Book Notes: The Europeans – Henry James

There is no croquet in The Europeans.

A couple of weeks after finishing Henry James’ early novel The Europeans (1878) my overriding impression is of a deft, lighthearted, ironic, and Austenish work. James had not by this point adopted the alternatively luxurious and syrupy construction that is thought to render his later work so forbidding. Rather, I was reminded a little of the gentle levity of Trollope and, especially, of the less cutting episodes of Austen. The opening lines of The Europeans set the rather tongue-in-cheek tone for the rest of the novel.

 A narrow grave-yard in the heart of a bustling, indifferent city, seen from the windows of a gloomy-looking inn, is at no time an object of enlivening suggestion; and the spectacle is not at its best when the mouldy tombstones and funereal umbrage have received the ineffectual refreshment of a dull, moist snow-fall. If, while the air is thickened by this frosty drizzle, the calendar should happen to indicate that the blessed vernal season is already six weeks old, it will be admitted that no depressing influence is absent from the scene.

Nothing particularly momentous happens in The Europeans. Indeed, the encounter between American born but European bred brother and sister and their uncle and cousins on the outskirts of Boston is all charm and cotton melodrama, seeking to contrast and then intermingle the stiff New England Puritanism of the Wentworths with the heady Old World etiquette of the morganatically married Baroness Münster and her younger, freer brother Felix. (A ‘morganatic’ marriage is that of two persons of unequal social rank which prevents the titles and privileges of the husband passing to his wife or children. It is also known as ‘marriage by the left hand’ owing to the tradition that the groom held the bridge’s right hand with his left rather than his right). Indeed, each name is fairly transparent: ‘Eugenia’ means roughly ‘well-born’ and ‘Felix’ ‘lucky’ or ‘happy.’

The Europeans is essentially a light comedy of manners which exploits the analogous rigidity of the Baroness and her uncle with the exuberant optimism of Felix and his courtship of his increasingly liberated cousin. James undercuts the apparent propriety of the former by so clearly endorsing the joy of the latter. It is this propriety and obvious attachment to her morganatic title that prevent the Baroness from dissolving her marriage and settling in the title-less New World. It is perhaps James’ aim to suggest that brilliance in conversation and appearance is no substitute for expression and a certain vigour in pursuing one’s ends. The languid grace of the Baroness ultimately fails her, whilst Felix’s optimism win’s him a wife: indeed, it seems that the Baroness and her uncle symbolise the decaying, doomed Europe and America which cannot but fall and be replaced by the expressive and liberated transatlantic culture James himself represented. The failure of Eugenia’s near-engagement with Robert Acton presents the impossibility of any productive union between aristocratic Old Europe and a more vigorous America.

The Europeans is the first novel of my new and very long term Henry James project. As you can tell from my having begun with The Europeans, my attachment to chronology is fairly vague and guided only by the intuition that James’ early, middle, and late periods should be read roughly in order so that, as his construction thickens, one has, as it were, kept up with him as much as is possible. I’m probably going to read Daisy Miller next as I have that in a Penguin English Library edition that also includes The Turn of the Screw, which is a bit later. The Europeans was a fairly gentle entry into what will undoubtedly become a rather more heavyweight reading list.