Henry James: A Life in Letters

"Henry James ! The greatest of all letter writers, I think, without a doubt. Wonderful. Extraordinary. He has an uncanny ability to connect with the feelings of his correspondents in particular situations. His condolence letters, for example, to friends who have lost close relatives, are the best condolence letters ever written. They are a warm embrace, epistolarily speaking. At the same time, they go to the heart of the individual problem, and they’re written without self-conscious piety. He wasn’t a religious man – there isn’t a religious aspect to them – but there is a spirituality in the way he writes to certain people, particularly women. He had an extraordinary understanding of women. The women in his novels are very profoundly observed. They are always the most important figures. He writes, I think, much better about women than about men. He’s also very good at distilling an experience. What he doesn’t put into his novels so often finds its way into his letters. Descriptions of places, of weather, of atmosphere, of landscape, of amusing moments in a particular city or stretch of country. What we don’t find in James’s novels are always in James’s letters. He is also a great encourager. There is a wonderful sense of him wanting his friends to do well. Even if he doesn’t think that such and such a book is the best product of a writer, nevertheless he can find something that will encourage the writer, if there has been a failure, to pick himself up and get on. This sense of wanting his friends to do well – of helping them to move on – is elemental in James’s correspondence. As you read it, you think this is the greatest human being ever. You long to meet him, and you realise why he was such a popular figure socially. Some people did find him a bit prosey and, well, Jamesian. But most people absolutely adored him, he was invited everywhere. He was terribly good with children – that’s always a good sign, where human beings are concerned. Of all these correspondents, I think he is the most fully rounded. More so even than Byron. There isn’t any sense that he’s trying to strike a pose. There is a complete lack of pomposity. And that is such an essential corrective to the general view of James as a sort of ponderous, obfuscating, deliberately obscure writer. The clarity of his perceptions is outstanding."