Maugham and James

From New York Maugham went for a few days to Boston,
where he dined with Henry James, then staying with his recently
widowed sister—in-law in Cambridge. Maugham had met James on a
couple of occasions in London and had been intrigued by him, if
slightly irritated by the atmosphere of “cher maftre” that surrounded
him, by the great man’s expectation of reverence and homage.
Maugham’s attitude to James’s work over the years was to grow in-
creasingly equivocal, a mixture of impatience and admiration, im-
patience with what he saw as a lack of that empathy essential to a
novelist and admiration for a superb technique. “The great novel-
ists, even in seclusion, have lived life passionately,” Maugham
wrote. “Henry James was content to observe it from a window.”
Nonetheless he found James good company, witty when in the
mood, and he was pleased to see him again, enjoying the intimate
evening ti trois, although it was obvious that James on this occasion
was in a nervous and unhappy frame of mind: grieving over the
death of his brother, William, he was also pining to return to En-
gland, restless and ill at ease in the land of his birth. As Maugham
prepared to leave, James insisted on accompanying him to the cor-
ner where he would catch the streetcar back to Boston.
I protested that I was perfectly capable of getting there by my-
self, but he would not hear of it, not only on account of the
kindness and the great courtesy which Were natural to him,
but also because America seemed to him a strange and terrify-
ing labyrinth in which without his guidance I was bound to
get hopelessly lost. . . . The street-car hove in sight and Henry
]ames was seized with agitation. He began waving frantically
when it was still a quarter of a mile away. He was afraid it
wouldn’t stop, and he besought me to jump on with the great-
est agility of which I was capable. . . . I was so infected by his
anxiety that when the car pulled up and I leapt on, I had al-
most the sensation that I had had a miraculous escape from
certain death. I saw him standing on his short legs in the mid-
dle of the road, looking after the car, and I felt that he Was
trembling still at my narrow shave.