When the porter’s wife (she used to answer the house-bell), announced “A gentleman—with a lady, sir,” I had, as I often had in those days, for the wish was father to the thought, an immediate vision of sitters.
Henry James is a maestro of the opening line. What is especially interesting about the lines which open a work by James is their seeming absence of much useful information. In many cases, a story opens with one character observing others, often in unusually close detail, but without apparently offering any insight. In these and other examples, however, James has furtively inserted information which will later prove the line to be deceptive in its ordinariness.
When the new book came out in the autumn Mr. and Mrs. St. George found it really magnificent. The former still has published nothing but Paul doesn’t even yet feel safe. I may say for him, however, that if this event were to occur he would really be the very first to appreciate it: which is perhaps a proof that the Master was essentially right and that Nature had dedicated him to intellectual, not to personal passion.
Just as James is quite masterful at writing an opening line effectively conveys information that seems mundane, but is later proved to be essential, so does he often show off his flair for ambiguity in closing lines. On its surface, the final line seems rather forthright. Within context, however, by the time the reader gets to this point, it is not beyond all reason to suspect that the narrator is being ironic. That is equally reasonable he is being sincere is what makes the line so strong.
"too clever to live"
Pemberton is the tutor to the pupil of the title. The pupil is a young man named Morgan Moreen whom Pemberton only agrees to privately teach because of financial deprivation. Morgan needs a tutor because he has a weak heart that would never withstand the pressures of the notorious British academic system. Eventually, Pemberton comes to love the boy and despise his parents and thus the conflict in which the above assertion—said once and then repeated with emphasis a very short time later—proves to be more than mere offhand commentary.
What indeed was this superfluity but the two volumes of my own precious "last"—we were still in the blest age of volumes—presented by its author to the lady of Milford Cottage, and by her, misguided votary, dropped with the best conscience in the world into the Witley abyss, out of which it had jumped with violence, under the touch of accident, straight up again into my own exposed face?
Ultimately, most of the tales of Henry James remain vital not because of the story itself, but rather the way in which James tells it. His was the opposite of the popular fiction of writers like Jack London; his interest was almost exclusively devoted to what was going on inside the minds of his characters rather than their external behavior. As such, great enjoyment for the lover of words can be extracted from his fiction even when interest in the story itself has diminished. For most writers, the above example would likely be a highlight of sentence construction that was worked on, rewritten and edited for hours. For James it was probably just another Tuesday from 4:10 to 4:15.
