Abstract
World War I threatened to destroy the rich transnational culture the Boston Cosmopolitans had lived in and cultivated for fifty years. On July 10, 1916, Henry Adams wrote to his dear English friend Charles Milnes Gaskell: “It is a great paralysis.… Our old world is dead.”1 However, the war ultimately failed to paralyze many of the Boston Cosmopolitans who managed to live through part or all of "The Great War.” To be sure, witnessing the young men of Europe’s diverse cultures kill each other at a rate that sometimes reached thousands per day was nothing short of horrifying; the scarring trenches in France’s eastern fields would permanently alter world history in frightening ways that would be difficult to predict.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Henry Adams to Charles Milnes Gaskell, July 10, 1916, in Henry Adams, The Letters of Henry Adams, 6 vols., ed. J. C. Levinson et al. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1988), 6: 734.
Henry Adams, The Letters of Henry Adams, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1982–1988), 6: 626 and Edward Chalfant, Improvement of the World: A Biography of Henry Adams—His Last Life, 1891–1918 (North Haven, CT: Archon, 2001), 422. The location is correct.
This was reported by Howell’s daughter Mildred in William Dean Howells, Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, 2 vols., ed. Mildred Howells (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968), 2: 394.
Henry Adams to Elizabeth Cameron, February 6, 1916, in Letters of Henry Adams, 6: 721.
Henry James to Alfred Sutro, August 8, 1914, in Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 2: 388.
Henry James to Rhoda Broughton, August 10, 1914, in Letters of Henry James, 2: 389.
Henry James to Howard Sturgis, August 4, 1914, in Letters of Henry James, 2: 384.
William Dean Howells, “War Stops Literature,’ Says W. D. Howells,” New York Times, November 29, 1914; reprinted in William Dean Howells, “Interviews with William Dean Howells,” American Literary Realism 6 (Fall 1973): 392–96.
Henry James to Mrs. Alfred Sutro, August 8, 1914, in Letters of Henry James, 2: 388.
See Philip Home, ed., Henry James: A Life in Letters, (New York: Penguin Press, 1999), 546.
Adeline Tintner, The Twentieth-Century World of Henry James: Changes in His Work after 1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 229.
Henry James, Within The Rim, and Other Essays (London: W. Collins and Sons, 1917).
Wharton collected essays, poems, illustrations, letters, musical scores, and stories in support of her cause. In the first pages of the book, former president Theodore Roosevelt challenges Americans to attempt to put themselves in other people’s shoes, much as the Boston Cosmopolitans had often strived to do. See Edith Wharton, ed., The Book of the Homeless (Le Livre des Sans-Foyer) (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1916), ix-x.
Rupert Brooke, Letters to America. With a Preface by Henry James (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1916).
Henry James to Charles Milnes Gaskell, July 10, 1916, in Letters of Henry Adams, 6: 734.
Ernest Samuels, Henry Adams (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1989), 446–57.
Ernest Samuels, Henry Adams: The Major Phase ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 580–81.
Howells to Signor Cortesi, May 1, 1918, in William Dean Howells, Life in Letters, 2: 380.
Mildred Howell, editorial comment, in William Dean Howells, Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, ed. Mildred Howells, 2: 394.
William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” in Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, 2 vols., ed. Mildred Howells (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968), 2: 395.
William Dean Howells to Brander Matthews, August 7, 1915, in William Dean Howells, Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, 2: 352.
Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance: An Autobiography (New York: Scribner, 1998).
Richard H. Brodhead, “Strangers on a Train: The Double Dream of Italy in the American Gilded Age,” Modernism/Modernity 1 (1994): 1–19.
Copyright information
© 2008 Mark Rennella
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rennella, M. (2008). World War I and the Demise of the Boston Cosmopolitans. In: The Boston Cosmopolitans. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611214_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230611214_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37186-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-61121-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)