THE SENSE OF
THE PAST
BY
HENRY JAMES
LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
COPYRIGHT
1917
Henry James
from a photograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn kindly lent by Mr. J. B.Pinker
PREFACE
THE SENSE OF THE PAST, the second of the two novels which Henry Jamesleft 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 itappears that the idea had been abandoned for accidental reasons, notbecause he was himself dissatisfied with it. He went back to it againduring the first winter of the war, having found that in the conditionshe could not then go on with The Ivory Tower and hoping that he mightbe able to work upon a story of remote and phantasmal life. Here-dictated, with slight modifications, the chapters already written,and continued the book at intervals until the autumn of 1915. He wasthen engaged for a time on other work—the introduction to theLetters from America of Rupert Brooke. He had just finished this and waspreparing to return immediately to The Sense of the Past when onDecember 2 he was attacked by his last illness. The later chapters ofthe novel, as they stand, had not been finally revised by him; but itwas never his habit to make more than verbal changes at that stage.
The notes on the course which the book was to follow were dictatedwhen he reached the point where the original draft broke off. These notesare given in full; their part in Henry James's method of work is indicatedin the preface to The Ivory Tower.
PERCY LUBBOCK.
CONTENTS
THE SENSE OF THE PAST
BOOK FIRST
BOOK SECOND
BOOK THIRD
BOOK FOURTH
Notes for THE SENSE OF THE PAST
THE SENSE OF THE PAST
BOOK FIRST
They occurred very much at the same hour and together, the two mainthings that—exclusive of the death of his mother, recent and deeplyfelt by him—had yet befallen Ralph Pendrel, who, at thirty, had knownfewer turns of fortune than many men of his age. But as these matterswere quite distinct I take them for clearness in their order. He had upto this time perforce encountered life mainly in the form of loss and ofsacrifice—inevitabilities these, however, such as scarce representeda chequered career. He had been left without his father in childhood; hehad then seen two sisters die; he had in his twentieth year parted bythe same law with his elder and only brother; and he had finally knownthe rupture of the strongest tie of all, an affection for which, as aliving claim, he had had to give up much else. Among these latterthings, 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 hiscrisis fairly present to him. The peril hung before him in fact, thoughthe first note of the crisis had