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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
I whatever henry James's feelings may have been toward his favorite “Albany cousin,” Mary (“Minny”) Temple, while she lived, it is clear that at her death in 1870, she left with him an indelible image that made available to him as a writer large areas of human experience. This image figured more or less obscurely in several of his stories and minor female characters but according to his own testimony was most fully and consciously operative in his creation of Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady and of Milly Theale in The Wings of the Dove.
1 For the story of the relationship between Henry James and Mary Temple and an account of its effect upon James's fiction, see Leon Edel, Henry James: The Untried Years, 1843-1870 (Philadelphia and New York, 1953), pp. 226-238, 323-333.
2 R. C. LeClair, “Henry James and Minny Temple,” AL, xxi (1949), 40.
3 F. O. Matthiessen, The James Family, Including Selections from the Writings of Henry James Senior, William, Henry and Alice James (New York, 1947), p. 260. Hereafter referred to as James Family.
4 The Novels and Tales of Henry James, New York ed. (New York, 1907-17), iii, 260, 262. Parenthetical documentation in my text is from this edition.
5 James Family, pp. 263, 261, 263.
6 James Family, pp. 261, 260. Leon Edel, Henry James: The Untried Years, pp. 235-238, 326-330, suggests that this consciousness of a reversal of Henry's and Minny's roles is related to the “vampire theme” which James developed in certain of his stories.
7 James Family, p. 260; LeClair, p. 40. Leon Edel, Henry James: The Untried Years, p. 344, dates the letter from James to his mother, 26 March 1870, which LeClair dates 29 March 1870. Edel, p. 331, contends that James both loved and feared Minny Temple: “Minny alive had been a constant reminder to Henry of his inarticulateness and his fear to assert himself. Minny gradually sinking into decline could renew his strength. Dead, Minny was Henry's, within the crystal walls of his mind… . He did not have to marry Minny and risk the awful consequences—and no one else could … Minny was now permanently his, the creature of his dreams.”
8 T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” in Selected Essays, new ed. (New York, 1950), pp. 7-8.
9 Densher never tells Milly a downright lie about his relationship with Kate. Kate herself may be less scrupulous; at least, Milly tells Lord Mark that Kate has sworn she is not engaged. Yet the reader is never allowed to catch Kate telling Milly an unambiguous falsehood. For the most part, Kate and Merton in misleading Milly depend upon the power of suggestion and the untruths provided by others, e.g., by Mrs. Lowder and Mrs. Condrip.
10 The Lost Childhood and Other Essays (London, 1951), p. 44.
11 F. O. Matthiessen, Henry James: The Major Phase (New York, 1944), p. 59, says that in Wings James “is evoking essentially the mood of a fairy tale.”