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On December 28, 1875, Henry James wrote one of his Parisian sketches and submitted it to the New York Tribune. Over two-thirds of the article was devoted to the description of the painting 1807 — Friedland by French artist Ernest Meissonier and its purchase by A. T. Stewart, an American millionaire. The painting, which was entitled 1807 by the painter, represented that famous Napoleonic episode, with delicately and meticulously treated costumes, facial types, and other details. As James reported, it had “a special claim to distinction” since it was the largest picture — a yard and a half long and three quarters of a yard high — ever produced by Meissonier, the “prince of miniaturists.” James, like a connoisseur, commented in great detail on the ingeniously rendered content of the painting.
1. James, Henry, Parisian Sketches (Washington Square, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1957), 33–39Google Scholar.
2. Ibid., 33.
3. Ibid., 34–35.
4. Ibid., 35.
5. Ibid., 35.
6. See Banta, Martha, Introduction, New Essays on The American, ed. Banta, Martha (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 28–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7. A number of reviewers were disappointed by the ending of the novel, which seemed to them “unacceptable,” The Scribner's review, which was a typical example, felt that James failed to sustain the interest he had created in his hero at the start: “We are made angry by his own failure to comprehend the character he had created.” Newman's decision near the end seemed so “un-American that it became a serious flaw to the whole novel” (see Banta, , Introduction, 24–25Google Scholar).
8. The grain exported from New York City between January 1 and July 8, 1880, for example, could fill a string of boxcars stretching 1,455 miles. America needed to export its products and “to have the foreign markets all open” (Williams, William Appleman, The Roots of the Modern American Expire [New York: Random, 1969], 239Google Scholar). Despite its substantial export, America still suffered from a nationwide repression resulting from overproduction between 1873 and 1879. It seemed “that the Great Republic might die of a surfeit, smothered in its own yield” (Pletcher, David M., The Awkward Years [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1962], xiiGoogle Scholar).
9. Poulson, Barry W., Economic History of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1981), 241Google Scholar.
10. Jones, Howard Mumford, The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865–1915 (New York: Viking, 1971), 104–12Google Scholar.
11. See Pratt, Julius W., “Anticolonialism in United States Policy,” in The Idea of Colonialism, ed. Strausz-Hupe, Robert and Hazed, Harry W., (New York: Praeger, 1958), 116–17Google Scholar.
12. Collamer of Vermont, in Congressional Globe, 35th Cong., 2nd sess., 542–43, quoted in Pratt, , “Anticolonialism,” 117Google Scholar.
13. President Ulyssess S. Grant and Secretary of State William H. Seward, aside from acquiring Alaska from Russia, tried to purchase the Virgin Islands from Denmark and to annex Santo Domingo. Grant's and Seward's expansionism thus initiated a Congressional debate in 1870–71 on the issue of “colonialism” and “imperialism” as American policy, but the traditional American anticolonialism turned out to be the temporary winner (Pratt, , “Anticolonialism,” 117–18Google Scholar).
14. Ibid., 118–19.
15. Quoted in Mumford, Lewis, The Golden Day (New York: Norton, 1926), 210Google Scholar.
16. Mumford, , Golden Day, 204Google Scholar.
17. Ibid., 205.
18. James, Henry, The American, ed. Tuttleton, James W. (New York: Norton, 1978), 31Google Scholar. The novel is hereafter referred to by page number in the text.
19. Marx, Karl, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (New York: International, 1964), 165, 168Google Scholar.
20. Ibid., 167.
21. Donald Mull is right in pointing out that Newman does not really know Claire. Claire, presented largely though the perception of Newman, is “forever muffled in those traditions which have produced her; we feel her largely as the converging point of those traditions' pressures” (Mull, , Henry James' “Sublime Economy” [Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973], 43Google Scholar). While agreeing that Claire's image is “muffled,” I would argue that it is decisively caused by Newman's fascination with history, for he is deeply concerned with Claire's cultural distinction.
22. See Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1969), 220–24Google Scholar.
23. I borrowed this term “transcendent value” from Carolyn Porter, who uses it and the term “commercial value” in reference to Claire and Noémie, respectively (see Porter, , “Gender and Value in The American,” in Banta, , New Essays, 99–130Google Scholar).
24. See Dimock, Wai-Chee, “Debasing Exchange: Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth,” PMLA 100 (1985): 784CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25. The way that Newman obtains the secret is presented as business transactions. First, with his sincerity and friendliness, Newman gains the sympathy of and support from Valentin, who advises Newman to ask Mrs. Bread about the secret concerning the murder of the old Marquis de Bellegarde: “It may help you. If not, tell everyone. It will — it will…it will avenge you” (234–5). Then, with a promise that he will secure Mrs. Bread with a regular financial income for the rest of her life, Newman gets the secret out of Mrs. Bread. To quote the marquise's accusation, Newman has “purchased her [Mrs. Bread's] services” (284). With this secret paper in hand, Newman proceeds to revenge: threatening and forcing the Bellegardes to effect his marriage with Claire.
26. See, for example, Rourke, Constance, American Humor: A Study of the National Character (New York: Harcourt, 1931), 254Google Scholar.
27. In a sense, Newman is destroying the paper. In another way, however, destroying the paper may be seen as a ritual of revenge. Newman says, before he tosses the paper into the fire, “I am going to burn them up…. There they go!” (308) (italics mine). Not inadvertently, Newman uses two plural pronouns in his remarks, probably referring to the Bellegardes. Burning the paper thus obtains an extra meaning: a gesture of defiance and destruction. With “the flame,” Newman wreaks a revenge by imagining his burning up the walls, the whole system of exchange, the commodities of history, and the Bellegardes. Nevertheless, Newman commits one more business error: this ritual of revenge turns out to be a real protection to the Bellegardes. The flame greedily “consumed” the “little paper” and “there was nothing left of it” (309). The Bellegardes will no longer feel threatened by Newman's control of the evidence. They have not been destroyed by the flame; on the contrary, the burning of the paper only helps to magnify the mystery and to increase the value of the Bellegarde family.
28. See Edel, Leon, Henry James: The Conquest of London 1870–1883 (Frome: Butler, 1962), 253Google Scholar; and James, Henry, Henry James Letters, ed. Edel, Leon (Cambridge, Mass.: Belnap, 1975), 2: 70, 104Google Scholar.
29. James, , Letters, 104Google Scholar.
30. Ibid., 104.
31. Ibid., 104–5.
32. Critics are divided on this issue regarding the nature of the ending. Two opposing examples can be seen in the following essays: Watkins, Floyd C., “Christopher Newman's Final Instinct,” Studies in The American, comp. William T. Stafford (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill, 1971), 100–103Google Scholar; and William T. Stafford, “The Ending of James's The American: A Defense of the Early Version,” in Stafford, 104–7.
33. James, Henry, The Art of Criticism, ed. Veeder, William and Griffin, Susan M. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 274–75Google Scholar.
34. Ibid., 282.
35. Ibid., 276–81.
36. James, , Letters, 70Google Scholar.
37. Ibid., 104–5.
38. Ibid., 105.
39. This tragic, realistic aspect becomes a consistent feature in many of James's major novels, such as The Portrait of a Lady, The Golden Bowl, and The Wings of the Dove. Porter, Carolyn briefly discusses this point in her essay (“Gender and Value,” 127)Google Scholar. And this aspect is invariably in relation to the efforts and failures to purchase and possess European culture with money.
40. Porter argues that it is the marquise's and Noémie's greed that has respectively killed the marquis and Valentin (Porter, , “Gender and Value,” 115Google Scholar).
41. James, , Letters, 105Google Scholar.
42. Ibid., 104.
43. Ibid., 1: 274.