"There could hardly be a greater shock of contrast than to pass from Mr. Kipling to Mr. Henry James. It is like passing from a swarming world of tropical sunshine into some dim-lighted Hades, peopled with low-voiced aristocratic shades. It takes us some time to realise that we are still dealing with flesh and blood. And I confess that Mr. James's dramatis persona grow too shadowy for me, their drama too imperceptibly refined, and the real pleasure I find in Mr. James's more recent books is that of the style-when it also is ...
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"There could hardly be a greater shock of contrast than to pass from Mr. Kipling to Mr. Henry James. It is like passing from a swarming world of tropical sunshine into some dim-lighted Hades, peopled with low-voiced aristocratic shades. It takes us some time to realise that we are still dealing with flesh and blood. And I confess that Mr. James's dramatis persona grow too shadowy for me, their drama too imperceptibly refined, and the real pleasure I find in Mr. James's more recent books is that of the style-when it also is not too pedantically wire-drawn. Some of the characterisations in The Private Life and other stories are very happy. A lady in perpetual mourning had been described as 'the queen of night, ' and Mr. James adds, 'the term was descriptive if you understood that the night was cloudy.' She was also 'rather submissively sad. She was like a woman with a painless malady." -Retrospective Reviews: 1891-1893 By Richard Le Gallienne "The Wheel of Time is the longest and most highly elaborated, Collaboration, the finest spun and least probable, and the story of Owen Wingrave, the subtlest, most suggestive and most pathetic. In the first, Maurice Glanvil's fine feeling for beauty prevented him from marrying plain Fanny Knocker-horrible name! He permitted her to think he was going to give her his hand and name and accept her wealth, and then ran away. Twenty years later he returns to London with a short, plain daughter, found Fanny a splendid, wealthy widow, proposed marriage to her, and was rejected. The plain daughter fell in love with the widow's handsome son, and the kind-hearted woman tried to arrange a match, but the youth fled and the girl died. Of course this is not Mr. James' story. Nobody can letell his stories in little. But there's the plot. Owen Wingrave is a strung fellow, physically, but seems to have inherited the taint of insanity. He is destined for the army, but conceives a horror of war. This is another tragic tale, with a mystical background, and there is a feeling of terror in it that is well simulated and sustained. All of Mr. James' tales, nowadays, tend to the same conclusion, that the life we are living is a pretty bad sort of live to live. But he tells them beautifully." -N. Y. Times.
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