Thursday, October 29, 2020 - Five authors of Greenwich Village - as told by Kate Alsbury - Henry James in Washington Square
Each Thursday of this month, Kate Alsbury has guided prose and photography tours of five of the most notable authors who have called Greenwich Village home: Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Willa Cather, and John Updike. The final installment of this series features a look back at the work and life of Henry James, as presented below.
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WASHINGTON SQUARE’S INFLUENCE ON HENRY JAMES
Author Henry James was born at 21 (a bit of disagreement here, some say it was at 2) Washington Place in April of 1843 — just a block away from the park. His grandmother lived down the street.
Growing up in Greenwich Village during the Nineteenth Century, it’s no wonder much of his work reflects scenes of society in and around the city. The impression it made on him was lasting.
Though he never claimed it was autobiographical, his novel Washington Square certainly seems to draw on elements of his early life, describing in detail the distinctness of the houses and social manners that lent the neighborhood its flair:
“The ideal of quiet and of genteel retirement, in 1835, was found in Washington Square, where the Doctor built himself a handsome, modern, wide-fronted house, with a big balcony before the drawing-room windows, and a flight of marble steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white marble. This structure, and many of its neighbours, which it exactly resembled, were supposed, forty years ago, to embody the last results of architectural science, and they remain to this day very solid and honourable dwellings. In front of them was the Square, containing a considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and round the corner was the more august precinct of the Fifth Avenue, taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare—the look of having had something of a social history. It was here, as you might have been informed on good authority, that you had come into a world which appeared to offer a variety of sources of interest; it was here that your grandmother lived, in venerable solitude, and dispensed a hospitality which commended itself alike to the infant imagination and the infant palate; it was here that you took your first walks abroad, following the nursery-maid with unequal step and sniffing up the strange odour of the ailantus-trees which at that time formed the principal umbrage of the Square, and diffused an aroma that you were not yet critical enough to dislike as it deserved…”
The novel follows the main character as she slowly realizes the truth of her circumstances and the somewhat oppressive nature of society.
Despite the elegant rigidity of a structured life that the story evokes, James looked back fondly on his childhood.
Edith Wharton found inspiration in Henry’s work, rooting her 1920 novel, The Age of Innocence, in Washington Square. It touches on some of the same high-society issues that James often highlighted, while enhancing the storyline with her personal experiences in New York’s high-life. During his career, James focused more heavily on what he knew best, the differences and similarities between America and Europe.
Influenced by lengthy visits to London and continental Europe throughout his life, their literature and society made a significant impact on his work, while leaving him feeling like an outsider — even in his own country.
But cultural anomalies weren’t the only reason he felt this way. After a lengthy stay abroad, he returned to New York to find the architecture and esthetic of his old neighborhood changed considerably.
The arch in the park was erected in 1892, designed by New York’s celebrity architect Stanford White, to celebrate the centennial of George Washington’s inauguration (Henry hated this especially).
Fondly sentimental of his childhood, he recalled the beauty and warmth of his early years in the city when writing to Mary Cadwalader (A New York socialite — Edith Wharton’s sister by marriage) in October of 1902: “Pretty, very pretty, as it used to be, New York Autumn, and in the Washington Squareish region trodden by the steps of my childhood, and I wonder if you ever kick the October leaves as you walk in Fifth Avenue, as I can to this hour feel myself, hear myself, positively smell myself doing. But perhaps there are no leaves and no trees now in Fifth Avenue—nothing but patriotic arches, Astor hotels and Vanderbilt palaces.”
After he returned to New York from Europe in 1904, he found the house he had grown up in torn down. He said the area was “ruthlessly suppressed.” The cold, crude buildings that were edging in on his idyllic memories made him feel as if he’d been “amputated of half of my history.”
The architecture of Greenwich Village — and Henry's attitude toward the city — transformed irreversibly.
Kate Alsbury is a writer and marketing consultant. Her creative work has appeared in journals like Frogpond and Modern Haiku, along with several anthologies.
