Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece by Michael Gorra

I read James’ The Portrait of a Lady a couple of weeks ago. Next I read a biography of Tchaikovsky (Tchaikovsky: the Man Revealed by John Suchet). I had been reading some of the big Russian novels recently and that made me curious about the other big Russian artist of the nineteenth century. And I was curious, too, to read about homosexual life in the nineteenth century because I had recently read Death in Venice. When I went to pick up the Tchaikovsky biography I had ordered through my local bookstore I saw this book (from 2012) about Henry James and The Portrait of a Lady turned face-out in the Literary Criticism section. So I bought this book also (used, $6) and read this after I finished the Tchaikovsky. I was happy to discover a bookmark from Shakespeare and Company, Paris, left inside by the previous owner.

The book is an ingenious mix of literary criticism and biography. Gorra gives a thorough analysis of James’ mid-career masterpiece (the last great novel of James’ early period) and as he works step by step through the novel he hangs from that framework a biography of James’ life, birth to death with special attention to the circumstances and influences of the writing of The Portrait of a Lady. It’s more literary criticism than biography, and the criticism is brilliant, but Gorra also gives us the narrative of James’ life in order to pull us through his long analysis.

I found it all fascinating. Gorra is a wide and expert reader of Victorian-era fiction. He refers to numerous other authors that influenced James, many of whom James met, some of whom James knew as friends and corresponded with. We get details of James life as a working writer, not just the novels and stories but the articles and essays and travel pieces he writes. I was struck by how hard James worked: the business of art. We look at the publishing business, learning, for instance, the economic reasons behind the practice for so many novels of the nineteenth century, including The Portrait of a Lady, to be published serially in magazines rather than coming out as completed novels. The author does an amazing job of research: excerpting voluminous correspondence from and to James and numerous friends and family members; reading journals that James’ work appeared in, memoirs from other writers, James’ diary. At one point Gorra checks the weather report for a day when James is crossing the English channel to tell us James must have had a rough trip. He visits the locations where James lived and wrote: Florence, Italy, Rome, Paris, London, and his final home in Rye, Sussex; as well as locations often nearby, maybe a friend’s house, where he set scenes of his novel. One particular interest in Gorra’s work is his comparison of James’ original text of the novel from 1881, with the revised version from 1908, which is the one I read.

The book will mostly be of interest to folks who have read, The Portrait of a Lady, as I just had. Having just read it recently, with the novel still fresh in my head, I enjoyed comparing what scenes and sentences had caught my attention and which Gorra found worth commenting on.

I won’t try and summarize James’ life here, but there was one story I found particularly interesting as it brought together several of my recent interests.

Spring 1876, in Paris, James met a wealthy Russian emigre and amateur painter named Paul Zuchovsky, a family friend of Turgenev, also living in Paris, whom James also knew. Zuchovsky was homosexual. James was homosexual, also, although it’s uncertain whether James ever acted on his desire; he might have remained a life-long celibate. But if he ever did have a physical relationship with another person, Paul might very well have been the guy, and in any case James seemed particularly smitten. A friend of James’, named Edmund Gosse, in a 1922 book of literary memoirs, relates a story that James told him as they once walked together in James’ garden in Rye at the end of James’ life: a story of James standing on a city street, in the rain, looking up at a lighted window, waiting for hours, the rain soaking him, hoping a particular beloved face will appear at the window. We don’t know the face, the year, the street, or the city, but it sounds like Paris, and the face may have belonged to Paul Zuchovsky.

The story continues. August of 1876 saw the premiere of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Bayreuth. Zuchovsky went to the premiere; James, who had no taste for music, did not. I know from the Tchaikovsky biography that Tchaikovsky, too, was at that premiere. I wonder if he and Paul met? Zuchovsky brought his fascination with Wagner home to Paris with him, and continued to bore James by hosting salons featuring performances of Wagner piano transcriptions. But Zuchovsky had also made a connection with Wagner himself. (Tchaikovsky attempted to meet Wagner when he was in Bayreuth for the Ring premiere but Wagner wasn’t home when Tchaikovsky called; he met Franz Liszt instead, Wagner’s father-in-law).

After that year James sees Zuchovsky only occasionally, in different cities. In 1880 Zuchovsky and Wagner are both living in Naples, and Wagner is employing, as a servant, Zuchovsky’s latest lover, Pepino. Gorra says that Wagner and Pepino used to sing together! Zuchovsky goes back and forth between the Wagner’s house and James’, but James declines to meet Wagner, complaining that his German wasn’t good enough. It’s more likely, though, that James was disgusted by the sexual display. He gave up on Zuchovsky after that. But Zuchovsky continued with Wagner and ended up doing the famous set design for the 1882 premiere of Parsifal.

I read a book on Wagner last year, Wagnerism by Alex Ross. Unfortunately there’s no mention of Zuchovsky.