Henry James and Harold Frederic: 

Two Views of the American 1870s

 

          As America emerged from the tragic experience of civil war in the 1860s, it was in a real sense a “new” America. The energies of the nation turned toward the accumulation of wealth on an unprecedented scale, and because the new business ethic allowed for no competitive ideals, many traditional beliefs were challenged and subsequently modified or discarded, though not without an accompanying moral and intellectual upheaval. 

          Nor were the changes in America limited to economics. With the rise of business came waves of immigrants, and the resulting rapid growth of urban centers challenged traditional agrarian values. The impact of Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary theories placed an emphasis on environmental factors in determining character development—a task that had been previously ascribed to divine forces. Improved communication and transportation also brought cultural confrontation between America and Europe, along with exposure to the realism of French, Russian, and British writers. Increased mobility and urbanization caused increasing fragmentation of many social institutions, including religious communities and family units.

          In the literary world, although many writers had turned away from earlier romantic attitudes, they were not as yet prepared to wholly embrace “reality” in literature. Writers watched as “old faiths were meeting new doubts and artists were struggling to find the forms to contain this turbulence” (1). In view of the prevailing currents of nationalism and optimism, Henry James described the mood of the 1870s as a “romantic vision of the real” (2). In spite of the fact that the   general reading public was not much interested in realism but preferred dime novels and Horatio Alger tales, writers such as Henry James and William Dean Howells strove to develop a literature that could be identified with the actual spirit of the time.

          Because the decade of the 1870s produced very few important works of fiction, critics have often passed over some of these early attempts at realism in favor of the later critical realism that appeared in the 1880s and 1890s. Roderick Hudson, one of these early works, was considered by James to be his first successful novel, and in spite of his own later criticism of the work, he thought well enough of it to include it in the first volume of his famous New York Edition. Viewed within the framework of the doctrines that prevailed in America in the 1870s, Roderick Hudson provides “a charming chapter in a phase of American cultural history (3). Robert Falk asserts that in Roderick Hudson, James “successfully transformed some of the provincialisms, pruderies, and insularities of the period into enduring literature” (4).

          During these earliest years of American literary realism, most American writing exhibited a self-conscious nationalism that was subject to the dictates of prevailing Puritan morality and genteel propriety. By the 1890s, however, this self-consciousness gave way to a greater acceptance of the realistic elements of life, and writers were able to write social criticism in a way that had been denied to those who had written so soon after the Civil War.

          One of the younger writers of this later period was Harold Frederic. He, like Henry James, had gone to Europe to live, as many artists and writers of the period had done. Unlike James, however, Frederic’s attempts at writing “international” novels were largely unsuccessful. It has been said that “Frederic, writing in England, wrote well only when he wrote of America, and of that small section of America—upper New York State and the Mohawk Valley—which he knew well” (5).

          The Damnation of Theron Ware, the last of Frederic’s New York State novels, was published in England in 1896 under the title, Illumination. The book was an immediate success in both America and Europe and is considered today to be Frederic’s best work. One of the primary values of the novel lies in its significance as a social and cultural document that describes the life that existed in the Upper Mohawk Valley during Frederic’s adolescent years. By the time he had reached the age of 20, Frederic had determined to become a writer (6), but it was not until another 20 years had passed that he was able to write about his experiences as a young man growing up during the turbulent decade of the 1870s. Fortunately for him, by the time The Damnation was published, critics were more willing to accept his harsh social realism. By comparison, by the late 1890s, Henry James was writing What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age, which dealt with the problems of divorce and societal decay—themes that American readers had been unwilling to accept in American works of the 1870s. 

          In 1958, John Henry Raleigh suggested that The Damnation of Theron Ware, at least in part, is really the story of Roderick Hudson told in a strictly American setting. He pointed out that many of the characters and themes in the earlier James work have direct counterparts in the novel by Frederic written nearly 20 years later (7). Investigation has revealed, however, that no detailed comparison of the two novels has been made. The prominent Frederic scholar, Thomas F. O’Donnell, writes, “Wouldn’t it be interestingly ironic—in view of Frederic’s reported dislike of James—to find that in DTW he, Frederic, was doing even approximately what HJ had done twenty years earlier in Roderick! . . . I don’t know of anything done or being done on this idea” (8).

          This study will examine these two works on the basis of their recognizable parallels in literary philosophy, plot development, themes, characterization, setting, and technique, with an emphasis on the social climate of the 1870s as it is revealed within the novels. In Roderick Hudson and The Damnation, we find two artists’ views of the “Gilded Age” that clearly manifest the turmoil of the period. James’ novel is a contemporary study of the age, while Frederic’s was written in retrospection—yet both speak unmistakably from the decade of the 1870s, providing us with valuable insights in to American life as it existed in the years just after the Civil War. 

          Both James and Frederic can be placed securely within the literary movement known as “Realism” because both men based their writing on the “realistic method” advocated by William Dean Howells. The touch stones of realistic writing include the “dramatic” interaction of characters, an interest in the commonplace, selection of details according to a moral pattern or scale of values, a faithful recording of the life one knows, an immersion in one’s own experience, and a rejection of the false and sentimental (9).  

          Even as the Rome of Roderick Hudson is still recognizable today, many of Frederic’s settings can still be found in and around his boyhood home of Utica, New York. By careful selection and arrangement, both James and Frederic tried to honestly capture the truth of the appearance of the life that they knew.

          A comparison of the plots of the two novels reveals remarkable similarities. In both stories, the protagonist is a young American “innocent” who dreams of one day becoming great. He is a “romantic” who is highly sensitive to the world of nature. He initially loves a simple, unaffected American girl. Presently, he is introduced into a new situation where he experiences the influence of a culture strangely different from his own. His lofty idealism is met by sophisticated scoffers. Under the influence of this new culture, he asks questions about individual freedom while exhibiting a great deal of egotism. The turning point in his life occurs when he meets a beautiful woman who is a representative of the other “foreign” culture. He is at once stimulated and quickened and views himself as being an altogether “different” person than he had been previously. Unfortunately, he is used by this woman as a mere object of amusement.

          Meanwhile, he neglects his work for his passion and now views his family and associates as “boring.” He eventually alienates himself from society. His powers of reason are affected, and he turns his back on his formerly-held values, finding himself uprooted from his previous social and familial ties. He lives now only for his illusion.

          Ultimately, he is spurned by the woman he admires, and he suffers a complete spiritual collapse. As a result, he becomes totally insensitive to nature and experiences a feeling of deep alienation as he attempts to pursue the woman in an attempt to recover his spirit. His family tries to come to his aid, but the attempt to restore him is unsuccessful. He expresses a “death wish” and describes his immense suffering to a close friend. His final degeneration reaches its climax in his physical and/or spiritual death.

          Both Roderick Hudson and The Damnation of Theron Ware exist on three historical and cultural levels: first, they emanate clearly from late 19th-century America; second, they are concerned with the perennial theme of much serious American literature:  what is the identity and the nature of “the American,” and what is his relationship to Europe?; and, third, they are metaphorical statements about the essential polarities of all human existence (10). At least four corresponding themes are evident in the two novels: 1) the problem of individual freedom; 2) the “international theme” of culture vs. culture; 3) the fall from innocence; and, 4) the problem of duality, both within man and within the world.

          In Roderick Hudson, James emphasizes the problem of freedom of the individual will and man’s share in determining his own destiny. Although Roderick has imagination and creative ability, he lacks self-control. He says, “There’s something inside of me that drives me. A demon of unrest!” Later, he says, “What am I, what are the best of us, but a desperate experiment? Do I more or less idiotically succeed—do I more or less sublimely fail? I seem to myself to be the last circumstance it depends on.” The will, to Roderick, is an abyss and a riddle, and he doubts that one can even know that he has a will. He states, “I believe there’s a certain group of circumstances possible for every man, in which his power to choose is destined to snap like a dry twig.”  Rowland Mallet, his friend and mentor, replies, “The power to choose is destiny. That’s the way to look at it.”

          Rowland’s suggestion that it is vitally important as to how one looks at life reflects the strain of pragmatic thought that prevailed in America during the post-war years. Whether or not man is ultimately able to shape his destiny seems a secondary consideration. Whether he believes that he can do so is the significant factor. Rowland regrets that Roderick loses his will, thus sealing his doom. James seems to be making the point that if a man fails, as Roderick does, “the fault is not in the stars, but in his own weakness of character and lack of will” (11).

          Likewise, in The Damnation, the question is also one of individual freedom. According to George W. Johnson, “If Theron will simply accept the contradiction between pastoral duty and personal attitude, he can find both professional power and individual freedom” (12). But because Theron cannot accept the contradiction, he is spiritually destroyed. In his lament to Sister Soulsby, the evangelistic fund-raiser, Theron exclaims, “There isn’t an atom left anywhere of the good man I used to be. And, mind you, I never lifted a finger to prevent the change . . . . Was it all a sham, or does God take a good man and turn him into an out-and-out bad one? . . . Or isn’t there any God at all—but only men who live and die like animals?” Theron wonders whether he had ever been able to alter his course or whether his life had always been completely outside of his control.

          Regarding the theme of cultural collision, Leon Edel states that Roderick Hudson may be considered to be the first important “international” novel in American literature (13). James himself says in his “Preface” to the novel that he is trying, as a painter does, to catch the “related state, to each other, of certain figures and things.” These “figures” and “things” are of New England and Rome, and in Roderick Hudson, James creates “a new international type, as beautiful as she was strange—a complete feminine expatriate” (14).

          Similarly, although the story is about a young minister’s struggles, John Henry Raleigh feels that “The Damnation is concerned not so much with the religious as with the cultural. . . .While most of its principal characters are connected with a religion, no one, except Alice Ware, seems to believe in God, at least in any literal sense./. . . And the real problems in the novel are not religious but are rather Jamesian and cultural, not whether God exists but how should man live” (15). To Frederic, the “pragmatic” attitude toward life seems to be a valid method for surviving in a world of irreconcilable extremes. 

          In tracing Roderick’s “fall” or degeneration, James does not make him solely responsible for his failure. The young artist is overwhelmed, it is true, by his passion for Christina, but she also has a part in the drama by her negative treatment of him. James gives her a rather dominant role in Roderick’s decline, the original idea for which may have come from any number of writers. Cornelia P. Kelley suggests that the germ for the story probably came from the life of the French painter, Henri Regnault (16), while Viola Dunbar traces the novel to Dumas’ L’Affaire Clemenceau-memoire de l’accuse (17). Because other novelists of the day, such as Turgenev and Balzac, were having relative success writing about moral failures, James felt that perhaps the public was ready to accept novels that dealt with questions of individual morality. For some time, the trend in America and elsewhere had been away from the humanistic and universal and toward a more individual-centered view of life. That James was aware of this shift in thought is clearly demonstrated by his emphasis on individual consciousness, beginning with Roderick Hudson and continuing throughout his writing career.

          Roderick’s “fall” is the result of his allowing his passion to destroy his art. For James, it is impossible to cultivate both passion and art (18). “Instead of acting out his passion, he would let his characters do it for him. They might die of it—but he would live! He feared the Christinas of this world.  In the end, Henry James discovered that his role would have to be the cultivation of art rather than the cultivation of passion. The solution was to invest all his passion in his art” (19).

          Frederic, on the other hand, aware of the great changes occurring in America during his lifetime, depicts in The Damnation “the fall of intellectual America from innocence into knowledge” (20) which introduces a terrible cosmic doubt into men’s lives. He traces not only America’s sexual fall, but also the fall of the religious, scientific, and aesthetic. He allows Theron to fall into the subtleties of theological truth, revealing the impact of biblical criticism that accepts a symbolic rather than a literal truth. Theron’s eyes become open to intellectual illumination and, consequently, to emotional darkness, during which time his idealized Bible heroes become “barbarians” (21). Theron has become the innocent “scarified by experience, the countryman seduced by Babylon, and the righteous, rural Republican Protestant subverted by satanic, urban, Democratic Catholicism” (22).

          The intolerant provincial backgrounds of Roderick and Theron prevent them both from adequately adjusting to the seeming ambiguities of their new cultural experiences. Raleigh suggests that “Theron is [like] Roderick, the gifted but unstable young man who collapses in the face of a deeper, wider, richer culture than the one into which he had been born” (23). The two innocents find nothing in their backgrounds that they can use to cope with their changed circumstances. 

          Finally, both James and Frederic are concerned with the essential nature of man as he views his universe—a nature comprised of dualities that are inherent in the observer and which must co-exist in order for man to be complete. In both novels, the protagonists dream of becoming great—Roderick as a sculptor, Theron as an orator. However, the difference between the dreaming and the doing is the crucial factor in both situations. Roderick, in spite of Rowland’s strength of purpose on his behalf, is unable to realize his dream. According to Henry S. Canby, “When he makes his first success, he is not equal to the labor required for perfection. Instead, he finds it easier to become infatuated with an incredibly beautiful girl. . . . Like his art, she requires a higher bid than he can make” (24).

          Theron is also unable to apply himself to the task of developing his abilities in preparation for a successful ministerial position, and he subsequently loses his grip on both the dream and the reality of his situation. Raleigh calls The Damnation a novel that has “the rather grim reminder that man is a poor creature, generally speaking, and is always being tempted to run off after pleasing illusions and to be blind to harsh realities” (25).  

          Similarly, George W. Johnson suggests that “the contradiction is that between two views of reality—realism and romance—neither of which can be abandoned” (26). Roderick refuses to face the realistic side of his life, and Christina says to him, “You’ve never really looked in the face the fact that you’re false, that you’ve broken your faith . . . . You’ve closed your eyes.”

          For Theron, likewise, “all the proper evidence is there, but there are two sets of evidence, one for the appearance of things, and the other for the reality of things. /. . . These ambiguities are further enhanced by the character of the protagonist himself, who is simultaneously likable and despicable” (27). Once Theron has been exposed to the romantic view of life, he is unable to return successfully to reality. Like Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, he becomes suspicious of everyone. Is Celia the chaste goddess, or is she the scarlet consort of the priest? Is Levi Gorringe interested purely in husbandry, or is he interested in Theron’s wife?  Confrontation reveals that the ambiguities exist primarily in Theron’s own mind.

          In Theron’s fumbling search for the “truth,” he finds that “every stage of his progressive attempt to reach that ‘intellectual world’ . . . is now labeled a ‘degeneration,’ and the doors to that world are now forever barred” (28). In a speech that addresses the question of the ultimate “knowability” of truth, much as Henry James had done, Father Forbes says to Theron, “so the truth remains always the truth, even though you give a charter to ten hundred thousand separate numskulls to examine it by the light of their private judgment, and report that it is as many different varieties of something else.” As we can see, the various themes of the two novels run smoothly in parallel lines.

          Interesting parallels are also found in abundance in the characters of the two novels. The two protagonists, Roderick Hudson and Theron Ware, represent the conflicts of art vs. passion and religion vs. passion respectively. They are both representative of the American “fatherless man” who is profoundly affected by the culture of Europe. Both men turn to the worship of alluring women in lieu of the respectable girls who had once received their attentions, but they are quickly banished when more “charming” women make their appearances. About either of the two men it might be said, “We have seen him in his parochial surrounding, a frustrated dreamer; and we watch him gradually substituting a life of excess—excess of tension and emotion—for the placid . . . horizons left behind” (29). Roderick and Theron have indeed been “overwhelmed by the sights and sound of Beauty and by the magnificence of Beauty’s High Priestess” (30).

          Both characters sense an expansion of their capabilities as they come under the influence of a different culture. Theron reflects, “Really, it was amazing how much wiser he had grown all at once,” while Roderick exclaims, “What an exquisite ass I was so short a time ago.” Both men feel that wonderful changes have occurred in their essential natures. Roderick says to Rowland, “I’m not a small boy nor a country lout any longer, and whatever I do I do with my eyes open.” Similarly, Theron reflects contentedly, “Yes; the former country lout, the narrow zealot, the untutored slave groping about in the dark after silly superstitions . . . was dead.”

          Theron’s inability to compromise his illusory view of life in order to survive in society has earlier been noted. Likewise, Rowland says of Roderick, “He’s too confoundedly all of one piece; he won’t throw overboard a grain of the cargo to save the rest.” When Roderick learns of Christina’s engagement to Prince Casamassima, he abandons his attempt to capture in white marble the representation of the idea of Intellectual Refinement.  Likewise, Theron finds his own seeking after intellectualism to be fruitless, and he is finally forced to abandon his quest.  

          The impact of the destruction of innocence is poignantly revealed in both novels as James and Frederic portray the effects of failure on the respective psyches of Roderick and Theron. At one point, Roderick exclaims, “I’m an angry, savage, disappointed, miserable man. . . . I’m in a state of helpless rage and grief and shame. . . . You can’t help me . . . . I’ve utterly gone to the devil.” When his friend Mary Garland tries to calm him, he declares, “I’m a dead failure, that’s all; I’m not a first-rate man. I’m second-rate, tenth-rate, anything you please.” He admits to Rowland, “Our little experiment’s a failure. . . . I recommend you to set me up there at the end of the garden and shoot me dead.” Roderick now finds his former interest in nature to be completely extinct. He laments, “Pity me, my friend; pity me!  Look at this lovely world and think what it must be to be dead to it.” After his final conversation with Rowland, Roderick admits, “I’ve already been so stupid. That, you know, damns me more than anything. Certainly I can shut up shop now./. . . I’m only fit to be alone.  It’s awful!”

          Theron similarly pours out his tormented thoughts to Sister Soulsby upon his return from New York City late in the novel. He cries, “There can’t be any hell worse than that I’ve gone through.” He confesses that even the bums in the streets would not approach him. “They saw that I was a fool whom God had taken hold of to break his heart first, and then to craze his brain, and then to fling him on a dunghill to die like a dog. . . . I’m only heart-broken, and crushed out of shape and life—that’s all.” Theron then tells Sister Soulsby that he had wanted to kill himself, but he had been too afraid. He explains, “It was so awful, to die there alone in the strange city—I couldn’t do it.” Roderick and Theron have met life on its own terms and have been devastated by the experience.

          Both James and Frederic seem to imply that the “innocent” possesses an inherent weakness of character that is largely responsible for his “damnation.” In a letter to his cousin, Cecelia, Rowland Mallet writes, “He’s [Roderick’s] the most extraordinary being, the strangest mixture of the clear and the obscure. I don’t understand so much power . . . going with so much weakness. . . .The poor fellow isn’t made right, and it’s really not his fault.”  In a similar manner, when Alice Ware blames the town of Octavius for Theron’s troubles, Sister Soulsby disagrees, saying, “If there hadn’t been a screw loose somewhere, Octavius/wouldn’t have hurt him. . . . He never was the right man for the place. . . . When pressure was put on him, it found out his weak spot like a shot, and pushed on it, and—well, it came near smashing him, that’s all.” The “innocence” of Roderick and Theron reflects the popular 19th-century conception of the uninitiated, unsophisticated American who is unable to survive in a cosmopolitan environment.

          Another parallel is exhibited in the characters of Christina Light and Celia Madden, who represent the “heiress of all the ages” who brings into sharp focus the narrowness of Puritan thinking. According to Maxwell Geismar, “Christina is the spoiled princess of the international set who flaunts her charm, her wiles, her power, her restlessness and her emptiness” (31). Rowland says, “About Miss Light it’s a long story. She’s one of the great beauties of all time and worth coming barefoot to Rome, like the pilgrims of old, to see. . . . She is corrupt, perverse, as proud as a potentate and a coquette of the first magnitude.” For Roderick, Christina symbolizes Ideal Beauty and satisfies his passion for a Hellenistic view of art that concentrates solely on Beauty.

          Christina’s counterpart, Celia Madden, is a spokesperson for the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite gospel of beauty. She defines her “Greek idea” as “absolute freedom from moral bugbears, for one thing. The recognition that beauty is the only thing in life that is worth while. The courage to kick out of one’s life everything that isn’t worth while.” Celia admits her “paganism,” saying that she is only “Catholic in the sense that its symbolism is pleasant to me.” Celia is the antithesis of American Puritan ideals as she “frankly dissociates herself from the sacrament of marriage, and proclaims her freedom to know love without it” (32). Like Celia, Christina Light is not really typical of her society either. “[Her] ideals . . . evolve not from any intellectual recognition or moral awareness on her part, but from deeper personal needs which tend to create that awareness. . . . In her search for some ideal of noble self-realization, [she] assumes different moral and dramatic postures in the way an actress might assume a given role” (33).

          Christina and Celia find themselves in circumstances that periodically give rise to extreme feelings of duress from which they need emotional release. Regarding her mother’s ostentations, Christina says, “I hope she’s satisfied. It’s not my doing. I feel weary, I feel angry, I want to cry, I want to bite. I’ve twenty minds to escape into my room and lock the door and let mamma s’en tirer as she can.” In similar fashion, after Theron’s confrontation with Celia’s half-drunken brother, Celia enters the woods with Theron to weep out her rage. She “threw herself face forward upon the soft green bank. . . . Her body shook with the violence of recurring sobs, or rather gasps of wrath and grief. Her hands, with stiffened, claw-like fingers, dug into the moss and tangle of tiny/vines and tore them by the roots.”

          Both women also have “systems” of morality or conduct that they follow and about which hovers an aura of mystery. Christina tells Rowland, “I say what I please, I do what I please!” When Rowland questions her sincerity in renouncing her engagement to the Prince, she replies, “What does it matter now whether I was insincere or not? I can’t conceive of anything mattering less. I was very fine—isn’t it true?” On the other hand, Celia defines her theory of life to Theron by explaining, “It is the one fixed rule of my life to obey my whims. Whatever occurs to me as a possible pleasant thing to do, straight like a flash, I go and do it. It is the only way that a person with means . . . can preserve any freshness of character. . . . The instant a wish occurs to me, I rush to gratify it.”

          Controversy among critics exists as to whether James and/or Frederic actually meant for Christina and Celia to be sinister figures that represent evil and treachery. The answer may lie in the later views of the two women as they are portrayed in subsequent novels: Christina is the title character of The Princess Casamassima (1986)—here she is much more dangerous and wicked than she is in Roderick Hudson; Celia later appears in The Market Place, published in 1899 after Frederic’s death, where her evil implications are developed further. This suggests that at least the seeds of evil exist in the two characters as they appear initially.

          Rather pale in contrast to Christina and Celia are Mary Garland and Alice Ware. These distinctly American young people embody all that Roderick and Theron seem to find attractive in women—that is, until something more exciting comes along. Early in the novel, Roderick defends Mary’s qualities to Rowland when the latter suggests that Roderick does not see her as she really is. He says, “Don’t tell me she’s not a moralist!  It was for that I fell in love with her—and with security and sanity, all the ‘saving clauses,’ in her sweet, fresh person.” Mary, the daughter of a minister and the sister of a minister, represents an essential New England ethos that strongly appeals to Roderick’s sense of character (34).

          Theron also feels a special delight in remembering Alice, “the bright-eyed, frank-faced, serenely self-reliant girl. . . . She was fresh from the refinements of a town seminary; she read books; it was known that she could play upon the piano. Her clothes, her manners, her way of speaking, the readiness of her thoughts and sprightly tongue . . . placed her on a pinnacle far away from the girls of the neighborhood.”

          Mary Garland and Alice Ware both share a considerable interest in horticulture. Mary tells Rowland that when they walk in the woods at home, it seems “as unnatural not to know what to call the flowers as it would be to see someone in the town with whom we shouldn’t be on speaking terms.” In The Damnation, Alice Ware’s garden is the pride of the neighborhood, and she spends many hours working with her gladioli, dahlias, hollyhocks, roses, and lilies. Interestingly, as Mary and Alice become less important to Roderick and Theron respectively, they turn to their flowers to sustain them by keeping their hands and minds occupied. Mary hunts for Swiss wild flowers with an enthusiasm that wins over even the inert Rowland. Alice also finds herself spending more and more time in her garden as Theron becomes more and more involved in his own activities.    In addition, both Mary and Alice must find the strength within themselves to endure in the face of broken relationships. They realize that they are now “outsiders” as far as their partners are concerned. Mary admits by her actions how little she is able to “get out of” Roderick because he now finds her extremely “boring” and refuses to discuss his restlessness with her. Alice is likewise unable to reach Theron. She tells him, “There is no good in talking any more at all. It is as if we didn’t speak the same language.” When Mary and Alice burst into tears, Roderick and Theron are both “reduced to the vulgar expedient of leaving the room.” Unfortunately, in spite of their admirable qualities, both Mary and Alice are soon forgotten—a consequence of the pressures of new cultural traditions upon Roderick and Theron. 

          In slightly different ways, Gloriani in Roderick Hudson and Father Forbes and Dr. Ledsmar in The Damnation represent worldly-wise sophisticates whose background of experience has made them pessimistic about life. They successfully serve as foils to offset the innocents’ extreme idealism. Gloriani, the cynical artist, has given his life over to modeling ugly things, indicating his disillusionment with life (35). Regarding Roderick’s art, he states, “It’s deucedly pretty. But, my dear young friend, it’s a kind of thing you positively can’t keep up, you know. . . . You’ll have at any rate to take to violence, to contortions, to romanticism, in self-defense. . . . You can’t fly; there’s no use trying.”

          Father Forbes’ deep influence on Theron is not primarily religious, but historical. He tells Theron that the most empty and utterly baseless idea is that of human progress because “the human race are still very like savages in a dangerous wood in the dark, telling one another ghost stories around a campfire”—and this they call their “religions.” Forbes also represents “the happy marriage of science and mystical religion, contentedly and discreetly performing his function as spiritual leader for a flock of Irish who, so long as he administers their beloved/sacrament properly, care nothing for his private intellectual meanderings” (36).

          Dr. Ledsmar in The Damnation represents the new science with its utter contempt for art. Ledsmar says, “All art, so called, is decay. When a race begins to brood on the beautiful—so called—it is a sign of rot, of getting ready to fall from the tree.” This quasi-scientific rationalism is even more deadly than Forbes’ quasi-Christian rationalism because Theron’s entire spiritual foundation rests on an emotional religion (37).

          In both novels, we also find traces of the pragmatic attitude that pervaded America after the Civil War. In Roderick Hudson, this philosophy is most clearly stated by Mr. Striker, a Hudson family friend, who says, “The crop we gather depends upon the seed we saw. [Roderick] may be the biggest genius of the age:  his potatoes won’t come up without his hoeing them. If he takes things so almighty easy . . . his produce will never gain the prize. Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch and doesn’t believe that we wake up to find our work done because we have lain all night a-dreaming of it;  anything worth doing is plaguy hard to do!”

          In The Damnation, the Soulsbys are the embodiments of Pragmatism.  They are spokespersons for the “here and now” who tell Theron what he must do to survive in a seemingly hostile world. These two middle-aged Methodist fundraisers, who boast of having a rather dubious past and a common-law marriage, have learned to accept life as it is and to operate within its seeming contradictions through practical methods that serve their purposes well. Sister Soulsby says to Theron, “You’ve got to take folks as you find them; and you’ve got to find them the best way you can. One place can be worked, managed, in one way, and another needs quite a different way, and both ways would be dead frosts—complete failures—in a third./. . . To properly serve the cause, one must be all things to all men. . . You simply can’t get along without some of the wisdom of the serpent.” The Soulsbys are, in a real sense, “post-realistic romancers” who live by their wits in a world that often sends weaker spirits into chaos.

          In the same way that many of the characters in Roderick Hudson have counterparts in The Damnation, the settings of the two novels are also analogous. The residents of Northampton, Massachusetts, correspond to Theron’s congregation of the Methodist Church of Octavius, New York. Both groups display the narrowness and restriction of old Puritan attitudes, the intolerance of opinions different from their own, and the condescending view of “foreign” elements.

          Roderick explains to Rowland, “You see, what [my mother] can’t forgive . . . is your taking me off to Rome. Rome’s an evil word in my mother’s vocabulary, to be said below the breath, as you’d repeat some profanity or tell a ‘low’ story. Northampton Mass is in just the centre of Christendom, and Rome far off in the mere margin, benighted heathendom too at that, into which it can do no proper moral man any good to penetrate.” Similarly, soon after Theron’s arrival in Octavius, Brother Pierce declares, “The place is jest overrun with Irish . . . They’ve got two Catholic churches here now to our one, and they do jest as they blamed please. . . .It’d be a good idée to pitch into Catholics in general whenever you can. You could make a hit that way. . . . They ain’t Christians at all. They’re idolaters, that’s what they are!”

          Rome in Roderick Hudson corresponds to the Irish Catholic Church in The Damnation. The Eternal City has, for Henry James, “a deep relish for the element of accumulation in the human picture and for the infinite superpositions of history.” Likewise, for the artist, Rome stands for both history and tradition that have been captured in art (38).

          The Irish Catholic Church, for Frederic, is an un-American, authoritarian power which, like Rome, has an historical impact on people’s lives. When Theron confronts Catholic ritual for the first time at the MacEvoy home, he is overwhelmed by the strange ceremony of last rites and feels a mysterious attraction for the beauty of the priest’s Latin incantation.  When he admits to having been greatly impressed by the ceremony that had been performed “to help MacEvoy to die,” Father Forbes explains that the rites are a very ancient ceremony, the origins of which cannot really be traced. During a discussion of religious history, Theron remarks, “It seems to me that as things are going, it doesn’t look much as if the America of the future will trouble itself about any kind of a church. The march of science must very soon produce a universal skepticism.” Theron’s attitude reflects the feeling of many Americans of the period who feared that science would ultimately destroy the religious impulse of the nation. Father Forbes flatly discounts this theory, basing his argument on the historical record of humankind and the very nature of humanity, which demands some type of historical religion as its foundation. 

          The “realistic method” employed by James and Frederic has been discussed previously. However, two particularly interesting parallels in stylistic technique merit further consideration. Striking similarities can be seen in the usage of the writers’ point of view and in the extensive employment of garden and water imagery throughout the two works.

          Much of the strength of both Roderick Hudson and The Damnation lies in the authors’ use of point of view in the telling of the stories. James and Frederic similarly present the drama of the action through the consciousness of one of the principal characters of each novel, a technique usually referred to as “third person limited.” The story of Roderick Hudson is told as it is viewed in and through the consciousness of Rowland Mallet, Roderick’s benefactor. This technique provides James with an opportunity to judge Roderick with both sympathy and objectivity. The reader feels not only what is happening to Rowland, but what Rowland feels is happening to other characters. This narrative approach imparts to the novel a unity that serves to make the work stronger and more compact. Rowland is present for all of the action, and his meditations between events are recorded, providing more exciting drama than would be produced by a mere surface account of the action (39). Because Rowland is not the main character, he is able to provide a degree of objectivity that would be impossible if seen through Roderick’s perception. This “center of consciousness” technique is perhaps one of James’ most outstanding contributions to the art of fiction, culminating in Lambert Strether in The Ambassadors.

          Frederic, similarly, tells his story primarily through the consciousness of Theron Ware, and the reader is constantly aware of Theron’s particular stage of mental and emotional development throughout the novel. As we do in Roderick Hudson, we encounter a moral struggle, a restless inner debate, and a dialogue of the Self in the tradition of American romantic realism (40). However, as Garland Strother has indicated, Frederic is not wholly consistent in his use of point of view in The Damnation. Frederic shifts the point of view on at least three occasions. Strother says, “The function of the shifts in point of view is in each case to indicate Theron’s loss of esteem in the eyes of another character. By shifting the point of view from Theron to the other character, Frederic dramatizes clearly this loss of esteem and foreshadows Theron’s eventual damnation” (41).

          By using an individual consciousness as the focal point of the narrative, both James and Frederic reveal an interest in the specific person, rather than in society at large—a tendency that is typical of the 1870s. In addition, shifts in technique away from the realistic and toward the symbolic show James’ and Frederic’s experimentation with techniques for revealing fleeting insights into new dimensions of mind and character (42).

          The similarity in use of imagery between the two works is also noteworthy. The dominant imagery throughout the two novels is that of the sea (or water) and that of the garden. Sea imagery in Roderick Hudson appears at least 34 times, while the garden enters the narrative at least 16 times. Both images often are used in association with the character of Roderick. At the outset of their journey to Europe, Rowland tells him, “I’ve launched you, as I may say, and I feel as if I ought to see you into port.” Roderick initially responds to European society “as a duck to water,” but after his exposure to the influence of Christina, he is unable to make Rowland see the world his way. He accuses his friend of not understanding him, as he looks at Rowland “out of such bottomless depths as might have formed the element of a shining merman who should be trying, comparatively near shore, to signal to a ruminating ox.”

          As Roderick continues to decline, he admits, “For the past ten days I’ve had the vision of some such fate [death] perpetually swimming before me. My mind is like a dead calm in the tropics, and my imagination as motionless as the blighted ship in the ‘Ancient Mariner!’ ” Rowland reflects on the young artist’s metamorphosis: “There swam before Rowland’s eyes a vision of the wondrous youth, graceful and beautiful as he passed, plunging like a diver into a misty gulf. The gulf was destruction, annihilation, death.” Later, the night of Roderick’s death, the rain falls about the villa “like the sound of the deeps about a ship’s sides.” When Roderick’s body is discovered, James writes that “the rain had spent its torrents upon him, and his clothes and hair were as wet as if the billows of the ocean had flung him upon the strand.”

          Although Frederic’s use of water imagery is not as extensive as James’, he does employ such images in connection with his principal figure, Theron Ware. At one point in the novel, Dr. Ledsmar reaches into one of his water-filled tanks, drawing out a lizard that he rechristens “Rev. Theron Ware.” After his experience with Celia in the forest, Theron associates the magic of the moment with “a strange hidden pool which mortal eye had not seen before. . . . As he pictured it, there rose sometimes from among the lily-pads, stirring the translucent depths and fluttering over the water’s surface drops like gems, the wonderful form of a woman.” After Theron leaves the office of Levi Gorringe, whom he has just insulted, the irate lawyer exclaims, “I didn’t think there was such an/out-and-out cur on this whole footstool. I almost wish, by God, I’d thrown him into the canal!”

          Near the end of the novel, Theron tells Sister Soulsby that while he was in New York, he had contemplated committing suicide by jumping from a bridge into the river below. Later, when Alice questions Sister Soulsby about Theron’s strange behavior, the latter brushes it off, saying, “It’s all past and gone. In fact, I hardly remember much about it now myself. He simply got into deep water, poor soul, and we’ve floated him out again, safe and sound.” Interestingly, a contemporary reviewer wrote in The Critic in 1896 that The Damnation was “not a religious or controversial novel but a human document—the story of a little earthenware pot which goes to swim gaily among the stronger vessels, and is broken by the way” (43).

          Both novels also contain garden scenes or images that figure prominently in the two stories. Rowland first meets Roderick in Cecelia’s garden Northampton—during the veritable Eden of the young artist’s innocence. Again, in order to reach Roderick’s studio, Rowland must pass through the front garden of the Hudson home where Mrs. Hudson “might be seen . . . of a morning, in a white apron and a pair of old gloves, engaged in frugal horticulture.” The gardens of New England connote a fundamental pure romantic closeness to nature and virtue, in contrast to the gardens of Europe, which cast a negative romantic spell on the unwary innocent. James describes one of Rowland’s favorite haunts in Italy: “The garden hangs in the air, and you ramble from terrace to terrace and wonder how it keeps from slipping down, in full consummation of its dishonor and decay, to the nakedly romantic gorge beneath.” In this garden, Rowland Mallet undergoes a “wilderness experience” and decides not to utterly abandon Roderick.

          After Roderick’s loss of innocence, the garden is no longer one of paradise but of deception. When Christina’s mother ultimately recognizes the treachery of her daughter, she cries, “To have nourished a serpent, sir, all these years! To have lavished one’s self upon a viper that turns and stings her own devoted mother!” As a result of this “serpent,” Roderick is devastated. He says, “If I hadn’t come to Rome I shouldn’t have risen, and if I hadn’t risen I shouldn’t have fallen.” In the garden in Florence, Roderick spends hours alone, stalking about in his abject restlessness. After the last unfortunate meeting of Roderick and Christina, who has now become the Princess Casamassima, Rowland sadly reflects, “It was her [Christina’s] fancy at present to treat the world as a garden of pleasure, and if hitherto she had played with Roderick’s passion on its stem there was little doubt that she would now pluck it with a more merciless hand and drain it of its acrid sweetness.” The archetypal garden, the serpent, and the innocent all play out their traditional roles from innocence to experience to destruction.

          Throughout The Damnation as well, the garden appears in relation to Theron’s intellectual development. Early in the novel, Theron decides, “Ignorance was a thing to be remedied, and he would forthwith bend all his energies to cultivating his mind till it should blossom like a garden.” He views his times of study and contemplation as likely “to yield more than the ordinary harvest of mental profit.”

          Alice Ware’s beautiful flower garden at the parsonage blooms majestically and seems to mock Theron, who foolishly believes that Levi Gorringe has sent many flowering plants to Alice for reasons that are not entirely honorable. When Theron’s “serpent of knowledge” appears, the garden quickly withers and fades. “His casual glance through the window caught a desolate picture of blackened dahlia stalks and shriveled blooms.  The gayety and color of the garden were gone, and in their place was shabby and disheveled ruin.” The Edenic garden of Theron’s innocence is also destroyed, not by Celia Madden, but by Theron himself. He has unwittingly done the work of the scientist’s symbolic serpent that bears his own name.

          In his “Preface” to Roderick Hudson, James admits that he had “yearned over the preliminary presentation of [his] small square patch of the American scene.” As an artist, he was deeply concerned about the conflicts of the 1870s. “The ‘complex fate’ of the American artist, James observed, was that he could not be as single-minded about the United States as the Europeans could be about their countries: all of America’s intensity was being poured into the doing of large things on a large continent (44).” It was difficult in the 1870s to defend one’s sitting at a desk writing novels when people were fashioning farms out of prairies, blasting their way through mountains, uprooting entire forests, and building transcontinental railroads. The decision for Roderick is as it was then for James—a choice between living and working in America, where the pursuit of art seemed reserved largely for women (and in men was considered to be idleness), or living and working in Europe, where art was still an honorable and civilized pursuit (45).

          Harold Frederic, like James, had a lover’s quarrel with his country. He felt that Americans during the Gilded Age years had lost their basic pride. In a letter to President Grover Cleveland, dated 8 November, 1884, Frederic wrote from London, “So long had I seen and hated these modern tendencies in our people; so trivial and selfish and unworthy had seemed to me the aims and ends for which Americans worked, the gods before which they did fetish worship, and the political harangues by which/they justified themselves, that I may be said to have grown up with more indignation at, than pride in, my country and my countrymen” (46).

          Although both writers chose to expatriate themselves from their homeland, neither man could turn his back entirely on the complex developments, problems, and successes of America as she steadily grew into a world power. For their subject matter, the two writers chose the life they knew, and because they constantly used the touchstone of “reality” in their writing, the two novels under consideration may be considered to be valid social and cultural documents.

          In Roderick Hudson and The Damnation, we see many of the prevailing social conditions of the 1870s as James and Frederic observed them. In both novels, we see the American small town with its provincial attitudes, Puritan morality, philanthropic and/or reform issues, glimpses of the American family, the emergence of big business and the increasing spirit of materialism, cultural and ethnic conflicts, religious unrest, and the perennial controversy surrounding the role of art and the artist in society.

          In spite of James’ protests that he had not really “done” Northampton, Massachusetts, most critics feel that James has indeed painted an accurate portrait of this provincial New England town during the 1870s. In 1864, James had spent the summer at Northampton, which was then a comfortable health resort, and he remarked that it was the “only small American ville de province of which one had happened to lay up . . . a pleased vision” (47). Maxwell Geismar suggests that James’ treatment of Northampton is perhaps the first of a line of provincial satires that reached their culmination in the writing of Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street (48). In James’ depiction of Roderick’s hometown, he clearly reveals the American artists’ dilemma in facing the limitations and dull future that parochialism proffers to gifted young people.

          In the opening paragraph of the novel, James writes, “Her [Cecelia’s] misfortunes were three in number; first, she had lost her husband; second, she had lost her money, or the greater part of it; and third, she lived at Northampton, Massachusetts.” Roderick, Cecelia, and Mary all admit that life in Northampton is dull. Roderick complains, “Nothing ever happens in this benighted town.” In a letter, Cecelia tells Rowland that she rushes to the window every time someone passes by, just for something to do, and Mary writes, “We lead here so quiet and monotonous a life that I am afraid I can tell you nothing that will interest you.”

          After Roderick has tasted the riches of Rome, he sees his hometown in an even more unfavorable light, if that is possible. He laughs about his engagement to Mary Garland “because it savors so of Northampton Mass, and because Northampton Mass seen from here [Rome] somehow is so funny.” Roderick says that any idea of his returning to “Northampton Main Street—even for three days again—has become, I think, my principal impossibility.” To return to Northampton, for Roderick, would amount to being buried alive. 

          The primary focus of Frederick’s story of Theron Ware is the small upstate New York community of Octavius (Utica). In The Damnation, we see the many subcultures that existed in Frederic’s hometown in the 1870s: the Irish-Americans, the various religious groups, the large and small business interests, the “intellectuals” of the town, and so forth. Like James, Frederic selected people that he had known as models for many of his characters.  Just as James is thought to have patterned Christina Light after Elena Lowe and Gloriani after William Wetmore Story, so Frederic’s good friend, Father Edward A. Terry, becomes Father Vincent Forbes and the Irish McQuade sisters combine to produce Celia Madden.   

          However, whereas James is interested in the effect of the times upon the artist, Frederic is more concerned with the prevailing conditions as they affect a provincial religious thinker. Frederic draws a vivid, concentrated picture of the extremes of spiritual attitudes and development within the organized Christianity of his region by contrasting the native American Methodists (the conservative liberals) with the smaller group of first and second generation Irish (the liberal conservatives) who are gradually assuming characteristics of the middle class (49). In his youth, Frederic had seen a variety of attacks on religious orthodoxy by “discriminating thinkers who included not only biological scientists but even some widely respected clergymen. . . . By 1890, Frederic was well aware that one who entered the modern lists equipped only with the thin defensive armor of primitive Methodism was in grave intellectual and spiritual danger” (50).

          For Frederic, the fall of society had a parallel in the individual—that is, innocence being exposed to disturbing knowledge. This knowledge then brings the possibilities of Good vs. Evil that can threaten emotional balances, unsettle the personality, and ultimately damn the soul (51). “Unlike his [other] New York novels, The Damnation is not primarily a study of society, but of the unsuccessful attempt of an individual to move from one intellectual level of that society to another” (52). Henry James’ concern is, likewise, not so much with society, but with the effects of society on the individual consciousness.

          In the 1870s, the young American artist is still confronted with vestiges of the old Puritan morality, which cling tenaciously to people’s minds in spite of modern developments that make the old values seem somehow anachronistic. Rowland Mallet is himself a product of this old traditional thinking. F.W. Dupee asserts that Rowland’s “negations are made part of the natural history of Puritanism in America” (53). Rowland “had sprung from a stiff Puritan stock and had been brought up to think much more intently of the duties of our earthly pilgrimage than of its privileges and pleasures.” He had been made to feel that “there ran through all things a strain of right and of wrong as different, after all, in their complexion, as the texture, to the spiritual sense, of Sundays and weekdays.” Rowland’s father had always bestowed on him “more frowns than smiles” and regretted that he had made a fortune that would be Rowland’s someday. “He remembered that the fruit had not dropped ripe from the tree into his own mouth, and he determined it should be no fault of his if the boy were corrupted by luxury. Rowland, therefore, received the education of a poor man’s son” and his habits were “marked by an exaggerated simplicity which was kept up really at great expense.”

          Mrs. Hudson and Mr. Striker, the town lawyer, also represent the Puritan morality of Northampton. His cousin Cecelia tells Rowland that Mrs. Hudson confessed one day that she had “a holy horror of a profession which consists exclusively. . .in making figures of people divested of all clothing.”  To Mrs. Hudson, sculpture is “an insidious form of immorality.” Roderick tells Rowland that his mother “only half believes in ‘art’. . . . She can see no good in my modeling from the life; it seems to her a snare of the enemy.”  She would rather have Roderick continue to study law, as “it’s a more natural occupation.” To Mrs. Hudson, artists in general are “bold, bad men.”

          When Roderick decides to leave his home and go to Europe to study and work, Mr. Striker sneers, “Roderick is going off to Europe to learn to imitate the antique. . . . An antique, as I understand it, is an image of a pagan deity, with considerable dirt sticking to it, and no arms, no nose and no clothing.” When Rowland explains that one of the reasons for studying in Rome is that the Romans are a handsome, well-made people, the lawyer replies, “I suppose they’re no better than a good tough Yankee. The same God made us!”

          Mrs. Hudson’s attitude toward the world outside of New England is one of distrust and apprehension. She tells Rowland that she has never really been able to give Roderick what he needed  in order to fulfill his capabilities, but that she “was afraid of the world for him; it was so dangerous and dreadful—so terrible mixed.” When Mrs. Hudson travels to Europe herself, she seems to think that since she is “in a foreign land with a southern climate and a Catholic religion, [her personal wants] would forthwith become very complex and formidable, though as yet they had simply resolved themselves into a desire for a great deal with tea and for a certain extremely familiar old black and white shawl across her feet.”

          Mrs. Hudson’s attitude toward the Roman Church is indicated by her remarks to Mary Garland as they visit one of the great cathedrals. She says, “Suppose we had to kiss that dreadful brass toe. If I could only have kept our doorknocker at Northampton as bright as that! I think it’s heathenish.”  As they stand viewing a tattered Italian peasant performing his devotions, she shudders, saying, “After that I suppose he thinks he’s as good as any one!” Later, when she finally realizes that Roderick is past saving, she weeps out, “It’s this wicked, infectious, heathenish place!”

          In a similar vein, in Frederic’s work, the Puritan mind in Octavius is precisely what starts Theron on his road to rebellion. His first confrontation with narrow thinking comes when he first meets his trustee board—Loren Pierce, Erastus Winch, and Levi Gorringe. Among other things, they see to it that there is no milk delivery to the parsonage on Sundays and that Alice Ware’s sunbonnet is divested of its flowers. Brother Pierce explains, “We are a plain sort o’ folks up in these parts. . . We don’t want no book-learnin’ or dictionary words in our pulpit.” They also want no “new-fangled notions” and refuse to have such “tom-foolery” as a choir or an organ in the church.  Pierce warns Theron, “Our folks don’t take no stock in all that pack o’ nonsense about science, such as tellin’ the ages of the earth by crackin’ up stones.” Nor do the Octavius Methodists subscribe to the outlandish theory that their grandfathers were all monkeys.

          When Theron innocently suggests a festival or some other form of entertainment in order to raise the money needed to meet the yearly deficit, Brother Pierce declares, “Our women-folks ain’t that kind. They did try to hold a sociable once, but nobody came, and we didn’t raise more’n three or four dollars. It ain’t their line. They lack the worldly arts. As the Discipline commands, they avoid the evil of putting on gold and costly apparel, and taking such diversions as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus.”          However, Theron quickly discovers the gap between the trustees’ public and private morality. They explain to him that the interest rates on the mortgages that they each hold are the “old” rates that were effective when the contracts were made. They have thus decided that they are “bound” by their agreements, even though the state has since lowered the rate from seven to six percent. Brother Pierce, annoyed at Theron’s interference, exhibits his “practical Puritanism” when he says, “The Lord gives us crosses grievous to our natur’ an’ we’re told to bear ‘em cheerfully as long as they’re on our backs; but there ain’t nothin’ said agin our unloadin’ ‘em in the ditch the minute we git the chance. I guess you won’t last here more’n a twelve-month.”

          For some reason, Theron finds himself unwilling to “enforce” many of the “rules” of his Methodist congregation. He makes a mental resolve not to preach a sermon denouncing the street-car line for operating on the Sabbath, as has been the custom each year. He also makes no effort to appoint a committee that would censure church members who had pretended to take their children to the circus “just to see the animals,” but who had stayed to watch “with an ardent and unashamed eye,” the flying act of the Rose-Queen of the Arena. 

          Despite his attempts at reform, Theron is unable to alter the thinking of the provincials of Octavius. Instead, his own character is changed, and he leaves the ministry a broken man. As Mrs. Hudson had blamed Rome for Roderick’s misfortunes, Alice Ware laments, “It was all that miserable, contemptible Octavius that did the mischief.”

          The years that followed the Civil War saw numerous attempts at social reform because many felt that man’s environment could be altered in such a way as to benefit mankind, both individually and collectively. The motivations for such attempts were as varied as were the proposals for change, but most, if not all, of them were based on the belief that society could be affected by the conscious effort of reform, some of which took the form of philanthropy.  Both Roderick Hudson and The Damnation incorporate the philanthropy/reform idea as a feature of the times.

          Because Rowland Mallet is financially independent, Cecelia feels that he has certain obligations to society. She asks him what he intends to “do” in Europe. When he replies that he intends merely to do “no great harm,” she asks, “Isn’t a man like you doing a certain harm when he isn’t doing some positive good? . . . Your circumstances. . .suggest the idea of some sort of social usefulness.” Rowland jokingly asks whether she thinks he should found an orphan asylum or build a dormitory for Harvard College, but Cecelia, in all seriousness, tells him that before he is finished, he is expected to “do something handsome” for his fellow human beings. Rowland reflects on the altruistic attitude of the times that alleges that true happiness consists of “getting out of one’s self” by engaging in some absorbing humanitarian interest.

          The ruins of Rome cause Mary Garland to reflect on the vanity of life. It depresses her to be constantly reminded of the many mighty civilizations that no longer exist. Only if one had something “good” to do could one perhaps feel that life was not completely futile. Mary tells Rowland that if she were to remain in Rome, she would have to “take refuge in some practical occupation,” such as opening a school for the beggar children, to keep from becoming permanently “low” or depressed.

          Frederic’s “reformers” in The Damnation are the traveling Soulsbys, who have taken a rather unorthodox, yet business-like, approach to their work. Their modus operandi is to gather the congregation together under the pretext of conducting a revival meeting, and then on the second evening, to lock all the church doors and hold a “debt-raising” service with their literally captive audience. Sister Soulsby, who has learned well the secret of mass psychology, is highly successful at raising the needed money, but Theron is somehow bothered by her tactics, which seem to him to be unscrupulous.

          In defense of her methodology, Sister Soulsby argues, “My dear friend, you might just as well say that potatoes are unclean and unfit to eat because manure is put into the / ground they grow in. . . .Either you were all to come to smash here, or the people had to be shaken up, stood on their heads. . . . It’s my business—mine and Soulsby’s—to do that sort of thing.”  She tries to convince Theron that things look different from the audience than they do from behind the scenes. She says, “It only shows that everything in this world is produced by machinery—by organization. The trouble is that you’ve been let in on the stage, behind the scenes, so to speak, and you’re so green . . . that you want to sit down and cry because the trees are cloth, and the moon is a lantern. And I say, Don’t be such a goose!” She argues that she and Soulsby “do good,” so even if some of their devices may seem to be fraudulent, they are “good frauds.”

          In spite of Theron’s moral reservations about their methods, he turns to the Soulsbys in his hour of despair. After nursing him back to health, Sister Soulsby tells Alice, “We’ve had all sorts of comfort out of the thing. . . There’s a solid satisfaction in knowing that at last, for once in our lives, we’ve had a chance to be of some real use to somebody who truly needed it

. . . .We feel as if we were George Peabody and Lady Burdett-Coutts, and several other philanthropists thrown in.”

          Larzer Ziff’s analysis of the Soulsby’s place in American life merits consideration. He states, “The Soulsbys represent the possibility of social control by a meritocracy of common-sensical people who sympathize with the masses and are knowledgeable enough to translate new intellectual developments into a tongue they can understand. They stand for what can be done on the American scene with the knowledge that has destroyed innocence. . . .They foreshadow the advertising man and the mass communicator, . . . but they also foreshadow the social planner. They are Frederic’s suggestion, in opposition to Social Darwinism, that people can control the future of their society if they but yield power to the able. The old Jeffersonian ideal must be modified to meet the realities of a world in which anti-social forces are increasingly centralized and must therefore be fought by centralization” (54). Both James and Frederic acknowledge the “social obligations” of those members of society who have either the means or the methods for improving the lot of their fellow human beings.

          The American family as revealed in the two novels seems to be a rather unstable institution at best. In neither of the works do we find a closely-knit, solid family unit. In sketching the family in this light, both James and Frederic acknowledge the trend during the l870s toward the fragmentation of society and the loosening of the traditional family ties that had long served as a primary social force in America.

          James reveals that even Rowland Mallet’s parents had not been happy in their marriage and that Rowland’s mother had spent her life trying to admit that the marriage had been “an irredeemable error.” As a result, the Mallet family had lived their lives independently from one another.  Rowland’s cousin, Cecelia, is a widow who has made a charming home for herself, “yet there was pity for him [Rowland] in seeing such a bright proud woman live in such a small dull way.” Roderick’s mother is also a widow, whose husband “drank himself to death.” She has showered all of her attentions and demands on Roderick after her only other son was killed in the Civil War. Roderick admits, however, that he has not been able to take his brother’s place and that he has ultimately been a disappointment to his mother in most respects.

          Christina Light’s family, though of American origins, has spent much of its time in Europe. Mrs. Light is the daughter of an American painter of bad landscapes and an Englishwoman who had formerly been an actor and who had subsequently run off with an English lord. Mrs. Light herself had been married only three years when her husband was “somehow” drowned in the Adriatic Sea. She then had moved in with her elderly father for a while, but because he was inform and helpless, she soon moved away and left him alone. Some of the Romans took up a collection to send him back to America, where he died “in some sort of asylum.” Mrs. Light’s primary objective is to arrange a “marriage of reason” between her daughter, Christina, and either an English duke, a lord, or even a young American with the proper number of millions.

          Roderick’s meeting with Christina “completes what Rome had already begun—his alienation from his native country, and his abnegation of all the sentimental ties that bind the ordinary man to his home” (55). Rowland frantically sends for Roderick’s mother and fiancée in the hope that they can exert some influence on him; meanwhile, Christina “is subjected constantly to the pressure of her mother’s desire that she give her hand to Prince Casamassima and make a ‘good’ marriage” (56). Christina, the American girl with a European education, retains her sense of duty to her mother; Roderick, the authentic native American, does not.

          In The Damnation, the changing function of the American family and the breakdown of traditional family ties are easily observed in the domestic relations of the Maddens, the Soulsbys, and the Wares.

          Jeremiah Madden and his wife share their ostentatious mansion with Michael and Celia, children of Jeremiah’s first marriage, and Theodore, the rebellious son of his present wife. Mr. Madden had remarried before moving to Octavius, primarily because the embarrassments of having a motherless family would hurt his social respectability and, even more important, his business prospects. The marriage has not been a fortunate one, however, because the second Mrs. Madden is narrow-minded, suspicious, vain, and sour-tempered.

          Each member of the Madden family has his or her own section of the house, and each carries on his or her own activities independently of the others. Although Celia permits no open discord, no real affection exists between her and her step-mother. “Mrs. Madden still permitted herself a certain license of hostile comment when her step-daughter was not present, and listened with gratification to what the women of her acquaintance ventured upon saying in the same spirit. . . . The two rarely met, for that matter, and exchanged only the baldest and curtest forms of speech.”

          Celia has her own opinions about marriage and its traditional role in society. At one point, Theron says to her, “One reads so much nowadays of American heiresses going to Europe and marrying dukes and noblemen. I suppose you will do that too. Princes would fight one another for you.” To this, she replies, “That is the old-fashioned idea that women must belong to somebody, as if they were curios, or statues, or race-horses. . . . I have a different view. I am myself, and I belong to myself, exactly as much as any man. The notion that any other human being could conceivably obtain the slightest property right in me is . . . preposterous.” Celia admits, of course, that this is not the generally accepted view of marriage, but she refuses to let others make rules for her.        Theron is intrigued by Sister Soulsby’s story of how she and her common-law “husband” began their partnership. She tells him that she ran away from a “stupid home” with a man that she knew was already married. After that, she supported herself for a good many years until she met Soulsby. She says, “We liked each other from the start. We compared notes, and we found that we had both soured on living by fakes, and that we were tired of the road, and wanted to settle down and be respectable in our old age. We had a little money—enough to see us through a year or two. . .so we took a little place in a quiet country village. . .and we started in.”

          When Theron turns to his new-found intellectual and “cultural” pursuits, he realizes that his marriage to Alice is now a burden, rather than the blessing that he had once imagined it was. Instead of spending time with his wife, Theron tries to “buy her off” with material things—a new piano and a hired girl to help around the house. As he imagines his relationship with Celia developing, Theron pushes Alice further and further into the background of his daily experiences. He recognizes his situation fully when Sister Soulsby suggests, “As long as people will marry in their teens, the wrong people will get yoked up together.” The Ware’s marriage eventually becomes one of dogged endurance because the split between them is a spiritual one that allows no common ground for reconciliation. They are finally, as Alice says, “worse than complete strangers.”      

          Both Roderick Hudson and The Damnation clearly reveal the influence of materialism on the American psyche. James and Frederic were aware of early stirrings in the business arena that would ultimately have a tremendous effect on all segments of the population. Even in the small towns, the effects of capitalism were already evident, and concepts such as the “American Dream,” the “Protestant Ethic,” and the “Gospel of Wealth” were direct outgrowths of this economic change in America.

          In Roderick Hudson, we see two groups of wealthy individuals: those who have inherited their money, such as Rowland Mallet and Mrs. Light, and those who have earned their fortunes in some type of business venture.  Money, to most Americans, seems to be a central concern. Mr. Striker boasts, “I’m a plain practical old boy, content to follow an honorable profession in a free country. I didn’t go to any part of Europe to learn my business; no one took me by the hand; I had to grease my wheels myself, and such as I am, I’m a self-made man, every inch of me!” When Roderick destroys the bust he has made of Barnaby Striker, he shouts, “I’ve driven the money-changers out of the temple!” Later, when Roderick finds himself in trouble in Rome, Mrs. Hudson offers to write to Mr. Striker for money.  Unfortunately, all the money in the world cannot solve Roderick’s problem.   

          One of the principal criteria in Mrs. Light’s consideration of a suitable husband for Christina is the financial foundation of the suitor. Prince Casamassima ranks high with his marble terrace, his golden coach, and the Casamassima hereditary diamonds, which would all go to Christina if she were to marry him. Christina reveals that her “mamma writes all those things down in a little book.” Mrs. Light fears that unless Christina marries well, they will lose all social prominence. At one time, the Light family had been considered to be well off, but since the railroads had brought in the “vulgarians,” it had been impossible for them to live on the amount of money that had formerly been sufficient.

          In Roderick Hudson, Mr. Leavenworth represents the American capitalist who has made his fortune and who goes off to Europe to enjoy it. Leavenworth, a widower, has recently retired from the proprietorship of large borax mines in the Middle West. His greatest concern now is a “retreat” that he is having built for himself on the banks of the Ohio River. The elaborate home will contain a library “filled with well-selected and beautifully-bound authors in groups relieved from point to point by high-class statuary.” He commissions Roderick to do a piece that represents the conception of “Intellectual Refinement,” about which Roderick remarks to his friends, “His conception is sitting on an India-rubber cushion with a pen in her ear and the lists of the stock-exchange in her hand. . . .It’s as much as one can do to like his awful money”

          In Octavius, “big business” looms as a formidable threat to the small businessmen, who see their displacement as inevitable. None of the small dealers can compete with Thurston’s, which buys in large quantities and undersells every other merchant in town—a precursor of the Wal-Mart philosophy. The town storekeepers admit that “Thurston’s” means “progress,” but they resent deeply their own loss of livelihood. Besides that, argues the bookstore proprietor, Thurston’s is destroying the book business and debauching the reading tastes of the community by catering strictly to the public’s taste for popular literature. At one point, Theron makes a mental resolve to preach a sermon on the subject of the “modern idea of admiring the great for crushing the small.”

          Jeremiah Madden, Octavius’ richest man, is the embodiment of the “American Dream” in the flesh. Having fled from Ireland during the potato famine years, he learned a trade, married, bought a house, and began his business. The phenomenal growth of his company, however, has not altered Jeremiah’s personal habits—he still works hard, lives simply, and attends church regularly. Partly because his home life has not been satisfying, Mr. Madden has concentrated most of his attention and energy on his business, and although he is now a wealthy man, he still works as if he were earning a daily wage. He provides well for his family, but money is all that he has to give them.

          Perhaps one of the most dominant themes of Roderick Hudson centers on cultural conflict. Michael Swan writes in 1950, “In those early years, he [James] saw Europe very plainly as a place for the moral destruction of the innocent New Worlders who visited it. . . . Here, James saw, was drama, and he began to write Roderick Hudson. . . . It must be admitted, that James’ idea of Europe in this book is a little naïve. His Puritanism, his own innocence, in fact, comes out in his conception of Europe as a kind of wicked paradise” (57).

          Roderick is not the only person who feels the difference between the cultures of America and Europe. As early as 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville writes in Democracy in America, “In the United States a wealthy man thinks that he owes it to public opinion to devote his leisure to some kind of industrial or commercial pursuit or to public business. He would think himself in bad repute if he employed his life solely in living. It is for the purpose of escaping this obligation to work that so many rich Americans come to Europe, where they find some scattered remains of aristocratic society, among whom idleness is still held in honor” (58). As Rowland Mallet explains to Mary Garland, “I have the misfortune to be rather an idle man, and in Europe both the burden and the obloquy of idleness are less heavy than here.” Mary, however, cannot understand his attitude. She asks, “Wouldn’t it be better to set at some work in order to get reconciled to America than to go to Europe just in order to get reconciled to sloth? . . . Every one I know works. . . . I look at you with curiosity: you’re the first unoccupied man I ever saw.” European manners, seen from different continents, evoke different responses. Christina cautions Rowland, “Please remind Mr. Hudson that he’s not in a New England village, that it’s not the custom in Rome to address one’s conversation exclusively, night after night, to the same poor girl.” Interestingly, Roderick’s attitude toward Roman society is not altogether complimentary. He complains, “Everything’s mean and dusky and shabby, and the men and women who make up this so-called brilliant society are the meanest and shabbiest of all. They have no real spontaneity; they are nothing but parrots and popinjays. They have no more dignity than so many grasshoppers.”

          Mr. Leavenworth is also quick to note differences between American women and those of Europe. He claims that America’s “refined and cultivated” young women are far superior to the “coarse and bold and sensual” duchesses, princesses, and countesses. He says, “You see more beautiful girls in an hour on Broadway than in the whole tour of Europe.” Regarding Christina’s engagement to the Italian prince, Mr. Leavenworth remarks, “If she wanted a fine bright fellow—a specimen of clean comfortable white humanity—I would have undertaken to find him for her without going out of my native State. And if she wanted a big fortune I would have found her twenty that she would have had hard work to make an impression on; money right there in convertible securities—not tied up in fever-stricken lands and worm-eaten villas.” He further claims that the degraded position of women in European countries is a true measure of the inferiority of European civilization to that of America.

          Cultural and ethnic conflicts are also an integral part of the community of Octavius, New York—not only those conflicts between the various religious factions, but among different ethnic groups as well. Until his contact with Celia and Father Forbes, Theron had thought of the Irish as something “sinister and repellent.” He had not known personally any persons of this “curiously alien race,” and he could only vaguely remember the dozen or more Irish families who had lived among the brickyards on the outskirts of the small town of Tyre. “His views on this general subject were merely those common to his communion and his environment. He took it for granted, for example, that in the large cities most of the poverty and all the drunkenness, crime, and political corruption were due to the perverse qualities of this foreign people—qualities accentuated and emphasized in every evil direction by the baleful influence of a false and idolatrous religion. It is hardly too much to say that he had never encountered a dissenting opinion on this point.”

          To the native Americans of Octavius, the “Eyetalians” of the community are not as troublesome as are the Irish. Even though the Italians are given to jabbin’ knives into each other,” they do not strike for higher wages the way the Irish do. Further cultural distinctions exist even between the divergent economic groups of Irishmen. For example, the Maddens have little to do with the Irish who live in the “shanties reared among the ash-heaps and debris of the town’s most bedraggled outskirts.” This conflict between cultures is precisely what ultimately unsettles Theron’s mind and precipitates his downfall.

          Although Henry James’ own training had freed him from the religious conflicts that tortured the New England conscience, traces of the religious unrest of the times are apparent in Roderick Hudson. One of the guests at the Hudson family picnic in Northampton is Mr. Whitefoot, a young Orthodox minister, “who but a twelve-month later became a convert to Episcopacy.” Reflecting a pragmatic approach to religious matters, Mary Garland’s family members are not considered to be theologians, but ministers. She says, “We don’t take a very firm stand on doctrine; we’re practical and active rather; we haven’t time to find reasons and phrases.”

          James’ interest in the Roman Catholic Church was not so much for its spiritual function, but for its social role in society. “James described the Catholic Church as ‘the most impressive convention in all history.’ . . . From Rowland Mallet to Lambert Strether in The Ambassadors, James’ Americans find relief and solace in European cathedrals” (59). However, like Rowland, James could likely say, “In these many months now that I’ve been in Rome I’ve never ceased for a moment to look at the Faith simply from the outside.  I don’t see an opening as big as your finger-nail where I could creep into it!”

          In The Damnation as well, Frederic chronicles the currents of spiritual change and unrest that were so much a part of the post-war years. “The old ideality has failed; it cannot continue with influence in an America that has awakened to/the implications of the Darwinist philosophy and the new historical and anthropological findings about organized religion” (60). As Theron is unprepared and unwilling to accept these new currents of thought and is unable to reject them in their various and appealing forms, he brings about his own damnation by trying to reconcile them within the narrowness of his own thinking (61). He cannot accept a religion that accepts the new biblical criticism while ministering to the masses on the bases of their psychological need for some kind of belief in higher power. 

          The place of art in society has always been a subject of interest and controversy. During the 1870s, much argument arose regarding the role of the artist in society, and Roderick Hudson reflects some of the ongoing debate. All of the artists depicted in the novel are Americans who have gone to Europe to pursue their chosen profession. Roderick declares that he is an advocate for “American art” because he does not see why the “biggest people” should not produce the greatest works in the world. In an echoing of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Roderick suggests that we need “to be true to ourselves, to pitch in and not be afraid, to fling Imitation overboard and fix our eyes upon our National Individuality.” Roderick intends his crowning achievement to be a magnificent image called “Native Land.” Mr. Leavenworth declares his own eagerness be a patron of America’s indigenous talent by employing an American architect for his great building. This demonstrates, he feels, his belief that “the office of art is second only to that of religion.”

          Roderick advocates the Greek approach to art. He states, “I mean never to make anything ugly. The Greeks never made anything ugly, and I’m a Hellenist!. . .For me it’s either that or nothing. It’s against the taste of the day, I know; we’ve really lost the faculty to understand beauty in the large ideal way. We stand like a race with shrunken muscles, staring helplessly at the weights our forefathers easily lifted.”

          One of the American artists who cannot accept Roderick’s “Greek idea” is Gloriani, another sculptor, who contends that there is no essential difference between beauty and ugliness and that to try to separate the elements is “a waste of wit.” According to Gloriani, there is no more use trying to be “Greek” than there is in waiting for the Muse to descend. The true artist must learn to do without both the Greeks and the Muse.

           Another friend, Sam Singleton, represents the struggling American artist in Europe who is patiently waiting for fame and fortune to come to him. His little watercolors have improved lately, but he has had to work diligently just to make ends meet. He worships Roderick, whose talent he envies, but Singleton’s pathos lies in the fact that he is spending his patient creative energy on goals that he has set far too low.

          Augusta Blanchard, another American painter, seems to be a combination of several of James’ acquaintances, according to critics—Lizzie Boott and Sarah Freeman Clarke perhaps. Miss Blanchard has her own money but is not above selling her pictures. She paints mostly flowers, but occasionally does one of a peasant woman with her back turned because she does backs well but is a little weak with faces. Miss Blanchard is admired by others for her combination of “beauty and talent, of isolation and self-support.”

          In these four artists, James presents a cross-section of the American artistic fraternity that existed in Europe in the 1870s. Few art schools existed in America at the time, thus no great masters were available to study under, and no “atmosphere” in America inspired creativity in artists. As a result, many fled to Europe in search of those elements they found lacking in their own country. “An expanding America offered no mystery, no ancient wrong, no ruins—only a happy daylight prosperity which was hardly sufficient for [an artist] of high imagination” (62).

          Leon Edel further states, “With the artists came the mere dabblers and the dilettantes. . . .There always were amateurs besides the hard workers; always dilettantes to read poems, admire pictures—and to imitate them” (63). One such dilettante in The Damnation is Celia Madden. She is an “out-and-out Greek,” who agrees more with Greek thought, the Greek theology of the beautiful and the strong, and the Greek philosophy of life than she does with modern teachings. Celia dabbles in painting, book-binding, sculpture, writing, carpentry, and music. In her apartment, Theron finds pictures of the Virgin Mary, spaced alternately between statues of unrobed figures, a spectacle that seems highly incongruous to Theron’s uninitiated artistic sense. Celia is determined that the “Greek idea” will ultimately prevail and that art, poetry, and the love of beauty will be restored to the Catholic religion as they existed before the “Fathers” extinguished them. Celia Madden is totally free to indulge her tastes for the new art, but once he is exposed to Celia’s ideas, Theron cannot turn back to his narrow ideals that have now been destroyed (64).            Roderick Hudson ends with Roderick’s violent suicidal death in the stormy Italian Alps, but Lotus Snow suggests that “his physical death only complements the death of his genius” (65). Roderick himself had said earlier, “The end of my work shall be the end of my life. When I’ve played my last card I shall cease to care for the game.” Roderick’s physical death then is merely symbolic because after his spiritual degeneration, he had not really lived at all.

          Regarding the ending of The Damnation, George W. Johnson feels that Theron “has no absolution, and his final dilemma is that he does not and cannot know whether he is a colossal sinner or only an average sort of man . . . He cannot know how or whether he is really damned at all” (66). As the novel ends, we see Theron preparing to go West with lofty dreams of entering the political arena and becoming a great leader. Evidence suggests, however, that the ending of the novel as it appears may have been a late addition. Frederic’s original notes for the ending read, “Soulsby & wife at deathbed—their words finish book” (67). The possibility exists that Roderick Hudson and Theron Ware, by their physical deaths, were to have carried the parallel comparison to the very end.

          Considering the remarkable similarities between the two works, a natural question arises concerning Frederic’s possible awareness of the James novel and whether there could have been conscious or unconscious “borrowing” on Frederic’s part along several lines. We do know that at the time of the publication of Roderick Hudson (1876), Frederic was working as a proofreader for the Utica Herald and the Utica Daily Observer, for which he reviewed a number of the novels of William Dean Howells. By 1880, Frederic had become the editor of the Utica Daily Observer, a post that he held until the summer of 1882. It seems likely, then, that Frederic would have been aware of James’ early novels, which, in addition to Roderick Hudson, included The American, Daisy Miller, and Portrait of a Lady. 

          Frederic subsequently served as editor of the Albany Evening Journal from 1882-1884. After this, he moved to England to become a correspondent for the New York Times. At that point, he began a correspondence with William Dean Howells in an attempt to further his own publishing fortunes. He knew that a kind word from Howells could help him immeasurably in his writing career because Howell’s editorial positions at the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s had given him tremendous influence with publishers and other critics. Howells had already been instrumental in helping Mark Twain, Stephen Crane (a close personal friend of Frederic’s in Europe), Frank Norris, and Hamlin Garland, among others. Unfortunately for Frederic, Howells was not inclined to provide him any assistance, but given Howells’ friendship with James and the close-knit ties within the community of young writers, it is hard to imagine that Frederic was not aware of James’ body of work. 

However, perhaps the most cogent argument for Frederic’s familiarity with James’ novels, and Roderick Hudson in particular, is the fact that Frederic reviewed Princess Casamassima in 1887. Surely he would have known about the earlier depiction of the main character as she first appears in Roderick Hudson. If so, two intriguing questions remain—was Frederic “borrowing” from James by doing essentially the same thing that James had done 20 years earlier, or are the amazing resemblances between the two novels merely a result of the “realistic method” of writing about what one knows, considering that both authors were writing about the same time period in American culture? The irony of the connection between the two works is even more poignant because Frederic openly expressed his dislike of James’ work. Perhaps James enjoys the last laugh after all. 

Speculation aside, what we do know is that both James and Frederic struggled with the ancient—yet modern—problem of the freedom of the human will, the problem of the individual vs. society, the question of personal morality, and the individual’s search for ultimate truth. Although they were often critical of American attitudes, the two artists revealed both an interest in and a concern for their country, whose “growing pains” were disturbing to many artists. Whatever the relationship between the two novels, by striving to faithfully record life as they experienced it, Henry James and Harold Frederic have provided us with memorable glimpses of American life as it existed in the 1870s.  

 

Notes

 

            1 Everett Carter, “Introduction” to The Damnation of Theron Ware” (Cambridge, MA:

                        Belknap, 1960) vii.

            2 Robert Falk, “The Search for Reality: Writers and Their Literature” in The Gilded

                        Age: A Reappraisal, Ed. H. Wayne Morgan (Syracuse: Syracuse U., 1963) 200.

            3 Leon Edel, “Introduction” to Roderick Hudson (New York: Harper, 1960) xi. 

            4 Falk, 207.

            5 Carter, “Introduction” x.

            6 Thomas F. O’Donnell, “Frederic in the Mohawk Valley” Occasional Papers from

                                    Utica College (Syracuse, 1968) 10.

            7 John Henry Raleigh, “Introduction” to The Damnation of Theron Ware (New York:

                        Holt, 1958) xviii. 

            8 Personal letter

            9 Everett Carter, Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1954) 240.

            10 Raleigh, xi. 

            11 Viola Dunbar, “The Problem in Roderick Hudson” Modern Language Notes LXVII

                        (February 1952) 113.

            12 George W. Johnson, “Harold Frederic’s Young Goodman Ware: The Ambiguities

                        of a Realistic Romance” Modern Fiction Studies VIII (Winter 1962) 365. 

            13 Edel, “Introduction” xi.

            14 Henry S. Canby, Turn West, Turn East (Boston: Houghton, 1951) 114.

            15 Raleigh, xvii-xviii. 

            16 Cornelia P. Kelley, The Early Development of Henry James (Urbana, IL:

                        U of Illinois) 188.

            17 Dunbar, “Source” 304. 

            18 Edel, “Introduction” vii. 

            19 Edel, “Introduction” xiv.

            20 Carter, “Introduction” xvii.

            21 Carter, “Introduction” xviii. 

            22 Carter, “Introduction” xix.

            23 Raleigh, xviii. 

            24 Canby, 28.

            25 Raleigh, xxii.

            26 Johnson, 367. 

            27 Raleigh, viii-ix. 

            28 Johnson, 366. 

            29 Edel, “Introduction” xii. 

            30 Raleigh, xiii. 

            31 Maxwell Geismar, Henry James and the Jacobites (Boston: Houghton) 20. 

            32 Carter, xxii. 

            33 Richard Poirier, The Comic Sense of Henry James (New York: Oxford) 14.

            34 F.R. Leavis, “Henry James’ First Novel” Scrutiny XIV (September 1947) 300.

            35 Kelley, 183. 

            36 Thomas F. O’Donnell and Hoyt C Franchere, Harold Frederic 114-115.

            37 O’Donnell and Franchere, 115. 

            38 Edwin T. Bowden, The Themes of Henry James (New Haven: Yale U., 1956) 27.

            39 Kelley, 191. 

            40 Edel, “Introduction” viii. 

            41 Garland Strother, “Shifts in Point of View in The Damnation of Theron Ware”

                        The Frederic Herald III (April 1969) 2.

            42 Carter, “Introduction” xxiii.

            43 “Review of The Damnation of Theron Ware” The Critic (1896) 310.

            44 Edel, “Introduction” viii. 

            45 Edel, “Introduction” viii-ix.

            46 O’Donnell and Franchere, 53-54.

            47 Leon Edel, Henry James: The Untried Years (1843-1870) (Philadelphia:

                        Lippincott, 1953) 206. 

            48 Geismar, 19. 

            49 O’Donnell and Franchere, 113. 

            50 O’Donnell and Franchere, 111. 

            51 Carter, Howells 241.

            52 O’Donnell and Franchere, 114. 

            53 F.W. Dupee, Henry James (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956) 75. 

            54 Larzer Ziff, The American `890s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation (New York:

                        Viking, 1966) 216. 

            55 Pelham Edgar, Henry James (Boston: Houghton, 1927) 233. 

            56 C. Hartley Grattan, The Three Jameses (New York: Longmans, 1962) 246-247. 

            57 Oscar Cargill, The Novels of Henry James, 28. 

            58 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II (New York: Vintage, 1954)

                        161. 

            59 F.O. Matthiessen, Henry James: The Major Phase (New York: Oxford) 145. 

            60 Ziff, 213-214. 

            61 O’Donnell and Franchere, 116. 

            62 Leon Edel, The Conquest of London (1870-1884) (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962)

                        87. 

            63 Edel, Conquest 87. 

            64 Ziff, 214.

            65 Lotus Snow, “The Prose and the Modesty of the Matter: James’ Imagery for the

                        Artist in Roderick Hudson and The Tragic Muse” Modern Fiction Studies XII

                        (Spring 1966) 61. 

            66 Johnson, 372. 

            67 Richard VanDerBeets, “The Ending of The Damnation of Theron Ware” American

                        Literature XXXVI (November 1964) 358. 

 

 

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