Crawford's Consistency

By Henry James

This absorbing tale by Henry James explores the 'dangers' of marriage. The narrator's friend Crawford is a rich, famous, and eligible bachelor who wants to avoid marriage. But things change when he meets the beautiful Elizabeth Ingram, falls in love with her, and proposes. The story follows Crawford, who once had everything but ends up with nothing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547414810

Henry James

Henry James (1843-1916) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and non-fiction. He spent most of his life in Europe, and much of his work regards the interactions and complexities between American and European characters. Among his works in this vein are The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), and The Ambassadors (1903). Through his influence, James ushered in the era of American realism in literature. In his lifetime he wrote 12 plays, 112 short stories, 20 novels, and many travel and critical works. He was nominated three times for the Noble Prize in Literature.

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Henry James

Crawford's Consistency

EAN 8596547414810

DigiCat, 2022

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Versions ofCrawford's Consistency

Crawford's Consistency

Versions ofCrawford's Consistency

Table of Contents

"Crawford's Consistency" in Scribner's Monthly12 (4) (August 1876): 569–584. — First publication in any form.

Crawford's Consistency in Eight Uncollected Tales of Henry James (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1950):?–? — First book edition; published posthumously; copyright status to be determined.

Crawford's Consistency

Table of Contents

For other versions of this work, see Crawford's Consistency.

CRAWFORD'S CONSISTENCY.

We were great friends, and it was natural that he should have let me know with all the promptness of his ardor that his happiness was complete. Ardor is here, perhaps, a misleading word, for Crawford's passion burned with a still and hidden flame; if he had written sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow, he had never declaimed them in public. But he was deeply in love; he had been full of tremulous hopes and fears, and his happiness, for several weeks, had hung by a hair—the extremely fine line that appeared to divide the yea and nay of the young lady's parents. The scale descended at last with their heavily-weighted consent in it, and Crawford gave himself up to tranquil bliss. He came to see me at my office—my name, on the little tin placard beneath my window, was garnished with an M. D., as vivid as new gilding could make it—long before that period of the morning at which my irrepressible buoyancy had succumbed to the teachings of experience (as it usually did about twelve o'clock), and resigned itself to believe that that particular day was not to be distinguished by the advent of the female form that haunted my dreams—the confiding old lady, namely, with a large account at the bank, and a mild, but expensive chronic malady. On that day I quite ​forgot the paucity of my patients and the vanity of my hopes in my enjoyment of Crawford's contagious felicity. If we had been less united in friendship, I might have envied him; but as it was, with my extreme admiration and affection for him, I felt for half an hour as if I were going to marry the lovely Elizabeth myself. I reflected after he had left me that I was very glad I was not, for lovely as Miss Ingram was, she had always inspired me with a vague mistrust. There was no harm in her, certainly; but there was nothing else either. I don't know to what I compared her—to a blushing rose that had no odor, to a blooming peach that had no taste. All that nature had asked of her was to be the prettiest girl of her time, and this request she obeyed to the letter. But when, of a morning, she had opened wide her beautiful, candid eyes, and half parted her clear, pink lips, and gathered up her splendid golden tresses, her day, as far as her own opportunity was concerned, was at an end; she had put her house in order, and she could fold her arms. She did so invariably, and it was in this attitude that Crawford saw her and fell in love with her. I could heartily congratulate him, for the fact that a blooming statue would make no wife for me, did not in the least discredit his own choice. I was human and erratic; I had an uneven temper and a prosaic soul. I wished to get as much as I gave—to be the planet, in short, and not the satellite. But Crawford had really virtue enough