James's "The Patagonia": a critique of Trollope's "The Journey to Panama."

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1995 by Adeline R. Tintner

The publication in the nineteen-eighties of the complete collected tales of Anthony Trollope has given the scholar an opportunity to see some startling connections between one of the 40 tales by Trollope and the talc of Henry James. Some of these Trollope tales had been republished in 1867 in a volume called Lotte Schmidt and Other Stories, which James probably saw and read, although the volume does not appear in his library and in his famous essay on Trollope of 1884 he does not mention in detail any of the short stories.

The early tale by Trollope seems to have interested James enough to improve on it in his tale written during a very productive year, 1888, a kind of annus mirabilis, along with such fine stories as "The Lesson of the Master," "A London Life," "The Modern Warning," "The Aspern Papers" and "The Liar." William Dean Howells spoke of this series as "one masterpiece" following the other, all revealing "depths under depths" of characterizations and showing James's "clutch upon the unconscious motives" of his people. This is as true of "The Patagonia" as it is of the other well-known tales.

The "germ" given by James in his Notebooks was

suggested to me by Mrs. Kemble's anecdote of Barry St. Leger and the lady (married and with her husband awaiting her in England) with whom he sails from India. She was young and pretty and had been placed under the captain's care. At a certain stage in the voyage, the captain was notified that the passengers were scandalized by the way she was flirting and carrying on with B. St. L. This came to her knowledge and during the night she jumped overboard. Admirable dismal little subject. (Complete Notebooks 43)

That same day James receives from Theodore Child the idea for "The Lesson of the Master" (Complete Notebooks 43). These two stories are typical of those written during the 1887-88 period, in which James uses the basic plot suggested by a few words from a friend's anecdote. However, these tales get their further impetus, not only from the anecdote in life, but also from some specific literary model. Although "A London Life" was suggested by Paul Boutget, lames uses Hogarth's literary illustrations to create the main parallel or analogue and for the "The Lesson of the Master" he resorts to the life of St. George from The Lives of the Saints. So also in "The Patagonia" James uses "The Journey to Panama" to fortify Mrs. Kemble's "germ."

The Trollope story and the James story both concern the sea voyage taken by a young woman who is going out to meet her fiance to get married after "a long engagement, of ten years" (Trollope 356; James, "Patagonia" 295). There is no love in either case as far as the young women are concerned and both take up with an attractive young man on shipboard. A tentative shipboard romance develops in each case between them, but their being seen together leads to gossip, which in turn leads to the breakup of the romance. Unlike Mrs. Kemble's "germ," the women are unmarried and have contracted their engagements to avoid poverty and social isolation. It is in the denouement that James parts company with Trollope. His heroine, Grace Mavis, actually commits suicide, whereas Trollope's Emily Viner only occasionally thinks of killing herself and, in the end, she is saved from a loveless marriage by the unexpected death of her fiance.

The plots therefore are very close. In spite of the changes James has made in some details of the Trollope story, the resemblances reveal Trollope's tale as an important source for James's story. It is in certain details that his tribute to Trollope becomes clear and factual. Although Donald D. Stone had indicated that James also used certain themes first suggested in Trollope's novels, Stone judged the echoes from the earlier novelist to be simply "wandering" (Stone, "James, Trollope . . ." 101). Not so in the case of "The Journey to Panama" and "The Patagonia."(1) James parts company with Trollope at that point where he imports a greater tragic force to the basic plot invented by Trollope. It is the tragic element, the suicide, in Mrs.

Kemble's anecdote that creates for James's imagination an "admirable little dismal subject." Although Emily Viner, the British heroine of "The Journey to Panama," does not kill herself, she rejects the loving proposal of marriage made by her shipboard friend. James's heroine, Grace Mavis, whose romance with Jasper Nettlepoint is a serious matter only for her, takes the tragic exit because she does not love her fiance the plodding architect, Mr. Butterfield, whom she is to meet at the end of her journey, and Jasper has not taken her love for him seriously. Both heroines are "nearly thirty" (Trollope 352), both engagements were "long" and had lasted 10 years. Emily's "was a long engagement, of ten years' standing" (Trollope 356); Grace Mavis equally was "the victim of a long engagement" ("Patagonia" 294). The heroine of "The Patagonia" had met her fiance in Paris "ten years" before and he had never returned to see his fiancee during that period.