ABSTRACT
When we come to look for the specific and tangible manifestations of Turgenev’s influence in James’s fiction, the initial problem is that of the massive prima-facie case for influence being there – the primafacie case, that is, constituted by the strength of James’s dedication to Turgenev and the example of his work, a dedication amounting at times to idolatry. James lavished so much praise upon Turgenev and exhibited so many broad similarities in conception, method and theme that, in the early stages of his career at least, he virtually invited critics to treat him as Turgenev’s pupil and to infer imitation rather than a case of naturally occurring likeness. Typical of this response is the American critic W. E. Henley’s review in October 1878 of The Europeans in The Academy (reprinted in Gard 1968). While praising the work as ‘capable and original’ Henley still finds it possible to write of James as ‘an exponent of the refined ecletic realism of Turgenieff’ (Gard 1968: 54). It is hardly surprising that Henley, who in any case had an interest of his own in Turgenev, should write of him as James’s master; two months earlier, on 28 August, James had written of Turgenev to Henley in terms of almost slavish admiration:
I am extremely glad to hear you mean to write something about him and wish you all success. I don’t think he is one quarter appreciated, anywhere. My own attempt dates from a good while ago – 1873 – and if it were à refaire I should make a much better thing of it. . . . I wish I had never read any of T, so that I might begin. You are right in saying that he is better than George Meredith. Rather! George Meredith strikes me as a capital example of the sort of writer that Turgenieff is most absolutely opposite to – the unrealists – the literary story-tellers. T. doesn’t care a straw for an epigram
or a phrase – his inspiration is not a whit literary, but purely and simply human moral.
