Appendix D - Henry James: Extract from Letter to William James on the ‘Peabody Affair’

Summary

For a discussion of the accusation that James based the character of Miss Birdseye on Eliza peabody, see Introduction, pp. XCVIii–XCVX. The text of the letter is from LL 169–71.

3 Bolton St. W.

Feb. 14th [1885]

Dear William

I am quite appalled by your note of the 2d, in which you assault me on the subject of my having painted a “portrait from life” of Miss Peabody! I was prepared for it by Lowell's (as I found the other day) taking for granted that she had been my model, & an allusion to the same effect in a note from Aunt Kate. Still, I didn't expect the charge to come from you. I hold that I have done nothing to deserve it, & think your tone on the subject singularly harsh & unfair. I care not a straw what people in general may say about Miss Birdseye – they can say nothing more idiotic & insulting than they have already said about all my books in which there has been any attempt to represent things or persons in America; but I should be very sorry — in fact deadly sick, or fatally ill — if I thought Miss Peabody herself supposed I intended to represent her. I absolutely had no shadow of such an intention. I have not seen Miss Peabody for 20 years, I never had but the most casual observation of her, I didn't know whether she was alive or dead, & she was not in the smallest degree my starting point or example. Miss Birdseye was evolved entirely from my moral consciousness, like every person I have ever drawn, & originated in my desire to make a figure who should embody in a sympathetic, pathetic, picturesque & at the same time grotesque way, the humanitary & ci‑devant transcendental tendencies which I thought it highly probable I should be accused of treating in a contemptuous manner in so far as they were otherwise represented in the tale. I wished to make this figure a woman, because so it would be more touching, & an old, weary battered & simple-minded woman because that deepened the same effect. I elaborated her in my mind's eye — & after I had got going reminded myself that my creation would perhaps be identified with Miss Peabody — that I freely admit.