‘The Master’ by Colm Toibin; Picador, London; Pounds 15.99; Pp 360. By MANOHAR SHETTY

A NOVEL ON A life novelist is, well, a novelty. Irish writer Colm Toibin charts the later years of the American master Henry James which he spent in England, with frequent visits to other European countries. Toibin goes beyond the dry chronicling of James’ life with profound insights into the intricate mind of a famous novelist. ‘The Master’ begins in 1895 with James, hungry for material success, and disappointed by the American response to his novels ‘The Bostonians’ and ‘The Princess Casamassima’, anxiously awaits the public response at the opening night of his play ‘Guy Domville’ at a theatre in London. Stricken with uncertainty and to alleviate the tension, he decides to watch a play by Oscar Wilde, ‘An Ideal Husband’, at another theatre close by. Wilde’s play is a massive success, his own is an unmitigated disaster with derision heaped on the author by the audience. James, utterly humiliated, and already by then the author of the critically acclaimed novels ‘The Portrait of a Lady’, ‘The Europeans’ and ‘Daisy Miller’, learns the bitter lesson that his art truly belongs to the aesthetic and rarefied world of his own novels. The failure of his play, instead of condemning him into wounded silence, fills him with greater resolve as a writer. A fruitful period follows during which James produced more acclaimed books including ‘What Maisie Knew’, ‘The Ambassadors’ and ‘The Awkward Age’.

Toibin, in elegant and spare prose which would have pleased the Master himself, delves into James’ complex relationship with women, his attachment to his mother and sister and the occasionally volatile relationship with his elder brother William who is also a distinguished academic and a domineering presence. James’ suppressed homosexuality is more than hinted upon, but Toibin deals with the subject with refined detachment—much the way James himself led his life, but with all the attendant emotional sacrifices he pays to keep the enemies of promise at bay in order to produce his enduring novels.

Amongst literary figures, Henry James’ life is the most comprehensively documented, notably in Leon Edel’s five-volume biography. But Toibin’s sentient exercise draws us closer to the very heart of greatness through the workings of the mind of a master. The writer takes us on a riveting journey through the fashionable villas and drawing rooms of the elite in Paris, Rome, Venice, London and Florence and how James makes all the scenarios palpable on paper. Always the courteous and urbane American gentleman, his work, though he much admired the ‘deep, rich English tone’ of George Eliot, remained exquisitely his own, his words described evocatively with possessing a ‘certainty of touch and unhurried incision’.

A little puzzling is why James’ life in Europe is considered to be one in ‘exile’ from America. He lived there by his own choice and indeed felt a creative need to do so. He always knew that England, not New England, would be his ultimate home.

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