Henry James, The Aspern Papers (1888)
Good Reads meta-data is 106 pages rated 3.71 by 5,042 litizens.
Genre: drama.
Verdict: Intriguing.
Ambitious scholar learns that some letters by a dead white poet might be in the possession of an elderly woman in Venice, despite her frequent and loud denials. Writing a biography of this poet, Ambitious decides to go to Venice to test the hypothesis. His approach is oblique. He will pose as a journalist looking for accommodation and rent a room from Dowager.
In the household, apart from the nearly invisible servants are Dowager and her naive, plain, and shy dependent Niece. Ambitious insinuates himself into the household and finds Dowager avaricious and Niece tedious, but needs must, however, he makes no progress and frets. He dare not raise the question directly with Dowager least she give him, not the papers, but the boot.
Dowager sees through his ruse but likes the rental income, while Niece is flummoxed to have a man in attendance. His own finances are draining away but Niece admits that there are papers and a cameo likeness of the dead poet, Jeffrey Aspern. That convinces Ambitious to hang on.
One night thinking the Dowager bed ridden with illness, Ambitious steals into her private study and rifles her desk to no avail. Dowager catches him at it and faints. He scampers and lies to Niece.
Dowager dies and Niece inherits. Do the papers exist or was that just bait? Will Niece now give him any papers that do exist? He has spent a lot of time with her ever so subtly trying to find a path to the trove and she being completely inexperienced takes that as a kind of courtship. She hints that were they to marry then the papers would be his. It is one of those marvellous James scenes where the message is never stated but hangs in the air above the page.
In a neat role reversal Ambitious is surprised by the hint and scrams, roaming around Venice in girlish confusion, but concludes that the game is worth the candle and goes back to Niece the next day, perhaps to accept her offer, he is not sure, but being so close to the trove, which has grown in his mind in importance, spurs him on. He learns that Niece, ashamed and embarrassed at her bold hint, assumed it would never happen and burned the papers which were numerous. Ambitious is stunned. His efforts have led to the destruction of the very things he wanted to preserve.
The end.
It is a sort of mystery story. Are there any papers to get? Why is Dowager so determined not to part with the papers? Will he or won’t he get the papers? Did the confrontation over the desk precipitate Dowager’s death? Will he or won’t he marry Niece to get the papers? What will become of Niece when Ambitious leaves?
I read it for the insights into the mind of a biographer, Ambitious, and there is some of that to be had, and there are rich descriptions of life in Venice.
Henry James was a great writer. The epiphany in Memorial Hall in the Bostonians has long stayed with me along with the drawing room scene in Wings of the Dove when a secret is revealed by posture. Added to that is the offered but not quite stated proposal in this story. He was a maestro who could make the reader understand something without saying it.