Everything Henry James Calls "Vulgar" In His Personal Correspondence

Source.

It’s vulgar…!

There is of course a great deal more to Henry James than wrinkled dislike — but how wonderful his expressions of wrinkled dislike! See him swell with the years, the little old big man who doesn’t like it, see him shake furiously his massive head, huge with taste: No. I don’t like that. It’s vulgar. I don’t like that. Vulgar. That was vulgar too. Rome didn’t used to be vulgar, but it’s vulgar now.

Oscar Wilde is vulgar. The English are vulgar, more vulgar than Americans by far, except the Americans pull ahead every once in a while. Everything outside of Italy is vulgar, and come to think of it, quite a lot of things inside of Italy is vulgar, too. It might perhaps be easier to come up with a list of things that aren’t vulgar, which might include Edith Wharton, good penmanship, privately liking Henry James’ very unsuccessfuly play Guy Domville, carefully avoiding sexuality while writing long letters to friends in the bath, robust health, feminine effervescence, masculine renunciation, end of list. (“I don’t like lists,” Henry James, 1899. “Lists are vulgar.”)

The English:

“W. asked if as individuals they ‘kill’ the individual American. To this I would say that the Englishmen I have met not only kill, but bury in unfathomable depths, the Americans I have met. A set of people less framed to provoke national self-complacency than the latter it would be hard to imagine. There is but one word to use in regard to them—vulgar, vulgar, vulgar.”

The newspapers that reprint his letters:

“I went down to Chartres the other day and had a charming time—but I won't speak of it as I have done it in the Tribune. The American papers over here are accablants, and the vulgarity and repulsiveness of the Tribune, whenever I see it, strikes me so violently that I feel tempted to stop my letter. But I shall not, though of late there has been a painful dearth of topics to write about.”

Everything that isn’t Italy:

“Already I feel my bows beneath her weight settle comfortably into the water....Out of Italy you don't know how vulgar a world it is.”

But also Italy:

“It is Sunday and all the world is in the streets and squares, and the Italian type greets me in all its handsomeness and friendliness, and also, I fear I must add, not a little in its vulgarity. But its vulgarity is the exaggeration of a merit and not, as in England and the U.S., of a defect.”