The Henry James Review

The Early Critical Reception of The Portrait of a Lady (1881-1916) by Marion Richmond, Canadian Publishing Foundation In 1880 Henry James's friend of his youth, Thomas Sergeant Perry, proposed to write a review-essay of aU James's work up to that year. The novelist discouraged him on very particular grounds. "I should be proud indeed to read a review of my 'literary career' from your hands," he wrote, but he added, "I would rather you should wait a few montiis, tiU my big novel (to be published tiiis year) comes out. It is from that I myself shaU pretend to date—on tiiat I shaU take my stand" (Harlow 305). The "big" novel to which James aUuded was TAe Portrait of a Lady, and it was to become—as he predicted—the principal work of his first phase, and one of his best-loved novels. The Portrait was first published in serial form in Macmillan's Magazine in October, 1880, almost concurrently in the Atlantic Monthly in November, 1880 (Edel, Laurence 318), and tiien in book form in London and in Boston in November, 1881 (Edel, Laurence 52-54). Six weeks after its publication in America 2,937 copies were sold. James's pubUshers regarded tiiis as a notable success (Monteiro 68). By August, 1882, a total of 6,500 copies had been printed by his American publishers. In England, however, diere was a slight drop in sales despite die numerous reviews of the book. A total of 7,000 copies were printed in England (Gard 550-51)—a considerable success by prevaiUng standards, given tiie experimental nature of the book, though far from being a best-seller. The critical reaction in England and America was mixed. In his 1951 stady "Henry James and die EngUsh Reviewers," Donald Murray pointed out tiiat while much critical comment was devoted to die novel, tiie critics generaUy failed to appreciate James's method of characterization (4). For example, in 1881 in an unsigned article for the Saturday Review the critic stated tiiat in almost everything that James had written There is die same minute and accurate observation [of character], the same adroitness in keeping the reader's curiosity, if not always his interest alive to die end, die same ingenious analysis of superficial feeling and motive. But in The Portrait of a Lady ... we cannot help remarking the care which the writer takes not to go down . . . below the surface of his characters and of the situations in which he places them. And in those cases where he cannot escape doing so, he seems at once to lose hold of die characters whose outward and superficial qualities he depicts with so much ability. . . . Mr. James has certainly many of the qualities of a fine novelist but his reluctance to go below the surface, or to grasp a character as a whole, renders his short sketches and little episodes more successful than his longer works. (Gard 98) Murray also remarked tiiat "A great many [EngUsh] critics damned James for his want of incident... action and 'red blood.' Only minor characters ... received real praise, and diere were ... some moral objections" (4). Margaret Oliphant, the reviewer for Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine had apparentiy misread die ending and was appaUed (as were a host of otiier EngUsh reviewers) by the "most equivocal if not debasing conclusion" of tiie novel (Bamberg 661). In similar fashion, the Blackwoods reviewer assumed that James had tiiought it fitting that, in the end, Isabel, in her "search after experience . . . should taste also die excitement of an unlawful passion" (Bamberg 661). Although the novel was described by tiie same reviewer as being "one of the most remarkable specimens of literary skiU," the work was, nonetheless, dismissed as an elaborate "word-fence witii the most curious vraisemblance and air of being real" (Bamberg 663). The reviewer for the Academy was alone in his awareness of James's dramatic methods of characterization . WhUe he criticized die lack of plot and narrative integration of the novel, he also spoke of the "masterly painting of moral and inteUectaal atmosphere—the realisable rendering—not of character itself, but of those impalpable radiations of character from which...