The Diary of a Man of Fifty
By Henry James
()
About this ebook
Henry James
Henry James was born in New York in 1843, the younger brother of the philosopher William James, and was educated in Europe and America. He left Harvard Law School in 1863, after a year's attendance, to concentrate on writing, and from 1869 he began to make prolonged visits to Europe, eventually settling in England in 1876. His literary output was both prodigious and of the highest quality: more than ten outstanding novels including his masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady; countless novellas and short stories; as well as innumerable essays, letters, and other pieces of critical prose. Known by contemporary fellow novelists as 'the Master', James died in Kensington, London, in 1916.
Related to The Diary of a Man of Fifty
Related ebooks
The Diary of a Man of Fifty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Woman in the Alcove: Caleb Sweetwater - Volume 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Patagonia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Professor's Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWintry Peacock: From "The New Decameron", Volume III. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Romantic Lady Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGloom in the Mortuary of Melancholy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThat Affair at Elizabeth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Woman in the Alcove Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Room in the Dragon Volant Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLawrence Clavering Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Europeans Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn a Glass Darkly, v. 2/3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Europeans: “It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilling to Die: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath, the Knight, and the Lady: A Ghost Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Women In The Alcove: “it would never do for me to lose my wits in the presence of a man who had none too many of his own.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gorilla Hunters (Musaicum Adventure Classics): Adventure Novel: A Tale of the Wilds of Africa Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Room in the Dragon Volant Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gorilla Hunters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Priest's Tale - Père Etienne From "The New Decameron", Volume III. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mill Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStories by American Authors (Volume 4) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrif: A Story of Australian Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Old Curiosity Shop Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anonymous Sex Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outsider: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Have Always Lived in the Castle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Other Black Girl: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Diary of a Man of Fifty
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Diary of a Man of Fifty - Henry James
THE DIARY OF A MAN OF FIFTY
by Henry James
The Diary of a Man of Fifty
Florence, April 5th, 1874.—They told me I should find Italy greatly changed; and in seven-and-twenty years there is room for changes. But to me everything is so perfectly the same that I seem to be living my youth over again; all the forgotten impressions of that enchanting time come back to me. At the moment they were powerful enough; but they afterwards faded away. What in the world became of them? Whatever becomes of such things, in the long intervals of consciousness? Where do they hide themselves away? in what unvisited cupboards and crannies of our being do they preserve themselves? They are like the lines of a letter written in sympathetic ink; hold the letter to the fire for a while and the grateful warmth brings out the invisible words. It is the warmth of this yellow sun of Florence that has been restoring the text of my own young romance; the thing has been lying before me today as a clear, fresh page. There have been moments during the last ten years when I have fell so portentously old, so fagged and finished, that I should have taken as a very bad joke any intimation that this present sense of juvenility was still in store for me. It won’t last, at any rate; so I had better make the best of it. But I confess it surprises me. I have led too serious a life; but that perhaps, after all, preserves one’s youth. At all events, I have travelled too far, I have worked too hard, I have lived in brutal climates and associated with tiresome people. When a man has reached his fifty-second year without being, materially, the worse for wear—when he has fair health, a fair fortune, a tidy conscience and a complete exemption from embarrassing relatives—I suppose he is bound, in delicacy, to write himself happy. But I confess I shirk this obligation. I have not been miserable; I won’t go so far as to say that—or at least as to write it. But happiness—positive happiness—would have been something different. I don’t know that it would have been better, by all measurements—that it would have left me better off at the present time. But it certainly would have made this difference—that I should not have been reduced, in pursuit of pleasant images, to disinter a buried episode of more than a quarter of a century ago. I should have found entertainment more—what shall I call it?—more contemporaneous. I should have had a wife and children, and I should not be in the way of making, as the French say, infidelities to the present. Of course it’s a great gain to have had an escape, not to have committed an act of thumping folly; and I suppose that, whatever serious step one might have taken at twenty-five, after a struggle, and with a violent effort, and however one’s conduct might appear to be justified by events, there would always remain a certain element of regret; a certain sense of loss lurking in the sense of gain; a tendency to wonder, rather wishfully, what might have been. What might have been, in this case, would, without doubt, have been very sad, and what has been has been very cheerful and comfortable; but there are nevertheless two or three questions I might ask myself. Why,