The Subtleties of Cruelty

THE COMPLETE TALES OF HENRY JAMES, VOLUMES I AND II (876 pp.)--Edited by Leon Edel--Lippincoff ($ 11.90).

Writers from Sophocles to James Jones have believed in winning readers by giving them plenty of action. But in Henry James's 20 novels and 112 tales of upper-class life, blood is rarely spilled (and if it is, hastily wiped away), sex is at best suggested, voices are seldom even raised. His brother William, the philosopher, pleaded with him: "Why won't you sit down and write a book with no twilight or mustiness in the plot, with great vigor and decisiveness in the action, no fencing in the dialogue, no psychological commentaries, and absolute straightness in the style?"

Self-Centered Love. But James felt he was more faithfully reflecting life than writers who concentrate on action. People mask their inner selves with elaborate manners and morals, and it was James's purpose to smoke them out. No other modern writer has so deftly exposed man's savagery beneath his civilized veneer. "James saw [the world] a place of torment," his personal secretary Theodora Bosanquet wrote, "where creatures of prey perpetually thrust their claws into the quivering flesh of the doomed, defenseless children of light. He saw fineness sacrificed to grossness, beauty to avarice, truth to a bold front. He hated the tyranny of persons over each other."

In these two volumes, the first of a contemplated twelve collecting all of James's stories, the young James was already subtly exploring human evil. His characters work their cruelty unconsciously; they kill by attrition and neglect. A devoted mother kills her soldier son by telling him, as he lies badly wounded, that the girl he left behind loves another man. A husband kills his sick wife by casually informing her that he spent the moment of her childbirth with another woman.

Prettying Up Life. The sensitive Jamesian gentleman who views life as if it should be a pretty picture makes his first appearance. By ignoring evil, he usually ends up disillusioned and despairing.

"I was born with a soul for the picturesque," confesses the middle-aged hero of A Passionate Pilgrim. "I found a world all hard lines and harsh lights, without shade, without composition, without the lovely mystery of color. I went about with my brush touching up and toning down. A very pretty chiaroscuro you'll find in my track!" A failure in America, he goes to England, where the charm of the rain-wet countryside convinces him that life must be gentler there. He visits an aristocratic relative, dreams of living on his sumptuous estate and marrying his sister. But though the English countryside is gentle, the sour old aristocrat is not. After insulting the American, he brutally throws him out. "What a dream!" murmurs the American, soon to die. "What an awakening!"

James later toned down the melodrama of these early stories, and fewer characters died of broken hearts. But only one of these stories is hopelessly bad; a few rank not far below the best of James's later tales.

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