair, ever so habitually assured, yet ever so easily awkward Englishmanwith his plea to put forth. There was that in this pleasant personagewhich could still make Berridge wonder what conception of profit fromhim might have, all incalculably, taken form in such a head—these beingtruly the last intrenchments of our hero's modesty. He wondered,the splendid young man, he wondered awfully, he wondered (it wasunmistakable) quite nervously, he wondered, to John's ardent and acuteimagination, quite beautifully, if the author of "The Heart of Gold"would mind just looking at a book by a friend of his, a great friend,which he himself believed rather clever, and had in fact found verycharming, but as to which—if it really wouldn't bore Mr. Berridge—heshould so like the verdict of some one who knew. His friend was awfullyambitious, and he thought there was something in it—with all of whichmight he send the book to any address?
Berridge thought of many things while the young Lord thus charged uponhim, and it was odd that no one of them was any question of the possibleworth of the offered achievement—which, for that matter, was certain tobe of the quality of all the books, to say nothing of the plays, andthe projects for plays, with which, for some time past, he had seen hisdaily post-bag distended. He had made out, on looking at these things,no difference at all from one to the other. Here, however, was somethingmore—something that made his fellow-guest's overture independently interesting and, as he might imagine, important. He smiled, he wasfriendly and vague; said "A work of fiction, I suppose?" and that hedidn't pretend ever to pronounce, that he in fact quite hated, always,to have to, not "knowing," as he felt, any better than any one else; butwould gladly look at anything, under that demur, if it would give anypleasure. Perhaps the very brightest and most diamond-like twinkle hehad yet seen the star of his renown emit was just the light brought intohis young Lord's eyes by this so easy consent to oblige. It was easybecause the presence before him was from moment to moment, referringitself back to some recent observation or memory; something caughtsomewhere, within a few weeks or months, as he had moved about, and thatseemed to flutter forth at this stir of the folded leaves of his recentexperience very much as a gathered, faded flower, placed there for"pressing," might drop from between the pages of a volume opened athazard.
He had seen him before, this splendid and sympathetic person—whoseflattering appeal was by no means all that made him sympathetic;he had met him, had noted, had wondered about him, had in factimaginatively, intellectually, so to speak, quite yearned over him, insome conjunction lately, though ever so fleet-ingly, apprehended: whichcircumstance constituted precisely an association as tormenting, forthe few minutes, as it was vague, and set him to sounding, intenselyand vainly, the face that itself figured everything agreeable exceptrecognition. He couldn't remember, and the young man didn't; distinctly,yes, they had been in presence, during the previous winter, by somechance of travel, through Sicily, through Italy, through the south ofFrance, but his Seigneurie —so Berridge liked exotically to phraseit—had then (in ignorance of the present reasons) not noticed him . Itwas positive for the man of established identity, all the while too,and through the perfect lucidity of his sense of achievement in an air"conducting" nothing but the loudest bang, that this was fundamentallymuch less remarkable than the fact of his being made up to in such aquarter now. That was the disservice, in a manner, of one's having somuch imagination: the mysterious values of other types kept loominglarger before you than the doubtless often higher but comparativelyfamiliar ones of your own, and if you had anything of the artist'sreal feeling for life the attraction and amusement of possibilities soprojected were worth more to you, in nineteen moods out of twenty, thanthe sufficiency, the serenity, the felicity, whatever it might be,of your stale personal certitudes. You were intellectually, you were"artistically" rather abject, in fine, if your curiosity (in the grandsense of the term) wasn't worth more to you than your dignity. What wasyour dignity, "anyway," but just the consistency of your curiosity, andwhat moments were ever so ignoble for you as, under the blighting breathof the false gods, stupid conventions, traditions, examples, your lapsesfrom that consistency? His Seigneurie , at all events, delightfully,hadn't the least real idea of what any John Berridge was talking about,and the latter felt that if he had been less beautifully witless, andthereby less true to his right figure, it might scarce have beenforgiven him.
His right figure was that of life in irreflective joy and at the highestthinkable level of prepared security and unconscious insolence. What wasthe pale page of fiction compared with the intimately personal adventurethat, in almost any direction, he would have been all so stupidly,all so gallantly, all so instinctively and, by every presumption,so prevailingly ready for? Berridge would have given six months'"royalties" for even an hour of his looser dormant consciousness—sinceone was oneself, after all, no worm, but an heir of all the agestoo—and yet without being able to supply chapter and verse for thefelt, the huge difference. His Seigneurie was tall and straight, butso, thank goodness, was the author of "The Heart of Gold," who had nosuch vulgar "mug" either; and there was no intrinsic inferiority inbeing a bit inordinately, and so it might have seemed a bit strikingly,black-browed instead of being fair as the morning. Again while his newfriend delivered himself our own tried in vain to place him; heindulged in plenty of pleasant, if rather restlessly headlong sound, theconfessed incoherence of a happy