The exact sensuous feel of things was something, on occasion, [Henry James] expressed a clear desire and even a preference for:

He wanted the hour of the day at which this and that had happened, and the temperature and the weather and the sound, and yet more the stillness, from the street, and the exact lookout, with the corresponding look-in, through the window and the slant on the walls of the light of afternoons that had been….

This look-out, with its corresponding look-in, James seems never to have sufficiently had, and there is more of mystery and evil than eagerness and glee in the inferences he draws. Throughout [Mr. Edel's Henry James: The Treacherous Years, 1895–1901], too, "The grey years gather; the arid spaces lengthen, damn them!" Art, pride, discipline, genius … In the Cage …

Where Mr. Edel is now, receiving the many messages of Henry James…. [They] are hardly...