ABSTRACT
Novelist Henry James was of no fixed address. His true abode was great literature, the articulate wanderer found an enduring residence in his work. And so did his friend, Miss Constance Fenimore Woolson she called his writing "my true country, my real home". And like him, Constance discovered a sanctuary in literature in his art, alongside her own. Accordingly, their friendship was a slow, tentative dance of proximity and distance. Colm Toibin, in his novel The Master, a fictionalized portrait of James's life, wrote of Woolson as James's "steadfast and self-contained and secret best friend". They wanted to be together but to preserve their independence for work. "Neither of them spoke", wrote Toibin, "about their private lives, their hidden selves". This was not a Romantic union of souls, but it was a sincere, mature companionship, at once tender and aloof, tip-toeing between embrace and flight. It was as genuine a friendship as either had known.
