These little novellas, brought to us by Melville House, feel so nice in the hand, and it’s so fulfilling to read a good book in a sitting, that I’m hoping to keep expanding my collection and reviewing the classic and new works here. In their latest batch of classic novellas, Melville House offered a Henry James book I’d never heard of: The Coxon Fund. You may remember from my previous post on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw that I am not well versed in James, but I thought I’d heard of most of his work here or there. Turns out I’m not the only one to find The Coxon Funda new discovery; a few of my friends, who also thought they were moderately familiar with James’s work, looked at me quizzically when I showed them the book.

On a first read, I can understand why The Coxon Fund is not as famous as Daisy Miller, The Turn of the Screw, or The Aspern Papers. This story, still psychologically acute and full of beautiful sentences, lacks some of the drama found in the more famous works. At least, that’s true on the surface. While I was in law school, I always wanted to dig a bit deeper into the cases, particularly the areas of family, trusts, and estates. It’s amazing to see what money and inheritance can do to people, but we were often given only a dry version of the facts post-decline. I am always on the lookout for a book that explores this area better, and I never knew Henry James offered one. The Coxon Fund, as its title suggests, has at its center an endowment that will become the subject of a few disputes, wrecking the potentiality of one family while showing fault lines in others.

Here we have a nameless narrator who is only tangentially involved in any of the main events in the novella. However, he knows all of the primary actors, and his interactions reminded me somewhat of Nick Carraway’s. At the beginning of the story, he tells us he’s just left the Mulvilles. They have recently began boarding Mr. Saltram, a remarkably talented artist who nevertheless is broke and estranged from his wife, “a deeply wronged, justly resentful, quite irreproachable and insufferable person.” On the one hand, our narrator is awed by Mr. Saltram, amazed by his intelligence and articulate manner. But Mr. Saltram is not really sophisticated. He fails to show up to his scheduled lectures, or perhaps worse shows up to lecture drunk. Our narrator, while attracted to Saltram, is also aware that Saltram takes advantage: “remarkable men find remarkable conveniences.”

One of our narrator’s friends is Mr. Gravener. Gravener doesn’t accept Saltram — “there was no cad like your cultivated cad.” In fact, Gravener finds Saltram so unimportant that Gravener fails to understand the man’s pull on other people. One of the individuals is Miss Ruth Anvoy, an American who’s come to visit her aunt in Britain. We first meet Miss Anvoy when she attends one of Saltram’s lectures — one Saltram failed to attend. Our narrator tells her she must come again; Saltram is worth it. But our narrator also tells her that Saltram is far from perfect.

A few years pass, and Gravener and Miss Anvoy are engaged to be married. There are some deaths and failed aspirations. Through Gravener we become aware that Miss Anvoy’s aunt has a sum of money she wishes to put to good use:

“She wishes to endow — ?”

“Some earnest and ‘loyal’ seeker,” Gravener said. “It was a sketchy design of her late husband’s, and he handed it on to her; setting apart in his will a sum of money of which she was to enjoy the interest for life, but of which, should she eventually see her opportunity — the matter was left largely to her discretion — she would best honour his memory by determining the exemplary public use. This sum of money, no less than thirteen thousand pounds, was to be called the Coxon Fund; and poor Sir Gregory evidently proposed to himself that the Coxon Fund should cover his name with glory — be universally desired and admired. He left his wife a full declaration of his views, so far at least as that term may be applied to views vitiated by a vagueness really infantine. A little learning’s a dangerous thing, and a good citizen who happens to have been an ass is worse for a community than bad sewerage. He’s worst of all when he’s dead, because then he can’t be stopped. However, such as they were, the poor man’s aspirations are now in his wife’s bosom, or fermenting rather in her foolish brain: it lies to her to carry them out. But of course she must first catch her hare.”

Lady Coxon gives the money to Miss Anvoy to dispose of how she sees fit. Miss Anvoy feels the moral obligation to use the money to support someone who can help the world: “He was like a jelly minus its mould, he had to be embanked; and that was precisely the source of her interest in him and the ground of her project.” Not an idealist, Mr. Gravener disagrees.

Typical of Henry James, what I’ve told you above merely gives structure to a deeper inquiry into the human psyche. All of the characters are greatly realized and offer much to think about. I was only partially disappointed that James left so much for me to figure out on my own (just like those old legal decisions!). An interesting strain of inquiry — the one Melville House focuses on in its book blurb — is that of the artist’s role in the world. Can the artistic abilities of the crass Saltram really make things better? And what do the rest of us do to support such a person? There is plenty of food for thought. Though there were parts, even in this novella, where I became easily distracted by what was going on around me, in the end it had my complete attention — and I have continued thinking about it ever since.