The Sense of the Past - Paperback

THE NOVELS AND TALES OF HENRY JAMES FEB New York Edition VOLUME XXVI H 1 EN HENRY JAMES NEW YORK CHARLES SGRIBNERS SONS PREFACE THE SENSE OF THE PAST the second of the two novels which Henry James left unfinished, had been planned and begun some years before he died. The two first books and a part of the third had been written, and it appears that the idea had been abandoned for accidental reasons, not because he was himself dissatisfied with it. He went back to it again during the first winter of the war, having found that in the conditions he could not then go on with The Ivory Tower and hoping that he might be able to work upon a story of remote and phan tasmal life. He redictated, with slight modifications, the chapters already written, and continued the book at in tervals until the autumn of 1915. He was then engaged for a time on other work the introduction to the Let ters from America of Rupert Brooke. He had just finished this and was preparing to return immediately to The Sense of the Past when on December 2 he was attacked by his last illness. The later chapters of the novel, as they stand, had not been finally revised by him but it was never his habit to make more than verbal changes at that stage. The notes on the course which the book was to follow were dictated when he reached the point where the original draft broke off. These notes are given in full their part in Henry Jamess method of work is indicated in the preface to The Ivory Tower. PERCY LUBBOCK. 654C47O CONTENTS THE SENSE OF THE PAST I NOTES FOR THE SENSE OF THE PAST 289 THE SENSE OF THE PAST BOOK FIRST THEY occurred very much at the same hour and together, the two main things that exclusive of the death of hismother, recent and deeply felt by him had yet befallen Ralph Pendrel, who, at thirty, had known fewer turns of fortune than many men of his age. But as these matters were quite distinct I take them for clearness in their order. He had up to this time perforce encoun tered life mainly in the form of loss and of sacri fice inevitabilities these, however, such as scarce represented a chequered career. He had been left without his father in childhood he had then seen two sisters die he had in his twentieth year parted by the same law with his elder and only brother and he had finally known the rupture of the strongest tie of all, an affection for which, as a living claim, he had had to give up much else. Among these latter things, none the less, he had not as yet had to reckon Mrs. Stent Coyne, and this even though the thought of such a peril was on the eve of his crisis fairly present to him. The peril hung before him in fact, though the first note of the crisis had by that time already sounded, from a different quarter, in the guise of a positive stroke of luck. It appeared that what destiny THE SENSE OF THE PAST might call on him for this time would not be just another relinquishment. A letter from a friend in England, a fellow-countryman spending a few months in London and having friends of his own there had mentioned to him the rumoured grave illness and imminent extinction, at a great age, of the last person in that country bearing Ralphs family name, a person of a distant cousinship with whom he had been indifferently aware. His indifference was not a little enlivened by a remark of his correspondent. Surely when he does die youll come in for something Surely was a good deal to sayand the whole hint fantastic it took so much for granted yet the words had an effect. This effect was that Ralph determined to mention the matter on the same occasion as something else the revolving months had charged him with, something he had at last really straightened himself to say to the woman he loved. He had had his fears, and in addition to other hindrances, infelicities of circum stance, imperfections of opportunity, had long de terred him, and he was now disposed to throw himself upon anything that could figure as a help...