The Lesson of the Master
By Henry James
4/5
()
About this ebook
The Lesson of the Master was written in the year 1888 by Henry James. This book is one of the most popular novels of Henry James, and has been translated into several other languages around the world.
This book is published by Booklassic which brings young readers closer to classic literature globally.
Henry James
Henry James (1843-1916) was an American author and master of literary realism. He split his time between America and Europe, eventually settling in England. Consequently, his novels are known for their interactions between American and European characters. He was one first American novelists to explore first-person consciousness and perception.
Read more from Henry James
Henry James: The Complete Novellas and Tales (Centaur Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Europeans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Turn of the Screw Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBadass Prepper's Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Prepare Yourself for the Worst Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoderick Hudson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gothic Novel Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The American Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bostonians Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Beast in the Jungle Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Daily Henry James: A Year of Quotes from the Work of the Master Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Oxford Book of American Essays Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Golden Bowl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Harvard Classics: All 71 Volumes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Turn of the Screw and Other Short Works Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gothic Classics: 60+ Books in One Volume Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wings of the Dove Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bushcraft Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Wilderness Survival Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings30 Occult & Supernatural masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Lesson of the Master
Related ebooks
The Liar (1888) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lesson of the Master Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Had I a Hundred Mouths: New and Selected Stories 1947-1983 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by George Gissing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsParallax Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoth Hour Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Middle Years by Henry James (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJournal of Camus Studies 2019 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVirginia Woolf: A Portrait Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tragic Muse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Guermantes Way Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Letters of Henry James: Volume 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOutsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCyrano de Bergerac Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Kate Chopin Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Touchstone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Apple Tree & Other Short Stories: Short story compilation from a Nobel Prize winner in Literature. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prelude to Christopher Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Henry James Short Stories Volume 7 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Aria Da Capo: A Play in One Act Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Grace Paley's "The Long-Distance Runner" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGale Researcher Guide for: Where Pain Is a Mercy: Flannery O'Connor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Small Boy and Others: Henry James Autobiography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCritical Essays of Ford Madox Ford Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Parisian Affair and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Random Illuminations: Conversations with Carol Shields Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Henry James Short Stories Volume 4 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Henry James Short Stories Volume 3 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Short Stories For You
The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ficciones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lovecraft Country: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skeleton Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Explicit Content: Red Hot Stories of Hardcore Erotica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of the Best American Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Past Midnight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Tuesdays in Winter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Scorched Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sour Candy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex and Erotic: Hard, hot and sexy Short-Stories for Adults Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Memory Wall: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Lesson of the Master
2 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A very funny story indeed.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A young writer, Paul Overt, befriends St. George, a famous master whose later work, while popular, is less artistically strong. Enmeshed in their social dance are St. George’s wife, who it becomes apparent directs the master’s artistic and business life, and Marian Fancourt, a young intellectual beauty who captures Paul’s heart. Revolving around themes of marriage and its effects on the artistic life (anyone care to guess?), The Lesson is a dense, rich novella full of twists and turns. There is a bit of humor here. Particuarlly St. George’s response to Paul’s question of whether the artist is a man - ”I mostly think not.”What the master wishes for the student: “The sense of having done the best – the sense which is the real life of the artist and the absence of which is his death, of having drawn from his intellectual instrument the finest music that nature had hidden in it, of having played it as it should be played.”
Book preview
The Lesson of the Master - Henry James
978-963-524-661-8
Chapter 1
He had been told the ladies were at church, but this was corrected by what he saw from the top of the steps - they descended from a great height in two arms, with a circular sweep of the most charming effect - at the threshold of the door which, from the long bright gallery, overlooked the immense lawn. Three gentlemen, on the grass, at a distance, sat under the great trees, while the fourth figure showed a crimson dress that told as a bit of colour
amid the fresh rich green. The servant had so far accompanied Paul Overt as to introduce him to this view, after asking him if he wished first to go to his room. The young man declined that privilege, conscious of no disrepair from so short and easy a journey and always liking to take at once a general perceptive possession of a new scene. He stood there a little with his eyes on the group and on the admirable picture, the wide grounds of an old country-house near London - that only made it better - on a splendid Sunday in June. But that lady, who's SHE?
he said to the servant before the man left him.
I think she's Mrs. St. George, sir.
Mrs. St. George, the wife of the distinguished -
Then Paul Overt checked himself, doubting if a footman would know.
Yes, sir - probably, sir,
said his guide, who appeared to wish to intimate that a person staying at Summersoft would naturally be, if only by alliance, distinguished. His tone, however, made poor Overt himself feel for the moment scantly so.
And the gentlemen?
Overt went on.
Well, sir, one of them's General Fancourt.
Ah yes, I know; thank you.
General Fancourt was distinguished, there was no doubt of that, for something he had done, or perhaps even hadn't done - the young man couldn't remember which - some years before in India. The servant went away, leaving the glass doors open into the gallery, and Paul Overt remained at the head of the wide double staircase, saying to himself that the place was sweet and promised a pleasant visit, while he leaned on the balustrade of fine old ironwork which, like all the other details, was of the same period as the house. It all went together and spoke in one voice - a rich English voice of the early part of the eighteenth century. It might have been church-time on a summer's day in the reign of Queen Anne; the stillness was too perfect to be modern, the nearness counted so as distance, and there was something so fresh and sound in the originality of the large smooth house, the expanse of beautiful brickwork that showed for pink rather than red and that had been kept clear of messy creepers by the law under which a woman with a rare complexion disdains a veil. When Paul Overt became aware that the people under the trees had noticed him he turned back through the open doors into the great gallery which was the pride of the place. It marched across from end to end and seemed - with its bright colours, its high panelled windows, its faded flowered chintzes, its quickly-recognised portraits and pictures, the blue-and-white china of its cabinets and the attenuated festoons and rosettes of its ceiling - a cheerful upholstered avenue into the other century.
Our friend was slightly nervous; that went with his character as a student of fine prose, went with the artist's general disposition to vibrate; and there was a particular thrill in the idea that Henry St. George might be a member of the party. For the young aspirant he had remained a high literary figure, in spite of the lower range of production to which he had fallen after his first three great successes, the comparative absence of quality in his later work. There had been moments when Paul Overt almost shed tears for this; but now that he was near him - he had never met him - he was conscious only of the fine original source and of his own immense debt. After he had taken a turn or two up and down the gallery he came out again and descended the steps. He was but slenderly supplied with a certain social boldness - it was really a weakness in him - so that, conscious of a want of acquaintance with the four persons in the distance, he gave way to motions recommended by their not committing him to a positive approach. There was a fine English awkwardness in this - he felt that too as he sauntered vaguely and obliquely across the lawn, taking an independent line. Fortunately there was an equally fine English directness in the way one of the gentlemen presently rose and made as if to stalk
him, though with an air of conciliation and reassurance. To this demonstration Paul Overt instantly responded, even if the gentleman were not his host. He was tall, straight and elderly and had, like the great house itself, a pink smiling face, and into the bargain a white moustache. Our young man met him halfway while he laughed and said: Er - Lady Watermouth told us you were coming; she asked me just to look after you.
Paul Overt thanked him, liking him on the spot, and turned round with him to walk toward the others. They've all gone to church - all except us,
the stranger continued as they went; we're just sitting here - it's so jolly.
Overt pronounced it jolly indeed: it was such a lovely place. He mentioned that he was having the charming impression for the first time.
Ah you've not been here before?
said his companion. It's a nice little place - not much to DO, you know
. Overt wondered what he wanted to do
- he felt that he himself was doing so much. By the time they came to where the others sat he had recognised his initiator for a military man and - such was the turn of Overt's imagination - had found him thus still more sympathetic. He would naturally have a need for action, for deeds at variance with the pacific pastoral scene. He was evidently so good-natured, however, that he accepted the inglorious hour for what it was worth. Paul Overt shared it with him and with his companions for the next twenty minutes; the latter looked at him and he looked at them without knowing much who they were, while the talk went on without much telling him even what it meant. It seemed indeed to mean nothing in particular; it wandered, with casual pointless pauses and short terrestrial flights, amid names of persons and places - names which, for our friend, had no great power of evocation. It was all sociable and slow, as was right and natural of a warm Sunday morning.
His first attention was given to the question, privately considered, of whether one of the two younger men would be Henry St. George. He knew many of his distinguished contemporaries by their photographs, but had never, as happened, seen a portrait of the great misguided novelist. One of the gentlemen was unimaginable - he was too young; and the other scarcely looked clever enough, with such mild undiscriminating eyes. If those eyes were St. George's the problem, presented by the ill-matched parts of his genius would be still more difficult of solution. Besides, the deportment of their proprietor was not, as regards the lady in