Henry James

The Letters of Henry James

AFTER another uneventful American year at Cambridge (1874-5, ) during which RoderickHudson was running its course in the Atlantic Monthly, Henry James came to Europe again with theclear intention of staying for good. His first idea was to settle in Paris. There he would find theliterary world with which he had the strongest affinity, and it does not seem to have occurred to himat the time to seek a European home anywhere else. His knowledge of England was still very slight, and he needed something more substantial to live and work upon than the romance of Italy. In Parishe settled therefore, in the autumn of 1875, taking rooms at 29 Rue du Luxembourg. He began towrite The American, to contribute Parisian Letters to the New York Tribune, and to frequent thesociety of a few of his compatriots. He made the valued acquaintance of Ivan Turgenev, andthrough him of the group which surrounded Gustave Flaubert-Edmond de Goncourt, AlphonseDaudet, Guy de Maupassant, Zola and others. But the letters which follow will shew the kind ofdoubts that began to arise after a winter in Paris-doubts of the possibility of Paris as a place wherean American imagination could really take root and flourish. He found the circle of literature tightlyclosed to outside influences; it seemed to exclude all culture but its own after a fashion that arousedhis opposition; he speaks sarcastically on one occasion of having watched Turgenev and Flaubertseriously discussing Daudet's Jack, while he reflected that none of the three had read, or knewEnglish enough to read, Daniel Deronda. During a summer stay at Etretat these doubts increased, andwhen he went back to Paris in the autumn of 1876 he had already begun to feel the tug of aninclination towards London. His brother William seems to have given the final impulse which senthim over, and before the end of the year he was in London at las