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The Outcry
The Outcry, Henry James's final novel, is an effervescent comedy of money and manners. Breckenridge Bender, a very rich American with a distinct resemblance to J.P. Morgan, arrives in England with the purpose of acquiring some very great art; he is directed to Dedborough, the estate of the debt-ridden Lord Theign. But plutocrat and aristocrat come into unexpected conflict when a young connoisseur, out to establish his own reputation, declares a prize painting from the lord's collection to be in fact an even rarer, and pricier, work than had been thought.
A popular success in its own day, but long unavailable since and now almost unknown, The Outcry is one of the most surprising and amusing of James's works. Here he explores questions of privilege and initiative, repute and honor, high art and base calculation, revisiting some of his favorite themes with a deft and winning touch.
A popular success in its own day, but long unavailable since and now almost unknown, The Outcry is one of the most surprising and amusing of James's works. Here he explores questions of privilege and initiative, repute and honor, high art and base calculation, revisiting some of his favorite themes with a deft and winning touch.
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1911
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About the author
Henry James
4,567 books3,949 followersHenry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 6, 2021
"William James made the request to brother Henry: write a new 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. He did just that with The Outcry – well, but some fencing in the dialogue." from Jean Strouse's Introduction to this New York Review Books edition, the very first edition of The Outcry to be published since the novel's initial printing back in 1911 when Henry James mailed off his finished work to his publisher.
The Outcry is both a light, amusing comedy of manners and a subtly scathing social commentary on the shifting values and cultural collisions of old world England and new world America in the first decade of the twentieth century. I’ll be the first to admit the dialogue is a bit staged, since, after all, Henry James simply converted his not-so-popular stage play The Outcry by adding character descriptions and stage directions to create his novel. Maybe I’m getting a bit soft in the head in the later years of my sixth decade but I found the work positively charming, most especially since art appreciation is a central theme. The 1911 reading public agreed - the novel enjoyed a popular success back in the day.
The characters are six in number:
Lord Theign - English aristocrat and art collector;
Lady Grace - Theign’s charming, attractive younger daughter;
Breckenridge Bender - super-wealthy American industrialist and art buyer;
Lord John - acquaintance of Bender and the man wishing to make Lady Grace his wife;
Lady Sandgate - friend of Theign and herself an owner of valuable artworks;
Huge Crimble - handsome, gentile connoisseur and expert art critic.
The novel itself is divided into three parts: part one at Lord Theign’s estate, Dedborough Place, and part two and part three at the home of Lady Sandgate. There are all sorts of ups and downs involving the relationships of these men and women fueled by the ups and downs of the value placed on a few key works of art. Rather than saying anything further about plot so as to spoil, below are my observations on the characters themselves along with photos (and a portrait) capturing, by my eye, the spirit of each:
Lord Theign is pitch-perfect for James' exploration of the dynamics of wealth and privilege among the British aristocracy. During the scene of his big blow up with daughter Lady Grace, Lord Theign scoffingly growls that Hugh Crimble is her tenth-rate friend (the tacit understanding Hugh is a mere intellectual art critic and not a Lord like Lord John, an aristocrat Grace refused to accept as her husband, very much against her father's wishes). And later on, when Lady Grace proposes to her father that he keep the country and culture of England in mind when he considers selling the valuable art in his possession, Lord Theign cries in stupefaction, “And pray who in the world’s England unless I am?”
Lady Grace is the novel’s heroine, a woman of strength (I mean, take a look at this portrait. Does this young lady look like someone who will take any nonsense from a man, no matter high ranking? And that’s exactly why I chose this painting!) She tells Hugh Crimble that Breckenridge Bender is nothing more than an ogre and, a bit further on, when pressed by Lord John in his insistence for an answer to his proposal of matrimony, Lady Grace replies “I’ve got to say-sorry as I am-that if you must have an answer it’s this: that never, Lord John, never, can there be anything more between us. No , no, never,” she repeated as she went – “never, never, never!” You tell him, Lady Grace! That’s the way to stand up to a man Henry James described as having a “delicacy of brutality.”
Modeled on J.P.Morgan (pictured above), Breckenridge Bender is all business and nothing but business. Bender came to Dedborough Place to look at the pictures and look at pictures is what he will do. He declined offers of English tea; he declined a stroll in the park: “Are there any pictures in the park?” He marches his way through the hall of thirty masterpieces as if fruit for the picking for his dollar investments, as if all of art is nothing more than a subcategory of that supremely important value: making money. Reading ever so slightly between the lines, we are given to understand Mr. Bender doesn’t have an aesthetic bone in his beefy body. One scene I found particularly humorous – in one exchange, Hugh Crimble asks Bender: “Then why are you – as if you were a banished Romeo – so keen for news from Verona?” To this odd mixture of business and literature Mr. Bender made no reply, contenting himself with but a large vague blandness that wore in him somehow the mark of tested utility.” Touché, Henry James!
"Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye, fixed her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in compassion." Ouch! Sounds like our man lacks a large heart. And, again, this time when viewing a work of art in his mind's eye: "Lord John seemed to look a moment not so much as the image evoked, in which he wasn't interested, as at certain possibilities lurking behind it." Henry James portrays the shifting values of the times, in many cases, from appreciation of the aesthetic to the strictly utilitarian.
"Lady Sandgate, with a slight flush, turned it over, "I delight in his triumph, and whatever I do is at least above board."" The novel is chock-full of tension and drama. What is needed is at least one personage who is both optimistic and a peacekeeper - Lady Sandgate is our lady.
“Lady Grace had turned to meet Mr. Hugh Crimble, whose pleasure in at once finding her lighted his keen countenance and broke into easy words. “So awfully kind of you-in the midst of the great doings I noticed-to have found a beautiful minute for me.”” Based, in part, on James’ novelist friend, Hugh Walpole, and also, in part, on aesthetician Roger Fry, Hugh Crimble is the novel’s hero. Young, dapper, sensitive, refined, along with all his dealings in the novel revolving around art and judging art, Hugh is also forever attending to Lady Grace’s feelings. But how much influence will Hugh ultimately swing in the new world where art is becoming so directly linked with money? And will Hugh win the approval of Lord Theign as his relationship with Lady Grace deepens? You will have to read this overlooked Henry James classic to find out.
August 11, 2016
James wrote this book, about a wealthy American art collector visiting one of the great treasure houses of Britain hoping to buy a Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait, as a play, scheduled to premiere in the same season as works by J.M. Barrie, G.B. Shaw, Somerset Maugham, and John Galsworthy. When Edward VII died, London's theaters were closed for the season, cancelling James's premiere. He then retooled it as a novel. But just barely. It reads very, very much like a play. It's 99% dialogue, with faintly disguised stage directions ("he cast a stare about"; "Mr. Bender carnivorously smiled") and few set changes. And way, way too many adverbs.
I haven't read enough late James to know when his writing took a turn toward the incomprehensible. This book is written in a strange dialect, upper class, rigid and uptight yet slangy, and not only completely remote from the way anyone speaks today, but remote from any dialect I've read in any novel from any era. At one point I realized that in order to understand what the characters were saying, I would need an annotated edition, or else have to translate into modern English on a separate piece of paper. As William James wrote to his brother after The Wings of the Dove was published, "You've reversed every traditional canon of story-telling (especially the fundamental one of telling the story, which you carefully avoid)." [This line is quoted in Jean Strouse's introduction. Yet Strouse contrasts The Outcry as a plot-driven novel, and it was much more successful in its first few weeks than James's previous works.]
I also realized that the play had been written with the expectation of many hard-of-hearing elderly in the audience, for whom lines would need to be repeated.
"And so awfully long after - wasn't it?" Lady Grace asked.
"Awfully long after -"
"Oh of course we don't see every one!" she heroically kept it up.
"You don't see every one," Hugh bravely laughed.
"His yielding on the picture?"
"His yielding on the picture."
"Your proposal wasn't good enough?"
"It wasn't good enough."
"You found you were too sorry for me?"
"I found I was too sorry for you -"
December 7, 2017
2.5
The Outcry disappointed me, this is Henry James's weakest work. Chapter VII is probably the most accomplished chapter. I didn't particularly enjoy earlier chapters as they felt disjointed. My advice to all readers is to read the introduction carefully before starting to read The Outcry.
The Outcry disappointed me, this is Henry James's weakest work. Chapter VII is probably the most accomplished chapter. I didn't particularly enjoy earlier chapters as they felt disjointed. My advice to all readers is to read the introduction carefully before starting to read The Outcry.
April 30, 2022
Henry James’s last completed novel. The story was adapted from author’s earlier stage play. An American millionaire, Breckenridge Bender, is intent on buying Britain’s art treasures. He plans to buy a Sir Joshua Reynolds painting from Lord Theign. Hugh Crimble, a British art critic, is against the sale, arguing that Britain’s art treasures should stay in the country. Lord Theign’s daughter, Lady Grace, is also against the sale. Lord Theign is in a bind as he wants to sell the painting to cover the gambling debts of his other daughter, Kitty Imber.
I found the dialogue a little artificial at times. This novel is not very representative of Henry James’s fictional works. Readers new to Henry James should begin with ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ or ‘The Turn of the Screw’.
This book was first published in 1911.
I found the dialogue a little artificial at times. This novel is not very representative of Henry James’s fictional works. Readers new to Henry James should begin with ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ or ‘The Turn of the Screw’.
This book was first published in 1911.
March 21, 2023
the very worst of James. The dialogue is just awful and the plot is so boring it’s almost painful. The great drama is whether or not a rich edwardian family will sell their painting or donate it to the national gallery. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Woof.
May 12, 2024
I committed myself to The Outcry, James' last published work, with reluctance. Fully aware of the laborious, convoluted style of late James, I foresaw myself groping my way through this comedy of manners - and grope I did, though it wasn't an entirely unrewarding experience. While the prose was thorny as expected, the plot was accessible and fairly interesting from a historical perspective. As usual, James explores the transatlantic clash between New World America and Old World Europe.
Breckenridge Bender is a filthy rich American who arrives in England in search of new art treasures. He's invited to Dedborough Palace, estate of the widowed and debt-ridden Lord Theign, where a trove of historically significant and expensive artworks are to be found. Upon his arrival, Hugh Crimble, a young connoisseur, suspects that one of Theign's paintings may be a misattributed masterpiece, a rare—and if Crimble is correct—priceless Montavano. Bender's efforts to purchase the prized painting from the cash-needy Thimble create a stir. Opposition is led by Crimble and his new love, Theign's daughter Lady Grace, and amplified into a patriotic outcry when newspapers catch wind of the potential sale.
While a relatively obscure James novel today, The Outcry was a popular success in its day, likely due to its cultural relevance. Just 2 years prior to its publication in 1911, the American multimillionaire Henry Clay Frick almost succeeded in purchasing The Duchess of Milan from the Duke of Norfolk, resulting in an outcry similar to the one depicted in the novel.
Though Bender and his sort are viewed by the British public as quasi-villains, or as Crimble describes, robber barons "armed now with cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes," much of England's great art was acquired in similar fashion. As Lady Grace says: "I suppose our art-wealth came in—save for those Elgin Marbles!—mainly by purchase too, didn't it? We ourselves largely took it away from somewhere, didn't we? We didn't grow it all." While James can be scathing in his portrayal of nouveau-riche Americans like Bender, such irony points to the questionable righteousness of the aristocratic noblesse.
Breckenridge Bender is a filthy rich American who arrives in England in search of new art treasures. He's invited to Dedborough Palace, estate of the widowed and debt-ridden Lord Theign, where a trove of historically significant and expensive artworks are to be found. Upon his arrival, Hugh Crimble, a young connoisseur, suspects that one of Theign's paintings may be a misattributed masterpiece, a rare—and if Crimble is correct—priceless Montavano. Bender's efforts to purchase the prized painting from the cash-needy Thimble create a stir. Opposition is led by Crimble and his new love, Theign's daughter Lady Grace, and amplified into a patriotic outcry when newspapers catch wind of the potential sale.
While a relatively obscure James novel today, The Outcry was a popular success in its day, likely due to its cultural relevance. Just 2 years prior to its publication in 1911, the American multimillionaire Henry Clay Frick almost succeeded in purchasing The Duchess of Milan from the Duke of Norfolk, resulting in an outcry similar to the one depicted in the novel.
Though Bender and his sort are viewed by the British public as quasi-villains, or as Crimble describes, robber barons "armed now with cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes," much of England's great art was acquired in similar fashion. As Lady Grace says: "I suppose our art-wealth came in—save for those Elgin Marbles!—mainly by purchase too, didn't it? We ourselves largely took it away from somewhere, didn't we? We didn't grow it all." While James can be scathing in his portrayal of nouveau-riche Americans like Bender, such irony points to the questionable righteousness of the aristocratic noblesse.
July 25, 2017
Risulta evidente da subito che il romanzo e' frutto di un riadattamento da quella che era pensata per essere un'opera teatrale .. i dialoghi sono il 90 % della narrazione
, scritti in pieno stile vittoriano , Il tutto , poco contornato da intermezzi , descrizioni e avvenimenti , risulta fin troppo statico e ridondante , fino ad annoiare .
Dimenticabile.
, scritti in pieno stile vittoriano , Il tutto , poco contornato da intermezzi , descrizioni e avvenimenti , risulta fin troppo statico e ridondante , fino ad annoiare .
Dimenticabile.
March 4, 2022
The rare Henry James novel that you could reasonably get through in one sitting, if you were so inclined. The Outcry is a comedy of manners set in the art world of turn of the century England: a wealthy American on the hunt to acquire Britain's finest artistic treasures becomes enamored of a particular painting at the venerable Theign Estate. The same painting is suspected to be a lost masterpiece by an upstart young art critic, who prevails upon the estate not to sell; this of course only makes the American want the painting more...Mix this central conflict with a healthy dose of romantic comedy will-they-won't-they tension and a whole lot of brash, bumbling aristocrats and you've got a slight but charming novel.
James originally conceived of The Outcry as a stage play, and you can tell--the cast is small, the settings small and self contained, the book follows a clear three act structure, and every scene is basically just a series of barbed, escalating conversations--but I thought the theatrical origins gave the book a nice clarity and concision that can feel antithetical to literature of the period and James in particular. Of course, James being James, the writing does tend to veer into verbose and densely structured descriptions at times; while some of this is great, it does tend to detract from the snappy pace of the dialogue and the witty verbal jousting the characters are supposed to be engaging in. Some of these descriptions are entirely superfluous and can feel like James padding the material out to novel length or straining too hard to write witty, "Jamesian" prose instead of just trusting in the light comedy he's created and letting the dialogue carry the weight.
Still, sometimes things just work. The characters and their concerns--the lives of the idle rich, American 1%ers and the British aristocracy could be very unrelatable to modern audiences, but James gets around that by injecting each character with enough ignorance, buffoonery and hurt feelings that we can get in on the fun and marvel at their obliviousness and warped priorities. Lord Theign, for example, is a character so affronted by the idea of selling his family's artistic legacy, yet he thinks nothing off selling his daughter into marriage to settle his debts. There's also something timely and timeless about the ideas the story floats about art and ownership--Bender's profligate spender, using his vast personal wealth to divest a country of its cultural and artistic capital no longer seems so outlandish in an era when everyone but the uber rich are priced out of the art game. Who has the right to buy, and who has the right to sell? Do we value art for its inherent qualities, or simply its rarity? A reader doesn't have to devote a lot of time to these ideas to enjoy the novel, but I couldn't help thinking on them while reading, which to me shows the book functioning as effective satire.
I'm often intimidated by James and his densely packed novels, but if he has more "light" fare like this I'd definitely be interested in reading it. A fun, funny (and quick!) read. Someday, I'll get around to tackling The Ambassadors. Probably.
James originally conceived of The Outcry as a stage play, and you can tell--the cast is small, the settings small and self contained, the book follows a clear three act structure, and every scene is basically just a series of barbed, escalating conversations--but I thought the theatrical origins gave the book a nice clarity and concision that can feel antithetical to literature of the period and James in particular. Of course, James being James, the writing does tend to veer into verbose and densely structured descriptions at times; while some of this is great, it does tend to detract from the snappy pace of the dialogue and the witty verbal jousting the characters are supposed to be engaging in. Some of these descriptions are entirely superfluous and can feel like James padding the material out to novel length or straining too hard to write witty, "Jamesian" prose instead of just trusting in the light comedy he's created and letting the dialogue carry the weight.
Still, sometimes things just work. The characters and their concerns--the lives of the idle rich, American 1%ers and the British aristocracy could be very unrelatable to modern audiences, but James gets around that by injecting each character with enough ignorance, buffoonery and hurt feelings that we can get in on the fun and marvel at their obliviousness and warped priorities. Lord Theign, for example, is a character so affronted by the idea of selling his family's artistic legacy, yet he thinks nothing off selling his daughter into marriage to settle his debts. There's also something timely and timeless about the ideas the story floats about art and ownership--Bender's profligate spender, using his vast personal wealth to divest a country of its cultural and artistic capital no longer seems so outlandish in an era when everyone but the uber rich are priced out of the art game. Who has the right to buy, and who has the right to sell? Do we value art for its inherent qualities, or simply its rarity? A reader doesn't have to devote a lot of time to these ideas to enjoy the novel, but I couldn't help thinking on them while reading, which to me shows the book functioning as effective satire.
I'm often intimidated by James and his densely packed novels, but if he has more "light" fare like this I'd definitely be interested in reading it. A fun, funny (and quick!) read. Someday, I'll get around to tackling The Ambassadors. Probably.
September 1, 2023
i>The Outcry is a novel by Henry James published in 1911. It was originally conceived as a play. James cast the material in a three-act drama in 1909. In 1911 James converted the play into a novel, which was successful with the public, the play wasn't. The Outcry was the last novel he was able to complete before his death in 1916. The story concerns the buying up of Britain's art treasures by wealthy Americans. The last James novel I read had an American art buyer too, he doesn't seem to like Americans buying Britain's art.
And here is the guy who is buying up all of England's art. One painting anyway. He is the American billionaire Breckenridge Bender. He just has to have the painting Duchess of Waterbridge by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Lord Theign is just as anxious to sell the thing, his daughter Kitty has many gambling debts out there that she can't cover. Hugh Crimble is a young art critic and is against the sale, although I'm not sure what he has to do with it, he says Britain's art treasures should stay in the country. Theigh's other daughter, Lady Grace agrees with him. Once the newspapers get a hold of this story they raise a patriotic outcry. A good thing to do when you're in a book named The Outcry.
It was okay. It would have been better without conversations like this:
"His yielding on the picture?"
"His yielding on the picture."
"Your proposal wasn't good enough?"
"It wasn't good enough."
"You found you were too sorry for me?"
"I found I was too sorry for you."
I'm glad I'm done with it, but it wasn't the worst book I ever read. How's that for a review?
And here is the guy who is buying up all of England's art. One painting anyway. He is the American billionaire Breckenridge Bender. He just has to have the painting Duchess of Waterbridge by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Lord Theign is just as anxious to sell the thing, his daughter Kitty has many gambling debts out there that she can't cover. Hugh Crimble is a young art critic and is against the sale, although I'm not sure what he has to do with it, he says Britain's art treasures should stay in the country. Theigh's other daughter, Lady Grace agrees with him. Once the newspapers get a hold of this story they raise a patriotic outcry. A good thing to do when you're in a book named The Outcry.
It was okay. It would have been better without conversations like this:
"His yielding on the picture?"
"His yielding on the picture."
"Your proposal wasn't good enough?"
"It wasn't good enough."
"You found you were too sorry for me?"
"I found I was too sorry for you."
I'm glad I'm done with it, but it wasn't the worst book I ever read. How's that for a review?
March 19, 2008
Written originally as a play, James continued to keep many of the stage directions in the text which made it difficult to follow. The various characters appear and leave his scenes much as they would have on the stage. It's astonishing to me that the book sold well as I found getting through it laborious. If I'd been the editor, I'd have asked him to delete all the descriptions of what was being said. The reader should have been able to figure that out from the lines themselves. The core of the plot has to do with the ins and outs of deciding whether or not a painting should be sold as it would leave England and wind up in America. Lots of lords and ladies, and stilted conversation such is rarely spoken in real life.
April 8, 2023
This book made me cheer and feel sorry for the American capitalist who is supposed to be the villain/antagonist.
Every single main character is either incomprehensible or thoroughly dislikeable, and not in an interesting, Ferrante-like kind of way.
Every single main character is either incomprehensible or thoroughly dislikeable, and not in an interesting, Ferrante-like kind of way.
October 9, 2018
The Outcry is James’s last, and slight, novel. Adapted from a play, never performed, it bristles with uppercrust dialogues from England at the turn of the prior century. As usual, it touches on James’s preferred subject of transatlantic clash of cultures and here focuses on art as national heritage. While the plot is accessible, the prose is not. Like famous art on show, one feels manipulated.
The book’s several clashes begins with the arrival of a filthy rich American art collector, named Bender, helping out financially pinched British nobility by relieving them of their blockbuster art, and ends with a generational one, between the pinched Lord Theign, his daughter Lady Grace, and the brash art evaluator to whom she feels drawn.
Lord Theign is particularly pinched due to his eldest daughter’s magnificent gambling debt, owed to a dour dowager, whose son, Lord John, is drawn to the same younger daughter, Grace. Lord John is not only courting Grace, with the father’s cruel support, but proffering a quid pro quo, the gambling debt for her hand.
Which will Lord Theign, then, sell first, his youngest daughter or his most valuable painting? We discover that Lord John – who introduces Bender to Lord Theign – is working on his own commission, and that a number of the principle characters consider selling art treasures to rich Americans as gauche, a sell-out.
Bender, while heavily patronized, is unruffled throughout. One of the few characters to mostly speak sense, he points out:
A tad more direct than English high society likes, he zings:
“Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” [p.56]
Nearly as direct, and more sympathetic, is Lady Grace, who eventually puts the kabosh on her father’s daughter sale. Before then, she observes:
But she and the young art evaluator, among others, find selling one’s “ancestor” to foreign lands to be dishonorable and work a scheme to undermine Theign, Bender & John’s plans.
I, for one, was mystified by such a century-old controversy. Even if Lord Theign’s wealth is inherited, what part of his private property (art, not people) is less than private?
I also was underwhelmed by the budding love between Lady Grace and the ambitious commoner with whom she’s in cahoots. They frustrate Lord Theign’s designs, in what appears to be James’s preferred outcome, but I had to wonder, for all of the father’s faults, is it worth the rupturing of family ties?
The most behind-the-scenes player, it turns out, is a family friend and recently widowed Lady Sandgate, who bookends the book. Her more sacrificial love of Lord Theign, I found more attractive. Surprisingly James describes her unflatteringly in the opening pages:
Yet her shared sacrifice with Theign – she, too, forsakes a fat sale – consummates their new relation and, by working her old friend, one suspects she’ll get him to climb down from his break with his better daughter.
So here we have, over a century ago, the younger generation upstaging the old, the female the male, and, for a time, old worlds over the new. Well, some things don’t change.
[Henry James, The Outcry, 1911, The New York Review of Books, NY, 2002]
The book’s several clashes begins with the arrival of a filthy rich American art collector, named Bender, helping out financially pinched British nobility by relieving them of their blockbuster art, and ends with a generational one, between the pinched Lord Theign, his daughter Lady Grace, and the brash art evaluator to whom she feels drawn.
Lord Theign is particularly pinched due to his eldest daughter’s magnificent gambling debt, owed to a dour dowager, whose son, Lord John, is drawn to the same younger daughter, Grace. Lord John is not only courting Grace, with the father’s cruel support, but proffering a quid pro quo, the gambling debt for her hand.
Which will Lord Theign, then, sell first, his youngest daughter or his most valuable painting? We discover that Lord John – who introduces Bender to Lord Theign – is working on his own commission, and that a number of the principle characters consider selling art treasures to rich Americans as gauche, a sell-out.
Bender, while heavily patronized, is unruffled throughout. One of the few characters to mostly speak sense, he points out:
“...if you drag their value to light why shouldn’t we want to grab them and carry them off – the same as all of you originally did?” [p.105]
A tad more direct than English high society likes, he zings:
“Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” [p.56]
Nearly as direct, and more sympathetic, is Lady Grace, who eventually puts the kabosh on her father’s daughter sale. Before then, she observes:
“But people have trafficked, people do; people are trafficking all around.” [p.34]
But she and the young art evaluator, among others, find selling one’s “ancestor” to foreign lands to be dishonorable and work a scheme to undermine Theign, Bender & John’s plans.
I, for one, was mystified by such a century-old controversy. Even if Lord Theign’s wealth is inherited, what part of his private property (art, not people) is less than private?
I also was underwhelmed by the budding love between Lady Grace and the ambitious commoner with whom she’s in cahoots. They frustrate Lord Theign’s designs, in what appears to be James’s preferred outcome, but I had to wonder, for all of the father’s faults, is it worth the rupturing of family ties?
The most behind-the-scenes player, it turns out, is a family friend and recently widowed Lady Sandgate, who bookends the book. Her more sacrificial love of Lord Theign, I found more attractive. Surprisingly James describes her unflatteringly in the opening pages:
“She might have consented, or even attained, to being but gracefully stupid, but she would have presumably confessed, if put on her trial for restlessless or for intelligence, that she was, after all almost clever enough to be vulgar.” [p.6]
Yet her shared sacrifice with Theign – she, too, forsakes a fat sale – consummates their new relation and, by working her old friend, one suspects she’ll get him to climb down from his break with his better daughter.
So here we have, over a century ago, the younger generation upstaging the old, the female the male, and, for a time, old worlds over the new. Well, some things don’t change.
[Henry James, The Outcry, 1911, The New York Review of Books, NY, 2002]
August 13, 2017
“Il più sorprendente e divertente dei romanzi di Henry James” riporta la copertina della Fazi Editore, citando a sua volta come fonte la New York Review of Books. Onestamente, tutto questo divertimento non l’ho colto. C’è di sicuro tanto umorismo, equamente distribuito tra l’americano desideroso di spendere il più possibile per dare prova delle proprie sconfinate risorse finanziarie e l’inglese desideroso di ricavare il meno possibile per non cedere di un millimetro dal suo aplomb da pari del regno. È puro scontro verbale tra due modi opposti di intendere e rivendicare il prestigio sociale, dicotomia che non giunge nuova ai conoscitori dello scrittore. L’umorismo tuttavia è portato ad un livello tale da apparire artificioso e pretenzioso, perdendo gran parte della sua ragion d’essere.
Non è una novità neppure l’ispirazione proveniente da un fatto di cronaca, ovvero la decisione del duca di Norfolk di vendere ad un acquirente americano una delle tele di sua proprietà esposta alla National Gallery, con conseguente scandalo e indignazione da parte dell’opinione pubblica e salvataggio in extremis dell’opera grazie all’intervento di una donazione anonima. Molti dei racconti di James, così come il suo romanzo forse più famoso, Giro di vite, si può dire che partano grossomodo dagli stessi presupposti ma, ciò che manca in questo caso è l’indagine psicologica che fa, di un evento marginalizzato in un determinato contesto, un tema dalla portata più ampia, se non universale.
La forma del testo, così come è concepito, non contempla il dovuto spazio per l’approfondimento psicologico ed a risentirne ad esempio è un personaggio femminile dalle potenzialità rimaste inespresse, come quello di Lady Grace, donna capace di ribellarsi all’autorità paterna, anteponendo al bene della famiglia l’ideale in cui crede e soprattutto la sua indipendenza.
Nato come pièce teatrale, il romanzo ne mantiene inalterati tutti i canoni. La suddivisione in tre libri non è altro che la suddivisione in tre atti, ognuno dei quali si svolge interamente in una stanza, dove i personaggi si trovano ad entrare ed uscire in maniera tutt’altro che naturale. Vedere la vicenda messa in scena darebbe sicuramente un effetto diverso ma, volendo giudicare il romanzo in sé, non mi sentirei di definirlo un esperimento pienamente riuscito.
Non è una novità neppure l’ispirazione proveniente da un fatto di cronaca, ovvero la decisione del duca di Norfolk di vendere ad un acquirente americano una delle tele di sua proprietà esposta alla National Gallery, con conseguente scandalo e indignazione da parte dell’opinione pubblica e salvataggio in extremis dell’opera grazie all’intervento di una donazione anonima. Molti dei racconti di James, così come il suo romanzo forse più famoso, Giro di vite, si può dire che partano grossomodo dagli stessi presupposti ma, ciò che manca in questo caso è l’indagine psicologica che fa, di un evento marginalizzato in un determinato contesto, un tema dalla portata più ampia, se non universale.
La forma del testo, così come è concepito, non contempla il dovuto spazio per l’approfondimento psicologico ed a risentirne ad esempio è un personaggio femminile dalle potenzialità rimaste inespresse, come quello di Lady Grace, donna capace di ribellarsi all’autorità paterna, anteponendo al bene della famiglia l’ideale in cui crede e soprattutto la sua indipendenza.
Nato come pièce teatrale, il romanzo ne mantiene inalterati tutti i canoni. La suddivisione in tre libri non è altro che la suddivisione in tre atti, ognuno dei quali si svolge interamente in una stanza, dove i personaggi si trovano ad entrare ed uscire in maniera tutt’altro che naturale. Vedere la vicenda messa in scena darebbe sicuramente un effetto diverso ma, volendo giudicare il romanzo in sé, non mi sentirei di definirlo un esperimento pienamente riuscito.
December 3, 2017
James's last completed novel published during his lifetime is actually one more attempt by him to convert an unsuccessful play into prose. None of these attempts by James are very successful or satisfying; they lack the imagination and scope of his more ambitious and crafted novels. Why he thought an argument about the provenance of a painting and the struggle to keep it in Britain rather than have it be bought by an artistically rapacious rich American would have made a good play is hard to figure out. It barely makes an interesting novel, let alone the artificial resolution of two pairs of love matches (one of which comes, literally, out of nowhere). Although this novel sold well in its day, it's pretty forgettable now.
June 28, 2018
Compared to other late James novels, this one is like a Lee Child novel in its pace and entertainment value! Likely in part because it was first conceived as a play.
April 14, 2021
If you like the plays by Oscar Wilde, you will enjoy the dialogue among these characters and the ensuing drama!
May 20, 2021
originally written as a play, and not much different in novel format, characters entering and exiting at key times. also has a very bouncy ending. interesting.
September 26, 2021
Not certain if it would have been better as a play. Theign’s temperamental indulgences are the only redeeming quality.
June 2, 2022
Piacevole lettura resa ancora più piacevole dallo
Scoprire che HJ aveva incontrato Berenson . E grazie a questi incontro “fastidioso” è nato questo romanzo .
Scoprire che HJ aveva incontrato Berenson . E grazie a questi incontro “fastidioso” è nato questo romanzo .
March 19, 2023
10 pounds of prose in a 5 pound bag.
July 5, 2023
Libro scorrevole ma noioso oltre ogni modo.
March 28, 2020
Back in 1909 Henry James had planned this as a play, which it never became. *
He had tried to become a successful playwright on the London stages since the 1890s (although being contemporary to Oscar Wilde didn't help, as Guy Domville was simply swept aside by The Importance of Being Earnest), had meanwhile given up the whole idea and moved on to write his now infamous 'major phase' trilogy, only to give the stage another go. If my memory doesn't fail me, this time he was almost through with it: the production was set & all. And then Edward VII died in 1910, causing the theatres to be shut down in mourning. Sorry about that, Henry.
James then adapted the script and published it as a novel in 1911. Ironically, it would be the last of his published novels, and the first to posthumously follow his brother William's suggestion to please stop writing bloody unreadable stuff. The Outcry is in fact a peculiar work in the Henry James canon, utterly lacking, for obvious reasons, the introspection that characterized (i.e. burdened) his previous efforts. It is short and based largely on dialogue and fast action (well, 'action' according to Henry James's standards).
Very fancy edition by the New York Review of Books.
* actually, according to wikipedia it did, posthumously, in 1917.
He had tried to become a successful playwright on the London stages since the 1890s (although being contemporary to Oscar Wilde didn't help, as Guy Domville was simply swept aside by The Importance of Being Earnest), had meanwhile given up the whole idea and moved on to write his now infamous 'major phase' trilogy, only to give the stage another go. If my memory doesn't fail me, this time he was almost through with it: the production was set & all. And then Edward VII died in 1910, causing the theatres to be shut down in mourning. Sorry about that, Henry.
James then adapted the script and published it as a novel in 1911. Ironically, it would be the last of his published novels, and the first to posthumously follow his brother William's suggestion to please stop writing bloody unreadable stuff. The Outcry is in fact a peculiar work in the Henry James canon, utterly lacking, for obvious reasons, the introspection that characterized (i.e. burdened) his previous efforts. It is short and based largely on dialogue and fast action (well, 'action' according to Henry James's standards).
Very fancy edition by the New York Review of Books.
* actually, according to wikipedia it did, posthumously, in 1917.
July 9, 2016
Henry James's last novel, adapted from a play he wrote that went unproduced. Lord Theign (redundant name!) has two daughters and an estate rich in art, including an excellent Sir Joshua. In order to pay off his elder daughter's gaming debts to a neighboring duchess, he has arranged to marry his younger daughter, Lady Grace, to the duchess's son, Lord John. However he still needs cash to clinch the deal. Perhaps he could sell a painting? The American Breckenridge Bender is after anything he can pay a lot of money for. But an Englishman, Hugh Crimble, has inspired Lady Grace with the idea that the treasures England owns--even those it got by devious means in the past--it should hold onto. While Lord John presses Lord Theign to treat with Mr. Bender, Lady Grace refuses Lord John's hand to throw her lot in with Mr. Crimble, who attempts to raise an outcry on the part of the English public about the loss of artworks to America.
The happy ending to this short work doesn't convince, and clearly shows James pandering to the public in hopes of gaining a name in the theater that he always wanted. Sadly, this novel was well-received--precisely, one guesses, because James did not follow through on his own better knowledge of human character.
The happy ending to this short work doesn't convince, and clearly shows James pandering to the public in hopes of gaining a name in the theater that he always wanted. Sadly, this novel was well-received--precisely, one guesses, because James did not follow through on his own better knowledge of human character.
March 20, 2012
This is James' final novel, and I thought it would be a lot better than it was. The first hundred pages or so were very slow, and that's saying something. This novel is only 194 pages long! I did get into it towards the end, but I got lost in James' very long descriptions. This novel reads like a play. However, like James' other novels, a lot of what goes on is psychological and can't be wholly conveyed through acting. It was difficult for me to relate to this one quite as much because a great deal of the plot played on social perceptions of aristocracy - the dos and don'ts as it were. If the reader isn't immediately familiar with these unwritten social laws of the time, a lot is lost. I began to appreciate it more towards the end and would likely profit by a second read, but I can't be bothered to re-read it since it was very slow going.
March 15, 2009
Well, it's obvious this was a play revised into a book. Each chapter is a scene, bounded by entrance and exit of characters. I'm thinking James intentionally left the struts to show us the construction.
The problem of art leaving old-monied (or really, no longer monied) Europe for new-monied America is not dominant today, so I'm not particularly interested in the main issue of the story. The characters' interests don't seem relevant to me. This is obviously influenced by my historical period and bias, however.
It's Henry James. Henry James is a quality writer. This just isn't his most compelling piece of fiction.
The problem of art leaving old-monied (or really, no longer monied) Europe for new-monied America is not dominant today, so I'm not particularly interested in the main issue of the story. The characters' interests don't seem relevant to me. This is obviously influenced by my historical period and bias, however.
It's Henry James. Henry James is a quality writer. This just isn't his most compelling piece of fiction.
January 18, 2016
I should love to be a fly on the wall to observe a classroom of modern students attempting to decipher some of the convoluted sentences which make up this work. It was great fun for me to read, but what would kids who use abbreviations for texting make of it? I do think it would be of benefit for them to study not only for the translation but the exploration of what transpired with regard to purchases of art held by English families for generations (vs donations to National Gallery).
August 17, 2016
En estilo barroco, narra la historia de varios personajes en Inglaterra del siglo XIX en torno a la compra venta de una pintura.
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