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The Reverberator
- Henry James
- Edited by Richard Salmon
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- 23 April 2021
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- 09 August 2018
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Often overlooked by modern critics, The Reverberator was a departure from Henry James' immediately preceding novels, The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima, returning to the popular 'international theme' of his earlier fiction. Its comedy of manners explores the conflicting values of American and Europeanized characters in the context of topical cultural concerns. Most notably, in its satire on popular journalism and an emerging mass-media through the scandal sheet 'The Reverberator', the novel dramatizes what James presciently saw as the 'devouring publicity' of modern life. This edition, based on the most reliable of the work's first book appearances (Macmillan, 1888), provides a thorough account of the novel's sources and composition, literary and historical contexts, and extensive revision for the New York Edition (1908), as well as extensive annotation. It will be of interest to James scholars, students of nineteenth-century Anglo-American literature and culture, and historians of journalism and new media.
Textual Variants I : Substantive Variants up to Copy Text
- Henry James
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Introduction
- Henry James
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- The Reverberator
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Sources and Conception
The conception of The Reverberator can be traced to a series of public controversies involving individuals with whom James was personally acquainted, which unfolded in American and British newspapers of the mid-1880s. In his Notebook entry for Thursday 17 November 1887 (Appendix B, pp. 282–6), James refers to two unrelated instances of intru-sive journalism, both coincidentally published in the New York World in close succession. His correspondence of the period points to further examples of a similar concern. The Notebook entry chiefly reflects on the ‘queer incident’ of a young American woman named Miss McC. (May Marcia McClellan) who, a year previously, had written an ‘inconceivable letter’ to an American newspaper commenting on the personal and collec-tive characteristics of Italian aristocratic families whose ‘hospitality she had just been enjoying’ in a resort near Lake Como (CN 40). Published on 14 November 1886 under the headline, ‘English, Even in Italy. All the Swells Modelled on British Fashions and Manners’ (Appendix A, pp. 278–81), McClellan's letter occupies only one column of The World's Sunday sup-plement edition and does not appear deliberately to court sensation or hint at scandalous secrets. Expressed in a gossipy, colloquial style, the writer's main point of observation is that the manners and fashions of Italian high society mimic those of the English: ‘it made me feel quite at home to see the preternaturally grave expression, the lurching walk and excessively British garments of these Latin dudes’, McClellan notes. Shortly afterwards (in December 1886 or the following January), James was introduced to May McClellan during a long stay in Florence, by which time he was already aware of the offence and scandal caused by her letter, despite it being written in ‘perfect good faith’ (CN 40). In a letter from Florence to his Venetian-American friend Katherine De Kay Bronson, tentatively dated 15 January 1887, James records visiting the McClellan family and concludes that ‘[t]hey have lived [.. .] in such an atmosphere of newspaper publicity and reporterism that they have lost all sense of perspective and proportion’. Although he admits to being ‘rather touched’ by the ‘girl's compunction’ at the consequences of her unfortunate act, James's sympathy lies more with the ‘poor little Montenegros’, the betrayed Italian family (HJL 3: 155).
XIV
- Henry James
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WHEN Gaston Probert came in that evening he was received by Mr. Dosson and Delia, and when he asked where Francie was he was told by Delia that she would show herself half an hour later. Francie had instructed her sister that as Gaston would have, first of all, information to give their father about the business he had transacted in America he wouldn't care for a lot of women in the room. When Delia made this speech before Mr. Dosson the old man protested that he was not in any hurry for the business; what he wanted to find out most was whether he had a good time—whether he liked it over there. Gaston might have liked it, but he did not look as if he had had a very good time. His face told of reverses, of suffering; and Delia declared to him that if she had not received his assurance to the contrary she would have believed he was right down sick. He confessed that he had been very sick at sea and was still feeling the effect of it, but insisted that there was nothing the matter with him now. He sat for some time with Mr. Dosson and Delia, and never once alluded to the cloud that hung over their relations. The girl had schooled her father to reticence on this point, and the manner in which she had descended upon him in the morning, after Mr. Flack had come up stairs, was a lesson he was not likely soon to forget. It had been impressed upon him that she was indeed wiser than he could pretend to be, and he was now mindful that he must not speak of the “piece in the paper” unless young Probert should speak of it first. When Delia rushed down to him in the court she began by asking him categorically whom he had wished to do good to by sending Mr. Flack up to their parlour. To Francie or to her? Why, the way they felt then, they detested his very name. To Mr. Flack himself? Why, he had simply exposed him to the biggest snub he had ever got in his life.
IV
- Henry James
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DELIA had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus; she had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chair after ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companions farewell at the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walked off in different directions. But up stairs they had instinctively not separated; they dropped into the first place and sat looking at each other and at the highly-decorated lamps that burned, night after night, in their empty saloon. “Well, I want to know when you’re going to stop,” Delia said to her sister, speaking as if this remark were a continuation, which it was not, of something they had lately been saying.
“Stop what?” asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron.
“Stop carrying on the way you do—with Mr. Flack.”
Francie stared, while she consumed her marron; then she replied, in her little flat, patient voice, “Why, Delia Dosson, how can you be so foolish?”
“Father, I wish you’d speak to her. Francie, I ain't foolish.”
“What do you want me to say to her?” Mr. Dosson inquired. “I guess I’ve said about all I know.”
“Well, that's in fun; I want you to speak to her in earnest.”
“I guess there's no one in earnest but you,” Francie remarked. “These are not so good as the last.”
“No, and there won't be if you don't look out. There's something you can do if you’ll just keep quiet. If you can't tell difference of style, well, I can.”
“What's the difference of style?” asked Mr. Dosson. But before this question could be answered Francie protested against the charge of carrying on. Quiet? Wasn't she as quiet as a stopped clock? Delia replied that a girl was not quiet so long as she didn't keep others so; and she wanted to know what her sister proposed to do about Mr. Flack. “Why don't you take him and let Francie take the other?” Mr. Dosson continued.
“That's just what I’m after—to make her take the other,” said his elder daughter.
“Take him—how do you mean?” Francie inquired.
“Oh, you know how.”
Notes
- Henry James
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Contents
- Henry James
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VII
- Henry James
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IT may as well be said at once that it was eventually carried out, and that in the course of a fortnight old Mr. Probert and his daughters alighted successively at the Hôtel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham. Francie's visit with her intended to Mme. de Brécourt bore exactly the fruit the young man had foreseen and was followed the very next day by a call from this lady. She took Francie out with her in her carriage and kept her the whole afternoon, driving her over half Paris, chattering with her, kissing her, delighting in her, telling her they were already sisters, paying her compliments which made the girl envy her art of beautiful expression. After she had carried her home the countess rushed off to her father’s, reflecting with pleasure that at that hour she should probably find her sister Marguerite there. Mme. de Cliché was with the old man in fact (she had three days in the week for coming to the Cours la Reine); she sat near himin the firelight, telling him presumably her troubles; for Maxime de Cliché was not quite the pearl that they originally had supposed. Mme. de Brécourt knew what Marguerite did whenever she took that little ottoman and drew it close to her father's chair: she gave way to her favourite vice, that of dolefulness, which lengthened her long face more; it was unbecoming, if she only knew it. The family was intensely united, as we know; but that did not prevent Mme. de Brécourt's having a certain sympathy for Maxime: he too was one of themselves and she asked herself what she would have done if she had been a well-constituted man with a wife whose cheeks were like decks in a high sea. It was the twilight hour in the winter days, before the lamps, that especially brought her out; then she began her plaintive, complicated stories, to which her father listened with such angelic patience. Mme. de Brécourt liked his particular room in the old house in the Cours la Reine; it reminded her of her mother's life and her young days and her dead brother and the feelings connected with her first going into the world.
XII
- Henry James
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HER absence had not been long and when she re-entered the familiar salon at the hotel she found her father and sister sitting there together as if they were timing her—a prey to curiosity and suspense. Mr. Dosson however gave no sign of impatience; he only looked at her in silence through the smoke of his cigar (he profaned the red satin splendour with perpetual fumes as she burst into the room. No other word than the one I use expresses the tell-tale character of poor Francie's ingress. She rushed to one of the tables, flinging down her muff and gloves, and the next moment Delia, who had sprung up as she came in, had caught her in her arms and was glaring into her face with a “Francie Dosson—what have you been through?” Francie said nothing at first, only closing her eyes and letting her sister do what she would with her. “She has been crying, father— she has,” Delia went on, pulling her down upon a sofa and almost shaking her as she continued. “Will you please tell? I’ve been perfectly wild! Yes you have, you dreadful—!” the elder girl declared, kissing her on the eyes. They opened at this compassionate pressure and Francie rested them in their beautiful distress on her father, who had now risen to his feet and stood with his back to the fire.
“Why, daughter,” said Mr. Dosson, “you look as if you had had quite a worry.”
“I told you I should—I told you, I told you!” Francie broke out, with a trembling voice. “And now it's come!”
“You don't mean to say you’ve done anything?” cried Delia, very white.
“It's all over—it's all over!” Francie pursued, turning her eyes to her sister.
“Are you crazy, Francie?” this young lady asked. “I’m sure you look as if you were.”
“Ain't you going to be married, my child?” asked Mr. Dosson, benevolently, coming nearer to her.
Francie sprang up, releasing herself from her sister, and threw her arms around him. “Will you take me away, father—will you take me right away?”
General Editors’ Preface
- Henry James
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The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James (hereafter CFHJ) has been undertaken in the belief that there is a need for a full scholarly, informative, historical edition of his work, presenting the texts in carefully checked, accurate form, with detailed annotation and extensive introductions. James's texts exist in a number of forms, including manu-scripts (though most are lost), serial texts and volumes of various sorts, often incorporating significant amounts of revision, most conspicuously the so-called New York Edition (hereafter NYE) published by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York and Macmillan & Co. in London (1907–9). Besides these there are also pirated editions, unfinished works published posthumously, and other questionable forms. The CFHJ takes account of these complexities, within the framework of a textual policy which aims to be clear, orderly and consistent.
This edition aims to represent James's fictional career as it evolves, with a fresh and expanded sense of its changing contexts and an informed sense of his developing style, technique and concerns. Consequently it does not attempt to base its choices on the principle of the ‘last lifetime edition’, which in the case of Henry James is monumentally embodied in the twenty-four volumes of the NYE, the author's selection of nine longer novels (six of them in two volumes) and fifty-eight shorter novels and tales, and including eighteen specially composed Prefaces. The CFHJ, as a general rule, adopts rather the text of the first published book edition of a work, unless the intrinsic particularities and the publishing history of that work require an alternative choice, on the ground that emphasis on the first context in which it was written and read will permit an unprecedented fullness of attention to the transformations in James's writing over five decades, as well as the rich literary and social contexts of their original publication.
There are inevitably cases where determining ‘the first published book edition’ requires some care. If, for instance, James expresses a preference for the text of one particular early book edition over another, or if the first edition to be published is demonstrably inferior to a later impression or edition, or if authorial supervision of a particular early edition or impression can be established, then a case can be made for choosing a text other than the first published book edition.
Acknowledgements
- Henry James
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VIII
- Henry James
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WHEN, on coming home the evening after his father had made the acquaintance of the Dossons, Gaston went into the room in which the old man habitually sat, Mr. Probert said, laying down his book and keeping on his glasses: “Of course you will go on living with me. You must understand that I don't consent to your going away. You will have to occupy the rooms that Susan and Alphonse had.”
Gaston observed with pleasure the transition from the conditional to the future and also the circumstance that his father was quietly reading, according to his custom when he sat at home of an evening. This proved he was not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and very serious books; works about the origin of things—of man, of institutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken upmore particularly since the circle of his social life had grown so much smaller. He sat there alone, turning his pages softly, contentedly, with the lamp-light shining on his refined old head and embroidered dressing-gown. Formerly he was out every night in the week—Gaston was perfectly aware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a little frivolous. He was essentially a social animal, and indeed—except perhaps poor Jane, in her damp old castle in Brittany— they were all social animals. That was doubtless part of the reason why the family had acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities with a society of conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons, slightly tarnished and dim, containing precious relics, where there was a circle round the fire and winged words flew about and there was always some clever person before the chimney-piece, holding or challenging the rest. That figure, Gaston knew, especially in the days before he could see for himself, had very often been his father, the lightest and most amiable specimen of the type that liked to take possession of the hearthrug. People left it to him; he was so transparent, like a glass screen, and he never triumphed in argument.
Glossary of Foreign Words and Phrases
- Henry James
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III
- Henry James
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THE young ladies consented to return to the Avenue de Villiers, and this time they found the celebrity of the future. He was smoking cigarettes with a friend, while coffee was served to the two gentlemen (it was just after luncheon), on a vast divan, covered with scrappy oriental rugs and cushions; it looked, Francie thought, as if the artist had set up a carpet-shop in a corner. She thought him very pleasant; and it may be mentioned without circumlocution that the young lady ushered in by the vulgar American reporter, whom he didn't like and who had already come too often to his studio to pick up “glimpses” (the painter wondered how in the world he had picked her up), this charming candidate for portraiture struck Charles Waterlow on the spot as an adorable model. She made, it may further be declared, quite the same impression on the gentleman who was with him and who never took his eyes off her while her own rested, afresh, on several finished and unfinished canvases. This gentleman asked of his friend, at the end of five minutes, the favour of an introduction to her; in consequence of which Francie learned that his name (she thought it singular) was Gaston Probert. Mr. Probert was a kind-eyed, smiling youth, who fingered the points of his moustache; he was represented by Mr. Waterlow as an American, but he pronounced the American language (so at least it seemed to Francie) as if it had been French.
After Francie had quitted the studio with Delia and Mr. Flack (her father, on this occasion, was not of the party), the two young men, falling back upon their divan, broke into expressions of æsthetic rapture, declared that the girl had qualities—oh, but qualities, and a charm of line! They remained there for an hour, contemplating these rare properties in the smoke of their cigarettes. You would have gathered from their conversation (though, as regards much of it, only perhaps with the aid of a grammar and dictionary) that the young lady possessed plastic treasures of the highest order, of which she was evidently quite unconscious.
IX
- Henry James
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MR. FLACK'S relations with his old friends did not, after his appearance in Paris, take on that familiarity and frequency which had marked their intercourse a year before: he let them know frankly that he could easily see the situation was quite different. They had got into the high set and they didn't care about the past: he alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, in pledges now repudiated. “What's the matter? Won't you come round there with us some day?” Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason why the young journalist should not be a welcome and congruous figure in the Cours la Reine.
Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn't he know a lot of people that they didn't know and wasn't it natural they should have their own society? The young man's treatment of the question was humorous, and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward. When he maintained that the Dossons had “shed” him, Mr. Dosson exclaimed, “Well, I guess you’ll grow again!” And Francie observed that it was no use for him to pose as a martyr, inasmuch as he knew perfectly well that with all the celebrated people he saw and the way he flew round he had the most enchanting time. She was aware she was a good deal less accessible than she had been the previous spring, for Mesdames de Brécourt and de Cliché (the former much more than the latter) took a considerable number of her hours. In spite of her protest to Gaston against a premature intimacy with his sisters, she spent whole days in their company (they had so much to tell her about what her new life would be, and it was generally very pleasant), and she thought it would be nice if in these intervals he should give himself to her father and even to Delia as he used to do.
But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack's nature seemed to be established by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently did not care for her father for himself, and though Mr. Dosson was the least querulous of men she divined that he suspected their old companion had fallen away.
List of Abbreviations
- Henry James
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Bibliography
- Henry James
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List of Illustrations
- Henry James
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XI
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ONE day, at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announced his return, a note was brought to Francie from Mme. de Brécourt. It caused her some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guard her against vain fears. “Please come to me the moment you have received this—I have sent the carriage. I will explain when you get here what I want to see you about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here.” The coupé from the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel and the girl had but a hurried conference with her father and sister; if conference it could be called in which vagueness on one side encountered blankness on the other. “It's for something bad—something bad,” Francie said, while she tied her bonnet; though she was unable to think what it could be. Delia, who looked a good deal scared, offered to accompany her; upon which Mr. Dosson made the first remark of a practical character in which he had indulged in relation to his daughter's alliance.
“No you won’t—no you won’t, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, but let them see that they can't whistle for all of us.” It was the first sign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. That question had never troubled him.
“I know what it is,” said Delia, while she arranged her sister's garments. “They want to talk about religion. They have got the priests; there's some bishop, or perhaps some cardinal. They want to baptise you.”
“You’d better take a waterproof!” Francie's father called after her as she flitted away.
She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all there for; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed in the phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually but in their collective form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there was always something of the tribunal. Mme. de Brécourt came out to meet her in the vestibule, drawing her quickly into a small room (not the salon—Francie knew it as her hostess's “own room,” a lovely boudoir), in which, considerably to the girl's relief, the rest of the family were not assembled.
Textual Introduction
- Henry James
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As documented in the Introduction to this volume, a total of four separate texts of The Reverberator were produced during James's lifetime. Leaving aside his extensive revision of the novel for publication in Volume 13 of the New York Edition of The Novels and Tales of Henry James (1908), three of these texts were produced within a year of the first documented reference to its conception in November 1887. There is no surviving manuscript of The Reverberator and no record of its submission to James's publisher in the Macmillan Archive. Chronologically, the first version of the novel to commence publication was its serialization in six monthly instalments of Macmillan's Magazine from February to July 1888. By the time that the serial had run its course, however, two book editions of The Reverberator had already appeared: on 5 June a first edition of 500 copies issued in two volumes in Great Britain, followed on 14 June by a second edition of 3,000 copies issued in one volume in the United States – both were published by Macmillan and Company. Given the close proximity of dates between the publication of these three versions of the novel, and the probability of their equally close printing dates, there is no single text of The Reverberator which holds an unques-tioned chronological primacy. The general principle of CFHJ is to select the first book edition as the copy text for this current edition, but as David J. Supino has observed, ‘[t]he printing sequence of the first edition and the second edition (American impression) is not clear, that is, whether the first edition was in fact the first book printing of this title’.
James's correspondence with Frederick Macmillan reveals that he received at least two payments covering separate instalments of the serial-ized text (recorded on 12 January and 16 April). This raises the possibility that James may still have been writing the novel during the process of serial publication, a practice common amongst earlier nineteenth-century novel-ists and one which he adopted for the much longer magazine serialization of The Tragic Muse in the latter months of 1888. At the latest, a complete version of the proofs for Macmillans's Magazine must have been in exis-tence by 16 April, when Frederick Macmillan offered terms for the novel's first volume publication and invited James to make corrections to the text before a second type-setting.