Playing with Henry James

The theme of Henry James’s The Aspern Papers is well known: an unscrupulous biographer seeks the unpublished papers of his subject, a long-dead poet, through the cultivation of the poet’s former mistress, a forgotten old lady living with her spinster niece in Venice. He insinuates himself into the household, leading the niece to hope for marriage, until his real intentions are revealed.

It is also well known that James’s story was inspired by his discovery that, living in reduced circumstances in Florence with her niece during the 1870s, was Claire Clairmont, one-time mistress of Byron (whose child she bore) and perhaps also of Shelley. A predatory biographical collector, a Massachusetts sea-captain, insinuated himself into the household, much as James’s protagonist did. James himself, meanwhile, was conducting – if that’s not too strong a word – a friendship with the American novelist, Constance Fenimore Woolson, whose strong feelings for James were only politely reciprocated.

Now, Emma Tennant has written an ingenious novel conflating the writing of James’s fiction, its historical original and the sad tale of Fenimore, as James called her. Although basing her tale on actual events, Tennant plays fast and loose with history, but that’s fine. We accept it in Shakespeare, after all, and she describes in a foreword the changes she has introduced. She directly equates James’s treatment of Fenimore with his fictional biographer’s treatment of the faded niece:

Both he – a common burglar, a man so greedy for the papers once ruffled by the breath of genius that he will court an old maid and ransack a private chamber – and the author of his unfortunate character, are one and the same man, guilty in the eyes of all good and charitable beings in this world. Letters or no letters, James has encouraged Fenimore to love him and to anticipate a return of that love.