Robert Silverberg - The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James

Editor’s Note:

Of all the treasures contained in the coffin-shaped wooden sea-chest at Harvard’s Widener Library in which those of Henry James’s notebooks and journals that survived his death were preserved and in the associated James archive at Harvard, only James’s account of his bizarre encounter with the Martian invaders in the summer of 1900 has gone unpublished until now. The rest of the material the box contained—the diaries and datebooks, the notes for unfinished novels, the variant drafts of his late plays, and so forth—has long since been made available to James scholars, first in the form of selections under the editorship of F.O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock ( The Notebooks of Henry James , Oxford University Press, 1947), and then a generation later in the magisterial full text edited by Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers ( The Complete Notebooks of Henry James , Oxford University Press, 1987.)

Despite the superb latter volume’s assertions, in its title and subtitle, of being “complete,” “authoritative,” and “definitive,” one brief text was indeed omitted from it, which was, of course, the invasion journal. Edel and Powers are in no way to be faulted for this, since they could not have been aware of the existence of the Martian papers, which had (apparently accidentally) been sequestered long ago among a group of documents at Harvard associated with the life of James’s sister Alice (1848-1892) and had either gone unnoticed by the biographers of Alice James or else, since the diary had obviously been composed some years after her death, had been dismissed by them as irrelevant to their research. It may also be that they found the little notebook simply illegible, for James had suffered severely from writer’s cramp from the winter of 1896-97 onward; his handwriting by 1900 had become quite erratic, and many of the (largely pencilled) entries in the Martian notebook are extremely challenging even to a reader experienced in Henry James’s hand, set down as they were in great haste under intensely strange circumstances.

The text is contained in a pocket diary book, four and a half inches by six, bound in a green leatherette cover. It appears that James used such books, in those years, in which to jot notes that he would later transcribe into his permanent notebook ( Houghton Journal VI , 26 October 1896 to 10 February 1909); but this is the only one of its kind that has survived. The first entry is undated, but can be specifically identified as belonging to mid-May of 1900 by its references to James’s visit to London in that month. At that time James made his home at Lamb House in the pleasant Sussex town of Rye, about seventy miles southeast of London. After an absence of nearly two years he had made a brief trip to the capital in March, 1900, at which time, he wrote, he was greeted by his friends “almost as if I had returned from African or Asian exile.” After seventeen days he went home to Lamb House, but he returned to London in May, having suddenly shaven off, a few days before, the beard that he had worn since the 1860s, because it had begun to turn white and offended his vanity. (James was then 57.) From internal evidence, then, we can date the first entry in the Martian journals to the period between May l5 and May 25, 1900.

[Undated] Stepped clean-shaven from the train at Charing Cross. Felt clean and light and eerily young: I could have been forty. A miraculous transformation, so simply achieved! Alas, the sad truth of it is that it will always be I, never any younger even without the beard; but this is a good way to greet the new century nevertheless.

Called on Helena De Kay. Gratifying surprise and expressions of pleasure over my rejuvenated physiognomy. Clemens is there, that is, “Mark Twain.” He has aged greatly in the three years since our last meeting. “The twentieth century is a stranger to me,” he sadly declares. His health is bad: has been to Sweden for a cure. Not clear what ails him, physically, at least. He is a dark and troubled soul in any case. His best work is behind him and plainly he knows it. I pray whatever God there be that that is not to be my fate.

To the club in the evening. Tomorrow a full day, the galleries, the booksellers, the customary dismaying conference with the publishers. (The war in South Africa is depressing all trade, publishing particularly badly hit, though I should think people would read more novels at a time of such tension.) Luncheon and dinner engagements, of course, the usual hosts, no doubt the usual guests. And so on and on the next day and the next and the next. I yearn already for little restful, red-roofed, uncomplicated Rye.

June 7, LH [Lamb House, Rye]: Home again at long last. London tires me: that is the truth of things. I have lost the habit of it, je crois . How I yearned, all the while I was there, for cabless days and dinnerless nights! And of course there is work to do. The Sacred Fount is now finished and ready to go to the agent. A fine flight into the high fantastic, I think—fanciful, fantastic, but very close and sustained. Writing in the first person makes me uneasy—it lends itself so readily to garrulity, to a fluidity of self-revelation—but there is no questioning that such a structure was essential to this tale.

What is to be next? There is of course the great Project, the fine and major thing, which perhaps I mean to call The Ambassadors . Am I ready to begin it? It will call for the most supreme effort, though I think the reward will be commensurate. A masterpiece, dare I say? I might do well to set down one more sketch of it before commencing. But not immediately. There is powerful temptation to be dilatory: I find a note here from Wells, who suggests that I bicycle over to Sandgate and indulge in a bit of conversation with him. Indeed it has been a while, and I am terribly fond of him. Wells first, yes, and some serious thought about my ambassadors after that.

June 14, Sandgate. I am at Wells’s this fine bright Thursday, very warm even for June. The bicycle ride in such heat across Romney Marsh to this grand new villa of his on the Kentish coast left me quite wilted, but Wells’s robust hospitality has quickly restored me.

What a vigorous man Wells is! Not that you would know it to look at him; his health is much improved since his great sickly time two years ago, but he is nonetheless such a flimsy little wisp of a man, with those short legs, that high squeaky voice, his somewhat absurd moustaches. And yet the mind of the man burns like a sun within that frail body! The energy comes forth in that stream of books, the marvelous fantastic tales, the time-machine story and the one about Dr. Moreau’s bestial monsters and the one that I think is my favorite, the pitiful narrative of the invisible man. Now he wants to write the story of a journey to the Moon, among innumerable other projects, all of which he will probably fulfill. But of course there is much more to Wells than these outlandish if amusing fables: his recent book, Love and Mr. Lewisham , is not at all a scientific romance but rather quite the searching analysis of matters of love and power. Even so Wells is not just a novelist (a mere novelist, I came close to saying!); he is a seer, a prophet, he genuinely wishes to transform the world according to his great plan for it. I doubt very much that he will have the chance, but I wish him well. It is a trifle exhausting to listen to him go on and on about the new century and the miracles that it will bring, but it is enthralling as well. And of course behind his scientific optimism lurks a dark vision, quite contradictory, of the inherent nature of mankind. He is a fascinating man, a raw, elemental force. I wish he paid more attention to matters of literary style; but, then, he wishes that I would pay less . I dare say each of us is both right and wrong about the other.