The Princess Casamassima

PENGUIN CLASSICS

THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA

HENRY JAMES was born in 1843 in Washington Place, New York, of Scottish and Irish ancestry. His father was a prominent theologian and philosopher, and his elder brother, William, is also famous as a philosopher. He attended schools in New York and later in London, Paris and Geneva, entering the Law School at Harvard in 1862. In 1865 he began to contribute reviews and short stories to American journals. In 1875, after two prior visits to Europe, he settled for a year in Paris, where he met Flaubert, Turgenev and other literary figures. However, the next year he moved to London, where he became so popular in society that in the winter of 1878–9 he confessed to accepting 107 invitations. In 1898 he left London and went to live at Lamb House, Rye, Sussex. Henry James became a naturalized citizen in 1915, was awarded the Order of Merit, and died in 1916.

In addition to many short stories, plays, books of criticism, autobiography and travel, he wrote some twenty novels, the first published being Roderick Hudson (1875). They include The Europeans, Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, The Tragic Muse, The Spoils of Poynton, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl.

DEREK BREWER is Life Fellow (formerly Master) of Emmanuel College, and Emeritus Professor of English, at the University of Cambridge. He has taught and lectured at many universities in this country and abroad, especially in Japan. He has written and edited a number of books, mostly on English medieval literature, but his Symbolic Stories (1980) covers authors from early periods up to the nineteenth century. He has also published articles on twentieth-century literature, and a substantial book of poems, Seatonian Exercises and Other Verses (Unicorn Press, 2000).

PATRICIA CRICK, one-time Scholar of Girton College, Cambridge, is a teacher of Modern Languages.

GEOFFREY MOORE was General Editor for the works of Henry James in Penguin Classics. He died in 1999.

HENRY JAMES

The Princess

Casamassima

Edited with an introduction by

Derek Brewer

Notes by Patricia Crick

Penguin Books

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Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by Macmillan & Co. 1886

Published in Penguin Books 1977

Reprinted in Penguin Classics with an introduction and notes 1987

22

Introduction copyright © Derek Brewer, 1987

Notes copyright © Patricia Crick, 1987

All rights reserved

The text is taken from the first edition of 1886; the author’s preface to the New York Edition of 1909 appears on pp. 33–48

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-192210-2

CONTENTS

Introduction

A Note on the Text

Preface to the New York Edition of 1909

THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA

Notes

INTRODUCTION

I

The Princess Casamassima must be read by anyone interested in the contrasts between wealth and poverty, fineness of spirit and vulgarity, terrorism and beauty, as they attract and afflict our feelings. It is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1886. Our dilemmas are almost as acute, the agonies, though different, are hardly less, the solutions are as hard as ever to find.

The central thread of story is straightforward. The hero is Hyacinth Robinson, the bastard son of a nobleman who is murdered by his mistress, a French dressmaker, Hyacinth’s mother, who is therefore imprisoned for life. Hyacinth is adopted by a humble spinster dressmaker who worked with the girl, Miss Pynsent, and brought up in poverty. He develops tastes and interests in art and beauty which make him acutely conscious of his sordid surroundings and the even greater poverty and suffering of many of those around him. He is drawn into circles of semi-secret radical politics. In a moment of excitement, led on by his radical friends, he makes a ‘sacred vow’ to further the radical cause by assassinating, when called on, a major political figure. But just after this, he is taken up by the young and beautiful Princess Casamassima, after whom the novel is named. She introduces him into the world of wealth and beauty, delicate feelings and perceptions. The nobility and fascination of this world as represented by the Princess seem to him to offset the corruption it may cause elsewhere. He loses his faith in radical schemes, in ‘the beastly cause’, as he comes to call it, to which he has committed himself. Yet he feels in honour bound not to deny his vow. Hence arises a tragic dilemma, only to be solved by his suicide, which has its own nobility.

The following works have been consulted in preparing this Introduction: S. Gorley Putt, The Fiction of Henry James, Penguin Books, 1968; Derek Brewer, Symbolic Stories, D. S.