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>> Home / Tutorials / James - Tales / My Friend Bingham

My Friend Bingham

August 5, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

My Friend Bingham first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly magazine for March 1867. Its initial appearance in book form was as part of the collection Eight Uncollected Tales of Henry James published by Rutgers University Press in 1950.

My Friend Bingham

Summer at Newport


My Friend Bingham – critical commentary

It is difficult to know what to make of this very early story except as a very oblique take on the theme of ‘fear of heterosexual intimacy’ – a theme which certainly sits comfortably alongside many of James’s other tales. Bingham has returned from the grand European tour with the resolution that he will not get married. However, he is accidentally brought into contact with Lucy. Quite apart from her intelligence and integrity (which are told about, but not shown) she is a widow.

One cannot escape the ‘shotgun’ connection between this meeting and marrying her. He even provides the gun himself. In other words, he feels obliged to compensate for the accidental shooting of her son by making her an offer of marriage. But following the marriage she never has any other children – so he escapes the fear of procreation after all.


My Friend Bingham – study resources

My Friend Bingham The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

My Friend Bingham The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

My Friend Bingham Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

My Friend Bingham Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

My Friend Bingham


My Friend Bingham – plot summary

Charles the narrator and his close friend George Bingham decide to spend a summer holiday together by the sea. Bingham, after travelling in Europe, has decided not to get married. Whilst they are on the beach hunting duck Bingham accidentally shoots a young boy who is playing with his mother.

Charles visits Lucy the grieving mother and offers to help. She is very forgiving and understanding about the accident. The two men attand the boy’s funeral, after which Charles returns to New York.

Ten days later Bingham visits Charles to say how impressed he is with Lucy, then goes off to see her again. He reports back to say that he is even more impressed with her, and finally admits to Charles that he has fallen in love with her.

However, on his next visit he reports that Lucy has been expelled from her holiday cottage by the landlady Miss Horner, who disapproves of the liaison, and so Bingham has brought Lucy back to New York. Charles goes to visit Lucy, and he too is very impressed by her intelligence and integrity.

When he nexts goes to visit her, Bingham is there, and announces that he has asked her to be his wife. She accepts him; they are happily married; but she never has any other children.


My Friend Bingham – principal characters
Charles the first person narrator, 28
George Bingham his rich and good-looking close friend, 30
Mrs Lucy Hicks a poor widow
Miss Margaret Horner her landlady, a relative

Further reading

Biographical

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.


Other works by Henry James

Henry James Washington SquareWashington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US


Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

© Roy Johnson 2013


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Filed Under: James - Tales Tagged With: English literature, Henry James, Literary studies, The Short Story

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