A Literary Mystery: Solved

A local journalist has proposed a solution to a century-old mystery central to one of Henry James’s novels. And the answer’s roots lie in Cambridge.

Since “The Ambassadors” debuted in 1903, literary critics from E. M. Forster to David Lodge have debated how the Newsome family makes its money—a driving element in the novel’s plot, which follows Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe as he searches for the Newsome family’s long-lost son.

What is the “little nameless object” that the Newsome family manufactures in the fictional town of Woollett, Mass.? Joshua L. Glenn, who writes for The Boston Globe, says the answer is toothpicks.

The first manufacturer of ready-made wooden toothpicks, James Forster, set up shop in Cambridge—where James briefly, but unsuccessfully, studied at Harvard Law School, and where his parents owned a home.

In “The Ambassadors,” James never reveals what exactly the Newsome family’s business makes. But he leaves a few hints.

Strether, the protagonist, says the product is “vulgar” and has become the subject of much controversy in the late 19th century.

It is, he says, “a small, trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest domestic use, it’s just wanting in—what shall I say? Well, dignity, or the least approach to distinction.”

Glenn, reviewing a new book for the Globe on the history of toothpicks, discovered that in 1860s New England “polite society regarded public tooth-picking as vulgar.”

Though James’ book makes no direct reference to toothpicks, Glenn has located instances in at least three references in James’ other writings that cast toothpicks in a negative light.

Strether also notes that the Newsome’s business “may well be on the way to become a monopoly”—just as Forster’s toothpick factory did.

“The question has been in the back of my mind for years,” Glenn said in an interview today, noting that scholars’ speculations have ranged from chamber pots to safety matches. Glenn published his findings in Slate late last month, under the headline, “Is it a Chamber Pot? Nope! A Century-Old Literary Mystery, Solved.”

Glenn’s solution has strong empirical support, but some literary critics may not accept a definitive answer.

“It seems like an ingenious solution,” English professor Louis Menand wrote in an e-mail today. Menand has authored a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on late 19th-century American intellectuals. “But I think we’re meant [by James] to project our own idea onto that deliberate opacity.”