on 17 February 1894, the 50-year-old Henry James attended a function at 65 Rutland Gate, Knightsbridge, less than a mile away from his flat at 34 De Vere Gardens in Kensington. This London dinner, which took place in what James later described as an ‘immaculate & lovable house’, was held by the literary hostess Blanche Alethea Crackanthorpe (1846–1928) and her husband, the barrister Montague Hughes Crackanthorpe (1832–1913). At some point during the evening, James encountered Stopford Brooke (1832–1916), the Irish-born man of letters and former cleric. The novelist mentioned their conversation in his notebook: ‘[l]ast night, at Mrs. Crackanthorpe’s, Stopford Brooke suggested to me 2 little ideas.’ The first of these ideas – that of a man ‘who has become afraid of himself when alone’ – never came to anything, though James reverted to it in his notebook on 16 May 1899 and 11 September 1900. The second idea, however, prompted immediate elaboration:

This is the first glimpse of a novel which, for one contemporary reviewer, was ‘wellnigh unbelievable in its irrelevance’ and, for another, ‘an example of hypochondriachal subtlety run mad’ – a novel which, for a subsequent generation of critics, became an instance of ‘unassailable mastery’ and even ‘the first authentic masterpiece of the “modern movement”’.