The Coburn Frontispieces

Henry James first met the American art photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966) in New York City in 1905, during the author’s belated return to the United States, where he was engaged on a lecture tour (the pecuniary pretext, really, for gathering the impressions that would become The American Scene [1907]) and, not incidentally, trying to work out the details for publishing the New York Edition of his Novels and Tales.  Since James’s return to America (after an absence of more than twenty years) was newsworthy, the Century Magazine sent Coburn to photograph the novelist.  The result of that first encounter was not published, but James was sufficiently impressed by Coburn to invite him to Rye the following year, where images were taken that James would gladly employ in the New York Edition: a side profile of the author (used for the first volume in the series, Roderick Hudson) and another of the main entrance to Lamb House (which graced volume IX as “Mr. Longdon’s” for The Awkward Age).

By a happy coincidence, even as Coburn was making prints of these early images, Charles Scribner’s Sons raised the question of illustration with James for the New York Edition.  James had long been skeptical about the conjunction of picture and text (frequently voicing his disgust with the illustrated magazines upon whose patronage he was nevertheless dependent).  Not surprisingly, then, initially he recoiled “with terror from the enterprise of first finding and then causing to be consummately captured” the twenty-plus subjects needed.  If Scribners “could get one really artistic and charming figure-piece for each book, I would resign myself,” James confessed; “but it’s not for me to say whom they can get it from — in any form above the mere usual magazine average, or even maximum: which wouldn’t be good enough.”  Considerably reanimated by his agent’s encouragement, however, James came to accept the challenge of securing appropriate frontispieces for the Edition.  In short order, he eagerly began collaborating with Coburn (serendipitously at hand), providing the photographer with detailed instructions for securing just the right images—in London, in Paris, in Rome, in Venice—to embellish his series of volumes.

For The Portrait of a Lady, James quickly sensed the rightness of “a good reproduceable, slightly nebulous view of the English country house (Hardwicke . . . on the Thames)” which he “had vaguely and approximately in mind, years ago, for the opening” of his novel.  Coburn went up river and shot just such an image, captioned as “The English Home” in the first volume.  Late in 1906, Coburn was dispatched to Italy, equipped by James with a meticulous itinerary for securing possible subjects.  One of these, “The Roman Bridge,” was chosen for the second volume of The Portrait of a Lady.

Volume I
The English Home

Volume II
The Roman Bridge