The Sacred Fount

Not even a single piece of work created by Henry James is more remarkably exploratory than The Sacred Fount. As the book was written, at the pinnacle of James' artistic prowess, shortly after two major successes and not long before The Ambassadors, it did not have any problem catching the audience's attention. The Sacred Fount (1901) opens with a scene of a weekend party at the Newmarch, the incomparable English country house. Here James guides the reader down a peculiar garden path. The Sacred Fount -- the only work of writing by James which utilizes a first person narrator -- leaves us in the grasp of a compulsive novelist, who identifies disturbing changes in his colleagues. A lady known for her grace has lost her poise, a dull man turns appealing; a friend is unexpectedly aged, a plain lady shines brightly. Whenever one improves, another is seen to be suffering. With "plunges of insight," the storyteller follows his kindred visitors as the weekend progresses, eagerly attempting to figure out what he comes to accept are actual exchanges of the force of life.