I read a book by Mark Seinfelt once entitled “Final Drafts” (Prometheus Books, 1999). It delves into 25 literary suicides between 1894 and 1991. The first chapter was about a popular but forgotten novelist and horst story writer named Constance Woolson. She was the grand-niece of James Fennimore Cooper. Her father, a prosperous retailer, used to take her with him when he traveled, and she developed a keen eye for detail – her greatest strength as a writer. Her great literary passion was for the work of Henry James. She fell in love with him through his writing long before she met him. She finally did meet him in Florence, Italy, April 1880. They quickly became friends, and James, although three years her junior, became her literary mentor.
He appreciated her wit, her ability, her wisdom, her adoration of him (no doubt), but he did not return her affection. He did accept it though, and for 14 years they were often together in England and on the continent – even sharing a house together for several months in Florence. While they were sharing this house James wrote his famous novel “The Aspern Papers” about a man who comes to realize he has “unwittingly but none the less deplorably “trifled” with the affections of a young woman. James realized he had done the same and so he cooled their relationship. Succumbing to depression, during a bout of influenza, Constance Woolson threw herself out a second story window and died. Henry James came to her house in Venice to help Constance’s sister sort through her many possessions. It seems she was a shopper on par with Imelda Marcos. James most wanted to find and destroy any of his letters she had kept, which he did-none are extant. 
It was also is job to dispose of the scores of black silk and black taffeta gowns she had bought. He hired a gondola and piled them in. Sitting beside the pile he had the gondolier row out to the middle of the lagoon, where, one by one, he cast them into the water. They wouldn’t sink. He used the gondolier’s pole to beat them down into the water, but they kept rising to the surface.
It was also is job to dispose of the scores of black silk and black taffeta gowns she had bought. He hired a gondola and piled them in. Sitting beside the pile he had the gondolier row out to the middle of the lagoon, where, one by one, he cast them into the water. They wouldn’t sink. He used the gondolier’s pole to beat them down into the water, but they kept rising to the surface. I’m not fond of Henry James as a writer, and even less fond of him as a person. One only need read a few of his “elegant” paragraphs (That is the word critics use; I prefer “aloof”, “pompous”, or self-important.” “Boring” comes to mind as well.) to know that he would not be able to identify a simple, declarative sentence if it bit him on his third chin. And so, when I read about this dark bizarre episode of his life it presented a powerful image of sin that would not go away. It was more powerful than Lady Macbeth trying to wring the blood-stain from her hands, because this actually happened. This image of his sweaty pate, his flailing arms slashing at the brackish water and black taffeta dresses is haunting.
It is haunting because sin is that way. It comes back. It won’t go away. It finds us out (Numbers 30.23). It will not be swept under a rug, hidden in the closet, shoved between mattresses, or buried in the back yard. The great thing about all those popular forensic shows is that they remind us that every crime leaves a trace. Even if we are able to destroy all the evidence, the way Henry James did, we still know what we did, and so does God. We know this and we have experienced it. We can remember right now things we wish undone – things that shame us before others, ourselves, God. After a long, hard career of service even the apostle Paul hadn’t forgotten: “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man of violence..” he says, “…the Lord come into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst.” (I Timothy 1.13,15). And yet he knew he had received mercy (1.16), and he knew he was saved (II Timothy 4.6-8).
He knew this because he had repented and been baptized. This is what remits sins (Acts 2.38). repentance, he says, overcomes regret and produced eagerness, guiltlessness, and zeal (II Corinthians 7.8-11). Baptism gives us “newness of life” (Romans 6.3-4).
Henry James didn’t need to beat the waters of Venice with a stick to be feed from those floating black gowns. He did need water, though – and preceding repentance. He needed what these two give – newness, life, grace.
