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Describing, in a letter to his brother William (Nov. 1880), "the young man [Morris Townsend] in Washington Square" as "sketched from the outside merely and not fouillé" (not delved into), Henry James confessed his disappointment with a character that, at the germinal stage of the story, had appeared to provide him with promising narrative material (CL 105). This, at least, is the impression one receives upon reading the well-known extract from James's notebooks (dated 21 Feb. 1879) containing the source of the novel (CN 11–12). As James recorded in that entry, the actress Fanny Kemble had told him the story of how her exceptionally handsome but penniless brother had courted and subsequently jilted a plain heiress. In James's synopsis the handsome fortune hunter was every bit the protagonist of the drama as the unhappy heiress, if not more so. Undoubtedly, he was a more powerful presence than the other male "actor," the young woman's father who had strenuously opposed the match, suspecting (with reason) that the young man was only interested in his daughter's money. Even allowing for the fact that the teller of the tale, Fanny Kemble, was the young man's own sister, and as such particularly well acquainted—and concerned—with his role in the affair, James had seemed genuinely intrigued by the figure of the handsome jilter. Indeed, to borrow an expression from Washington Square, James appeared to have found in the young man "an object on which . . . [his] imagination could exercise itself indefinitely" (NO 25–26).
As if taking their lead from James's assessment in his letter to his brother, critical readings of Washington Square for a long time tended to downplay the significance of Morris Townsend's portrayal and his role in the story. However, in William Kenney's 1970 essay "Doctor Sloper's Double in Washington Square" Morris finally gained center stage. By delineating the parallels and interdependence between the novel's two principal male characters and antagonists, Kenney made explicit (in his title) what earlier critics had only hinted at and in so doing set the tone for much subsequent analysis of Washington Square. Examining the interaction between Morris and Dr. Sloper, John Lucas notes how well the two characters read each other and understand...