A New England Winter

A New England Winter is a short story by Henry James, first published in the Century Magazine in August and September 1884 and collected in Tales of Three Cities the following year. It is one of his American stories from the period when he had been living in England for nearly a decade and was returning to American settings with the sharpened eye of an expatriate looking at familiar territory from a new distance.

The story is set in Boston during the winter months and follows Mrs Daintry, a widowed older woman whose son Florimond has been studying art in Paris for years and is about to return for a visit. Mrs Daintry has decided that her son needs to be guided into the kind of marriage that will save him from the artistic life she has come to fear is unsuitable. She has selected the young Pauline Mesh as the appropriate match and the story works through her elaborate manoeuvres to bring the two together during Florimond’s Boston visit.

What makes the story interesting is the slight comedy of Mrs Daintry’s certainty about what is best for everyone involved. She is not a villain. She is a well meaning intelligent woman who has never once questioned her own judgement about social arrangements. James lets the reader see what she does not see, including the actual character of Florimond, the actual interests of Pauline, and the various ways in which the scheme will probably not produce what she intends. The Boston setting is observed with the affectionate sharpness that James reserved for his American material when he was at his best.

The story runs about a hundred pages and is one of the more substantial pieces from this period of his short fiction. It pairs naturally with the other Tales of Three Cities pieces.