This one puts me back on my Henry James trail.

It was published in 1878, 10 years earlier than The Aspern Papers. And whereas that later work had an icy little problem at its heart, and left the reader with much to ponder at the end, this one, though interesting and enjoyable (I listened to the audio-version, very capably narrated by Eleanor Bron), felt just a little too pat.

The action is set some three or four decades before the time of writing, and what James aims to foreground is the contrast between the manners and outlook of New England folk and those of their European counterparts.

Representing the Europeans we have -- and this could hardly be more exotic -- the Baroness Eugenia-Camilla-Dolores Munster, who is the morganatic wife of Prince Adolf of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein (a principality somewhere in Germany), and her younger brother, Felix Young. They have come to the New World to seek their fortune. Eugenia's marriage is under threat (political forces want the prince to make a more strategic marriage), so she's looking for an alternative husband, and Felix, an artist working for an illustrated newspaper, is looking for inspiration and a large pool of customers. Their specific target is a collection of cousins living not far from Boston. What is most important to Eugenia is that said cousins are rich. Felix agrees this would be an admirable quality, but he has much broader expectations, hoping to find his estranged family "powerful, and clever, and friendly, and elegant, and interesting, and generally delightful!". It is Felix's wider view, the novel will teach us, that holds the way to happiness.

So a meeting is set up, and the gorgeous pair, all sophistication and cosmopolitanism, are let loose upon the staid but kindly little community in the country. In the family itself, we have Mr Wentworth (uncle to Eugenia and Felix); Gertrude and Charlotte, his daughters; and Clifford, his son. Orbiting this group are Mr Brand, a well-meaning but rather dull unitarian minister; and Mr Robert Acton, described by Felix as a "man of the world", who has been to China, brought home a fortune, and "says witty things". Robert also has a sister, Lizzie, and an ailing mother. Mr Wentworth offers our Europeans the use of a small house adjoining the family home, and they duly install themselves.



The interest of the book lies in the differing world-views of the two groups. But neither group is homogeneous. While both the Europeans are worldly-wise, sophisticated, charming, cultured, uninhibited, and unconventional, they are quite distinct characters. Felix is the fun-loving but insightful one, gladly drinking in all that this new environment has to offer him, and beguiling his hide-bound relations with his freshness and brightness. Eugenia, on the other hand, is restless, devious, and sometimes (as, for example, with her predilection for festooning her new abode with random fabrics) a little ridiculous.

Similarly, while all our New Englanders have a quality of solidity and kindness, Gertrude is the one who, from the beginning, stands out as poised to reject the narrow staidness that envelops her environs, and turns like a sunflower towards the light, colour, and panache of the visitors. She is immediately drawn to Felix, and he to her. Mr Acton is also prepared to put a toe in the ocean of exoticism, and we wonder whether he will be the answer to Eugenia's problem. But no, he finds her tendency to deceit too troubling, so it's not to be. Clifford, the mildly reprobate son, is also fascinated by Eugenia (and she regards him, although he's much younger, as a "second bowstring"). But again he draws back, returning to the safe haven of Lizzie. Mr Brand, Mr Wentworth, and Charlotte, on the other hand, are the dyed-in-the-wool puritans, unimaginative and unadventurous. Luckily, Mr Brand realizes (aided by Felix) that it's actually Charlotte he's in love with, rather than Gertrude, who would have for ever given him trouble.

So neither side is set up as a target for our mockery. Indeed, the redoubtable F.R. Leavis pronounces the "irruption" of the Europeans into the well-ordered world of the Wentworths as beneficent, and adds: "James's irony is far from being unkind; he sees too much he admires in the ethos he criticizes to condemn it."

But my sympathy, of course, runs more to the cosmopolitan Europeans and their converts than to the pious and serious New Englanders... The brother and sister, for a start, sport a splendid deracination that those of us trapped by modern-day citizenship and borders can only envy. They are children of Americans, but their father was born in Sicily; Felix was born "at a dear little place in France", and reckons he has lived in "every city in Europe"; Eugenia was born in Vienna, but peppers her speech with French expressions.

And then there's the outlook on life. Felix at one point describes to Gertrude the worldview of her kin: "I think the tendency -- among you generally -- is to be made unhappy too easily... You don't seem to me to get all the pleasure out of life that you might... You seem to me very well placed for enjoying. You have money and liberty and what is called in Europe a 'position'. But you take a painful view of life, as one might say." Whereas the New Englanders see life as a discipline, Felix prefers to see it as an opportunity. So much more attractive at the end of the day... Talking to his sister, Felix describes the problem of New England society like this: "I think there is something the matter with them; they have some melancholy memory or some depressing expectation."

On this subject, Deborah Austin, writing in 1962, reminds us: "We in America are still aware, though the intensity of the awareness fluctuates, of the melancholy, long withdrawing roar of puritanism as it recedes from our culture. The Wentworths, freethinkers and Unitarians though they were, were lapped in its last full wave... The Wentworths' puritanism has ceased to have preponderantly religious expression... But they obey a kind of race-memory, which is awakened by the proper stimuli, and which always acts to make enjoyment impossible, or qualified."


Having listened, I downloaded the text from the Internet Archive. You certainly can't accuse these of being impersonal electronic copies...



So the character studies are interesting, as are the broader philosophical approaches laid out before our eyes. But there's no doubt that this book doesn't have the gut-wrenching twist -- the acute moral dilemma -- of The Aspern Papers. And the largely happy ending (in which everyone, except Eugenia, is cheerfully paired off, with the churning out of no fewer than four marriages) is a big and not very convincing surprise. All the way through, you keep waiting for things to go wrong: Despite the tediousness of the Boston party, you can't help but worry about them: Are they having one put over on them by these gorgeous visitors, and how many hearts will be broken? But it doesn't go wrong (except for Eugenia -- and even then, it's a lucky escape really, as she'd never have survived in that place with Acton). She may exit the scene with some disappointment, but no-one comes off as out-and-out dishonourable or disingenuous.

If critics are divided over The Europeans, it's partly due to this undeniably frothy close. Austin tells us that it was criticism of the tragic way The American (1877) ended that motivated James to write, by way of compensation, "a very joyous little romance". But after his brother gave the work a chilly reception, he came to think dismissively of it himself. Leavis, on the other hand, calls it "a masterpiece of major quality".

I'll put myself somewhere in the middle. Enjoyable, perceptive, but too willing to let everyone off the hook.