DOI Artikel:
Milman, Lena: A few notes upon Mr. James
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27806#0081
By Lena Milman 77
beautiful shadow, in each case, is all that remains ; but that
shadow is the artist’s thought.”
Ill
In one of Mr. James’s earlier stories we read of a young German
who has heard of the population of the United States as being “a
highly humorous people.” The author may or may not concur
in this opinion, but certainly his own vein of humour is as far
removed as possible from that usually regarded as typically
American, and it may be that, in crediting his countrymen with
an exclusive appreciation for the exaggerated burlesque of their
most popular writers, we do them the same injustice they do us
who conceive of our being moved to mirth by that humour known
as the “ New.”
Mr. James’s humour is like Miss Austen’s, in being so entirely a
part of the texture that it is almost as difficult to detach an
illustrative fragment as to cut a pattern from one of those fabrics
which we are advised to “see in the piece.” And, spite of what
we have said of his being chiefly successful as a short-story writer,
it is perhaps in one of his shorter novels, “Washington Square,”
that his humour is best exemplified. The character indeed of
Aunt Penniman, alwavs advising, but always ill-advised, is worthy
a place beside the immortal aunts who watched over Maggie
Tulliver and the thrifty Aunt Norris of “Mansfield Park.”
We read of Aunt Penniman that “ Her manners were strange and
formidable, and her mourning robes—she dressed in black for
twenty years after her husband’s death, and then suddenly appeared
one morning with pink roses in her cap—were complicated in odd,
unexpected places with buckles, bugles, and pins, which discouraged
familiarity.
beautiful shadow, in each case, is all that remains ; but that
shadow is the artist’s thought.”
Ill
In one of Mr. James’s earlier stories we read of a young German
who has heard of the population of the United States as being “a
highly humorous people.” The author may or may not concur
in this opinion, but certainly his own vein of humour is as far
removed as possible from that usually regarded as typically
American, and it may be that, in crediting his countrymen with
an exclusive appreciation for the exaggerated burlesque of their
most popular writers, we do them the same injustice they do us
who conceive of our being moved to mirth by that humour known
as the “ New.”
Mr. James’s humour is like Miss Austen’s, in being so entirely a
part of the texture that it is almost as difficult to detach an
illustrative fragment as to cut a pattern from one of those fabrics
which we are advised to “see in the piece.” And, spite of what
we have said of his being chiefly successful as a short-story writer,
it is perhaps in one of his shorter novels, “Washington Square,”
that his humour is best exemplified. The character indeed of
Aunt Penniman, alwavs advising, but always ill-advised, is worthy
a place beside the immortal aunts who watched over Maggie
Tulliver and the thrifty Aunt Norris of “Mansfield Park.”
We read of Aunt Penniman that “ Her manners were strange and
formidable, and her mourning robes—she dressed in black for
twenty years after her husband’s death, and then suddenly appeared
one morning with pink roses in her cap—were complicated in odd,
unexpected places with buckles, bugles, and pins, which discouraged
familiarity.