A Turn in the Fog: Gertrude Atherton Reads Henry James

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• A Turn in the FogGertrude Atherton Reads Henry James
• Lisa Orr (bio)

In 1904 Gertrude Atherton, best-selling author and self-proclaimed admirer of Henry James's work, sought the Master's blessing for her own: she wrote asking if she could dedicate her forthcoming volume of short stories to him. He responded kindly, concluding, "May my name, I mean, contribute to bring your work better fortune than it usually contributes to bring mine" (Atherton, Adventures 375). In her autobiography Atherton followed this account with a surprising conclusion: "In the course of the year I wrote a long short story of which Henry James was the hero and called it "The Bell in the Fog"; and this title I gave to the volume of short stories I had asked permission to dedicate to him" (Adventures 375).

This might be legerdemain, but Atherton sounds as if she obtained his blessing before she wrote the story. Securing a preemptive promise would make sense, since "The Bell in the Fog" contains a barely veiled, unflattering portrait of James: Ralph Orth, a celebrated writer who buys an English estate resembling The Turn of the Screw's Bly Manor. As in The Turn of the Screw, the main character experiences what may, or may not, be supernatural events; children also figure largely. In fact, Atherton's plot contains enough allusions to James's to qualify as a parody. More importantly, she provides not merely a comment on James's style and subject but a forceful repudiation of James's critique of both the New Woman and the New World.

Atherton was not well acquainted with James: by her own account, she met him three times. Nor was she afforded his stature, though considered important in her lifetime. Often she [End Page 221] is lumped with other women writers of the time as a regionalist since she wrote of her home state of California—although she also produced historical fiction, social realism, and even international novels. According to her biographer Emily Wortis Leider, Atherton "was praised by George Meredith and Oscar Wilde, championed by Ambrose Bierce, sought out by Rebecca West, befriended by Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, and often mentioned in the same sentence as Edith Wharton" (1). But Leider argues that she wrote rapidly; her output was uneven (1). Clever and unkind, she burned bridges with writers, publishers, and critics. Today she is seldom remembered.

In an interview with The New York Times after her story collection appeared in 1905, Atherton explained why her responses to James were not truly contradictory: "Why the dedication to Henry James? Because I admire his work. . . . One may detest a workman but adore his work" (Pendennis). The same mixture of respect and resentment had been present at their first meeting. In her autobiography Atherton claims that she was "in love" with James after reading his early works and that she told him so years later when they met. But his response "was so involved, there were so many colons and semicolons, so many commas and dashes, with never a period, that by the time he had finished I was too bewildered to do anything but stare at him, and to this day I do not know whether he was pleased or not" (111). The anecdote both underrates her abilities (women "love" rather than comprehend) and mocks his style.

That same mixture of critique and homage seems to fuel Atherton's portrait of James. A reviewer easily identified Atherton's hero, but she was unembarrassed ("Mrs. Atherton's Stories"). From her first novel Atherton had lifted characters and plots from life, in ways that cost her friendships (Leider 57–58). She justified the theft adequately for herself, if not others: "Gertrude told herself . . . that although based on observations 'from the life' her fictional portraits were always composites, never exact likenesses." (Leider 235).

Of course James had often done the same, most famously with his cousin Minny Temple and his friend Constance Fenimore Woolson (Tóibín 225). Although James did not limit himself to the dead, there is something disturbing in his posthumous use of both Temple and Woolson. "The dead woman was appropriated [End Page 222...