The Novels of 
 
 Henry James 
 
 A Study 
 
 By 
 
 Elisabeth Luther Gary 
 
 With a Bibliography by 
 Frederick A. King 
 
 G, P. Putnam s Sons 
 
 New York and London 
 
 Gbe "Knickerbocker jprees 
 
 1905 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1905 
 
 BY 
 ELISABETH LUTHER GARY 
 
 Ubc TRnicfcerbocfeer ffre0s, 1Rew l^orfe 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ... i 
 I. AMERICAN CHARACTER .... 20 
 II. THE GENIUS OF PLACE . ... 95 
 III. THE QUESTION OF WEALTH . . 119 - 
 IV. IMAGINATION . -"-. ..... 144 
 
 V. PHILOSOPHY 169 * 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY . . ... .... . 189 
 

The Novels of Henry James 
 
 Introductory Chapter 
 
 AFTER the work of an important 
 writer has extended over more than a 
 quarter of a century, he becomes, prop 
 erly enough, a subject, if not for final 
 critical judgment, at least for some 
 thing more than cursory consideration. 
 It is time to think of him not as the 
 author of independent works, each 
 pleasing or displeasing to a sufficiently 
 various public, but as the creator 
 through his accumulated accomplish 
 ment of an impression both definite 
 
James 
 
 and general . x It is inconceivable that 
 the little world of readers and thinkers 
 to which he addresses himself is in pre 
 cisely the same temper of mind as if 
 he had not lived and written. He has 
 either enriched or impoverished it. He 
 has either raised or lowered its opinion 
 of the human nature so long discussed 
 by him. He has either quickened or 
 dulled its vision for beauty in character, 
 art, and the external world. Above all, 
 he has inevitably made more clear the 
 elusive boundaries of what is worth 
 while in a life of multitudinous choice. 
 He has emphasised by a thousand 
 minute accents, if not by obvious 
 broad strokes, his preoccupations in 
 the domain of morals. In a word, he 
 has become an influence to be prized 
 or to be deprecated, he has become a 
 part of the mental climate to which we 
 
Untrofcuctors 
 
 owe so many of our joys and afflictions. 
 He belongs indefeasably to our con 
 sciousness and can never be separated 
 from our memories. In the case of a 
 living writer we frequently ignore this 
 intimate relation with the public. It 
 is natural to take it for granted, much 
 as we take for granted the bonds of 
 family, so difficult is it to estimate at 
 its true value to us the note of a 
 voice still speaking for our warning, 
 our instruction, our amusement, or our 
 comfort. 
 
 The voice of Mr. Henry James is one 
 to which we have long been accus 
 tomed. For something more than 
 thirty years it has sounded in harmony 
 with our finer aesthetic predilections.: 
 None who heard it in the early time, 
 when the trip to Europe was not yet a 
 common yearly satisfaction for even 
 
tbenrg 5ames 
 
 the "cultivated minority," when the 
 foreign galleries were not yet filled 
 with American tourists, can forget its 
 irresistible note of youthful receptivity, 
 of eloquent rejoicing in "the beautiful 
 scenic properties of English life," of 
 bright suggestion that only a "poor 
 disinherited Yankee" could properly 
 appreciate the "points" of admirable 
 England. As it grew more and more 
 apparent that this England was to re 
 tain its fascination in the eyes of the 
 itinerant critic, and that his interest in 
 the enchanting English landscape was 
 to wrap itself closely about the figures 
 with which, he early noted, an English 
 landscape is always amply relieved, it 
 became a matter almost of anxiety to 
 discover in what frame of mind he was 
 to interrogate the much entangled hu 
 man scene on which his eyes were so 
 
flntrofcuctorg 
 
 intelligently bent. Already seen to be 
 gifted with an extraordinary capacity 
 for self-expression, and amazingly 
 perceptive, responsive, accurate, and 
 imaginative, he set us at liberty to 
 indulge in brilliant expectations. His 
 ^rly novels seemed the vanguard of a 
 ifody of literature that should win an 
 easy triumph over the commonplace. 
 Some of us shook our heads, to be 
 sure, over what we vaguely suspected 
 to be their "foreign flavour," their ap 
 parent derivation from sources with 
 which we were not ourselves intimately 
 acquainted; but there was compensa 
 tion in having the pleasure of such 
 an undeniably rare quality, and fur 
 nished for us by one of our own race, 
 of our national family. He has told 
 us that to be at once fresh and ripe of 
 mind was what Lowell predominantly 
 
Dents James 
 
 understood by being a good American, 
 and on his own part he has never 
 ceased to be one in that particular 
 sense. 
 
 But if it is true that "America is 
 Opportunity," it was logical enough 
 to feel, as many early readers of 
 James vociferously did feel, that 
 species of practical joke was cruelly 
 played upon that innocent country 
 when its most promising and com- 
 v petent novelist made prompt use of 
 ^the opportunity to leave it. It was at 
 least, perhaps, a measure of the Amer 
 ican desire to possess him that his 
 flitting was so openly resented. Such 
 naive resentments have slipped, how 
 ever, into the background of the na 
 tional consciousness. Concern for the 
 dignity of the country has come with 
 time to mean in serious minds some- 
 
fntrofcuctors 
 
 thing very different from this imma 
 ture sentiment of provincial pride. 
 What the * good American now thinks 
 about with perhaps less optimism than 
 formerly, but surely with a finer ar 
 dour, is how his country may avoid the 
 Qhoice commemorated in Emerson s sig 
 nificant poem, how it may learn clearly 
 to distinguish diadems from fagots 
 and firmly to grasp the better gifts 
 of the hypocritic days in manners, 
 in morals, and in learning, as well as 
 in commerce and mechanical science. 
 He finds it not merely agreeable but 
 quite essential to his peace of mind to 
 enlarge so far as he can his horizon, to 
 listen to cosmopolitan voices from the 
 more ancient civilised centres of the 
 world. He finds it good not only to 
 
 hear the deeds of kings, 
 
 Which were fools and which were wise. 
 
James 
 
 but to hear also of societies older than 
 our own with their fixed and mellowed 
 forms, to reflect upon the types pro 
 duced by them, and the types impos 
 sible for them to produce. 
 
 From this point of view the patriot 
 must inevitably welcome, almost with 
 a sense of pious gratitude, a long series 
 ( of impressions made upon a mind 
 1 prepared to receive the fine, elusive, im- 
 \ perceptible seed of English and Euro- 
 \ pean influences, to nourish it with the 
 I substance of a rich intelligence, and 
 \ bring it to a luxuriant fruitage of ripe 
 reflection. Perhaps it is indeed neces 
 sary to belong to the disinherited in 
 order to look on at the overwhelming 
 complicated social spectacle of London 
 with a gaze at once interested and de 
 tached, to separate from its brilliant 
 confusion the elements of similarity 
 
fntrotwctor 
 
 and contrast so indispensable to the 
 student of comparative sociology in 
 the untechnical and practically un 
 limited sense of a phrase curiously re 
 stricted and perverted in the modern 
 vocabulary. The novelist of manners, 
 to use again a phrase commonly lim 
 ited to only half its meaning, is of 
 necessity a person dedicated to his 
 occupation. If the wisdom of a 
 learned man cometh by opportunity of 
 leisure, the wise records of a leisure 
 class require nevertheless an immense 
 amount of labour. It is, perhaps, as 
 the diligent recorder of a leisure class, * 
 with its intricately combined and dif 
 ferentiated characteristics, that Mr. 
 James most appeals to readers eageri 
 for the fullest possible data of human\ 
 society. Along this line he has la 
 boured for us of the present generation 
 
io Dents 3ames 
 
 as no one else has laboured, and has 
 fixed with exquisite analysis types and 
 conditions that are already ceasing to 
 exist in life and are nowhere else than 
 in his novels adequately commemor 
 ated. Even when we find ourselves in 
 special instances critical of his choice 
 and in doubt concerning its sustained 
 significance, we are obliged to admit 
 that he alone of the present time has 
 undertaken to produce for us a picture 
 of international social relations, drawn 
 in the presence of the model, and with 
 a patience and authority inspired by 
 an infinitely serious purpose. His 
 cumulative statement of his impres 
 sions has the dignity of mature, con 
 sidered, highly developed art. It isi 
 the synthesis of deliberately acquired \ 
 knowledge, and bears none of the 
 marks of hasty seeing or superficial 
 
fntrofcuctorg 
 
 learning. In using the simile of the 
 painter s art to express his perform 
 ance, we are more than usually justi 
 fied, for his method is closely akin to 
 that of the painter if we make due 
 allowance for the greater flexibility of 
 his medium. He reproduces appear-T* 
 ances with sufficient regard to selec- 
 tion, representing in his work the seen 
 and recording the fact that certain 
 things are unseen. From these ap 
 pearances we may judge what the 
 reality is; from these beautifully ren 
 dered effects we may infer causes ; but 
 what is not left for inference, what is 
 impressed upon us so forcibly as to 
 admit of no contradiction, is the sin- 
 I cerity of the artist and the consequent 
 importance as matter for consideration , 
 of his art. He has many times been 
 said to resemble the French in his 
 
12 
 
 methods, and he himself has acknow 
 ledged a special allegiance to the es 
 sentially Gallic spirit of Balzac. But 
 the quality in which we can see most 
 clearly such a resemblance, the quality 
 conscientiousness, is stronger with 
 him and deeper than with any French 
 man known to modern letters. So far 
 as he displays that admirable virtue in 
 the matter the mere matter, it is 
 tempting for an English writer to say, 
 of his technique he is certainly 
 closely allied to the French mind 
 which works toward "style" with an 
 indifference to the labour involved, a 
 love not merely of the end but of the 
 means to such an end, unknown to any 
 other race. But conscientiousness in| 
 its deeper and subtler sense, the French, 
 it has been noted by a critic himself at 
 once deep and subtle, conspicuously 
 
fntrofcuctors 13 
 
 lack. Mr. James, on the other hand, 
 has carried it into regions which it 
 illumines with an extraordinary light.! 
 ?It has become increasingly true of 
 him that he reaches depths and cran4 A 
 nies of character and temperament to] . 
 ^which none of his predecessors could 
 have penetrated, making his way 
 through the baffling layers of cant and 
 custom and back of the sturdy file of 
 obvious motives guarding the secrets* 
 of our innermost being, by means of a 
 passion for truth too intense and mov 
 ing to be classified as philosophy. It 
 has been said indeed that Mr. James 
 has no philosophy, but it cannot be 
 denied that he has a religion in the \ 
 general and large meaning of the word. 
 In the domain of his art it is his religion 
 to reveal not perhaps so much as may 
 be possible of life, but life as close as 
 
14 Denr$ James 
 
 ^possible to its source, life as little as 
 /possible concealed by its mask or ob- 
 f served at second hand. Reviewing 
 1 his work from the tentative charming 
 experiments, confessions, and blithe 
 confidences of his wandering years to 
 The Golden Bowl, with its close texture 
 like old rich hand-woven tapestry, the 
 tendency of his effort, preconceived, we 
 may imagine, and consistently held, is 
 sufficiently apparent. It is nothing 
 surely, but this, or at all events no-i 
 thing less than this: to come by in-j 
 corrigible patience and unwearying 
 perception at the life of the soul, and 
 to render this with an art worthy of 
 the difficult, the well-nigh impossible 
 subject. Something of the sort he has, 
 indeed, said, impersonally, in his essay 
 on Pierre Loti, which, like all his essays, 
 contains wide suggestion for the fas- 
 
 
flntrofcuctors 15 
 
 cinated student of his point of view. 
 The soul, he suggests, may appear to 
 the moralising observer "a romantic, 
 moonlighted landscape, with woods 
 and mountains and dim distances, 
 visited by strange winds and mur 
 murs." It is thus, certainly, that it 
 appears to him, and if in his thickly 
 peopled life he has lacked, and in his 
 writings has somewhat shown the lack, 
 of frequent communion with the good 
 brown earth in places not yet human 
 ised by the presence of man, he has 
 made of the dim underworld in which 
 ideas and emotions are born a place of 
 infinite loneliness and romance. These 
 inner scenes upon which he looks are 
 as filled with the unfamiliar and the 
 inaccessible as the island of Cru 
 soe s fame or the New World appear 
 ing to the first explorer of the Western 
 
16 DenrE 5ame0 
 
 hemisphere. This interrogation of the 
 invisible united to an unremitting effort 
 I toward completeness of evocation con 
 stitutes his extraordinary distinction. 
 It places him as he appears in his 
 later novels, quite apart not only in 
 accomplishment, but, one might posi 
 tively say, in aim from all other 
 novelists living or dead. Great as 
 Thackeray was, greater in a certain 
 clear control over his material than any 
 one of his century, he nevertheless was 
 contented with the obvious, and in this 
 contentment unquestionably lies much 
 of the secret not of his genius, but of 
 his popularity. George Meredith, to 
 whom the human spirit, and even more 
 particularly the human mind, is the 
 most interesting subject in the world, 
 declines to provide for it a credible 
 social environment. Against a group 
 
flntrotmctors 17 
 
 of modern French novelists Mr. James 
 himself brings the charge of neglect for 
 "the multitudinous, adventurous ex 
 perience of the senses," of "the deeper, 
 stranger, subtler inward life, the won 
 derful adventures of the soul," and 
 notes the apparent inability of the 
 French imagination when it does take 
 account of ideas and moral states, to 
 use the same skill that is so much at its 
 service in expressing the visible. Of 
 Flaubert he says : * He should at least 
 have listened at the chamber of the 
 soul. This would have floated him on 
 a deeper tide; above all, it would have 
 calmed his nerves." Such expressions 
 are of the greatest value to the critic 
 or commentator attempting to find 
 precisely the generalisation that will re 
 present to the general but ungeneral- 
 ising public the special combination of 
 
r 
 
 18 tjenq? James 
 
 qualities in which abides the pre-emi 
 nence of Mr. James as a writer of fiction. 
 If there is no egoistic satisfaction to be 
 had from a clue so unmistakable, there 
 is the equal, if not superior, satisfaction 
 of having one s analysis so clearly and 
 simply done for one. The pure consis 
 tency of his attitude is what makes Mr. 
 James for any critic the most certain of 
 quantities, the least really bewildering, 
 though far from the least intricate, of 
 problems so far as the larger aspiration 
 and the visible goal of his labour are 
 concerned. What he personally stands 
 for in his criticisms, and what he in- 
 defatigably acts upon in his novels and 
 stories, most of all in his shorter 
 stories, is this simple and supreme idea 
 of combining what a critic of painting 
 would call tactile values with the 
 greatest possible amount of spiritual 
 
fntrotmctors 19 
 
 truth. In other words, his technical 
 curiosity, his ability to represent life 
 pictorially by a multiplicity of fine ob 
 servations, runs hand in hand with a 
 curiosity far more unusual and far 
 more difficult to satisfy, a curiosity as 
 to moral states and responsible affec 
 tions. To say this is only to say what 
 is obvious to every interested reader 
 of his work, but it is the natural point 
 to start from in any co-ordinated 
 comment on his various achievement. 
 
I 
 
 IF we discover in work of ripe years 
 a conspicuous value, we instinctively 
 ask under what conditions the stream 
 of artistic energy began to flow, where 
 it took its rise, through what land 
 scape, bleak or smiling, it made its 
 way, how promptly or gradually it en 
 larged its borders and extended its 
 sweep, if it were clear at its source or 
 turbid, slow or impetuous in its move 
 ment. In many cases the thoughts 
 of youth are far from long thoughts;) 
 what seems profoundly important to 
 the pride and passion of young minds 
 becomes definitely unimportant to the 
 calmer mood * of middle age. Espe- 
 
 20 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 21 
 
 cially the impulse toward intellectual 
 labour is curiously apt to wane. The 
 idleness of the young is negligible com 
 pared to the idleness of the middle 
 years, the deadly peace that follows a 
 certain amount of successful striving 
 and that marks the end of true accom 
 plishment. When, then, we are re 
 joiced by the vision of a noble fruitful 
 activity, which after nearly forty years 
 of work in the most exacting and ex 
 hausting field of literature permits 
 no perfunctoriness, no superficiality or 
 indifference, we are keen to trace the 
 inspiration to its beginnings and search 
 where it is least tortuous, least com 
 plicated by the contributory streams 
 of experience, for its original quality. 
 The early works of a writer who has 
 
 prmzon "himru4JL of l^st.infy^ fibre, are 
 
 more than merely the charming and 
 
22 Ibenrs James 
 
 touching efforts of fragile immaturity 
 to meet the great mocking initiated 
 world on equal terms: they are fre 
 quently the key to his larger intention ; 
 they show with what his mind has 
 been primarily occupied, before the 
 many-coloured complexities of his jour 
 ney through life have come into ques 
 tion. If he has finally achieved the 
 effect of unity in his later work, com 
 pounded of ten thousand observations 
 and reflections on the human scene, it 
 is curiously interesting to see the 
 earlier unity formed with only a few 
 predilections and a handful of data. 
 
 If, especially, a writer has made 
 himself a recorder and interpreter of 
 society on any extended scale, if he 
 has depicted the life of gregarious 
 people, and has reproduced in multi 
 tudinous figures the manners, opinions, 
 
Bmerican Cbaracter 23 
 
 ideas, and temper of the social world 
 of his prolonged study, it is rewarding 
 to look back to his attitude toward 
 the narrower social world of his early 
 experience, to observe how he laid 
 the foundations of intimate knowledge 
 necessary to his purpose, and whether 
 his interest in civilisation struck at 
 first the provincial local note or be 
 trayed an appreciation of wide hori 
 zons. As Mr. James is an American 
 and has chosen for his most frequently 
 recurring theme the attitude in whichV 
 America and England stand toward* 
 each other on the social field, every 
 shade of expression noted by him in 
 the two fair faces thus confronting one 
 another with mingled bewilderment, 
 friendliness, and antagonism, has its 
 special value. If thirty years ago 
 his observation was less practised and 
 
24 fbenrp James 
 
 instructed than now, it was not less 
 refined and thorough. And certainly 
 we cannot fully enjoy the splendid 
 various subjects of his art as his 
 steady hand guides and governs it 
 without spending a little time with it 
 as an integral performance, an organic 
 whole developed as is the way of life 
 from simplicity toward complexity, 
 from the homogeneous toward the 
 heterogeneous, not losing the vital es 
 sence by which alone it is interesting 
 and human. Any notice, then, of the 
 novels of Mr. James that fails to take 
 account of the very earliest, of Watch 
 and Ward and Roderick Hudson and 
 The Europeans, as a part of the pattern 
 in the dense rich web to which be 
 long The Ambassadors and The Golden 
 Bowl, misses, one might say, the fun* 
 of criticism; misses at all events the 
 
Hmerican Gbaracter 25 
 
 merry game of finding in the earlier* 
 work the cross references and comple- J 
 tions and extensions of the later, of 
 finding in the later the suggestions 
 and sympathies and explanations of I 
 the earlier, of bringing them all to 
 gether in the mind to form a broad 
 and definite impression more satisfy 
 ing, we are free to hope, than a frag 
 mentary and desultory discussion of 
 even the most important parts could 
 yield. 
 
 Mr. James almost may be said to 
 have begun work before the end of his 
 first decade. At all events, he has 
 given us a charming and revealing 
 picture of an early childhood largely 
 spent in poring over the numbers of 
 Punch, through the illustrations of 
 which he became familiar with the 
 units of the vast London throng, with 
 
26 Ibenrg James 
 
 the cabmen and costermongers, the 
 little pages in buttons, the gentlemen 
 of the hunt and the Row, the small 
 boys in tall hats and Eton jackets, 
 the pretty girls in striped petticoats 
 and mushroom-shaped coiffures. He 
 was already consciously engaging in 
 that preparation for the trans-Atlantic 
 adventure which has formed the text 
 of so many of his later stories. He 
 knew the names of the London streets, 
 he tells us, of the theatres, and of many 
 of the shops; he knew what to expect 
 from Kensington Gardens and Picca 
 dilly, he knew the very aspect of a 
 Westminster slum. He was collecting 
 his baggage betimes, arranging it in 
 portable form, and with such com 
 petence that, when at the age of twelve ]/ 
 he finally set forth upon the travels 
 that even then seemed to him to have 
 
Hmerican Character 27 
 
 been perpetually postponed, he was 
 ready to take his place at once on 
 deck, scanning the new horizon with 
 a gaze no less youthfully eager for its 
 precocious initiation. We may very 
 well imagine that to the eyes of the 
 child it was a natural substitution of 
 the great pictorial world for the limited 
 but largely suggesting picture - book. 
 And the lovers of picture-books and of 
 an art of illustration that has fallen 
 into a trance of the most alarming 
 character, if it be not actually dead, 
 may delight to fall upon the descrip 
 tion it occurs in an essay on George 
 Du Maurier of the effect upon a 
 susceptible adolescent mind of the 
 rich and life - communicating line of 
 John Leech. That the famous illus 
 trator assisted in the forming of this 
 childish vision of an elaborate civilisa- 
 
28 
 
 tion is an agreeable fragment of in 
 formation for us, hinting how great 
 talents have always served each other, 
 how masters in one art and another 
 have played into each other s hands, 
 how many hundreds of such influences 
 have been assimilated in the making 
 of a masterpiece. 
 
 It was in 1855 that the young 
 traveller was given his opportunity to 
 register the London of Punch with the 
 immense real town. He found to his 
 /abundant joy that the impression and 
 ^the reality coincided with precision, 
 that the deep, brilliant colours of the 
 actual scene filled the prefigured out 
 line as though placed by the accurate 
 hand of some old Japanese print- 
 maker of superior skill, and thus the 
 first note was struck for him of the 
 gratitude which he has always so 
 
Hmertcan Cbaracter 29 
 
 freely expressed toward those who 
 have felt, have analysed and repre 
 sented life. The London passion sur- 
 vived with him, renewed itself in later 
 years, and flowered richly in his work. 
 It was a full generation after the first 
 visit that he paid his special tribute 
 to the British capital as the particular 
 spot in the world which communicates 
 the greatest sense of life," and it is not 
 unimportant that he added, "a sense 
 of the life of people of our incompar 
 able English speech," and lingered on 
 the kindness he felt for the London 
 railway stations as places where one 
 thinks 
 
 how great we all are together in the light of 
 heaven and the face of the rest of the world, 
 with the bond of our glorious tongue in 
 which we labour to write articles and books 
 for each other s candid perusal, how great 
 we all are, and how great is the great city 
 
30 IfoenrE James 
 
 which we may unite fraternally to regard as 
 the capital of our race. 
 
 The London passion, specific and 
 explicit as it is with him, is, after all, 
 the form, jhe mould into which is 
 poured his richer passion for the race 
 to which he belongs^ If he vibrates 
 with the historic sense it is not in the 
 mood of the scholar as the scholar 
 oftenest defines himself to us by his 
 works it is in the mood of the rare 
 individual to whom history means 
 continuity of experience, who, wrapped 
 in the mantle of inherited traditions 
 and manners of thought, surveys the 
 present also in its historic aspect, 
 marks in it what has changed and what 
 will change; sees the much that is 
 fluid, the little that is fixed, in what 
 so lightly passes under the name of 
 "our civilisation." This faculty for 
 
Hmertcan Character 31 
 
 
 
 
 seeing contrasts and evolutions, for liv 
 ing on the one hand with sensibilities 
 in full reaction to the impressions of 
 the tremendous carnival of modern 
 society, and on the other hand with 
 affections clustering and clinging about 
 the old, the dim, the ghostly, in relics 
 
 of the past, this mingling of curiosity 
 
 \ 
 
 and reverence, constitutes an advan 
 tage for the recorder of manners hardly 
 to be over-estimated. In a quite re 
 cent book, The Awkward Age, the 
 step from the manners of the near 
 past to those of the immediate present 
 within a certain small circle of the 
 tangential social rings making up the 
 great capital, is taken in a way to 
 indicate to the interested reader the 
 constant method of the writer, a habit 
 that seems unintermitting with him, 
 of using the vanished scene as a I 
 
32 tbenrg 3ames 
 
 ? 
 
 touchstone for the one before us, of 
 
 holding up his brilliant picture against 
 the soft, thick background of accumu 
 lated associations to try the value of 
 
 its modern tone. 
 v 
 
 For this method, however, the pre 
 paration is necessarily vast. Inde 
 fatigable interrogation of the living 
 model, complete saturation in the com 
 posite air of reminiscent experience, 
 without these there can be no fusion of 
 impressions, no "atmosphere" in the 
 sense given to the word by the paint 
 ers; and it was the good fortune of 
 Mr. James to be able to commence 
 his studies in the one right way for 
 achieving his result. 
 
 He was abroad until 1859, and then 
 came back for a single decade of 
 purely American life before he again 
 packed his still slender and portable 
 
Bmerican Cbaracter 33 
 
 outfit for the return to England that 
 was to separate him conclusively from 
 his native country. This decade, more 
 or less unconsciously dedicated, no 
 doubt, to the observation of American 
 customs and character, was to have 
 upon his later work an effect peculiarly 
 interesting to the American critic. It 
 is easy to exaggerate the effect, and 
 the safer course might be to ignore it, 
 to assume that the later work would 
 have been substantially the same with 
 out the brief period of study in the 
 Harvard law -school, of escape on dusky 
 winter afternoons into the glow of Mr. 
 ^Lowell s "learned lamplight," of look 
 ing out upon beaten snow and wooden 
 houses and lonely roads, of looking 
 in upon crowding imaginations of mot 
 ley foreign splendours, of southern col 
 our, of Italy and England and bright, 
 
 3 
 
34 Ibenrs 5ames 
 
 logical France. But the safer course 
 in some instances frankly declines to 
 be possible, and no deeply enlisted 
 reader of the novels of Mr. James can 
 forget that early background, that 
 familiarity with the cool, clear New 
 England life, to which his mature 
 fancy repeatedly returns, whimsically, 
 critically, with detachment, but with 
 how much also of appreciation and 
 understanding. 
 
 As early as 1865 he began to con 
 tribute stories to the Atlantic Monthly, 
 and naturally these had in more than 
 one case the war background. They 
 were not very remarkable, nor did 
 they possess many of the special 
 qualities of the later work. In only 
 one instance, that of the story entitled 
 Gabrielle de Bergerac, in which the 
 American note is not struck, do we get 
 
Hmertcan Cbaracter 35 
 
 a hint of the free and gracious manner 
 so soon to be acquired. Yet they have 
 a present interest, since it is easy to 
 detect in them a theory not altogether 
 dissociated from the convictions rul 
 ing The Sacred Fount and The Golden 
 Bowl. A search for motives of action. 
 a freedom: from Sentimentality, 
 
 marked respect for accuracy of obser 
 vation are there, and if it is not yet 
 the art that conceals art, art neverthe 
 less is present, lending her lovely as 
 pect to the timid interpretations of an 
 inexperienced hand. 
 
 An article, moreover, on George 
 Eliot in the Atlantic for October, 1866, 
 sets forth certain principles of the 
 novelist s craft already definitely con 
 ceived and firmly stated. Challeng 
 ing the anti-climax in Adam Bede, the 
 young author suggests that it might 
 
36 Ibenrs James 
 
 very well have been left to the reader 
 to deduce from Adam s character, 
 temperament, and state of mind his 
 1 ultimate marriage with Dinah. 
 
 In every novel [he observes] the work is 
 divided between the writer and the reader, 
 but the writer makes the reader very much 
 
 (as he makes his characters. When he makes 
 him ill, that is, makes him indifferent, he 
 does no work, the writer does all. When he 
 makes him well, that is, makes him inter 
 ested, then the reader does quite half the 
 labour. In making such a deduction as I 
 have just indicated [that of Adam s probable 
 marriage], the reader would be doing but his 
 share of the task; the grand point is to get 
 him to make it. I hold that there is a 
 way. It is perhaps a secret, but until it is 
 found out, I think that the art of story 
 telling cannot be said to have approached 
 perfection. 
 
 This artistic requirement which he 
 was not to forget is evolved with 
 genuine penetration, and other points 
 
Bmertcan Cbaracter 37 
 
 chosen for emphasis prove that already 
 he had thought about what kind of a 
 novelist he intended to make of himself, 
 and that his struggle with his difficult 
 medium was to be systematic. It 
 would hardly be fair to quote exten 
 sively from the clever little article, 
 rich as it is in suggestion, or to infer 
 from it an inflexible plan. The har 
 ness a young man of three and twenty 
 makes for his genius is seldom stout 
 enough to hold any but the tamest 
 spirit for an extended term of years. 
 We may, h.owever, give ourselves the 
 satisfaction a rare one of perceiving 
 at the outset that there was a plan 
 well -cogitated and serious and we may, 
 perhaps, extract one more passage for 
 the fulness of its significance : 
 
 They [the novels of George Eliot] offer a 
 completeness, a rich density of detail, which 
 

 38 f>enr 3ames 
 
 could be the fruit only of a long term of con 
 scious contact such as would make it much 
 more difficult for the author to fall into the 
 perversion and suppression of factvthan to 
 set them down literally. 
 
 An acute critic might fairly have 
 predicted at this time that a rich 
 density of detail would one day char 
 acterise the work of Mr. James himself, 
 and also that it would be the fruit of 
 nothing less than conscious contact 
 with a world of multitudinous ap 
 pearances by a mind that found it 
 more difficult to be perversive than 
 truthful. The secret hidden from the 
 critical eye was the special field of his 
 labour. In England, novels of vari 
 ous kinds were swarming. After a 
 hundred years of as much struggle, 
 error, compromise, and triumph over 
 adverse conditions as ever went to the 
 
Hmerican Gbaracter 39 
 
 founding of a nation, the novel had 
 made its place as an art and as a 
 record of life. It was the high tide of 
 what might be called its legitimate pop 
 ularity, a popularity, that is, involving 
 the intelligent consideration of serious 
 minds. Thackeray had died leaving his 
 Becky, his Blanche Amory, his Ethel 
 Newcome, and his Beatrix to the pro 
 longed and energetic discussion of his 
 critics. Dickens had etched all the fig 
 ures variees of his large queer London 
 plate, with its rich brutality of line, its 
 coarse discriminations, its inestimable 
 pictorial value. Anthony Trollope had 
 just finished The Last Chronicles of 
 Barset, and with it had closed the door 
 on his masterpieces. George Eliot had 
 published her three great books and 
 Meredith had written Richard Feverel 
 and Rhoda Fleming. Even Thomas 
 
40 Ifoenrp James 
 
 Hardy had already appeared on the 
 horizon with his Desperate Remedies. 
 Nearly twenty years before, Balzac, in 
 France, had been cut down by the 
 fury of his industry. It was a world, 
 certainly, in which a young novelist 
 with a plan needed to keep all his wits 
 about him to hold to his individual 
 path: to be a student yet not bound 
 to a master ; to be plastic, susceptible, 
 teachable and yet definite, sincere, and 
 persistent; to cherish his freshness 
 and bloom and avoid remaining un 
 sophisticated and unintelligent. When 
 Watch and Ward appeared in the 
 Atlantic, in 1871 as the serial for the 
 year, it offered no positive promise 
 that such a feat was within its author s 
 range. It was neither imitative nor 
 strikingly original. It was a pleasant 
 little story, not without touches of 
 
Hmertcan Character 41 
 
 melodrama, dealing with the predica 
 ment of a young girl, whose guardian 
 is in love with her. The fact that she 
 owes to him her salvation from a life 
 of destitution constitutes, however, a 
 situation not entirely unworthy of the 
 author of The Wings of a Dove. No 
 one has ever more justly drawn the 
 relations of obligation and gratitude, 
 and in his first extended novel his 
 future mastery in this difficult line at 
 least is foreshadowed. The figures of 
 Roger and Nora, despite their prim 
 ness of outline, have thoroughly the 
 aspect of life by virtue of their deep, 
 their infrangible and incorruptible del 
 icacy. The conditions weighing upon 
 them were not common, but their 
 interest depended on the complete 
 lack of vulgarity in the chief actors of 
 the crude little drama. Character as 
 
42 Tfoenrg 5ames 
 
 brought out by the plot was the essen 
 tial matter, and thus at the very 
 beginning the genuine note of the 
 author s individuality was struck. 
 
 Watch and Ward was followed by a 
 group of short stories, some of which 
 have been republished, and others of 
 which lie deeply buried in the early 
 numbers of the extinct Galaxy. They 
 are admirable performances, real and 
 human in feeling, most of them touched 
 Vwith such tragedy as lies in the situa- 
 /\ion of sensitive temperaments and 
 talents placed at the mercy of events. 
 They show a spirited interest in psycho 
 logical problems, with which they deal 
 at the same time quite naturally and 
 without the forced or pedantic sugges 
 tion from which professed students of 
 psychology seem to find it so difficult 
 to escape. A strong sense of the 
 
Hmerican Gbaracter 43 
 
 mystery of the human mind is brought 
 home to us by such a story as The Last 
 of the Valerii or Madame de Mauves, 
 but it is tempered and lightened by the 
 fascinating background of the visible 
 world against which the most lurid 
 accidents are set. We may read posi 
 tively with a feeling of tranquillity a 
 story of even the darkest crime if on 
 every page we are detained and soothed 
 by such pictures as that of Oxford in 
 The Passionate Pilgrim, or that of the 
 quiet old church of San Miniato in The 
 Madonna of the Future. The human 
 creature is, naturally, not so finely 
 indicated. We receive an impression 
 of much intensity of mind and heart, of 
 a haunting curiosity concerning the 
 supernatural, of remarkably significant 
 dialogue ; and from time to time we are 
 face to face with a figure as success- 
 
44 Ifoenrp 5ames 
 
 fully executed as it is ingeniously con 
 ceived such a figure as Eugene Picker 
 ing or Longmore in Madame de Mauves 
 but in general the extreme care with 
 which the persons of the drama are con 
 structed is not yet sufficiently hidden ; 
 they are rather barely and austerely 
 before us with the somewhat gaunt 
 lines of their physiognomy well in 
 view. They are like the firststudifis 
 of a painter more intent upon master 
 ing his instrument and reproducing 
 with accuracy the object before him 
 than upon attaining immediately a 
 handsome picture for the applause of an 
 undiscriminating public. This is the 
 characteristic quality of all the early 
 work, most obvious of course where the 
 problem is most difficult. By no means 
 devoid of the beauty that abides in 
 "style," these early tales are neverthe- 
 
Hmertcan Cbaracter 45 
 
 less too rich in matter and ideas to fit 
 themselves easily to a personal diction. 
 Some of them, The Passionate Pilgrim 
 in particular, give the impression of a 
 knobby surface of all sorts of thoughts 
 and observations on which the robe of 
 words hangs, not loosely, but with 
 queer misadjustments and places where 
 strain is apparent. It is clear enough 
 that the ideas came first and were of 
 first importance, and that the chief 
 use to their author of lovely words, 
 susceptible as he proved himself to 
 them, was to make his thoughts more 
 clearly perceived, to carry light into 
 the dark depths and make shine the 
 idea found in an obscure corner of the 
 mind. 
 
 There was, in a word, nothing 
 dilletante in the earliest product of Mr. 
 James s mind. It was clear enough 
 
46 1bent James 
 
 that he was prepared to probe deeply 
 into the spiritual essence of humanity 
 and that the special and the curious 
 had their charm for him. It was not 
 so clear that he was to throw a vivid 
 light on contemporary manners; and 
 it was not discernible at all, in spite of 
 the fact that many of his characters 
 happen to be Americans in Europe, 
 that the international relation was to 
 furnish him with his most important 
 and sustained theme. It was, how 
 ever, unmistakable that he was to be a 
 writer dedicated to illumination. The 
 habit of reading him sharpens our ca- 
 j pacity for discerning truth. Before he 
 was thirty, he was "striking matches," 
 to use a phrase of his later years, for 
 us to see the finer facts surrounding 
 us : facts of spirit wherever the human 
 comes into play, and in the case of 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 47 
 
 inarticulate landscape, exquisite facts 
 of surface, recognitions of composition 
 and colour in the external world that 
 make in his work a series of pictures so 
 expressively painted as to constitute 
 in themselves a definite achievement 
 for art. 
 
 Since his strength was chiefly 7 to lie 
 in combining close observation of the 
 innumerable phenomena of the sur 
 face of life with indefatigable explora 
 tion of the recondite truths of the 
 spirit, it was his great opportunity to 
 have access to a society permeated ^ 
 by fresh thought and to study that " 
 society against the background of the 
 older European civilisation, instead 
 of seeing it within its local limits only. 
 It was his virtue as an artist that he 
 recognised promptly a state of things 
 ready to his hand, a region of manners 
 
48 Denr James 
 
 which he could explore almost as a 
 pioneer, an environment upon which 
 he could steadily draw for animating 
 suggestion. If he was not to conceive 
 a second Comedie Humaine his Comedie 
 Sociale was, nevertheless, on a scale 
 worthy of a profound student of life. 
 He never committed himself to a plan 
 more vast than he has found it possi 
 ble to carry on. Certain limitations of 
 taste and interest closed about him at 
 the beginning, and apparently he has 
 never for a moment deviated from the 
 belief so fervently expressed by Joubert 
 and so fervently approved by Arnold, 
 that 
 
 with the fever of the senses, the delirium of 
 the passions, the weakness of the spirit; with 
 the storms of the passing time and with the 
 great scourges of human life, hunger, thirst, 
 dishonour, diseases, and death, authors may 
 as long as they like go on making novels 
 
Bmerican Cbaractet 49 
 
 which shall harrow our hearts, but the soul 
 says all the while, "You hurt me." 
 
 Not that these cruelties of human 
 existence have no place in his novels 
 he would be a strange seeker after the 
 vraie veritt who should ignore their 
 presence in the world; but no author 
 ever made them less the reason of his 
 writing, none ever more continually 
 penetrated beyond them to the inner 
 life which is so largely independent of 
 them, none ever more earnestly con 
 cerned himself with the ideal and 
 refining elements of human nature 
 while clearly bending a critical vision 
 upon its idiosyncrasies, external and 
 inner. 
 
 In his earlier essay on Balzac Mr. 
 James expressed his opinion that only 
 after a man has arrived at full maturity, 
 only after he is thirty, to give a round 
 
50 IbentE James 
 
 number to the period, does he produce 
 a thoroughly satisfactory novel. It 
 was in his fourth decade that he him 
 self produced Roderick Hudson, The 
 American, The Europeans, Daisy Miller, 
 Confidence, An International Episode, 
 Washington Square, The Portrait of a 
 Lady, and The Siege of London, and he 
 had profited by his period of prepara 
 tion to the extent that none of these 
 show a lack of competence to handle 
 the material or a lack of knowledge of 
 his field, greatly as his capacity was to 
 deepen and broaden with the progress 
 of the pensive years. The first to 
 appear, Roderick Hudson, is compactly 
 woven, a tissue of recorded facts in 
 which the pattern of the idea is clearly 
 outlined. A certain conscientiousness 
 of treatment, an absence of improvisa 
 tion, an obvious desire to make every- 
 
Hmertcan Cbaracter 51 
 
 thing clear, to portray convincingly 
 the physiognomies, both physical and 
 mental, of the characters, the particular 
 places in which from time to time they 
 happen to be, their occupations and 
 amusements, above all their relations 
 to one another, is the conspicuous 
 quality in the book, which, in spite of 
 the somewhat formal presentation, so 
 different from the later freedom and 
 luxuriance of metaphor and image, 
 bears a striking likeness to many of its 
 successors. It relates the history of a 
 young sculptor immured in a law office 
 in a New England village and panting 
 for freedom and art. He is rescued by 
 a rich youth who on his side is panting 
 for an opportunity intelligently to do a 
 good deed, and who, recognising the 
 quality of the work produced by 
 Roderick s untrained hand, proposes 
 
52 IbentE -James 
 
 to supply the needed training in Rome. 
 Roderick, strong in genius, but weak in 
 will and character, falls under the sway 
 of Christina Light, an interesting, 
 death-dealing, irresponsible beauty of 
 whom we hear again in The Princess 
 Casamassima. Every part of the story 
 is highly defined and finished with 
 minute detail. We are told a great 
 deal about every one; the history of 
 each character almost from birth is 
 traced with a patient elaboration that 
 reminds us of how often the name of 
 Balzac is mentioned by its author. 
 The principal exhibition is of Roder 
 ick s character, allowed to bloom with 
 shattering swiftness in the rich air of 
 the papal city, but each of Roderick s 
 companions also is a concrete human 
 being so visualised as to be entirely 
 recognisable; these, however, vary 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 53 
 
 greatly from one another in interest. 
 A liking, not by any means limited to 
 the early novels, for contrasting bril 
 liant figures with those in which an 
 almost violent reserve, an almost op 
 pressive quietness, is conspicuous, finds 
 expression in the portraits of the two 
 women, Mary Garland and the extra 
 ordinary Christina. The former is the 
 dull and colourless forerunner of such 
 exquisitely beautiful creations as Milly 
 Theale, Nanda Brookenham, and the 
 nameless young woman at "Cockers." 
 Perhaps nothing would serve better to 
 mark time and progress than to place 
 one of these perfectly affirmed, deli 
 cately represented heroines against the 
 honest and rather heavy image of Mary 
 Garland sitting by her eternal candle 
 busy with her interminable sewing. 
 Mary is what many of her sisters in 
 
54 t>enr 
 
 fiction are: what Laura Pendennis 
 is, with her prayers and tears; what 
 Dinah Morris is, with her cap and red 
 dish hair; what Florence Dombey is, 
 and Lucy, beloved of Richard Feverel, 
 merely a likeness in monotone of a 
 human figure, essentially human, un 
 deniably real and solid, but without 
 that subtlety of spiritual life to be 
 communicated only by the deepest 
 insight on the part of the artist into 
 the human soul. They are plain * good 
 likenesses" and as such to be treasured 
 in the circle of sitting - room decora 
 tions, but none of them is the mysteri 
 ous evocation of a personality for which 
 lovers of art would cross continents 
 and seas. Christina Light, on the 
 other hand, is a heroine to play her part 
 successfully in any picture at almost 
 any stage of her author s career; a 
 
Bmerican Cbaracter 55 
 
 mysterious creature, light and buoyant 
 as a graceful ship just launched, 
 fascinating in her eccentric outline 
 and glowing with physical beauty and 
 charm. 
 
 All through the book people explain 
 themselves to each other and explain 
 each other to themselves. All the 
 investigation into character and tem 
 perament is done in the open; nothing 
 is concealed; it is easy to follow the 
 mental processes by which the author 
 seeks to make himself "privy to the 
 mystery of knowledge" in all that 
 concerns life, and it would be a rash 
 reader who should deny the special 
 attraction of this slightly clumsy and 
 touching candour of curiosity and 
 effort. There was already the talent 
 noted in the article on Henrik Ibsen, 
 as characteristic of that dramatist s 
 
56 1foenr James 
 
 remarkable art the talent for pro 
 ducing an intensity of interest by 
 means incorruptibly quiet," by an 
 "almost demure preservation of the 
 appearance of the usual." And there 
 was also an occasional charmed glance 
 at the beauty of the outer world, as 
 in the description of Rowland s walk 
 toward Fiesole, with its quotation from 
 Browning naively brought in. There 
 was, moreover, a well -developed plot; 
 a highly professional construction, an 
 ordered drama in which the interest 
 is sharply broken off only to follow 
 the imagination along suggested paths. 
 It was in fact a complete instance of a 
 prophetic achievement. Yet in spite 
 of the fact that Roderick is taken from 
 a Massachusetts village to Rome for 
 his artistic development, we find not 
 more than a phrase or two from which 
 
Enter lean Cbaracter 57 
 
 the reader may infer that his tragic 
 history is to mark the beginning of the 
 long series of international dramas. 
 This prophecy may be detected in the 
 account of Roderick s little statuette 
 of a fair youth drinking thirstily from 
 a gourd: 
 
 "Tell me this," said Rowland, "do you 
 mean anything by your young Water- 
 drinker? Does he represent an idea? Is 
 he a symbol?" Hudson raised his eye 
 brows and gently scratched his head. "Why, 
 he s youth, you know; he s innocence, he s 
 health, he s curiosity. Yes, he s a good 
 many things." "And is the cup also a sym 
 bol?" "The cup is knowledge, pleasure, 
 experience. Anything of that kind! " "Well, 
 he s guzzling in earnest," said Rowland. 
 Hudson gave a vigorous nod. "Aye, poor 
 fellow, he s thirsty! " 
 
 Thirsty America was in the author s 
 mind, no doubt, thirsty then as she is 
 not now for conditions so difficult in 
 
58 Ibenrs James 
 
 that memorable past to attain, thirsty 
 then for ideals of art and culture now 
 cheapened somewhat by their acces 
 sibility, and not, apparently, so magical 
 in their allurement. In reading Roder 
 ick Hudson to-day it is impossible not 
 to let the mind wander from the book 
 to the reality, so close the book obvi 
 ously is to the reality, and from the 
 past to the greatly different present; 
 it is during these vagrant moments 
 that one perceives how gently the tone 
 of time has descended upon the pages ; 
 they have mellowed and taken on a 
 unity of colour and impression that 
 could not have been recognised in 
 them when they came fresh from the 
 press, the natural effect of age upon 
 the sincere expression of truth in any 
 form of art. What may have seemed 
 a little sharp and thin at the moment 
 
Hmertcan Cbaracter 59 
 
 it was written is now seen to have 
 conformed to the slightly sharp and 
 thin quality of the scenes and natures 
 described; is seen, too, as the natural 
 note of inexperience, and especially is 
 seen to be the result of the strong 
 sense of responsibility; the instinct of 
 a fine and subtle truthfulness triumph 
 ing over a rich imagination in the effort 
 to see life as it is. It was the kind of 
 practice that makes perfect if carried 
 on to the logical end ; it was the bond 
 age that makes freedom; it was the 
 attention to truth of substance and 
 truth of manner that makes in time 
 beauty. 
 
 In The American, that followed Rod- 
 erick Hudson after an interval of two 
 years, the step toward beauty is noth 
 ing less than a stride. It carries the 
 author, previously punctilious to the 
 
60 Ifoenrs James 
 
 verge of stiffness, into flowery gardens 
 of freedom, a freedom marked by his 
 easier handling of his figures, his light 
 ness of touch in manipulating his greater 
 plot, and above all by his manner of 
 good fellowship with his reader, that 
 manner which was to carry him so far 
 in the mystery of style. Already he 
 stood sufficiently aloof from his own 
 country to see the relation borne by the 
 American to the foreigner. The beau 
 tiful study of Christopher Newman is 
 accomplished with great simplicity in 
 the mild, winning manner of the later 
 novels. Uncontentious, delicate, gen 
 erous in his relation towards others, 
 frankly without superficial taste, but 
 with endless inner refinements of kind 
 ness and conscience, Newman stands 
 against the background of family 
 arrogance and tradition among the 
 
Bmerican Gbaracter 61 
 
 French nobility, a presentation of his 
 country s quality such as the unfor 
 tunate Roderick might have been 
 proud to equal in a sculptured sym 
 bol. The charm of Madame de Cintre, 
 mary tred in_ the great French cause 
 of "family,", is no less potent and 
 is communicated by the same mild 
 method. The love of form account 
 able for the inflexibility of Roderick 
 Hudson had already passed into the 
 flowing expression of culture. Cult 
 ure, Matthew Arnold has determined 
 for us by two rounded definitions, the 
 familiar knowing the best that has 
 been thought and known in the world" 
 and the less familiar "getting the 
 power through reading to estimate 
 the proportion and relation in what 
 we read." Whether Mr. James got 
 it through reading or through writing, 
 
62 Ibenrg 3ames 
 
 in The American a similar power to 
 realise proportion and relation is pre 
 sent in visible and appreciable shape. 
 It is the first purely artistic result of 
 his passion for artistic embodiment of 
 thought. The care for art in it is ex 
 treme, and it is somewhat significant 
 that this early writing has so little of 
 the tremulous sensibility in which 
 youth abounds; and that it has so 
 much painstaking, so much groping 
 concern for propriety of expression, so 
 much careful preparation of the matter. 
 It betrays the fact that the preoccupa 
 tion of its author with form is not an 
 acquired and grafted characteristic. 
 It was at the beginning his strength 
 and his weakness, yet always more his 
 strength than his weakness. It was 
 the latter in fact only so far as it 
 helped to suppress the expression of a 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 63 
 
 poetic perception as rare as it is ex 
 quisite. When in the fire of Spring a 
 young talent is cautious, one too in 
 sistently remembers that 
 
 The Bird of Time has but a little way 
 To flutter and the Bird is on the Wing. 
 
 It is not, however, to the purpose to 
 think of how a talent would have been 
 had it been different. It is difficult 
 enough to think truly how in itself 
 it is. In the case of Mr. James 
 caution and responsibility fastening 
 themselves on the shoulders of youth 
 surely sufficiently have justified their 
 grasp. The poetry has found its way 
 out and has been perhaps strength 
 ened and enriched by the husbandry 
 that would not let it push prematurely 
 into sight. Self - consciousness with 
 him has passed into poise, cultivation 
 has brought forth luxuriant bloom. 
 
64 Ifoenn? James 
 
 And the fact that he composed from 
 the beginning with his eye "on the 
 object," that he saturated himself 
 from year to year with the experience 
 upon which it was his steady intention 
 to draw for his pictures of life, gave 
 his work the consistent quality of 
 fidelity, the quality that wraps it 
 together. He gave his perceptions 
 that play essential to their growth, 
 recorded the reports they made to him 
 with accurate care, and held himself as 
 disinterestedly as possible in the atti 
 tude of a spectator. Full of vitality 
 and curiosity, neither of which ap 
 parently has waned in the course of a 
 long service, he curbed his sensibility 
 and the egoism which, since he was 
 young, he must have had, with a 
 remarkable respect for the conditions 
 by which good literature is nourished. 
 
Hmertcan Cbaracter 65 
 
 If he was " detached," if he did not 
 give himself away in his books as 
 much as Dickens or Thackeray or 
 George Eliot, he was not less of his 
 race and nation for that. To be 
 transparent, effusive, gushing, he says 
 in his article on Daudet "has never 
 been and will never be the ideal of us 
 of English speech/ and the dignity 
 of his early style suggests the normal 
 later flowering in the manner of Anglo- 
 Saxon genius. 
 
 The American is the novel which 
 we may take as on the whole per 
 haps most representative of his early 
 quality, and as in its kind a master 
 piece of simple rather than complex 
 art, but unmistakably of art. It con 
 tains a number of important char 
 acters none, in fact, that can be called 
 unimportant, so closely is each fitted 
 
66 
 
 into the scheme or plot and made to 
 contribute to the development. 
 
 Christopher Newman, however, the 
 "American," entirely dominates the 
 interesting group. To him is owing 
 the profound sense of life in the book. 
 If Mr. James did intend, as by the 
 title we are justified in assuming, to 
 make him the image of his countiy, 
 the concrete representation of an ab 
 straction, he accomplished his object 
 in a way very different from that 
 pursued by other inventors of our 
 supposed type. For one thing, he ab 
 solutely refrained from feeding the 
 vanity of his countrymen by mak 
 ing his American an incarnation of a 
 moral or political or national idea. 
 The democratic spirit of Christopher 
 Newman, if by democratic spirit we 
 mean the pride of liberty to do as one 
 
Bmerican Character 67 
 
 pleases without consulting others, is 
 sufficiently obvious; but it is intro 
 duced without the tacit glorification 
 of its virtues common to writers of 
 less subtlety and less breeding. One si 
 theories, after all, matter little," New-f 
 man s creator somewhere says in ref 
 erence to his method of pursuing 
 culture, "it is one s humour that is the 
 great thing. The American s humour 
 is so much the greatest thing about 
 him that, despite his shrewdness, he 
 survives in direct line with Colonel 
 Newcome and the good, dull Dobbin, 
 as one of the gentlest figures in fiction. 
 It was a happy result, the happiest, 
 of an attempt to embody our national 
 characteristic, that, in place of the 
 flamboyant merits on which in litera 
 ture we have more or less depended for 
 impressiveness, we should see our- 
 
68 Ibenrp James 
 
 selves depicted as possessing the spirit 
 ual delicacy ordinarily associated with. 
 races of immemorial politeness.] New 
 man has in due degree the idio 
 syncrasies that make for common 
 recognition of him as an American 
 product. He is a money-maker, who 
 has won his way through difficulties 
 usual enough in the generation of 
 Americans to which he belongs. At 
 the age of fourteen he had been set 
 adrift in the Western world : * necessity 
 had taken him by his slim young 
 shoulders and pushed him into the 
 street to earn that night s supper." It 
 illustrates the choice of adventure com 
 monly made by Mr. James that history 
 begins after the material difficulties are 
 surmounted and the problem has be 
 come, how to enjoy the material welfare. 
 His democracy of enjoyment is a 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 6 9 
 
 part of his Americanism. Taking his 
 holiday in Paris he likes the great 
 gilded rooms of his showy hotel; he 
 likes driving rapidly and expensively 
 through the country to see the monu 
 ments of history; his ideal of giving 
 a party" for the celebration of his 
 engagement with the lovely Claire de 
 Cintre is to invite every one who has 
 shown him a minimum of politeness 
 and every one with whom he has a 
 shadow of friendship, and to entertain 
 them with singers and actresses of 
 first quality hired at great cost for the 
 charming and intimate occasion. On 
 the other hand his susceptibility to 
 finer impressions is equally marked, 
 and, with a subtlety of suggestion 
 worthy of the cause, this susceptibility 
 is made to appear also a part of New 
 man s Americanism, a part so integral 
 
70 Ibenrs 5ames 
 
 as to seem the real essence of every 
 thing, the element impossible to change 
 without destroying the organism. 
 
 "You are the great Western Bar 
 barian," Mrs. Tristram says to him, 
 "stepping forth in his innocence and 
 might, gazing a while at this poor 
 effete Old World, and then swooping 
 down on it." To this indictment 
 Newman replies with remonstrance. 
 "I am a highly civilised man," he 
 contends, "I stick to that. If you 
 don t believe it I should like to prove 
 it to you." The extent to which he 
 proves it is the psychological basis of 
 the story. The extent of his politeness N 
 is the touchstone by which the differ- / 
 ent characters are tested. \ If the word 
 appears to minify his frank and sturdy 
 temper it can only be because we 
 allow it a superficial meaning alone 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 
 
 and decline to trace it to its deep 
 i source in consideration for the comfort 
 of others. At all events, it is clearly 
 enough politeness in Newman that 
 gives him his great air of superiority 
 in the presence of the old French 
 noblesse, and that makes his kind 
 simplicity a force in contrast with 
 their complexity of manner. It is the 
 absence of politeness in the complex 
 Bellegarde manner that constitutes 
 its weakness and converts it by in 
 sidious shades into absurdity. It is 
 the politeness of Madame de Cintre 
 that makes her a star of charm in the 
 cold constellation of her relatives, 
 before we are aware of her superior 
 moral virtue. It is the grace of polite 
 ness in her younger brother Valentin 
 that makes him the true head of the 
 house of Bellegarde. At the end of 
 
72 DentE 3ames 
 
 the story, which takes, its many read 
 ers will remember, a melodramatic turn 
 involving criminal acts and startling 
 disclosures, the politeness by which 
 Newman expresses his rich spirit of 
 benignity blossoms into a state of feel 
 ing beside which the cheaper states 
 so frequently encountered both in 
 fiction and in life, seem as tawdry as 
 a milliner s display after the bloom 
 ing summer hedges. The unfortunate 
 American, duped by his French antag 
 onists, but in possession of their hideous 
 secret for revelation or not as he may 
 choose, has been gazing at the gray 
 walls of the convent to which Madame 
 de Cintre had been driven. Turning 
 away, he walked down to the edge of 
 the Seine and saw above him the soft 
 vast towers of Notre Dame : 
 
 He crossed one of the bridges and stood 
 
Bmerfcan Cbaracter 73 
 
 a moment in the empty place before the 
 great cathedral ; then he went in beneath the 
 grossly imaged portals. He wandered some 
 distance up the nave and sat down in the 
 splendid dimness. He sat a long time; he 
 heard far-away bells chiming off at long 
 intervals, to the rest of the world. He was 
 very tired. This was the best place he could 
 be in. He said no prayers; he had no 
 prayers to say. He had nothing to be 
 thankful for, and he had nothing to ask; 
 nothing to ask, because now he must take 
 care of himself. But a great cathedral offers 
 a very various hospitality, and Newman sat 
 in his place, because while he was there he 
 was out of the world. The most unpleasant 
 thing that had ever happened to him had 
 reached its formal conclusion, as it were; he 
 could close the book and put it away. He 
 leaned his head for a long time on the chair 
 in front of him; when he took it up he felt 
 that he was himself again. vSomewhere in 
 his mind a tight knot seemed to have loosened. 
 He thought of the Bellegardes; he had al 
 most forgotten them. He remembered them 
 as people he had meant to do something to. 
 He gave a groan as he remembered what he 
 had meant to do; the bottom suddenly had 
 
74 1benr James 
 
 fallen out of his revenge. Whether it was 
 Christian charity or unregenerate good nature 
 what it was in the background of his soul 
 I don t pretend to say; but Newman s last 
 thought was that of course he would let the 
 Bellegardes go. If he had spoken it aloud 
 he would have said that he didn t want to 
 hurt them. He was ashamed of having 
 wanted to hurt them. They had hurt him 
 but such things were really not his game. 
 At last he got up and came out of the dark 
 ening church; not with the elastic step of 
 a man who has won a victory or taken a 
 resolve, but strolling soberly, like a good- 
 natured man who is still a little ashamed. 
 
 This tone of mind, which perhaps we 
 can best define as spiritual courtesy in 
 opposition to the false * * politesse sterile 
 et rampante," attaching only to the 
 surface of behaviour, is one upon 
 which Mr. James has continued to bend 
 his discerning gaze. It appears again 
 and again in such diverse individuals 
 as Ralph Touchett, Francie Dosson, 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 75 
 
 Maisie Farange, Mr. Longdon, Verena 
 Tarrant, Milly Theale, Strether, Adam 
 Verver, and the exquisite Maggie. 
 Although in Newman and in the 
 wonderful late evolution of Newman, 
 Adam Verver, it seems inseparably 
 connected with the nationality of its 
 possessor, it makes its home as well 
 with English Maisie, with Henry Chil- 
 ver in The Great Condition, and with 
 other characters in the short stories 
 that have kept pace with the nov 
 els in number, variety and quality. 
 , Nevertheless it is true that in nearly 
 / all the important American characters 
 the inner delicacy prompting con 
 siderate relations with others, the 
 essential kindness seeking happiness 
 in the well-being of others, are so con- 
 
 : spicuous as to press upon the reader 
 
 
 
 the conviction that by the writer they 
 
76 1foenr James 
 
 | l are regarded as peculiarly character- 
 \ istic of his nation. The impression 
 they create is the stronger that Mr. 
 James nowhere shirks his duty as an 
 observer or fails to note the symbols 
 of difference in taste and training 
 which make against the perfection of 
 manner in his national family, as com 
 pared with the European tradition. 
 The artistic detachment that has en 
 abled him to record with precision and 
 without prejudice the manners of many 
 countries, has yet left him the ancient 
 right of the artist to add himself to 
 -I nature in the account of his observa 
 tions, and there is no injustice to his 
 art in reflecting that he analyses his 
 American characters with a sympathy 
 which lends an ineffable sweetness and 
 warmth to their portraiture. Yet in 
 recognising the elevation of his concep- 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 77 
 
 tions of his countrymen and country 
 women it is easy also to perceive that 
 they are not wholly isolated in their 
 essential character. They are the 
 verdant branch of the Anglo-Saxon 
 stock, fed by the same sap that courses 
 through the stout British trunk, if 
 somewhat lighter and gayer and freer 
 in movement, and brighter and thinner 
 in colour, and slighter in form. With 
 what Mr. James somewhere defines asj 
 "the faintly acrid perfume of the New! 
 England temperament," with sensitive 
 imaginations, fanciful humour, con 
 scientious exclusions and renunciations, 
 they nevertheless are not alien to the 
 English as they are alien to the French 
 and to the Italians. The same taste 
 in morality exists for both. When in 
 The Golden Bowl the Roman Prince 
 asks Maggie Verver, who is betrothed 
 
78 
 
 to him, if she believes that he is not 
 a hypocrite, if she recognises that he 
 does n t lie or dissemble or deceive, we 
 can imagine the colour rising in an 
 English face as promptly as in hers. 
 The Prince notes, in fact, that the dis 
 ability seriously to discuss questions 
 of veracity and loyalty or the lack of 
 them is "the English, the American 
 sign," that duplicity, like "love" has 
 to be joked about. The whole matter 
 is put concisely in the following frag 
 ment of discourse taken from a very 
 enlightening little paper called An 
 Animated Conversation. Several per 
 sons, some of them American, the rest 
 English, are exchanging ideas on in 
 ternational differences. The interna 
 tional differences, between England 
 and America, Darcy, an American, 
 characterises as "rubbish," and he 
 
Smertcan Gbaracter 79 
 
 holds that if his countrymen are not all 
 "formed," at least they are forming, 
 and on a scale of opportunity like 
 nothing else in the world : 
 
 the opportunity for two great peoples to ac 
 cept, or rather to cultivate with talent, a 
 common destiny, to tackle the world to 
 gether, to unite in the arts of peace by 
 which I mean, of course, in the arts of life. 
 It will make life larger and the arts finer for 
 each of them. It will be an immense and 
 complicated problem of course to see it 
 through; but that s why I speak of it as an 
 object of envy to other nations, in its dis 
 cipline, its suggestiveness, the initiation, the 
 revelation it will lead to. Their problems in 
 comparison strike me as small and vulgar. 
 It s not true that there is nothing new under 
 the sun; the donnee of the drama that Eng 
 land and America may act out together 
 is absolutely new. Essentially new is the 
 position in which they stand toward each 
 other. It rests with all of us to make it 
 newer still. 
 
 This was written more than fifteen 
 
8o Ifoenrp James 
 
 years ago and twelve years after the 
 publication of The American. The 
 swiftly moving forces of the West 
 already had been hard at work on 
 American civilisation, and already the 
 illusions and ignorances of a Christo 
 pher Newman concerning European 
 customs and thought had become of 
 less probable occurrence, had been, at 
 all events, replaced by a different set 
 of illusions and ignorances. Not alto 
 gether, therefore, because of their in 
 trinsic worth, but to a large degree 
 because they crystallise for us the 
 evanescent forms of a social state that 
 flowered and withered in a night, must 
 we prize the series of novels executed 
 by Mr. James before the last quarter 
 of the mighty century just closed. 
 
 His heroines of that comparatively 
 fresh adventurous time have a seri- 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 81 
 
 ous, simple intensity that makes them 
 beguiling figures in the gravely ordered 
 setting of their lives. Most of them 
 are responsive to new impressions, ner 
 vously alive to the interests of the 
 world outside their shuttered windows. 
 Gertrude Wentworth in The Europeans 
 meets the impact of foreign life upon 
 her susceptible temperament with sud 
 den tears of joy. Isabel Archer, in 
 The Portrait of A Lady, is thrilled with 
 exquisite excitements when she stands 
 for the first time on English ground. 
 They all have firm, clear minds and 
 fine capacities for pure joys and in 
 telligent recreations. They have, too, 
 whatever their age may be, the con 
 fiding, idealising tendency of the very 
 young, and a gay perversity, that 
 risks nothing so easily as misunder 
 standing. The immortal Daisy Miller 
 
82 f>enr James 
 
 is the embodiment of the latter peril 
 ous attribute and owes her interna 
 tional fame, no doubt, chiefly to the 
 readiness with which she sacrificed to 
 the idol of her American independence. 
 Catherine Sloper, in Washington Square, 
 is the one unperceptive intelligence of 
 the group, and her heaviness of mind 
 is adroitly symbolised by her author 
 in the fact that she wears satins at the 
 age of muslins. But she, with the rest, 
 savours of a moral charm composed of 
 two admirable qualities, delicacy and 
 loyalty: these make the little clear 
 flame that burns so steadily beneath 
 all the various exteriors. And as if 
 from the action of this hidden puri 
 fying element, the dross of artificial 
 conventions disappears. The moral 
 nature moves with a fine freedom of 
 limb, and the unsophisticated con- 
 
Hmertcan Cbaracter 83 
 
 science takes unexpected gracious at 
 titudes. 
 
 No writer has been more haunted by 
 the compatibility of gentleness with 
 the firmer qualities of the spirit. In 
 Verena Tarrant of The Bostonians, it 
 constitutes the invincible charm of an 
 otherwise undistinguished character 
 unless it be distinguished to have the 
 gift of eloquent, excessive, persuasive 
 speech. The lack of gentleness in her 
 militant companion, Olive Chancellor, 
 is the undoing of an otherwise estimable 
 lady; the presence of it again in the 
 noble and affecting portrait of Miss 
 Birdseye lends to her aged aspect an 
 interest greater than any inspired by 
 her dim, disordered activity in the 
 pursuit of human enfranchisement. 
 Her gentleness pervades her earn 
 est, industrious career, and over the 
 
84 fbenrs 3ames 
 
 scene of her quiet death casts a perfect 
 grace : 
 
 Miss Birdseye s voice was very low, like 
 that of a person breathing with difficulty; 
 but it had no painful or querulous note it 
 expressed only the cheerful weariness which 
 had marked all this last period of her life, and 
 which seemed to make it now as blissful as it 
 was suitable that she should pass away. Her 
 head was thrown back against the top of the 
 chair, the ribbon which confined her ancient 
 hat hung loose, and the late afternoon -light 
 covered her octogenarian face and gave it a 
 kind of fairness, a double placidity. There 
 was, to Ransom, something almost august in 
 the trustful renunciation of her countenance ; 
 something in it seemed to say that she had 
 been ready long before, but as the time was 
 not ripe she had waited, with her usual faith 
 that all was for the best; only, at present, 
 since the right conditions met, she could n t 
 help feeling that it was quite a luxury, the 
 greatest she had ever tasted. 
 
 This sympathetic description is in 
 the style of interested personal com- 
 
amertcan Gbaracter 85 
 
 ment, and so is the later reference to 
 her burial-place : 
 
 Her mortal remains were to be committed 
 to their rest in the little cemetery at Mar- 
 mion, in sight of the pretty sea-view she 
 loved to gaze at, among old mossy head 
 stones of mariners and fisher-folk. She had 
 seen the place when she first came down, 
 when she was able to drive out a little, and 
 she had said she thought it must be pleasant 
 to lie there. It was not an injunction, a 
 definite request; it had not occurred to Miss 
 Birdseye, at the end of her days, to take an 
 exacting line or to make, for the first time in 
 eighty years, a personal claim. But Olive 
 Chancellor and Verena had put their con 
 struction on her appreciation of the quietest 
 corner of the striving, suffering world so 
 weary a pilgrim of philanthropy had ever 
 beheld. 
 
 In the personal manner, also, are the 
 descriptions of Francie Dosson, in The 
 Reverberator, which are little more 
 than suggestive musings on the quality 
 
86 Ibenrs James 
 
 directly displayed by that lovable 
 young American in act and speech: 
 
 She thought Delia whipped her up too 
 much, but there was that in her which 
 would have prevented her from ever running 
 away. She could smile and smile for an 
 hour without irritation, making even pacific 
 answers, though all the while her com 
 panion s grossness hurt something delicate 
 that was in her. 
 
 Francie did not in the least dislike Mr. 
 Flack. Interested as I am in presenting her 
 favourably to the reader, I am yet obliged 
 as a veracious historian to admit that he 
 seemed to her decidedly a brilliant being. 
 In many a girl the sort of appreciation she 
 had of him might easily have been converted 
 by peremptory treatment from outside into 
 something more exalted. I do not mis 
 represent the perversity of women in saying 
 that our young lady might at this moment 
 have replied to her sister with, "No, I was 
 not in love with him, but somehow since you 
 are so very prohibitive I foresee that I shall 
 be if he asks me." It is doubtless difficult 
 to say more for Francie s simplicity of char- 
 
Hmerican Character 87 
 
 acter than that she felt no need of encour 
 aging Mr. Flack in order to prove to herself 
 that she was not bullied. She did n t care 
 whether she were bullied or not; and she 
 was perfectly capable of letting her sister 
 believe that she had carried mildness to the 
 point of giving up a man she had a secret 
 sentiment for in order to oblige that large- 
 brained young lady. She was not clear 
 herself as to whether it might not be so; her 
 pride, what she had of it, lay in an undis 
 tributed, inert form quite at the bottom of 
 her heart, and she had never yet invented 
 any consoling theory to cover her want of a 
 high spirit. 
 
 It will hardly be denied by any 
 attentive reader of fiction, that a 
 peculiar talent is required to endow 
 heroines with this mingled cmajjty 
 
 ( 1 1 n L-^Z ^. , .^..X . .- . "--: : ."ir*A. 
 
 of simplicity *ffl^ Vi n H n PQQ without 
 suggesting a state of colourless in 
 sipidity, an absence of " brain-stuff," 
 fatal to sustained interest. The fact 
 that these softly innocent American 
 
88 1benr$ James 
 
 heroines, and even the keenly innocent 
 American heroes, wear their tempera 
 ment with so distinguished an air 
 proves, certainly, the presence in their 
 author of the peculiar talent, but does 
 . it not also prove a certain distin 
 guished charm in the American char 
 acter which has waited it had not, 
 to be sure, an excessive period to wait 
 for the right interpreter, the inter 
 preter whose condition of rightness 
 has been determined not merely by 
 his natural talent, but by his inter 
 national experience, his possession of 
 a background for his figures, and a 
 standard of comparison? 
 
 Isabel Archer is the most instructed 
 of his young Americans, the most 
 given to introspection and analysis, 
 the least humble in the arms of fortune, 
 yet even her brilliant intelligent per- 
 
Hmertcan Cbaracter 8 9 
 
 sonality breathes of a purity that is 
 deeper than the mere natural attribute 
 of maidenhood, a purity that lies at the 
 core of character, and is inexpugnable 
 by experience, however extended into 
 dangerous fields. The connotation of 
 her characteristics suggests the com 
 ment long after made by Mr. James 
 upon his renewed impression of the 
 wide New Hampshire landscape, that 
 it insists on referring itself to the 
 idyllic type: 
 
 as if the higher finish, even at the hand of 
 nature, were in some sort a perversion, and 
 hillsides and rocky eminences and wild or 
 chards, in short, any common sequestered 
 spot, could strike one as the more exquisitely 
 and ideally Sicilian, Theocritan, poetic, ro 
 mantic, academic from their not bearing the 
 burden of too much history. 
 
 This perhaps is the "note" of 
 American character, as of American 
 
90 t>enr James 
 
 landscape, from the point of view of 
 a detached but not denationalised ob 
 server. Certainly in the following 
 passage, illustrating Isabel s habit of 
 mind and absorbing interest in the 
 laws of her nature, there is a flavour 
 of New World, of Old World unsophis- 
 tication : 
 
 She had an unquenchable desire to think 
 well of herself. She had a theory that it 
 was only on this condition that life was 
 worth living; that one should be one of the 
 best, should be conscious of a fine organisa 
 tion (she could not help knowing her organ 
 isation was fine), should move in a realm of 
 light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, 
 of inspiration gracefully chronic. It was 
 almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of 
 oneself as to cultivate doubt of one s best 
 friend; one should try to be one s own best 
 friend, and to give oneself, in this manner, 
 distinguished company. The girl had a cer 
 tain nobleness of imagination which rendered 
 her a good many services and played her a 
 great many tricks. She spent half her time 
 
Hmertcan Cbaracter 91 
 
 in thinking of beauty, and bravery, and 
 magnanimity; she had a fixed determination 
 to regard the world as a place of brightness, 
 of free expansion, of irresistible action; she 
 thought it would be detestable to be afraid 
 or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that 
 she should never do anything wrong. She 
 had resented so strongly, after discovering 
 them, her mere errors of feeling (the dis 
 covery always made her tremble, as if she 
 had escaped from a trap which might have 
 caught her and smothered her), that the 
 chance of inflicting a sensible injury upon 
 another person, presented only as a con 
 tingency, caused her at moments to hold her 
 breath. That always seemed the worst 
 thing that could happen to one. On the 
 whole, reflectively, she was in no uncer 
 tainty about the things that were wrong. 
 She had no taste for thinking of them, but 
 whenever she looked at them fixedly she 
 recognised them. It was wrong to be mean, 
 to be jealous, to be false, to be cruel; she 
 had seen very little of the evil of the world, 
 but she had seen women who lied and who 
 tried to hurt each other. Seeing such 
 things had quickened her high spirit; it 
 seemed right to scorn them. 
 
92 Ifoenrp James 
 
 If this special psychological charm is 
 notable and typical in the early books 
 it is not less so in the late ones, The 
 Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl. 
 Mamie Pocock has it in spite of her 
 largeness, her chattiness, her poly 
 syllables, and the complexities of her 
 hair. Maggie Verver has it to a far 
 more intense degree; in her, it is the 
 finest distillation of delicacy, idyllic, 
 if you will, and Sicilian, but, above all, 
 American. 
 
 "There are things, my dear," Mrs. Assing- 
 ham explains to her husband, " haven t 
 you felt it yourself, coarse as you are? that 
 no one could tell Maggie. There are things 
 that, upon my word, I should n t care to 
 attempt to tell her now." 
 
 The Colonel smoked on it. "She d be so 
 scandalised?" 
 
 "She d be so frightened. She d be, in 
 her strange little way, so hurt. She was n t 
 born to know evil. She must never know it." 
 
Hmerican Cbaracter 93 
 
 Different as the "style" of Maggie s 
 portraiture is from that of Francie, 
 Gertrude, and Isabel, the likeness 
 common to them all is not to be mis 
 taken, and marks for their author s 
 position as a novelist the creation of a 
 special type, and a type, moreover, 
 that has appeared before in fiction 
 only in scattered examples. It has 
 had no place as the central conception 
 of a body of literature; for the illus 
 tration of which psychologic detail is 
 gathered, but which is never sub 
 ordinated or contradicted. It has 
 never before been used as the moral 
 value against w r hich all the minor 
 forms of vice show as motes in a clear 
 light, and all the greater forms as 
 dusky shadow from which such light 
 has been withdrawn. 
 
 That it is the American type is 
 
94 Ibenrs James 
 
 hardly to be made a matter of pride 
 with us, is much more to be made a 
 matter of shame in the degree to 
 which we manage to depart from it; 
 but it is in the nature of a positive joy 
 to reflect in its presence on the amount 
 of intellectual and spiritual experience 
 possible to so finely absorbent a 
 texture. Almost the last word con 
 cerning it is said in answer to the 
 perceptive Prince of The Golden Bowl: 
 
 "You Americans are almost incredibly 
 romantic," he exclaims. 
 
 "Of course we are. That is just what 
 makes everything so nice for us." 
 
 "Everything?" 
 
 "Well, everything that s nice at all. The 
 world, the beautiful world or everything 
 in it that is beautiful. I mean we see so 
 much." 
 
II 
 
 A NOVELIST with this strong sense of 
 poetic element in human nature, 
 and with a tendency to let his imagina 
 tion wander into the region of mystic 
 ism and to interrogate the soul rather 
 than the mind, needs a strong counter 
 balance of interest in the exterior 
 world to keep his feet firmly on the 
 earth, and to provide for his characters 
 a credible, tangible environment. 
 
 In the case of Mr. James, this interest 
 manifests itself as a notable, a truly 
 remarkable, feeling for houses and 
 their furnishings and surroundings, 
 especially where they have the ingra 
 tiating touch of age, and an intimate 
 association with the lives of their 
 
 95 
 
96 Ibenrs 5ames 
 
 V owners. He feels the genius of places, 
 the inner life behind the outer aspect of 
 ponderable things, and so closely ad 
 justs his vision to fine discriminations 
 in these that the places he knows 
 and likes the best are a part of his 
 drama, a part of the expression of his 
 characters, and even, by a stretch of 
 imagination, are in themselves char 
 acters, of an individuality not easily 
 to be forgotten. In the earlier work 
 they live chiefly, however, as a means 
 of expression. The home of the Went- 
 worths, for example, in The Europeans, 
 is not only an admirable type of the 
 dwellings of well-to-do Americans of 
 the time and locality indicated, but in 
 its clean, bare formality is precisely 
 the harmonious setting for their seri 
 ous, open lives : 
 
 The doors and windows of the large square 
 
TTbe (Senius of place 97 
 
 house were all wide open, to admit the 
 purifying sunshine, which lay in generous 
 patches upon the floor of a wide, high, covered 
 piazza adjusted to two sides of the mansion 
 a piazza on which several straw-bottomed 
 rocking-chairs and half a dozen of those 
 small cylindrical stools in green and blue 
 porcelain, which suggest an affiliation be 
 tween the residents and the Eastern trade, 
 were symmetrically disposed. It was an 
 ancient house ancient in the sense of be 
 ing eighty years old; it was built of wood, 
 painted a clear, faded grey, and adorned 
 along the front at intervals, with flat wooden 
 pilasters, painted white. These pilasters ap 
 peared to support a kind of classic pediment, 
 which was decorated in the middle by a large 
 triple window in a boldly carved frame, and 
 in each of its smaller angles by a glazed 
 circular aperture. A large white door, fur 
 nished with a highly polished brass knocker, 
 presented itself to the rural-looking road, 
 with which it was connected by a spacious 
 pathway, paved with worn and cracked 
 but very clean bricks. Behind it there were 
 meadows and orchards, a barn and a pond; 
 and facing it, a short distance along the road, 
 on the opposite side, stood a smaller house, 
 
98 Ibenrs James 
 
 painted white, with external shutters painted 
 green, a little garden on one hand and an 
 orchard on the other. All this was shining 
 in the morning air, through which the sim 
 ple details of the picture addressed them 
 selves to the eye as distinctly as a "sum" in 
 addition. 
 
 And in The Bostonians, the home of 
 Olive Chancellor, on Charles Street, 
 successfully completes the image of 
 that young woman s exacting tempera 
 ment as Basil Ransom is first intro 
 duced to it. 
 
 The general character of the place struck 
 him as Bostonian; this was, in fact, very 
 much what he had supposed Boston to 
 be. He had always heard Boston was a 
 city of culture, and now there was culture 
 in Miss Chancellor s tables and sofas, in 
 the books that were everywhere, on little 
 shelves like brackets (as if a book were a 
 statuette), in the photographs and water- 
 colours that covered the walls, in the cur- 
 
(Benius of place 99 
 
 tains that were festooned rather stiffly in 
 the doorways. 
 
 Not less representative, in the same 
 book, are the long, bald rooms, in which 
 Verena Tarrant s audience is gathered, 
 and the hot little dining-room of the 
 Tarrant homestead, with its smell of 
 kerosene, its coloured table-cloth, and 
 creaking, unstable chairs. 
 
 But it is not until we get away 
 from America, and into England, Italy, 
 and France with Mr. James, that 
 we realise the pervasive influence of 
 beauty and romance in homes, gardens, 
 churches, and little inns; of the mellow 
 bloom imparted by gathered years to 
 the common substances of brick and 
 stone and wood. For the English 
 scene, steeped in its recognitions of an 
 immemorial history, his feeling deepens 
 to inalienable affection. His early 
 
3ames 
 
 impression is recorded in his early 
 story so felicitously named The Pas 
 sionate Pilgrim: 
 
 Just the scene around me was the England 
 of my visions. Over against us, amid the 
 deep-hued bloom of its ordered gardens, the 
 dark red palace, with its formal copings and 
 its vacant windows, seemed to tell of a proud 
 and splendid past; the little village nestling 
 between park and palace, around a patch of 
 turfy common, with its tavern of gentility, 
 its ivy-towered church, its parsonage, re 
 tained to my modernised fancy the lurking 
 semblance of a feudal hamlet. It was in 
 this dark composite light that I had read all 
 English prose ; it was this mild, moist air that 
 had blown from the verses of English poets ; 
 beneath these broad acres of rain-deepened 
 greenness a thousand honoured dead lay 
 buried. 
 
 He has kept clear of confusions and 
 blunted outlines. His sentiment for 
 places has never degenerated into that 
 irritating sentimentality which sees all 
 
Ube Oenius of place 101 
 
 beauty under one obliterating light of 
 egoistic fancy. The light of his Italy 
 is never the light of his England; the 
 light of his England is as far^as pos 
 sible removed from that of his America. 
 His Paris haze is possessed of an 
 entirely different personality from his 
 London fog; he respects the facial 
 idiosyncrasies of an English country- 
 house or an Alpine hostelry with as 
 much honourable exactitude as the 
 great portrait painters have employed 
 in the service of their sitters. It is 
 this feeling for shades of truth in its 
 every aesthetic form that makes him a 
 writer so to be depended upon by the 
 untra veiled. If from his writings they 
 have not the place itself they at least 
 have an impression of it that has not 
 been falsified in tone or colour by any 
 attempt to fit it to fine language or 
 
102 Ibenrs James 
 
 1 arrange" it according to a personal 
 recipe of arrangement. 
 
 And if one does not always love the 
 company he keeps, one can hardly fail 
 of love for the places in which he keeps 
 it. The Portrait of a^Lady is the first 
 of the novels to take us into the 
 familiar life of_an old English country - 
 h^use. The description of Garden- 
 court, with which the book opens 
 expresses the quality produced by the 
 sense of property, of ownership, of 
 vested rights : 
 
 It stood upon a low hill, above the river 
 the river being the Thames, at some forty 
 miles from London. A long gabled front of 
 red brick, with the complexion of which 
 time and the weather had played all sorts of 
 picturesque tricks, only, however, to im 
 prove and refine it, presented itself to the 
 lawn, with its patches of ivy, its clustered 
 chimneys, its windows smothered in creepers. 
 -The house had a name and a history ; the old 
 
Ube Genius of place 103 
 
 gentleman taking his tea would have been 
 delighted to tell you these things: how it 
 had been built under Edward the Sixth, had 
 offered a night s hospitality to the great 
 Elizabeth (whose august person had ex 
 tended itself upon a huge, magnificent, and 
 terribly angular bed which still formed the 
 principal honour of the sleeping apartments), 
 had been a good deal bruised and defaced in 
 Cromwell s wars, and then, under the Re 
 storation, repaired and much enlarged; and 
 how, finally, after having been remodelled 
 and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it 
 had passed into the careful keeping of a 
 shrewd American banker, who had bought 
 it originally because (owing to circumstances 
 too complicated to set forth) it was offered 
 at a great bargain; bought it with much 
 grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its 
 incommodity, and who now, at the end of 
 twenty years, had become conscious of a 
 real aesthetic passion for it, so that he knew 
 all its points, and would tell you just where 
 to stand to see them in combination, and 
 just the hour when the shadows of its various 
 protuberances which fell so softly upon the 
 warm, weary brickwork were of the right 
 measure. 
 
104 t>enr -James 
 
 In the later novels these careful 
 enumerations give way to the freer 
 movement of a more distinguished 
 style; but the sensitiveness to im 
 pressions of ordered humanised habi 
 tations, made "Beautiful by the hand 
 of man, persists; especially the classic 
 element in places, the quality of 
 measure and restraint, finds more and 
 more fervent appreciation. In the 
 earlier though not in the earliest books 
 the romantic and picturesque side of 
 life receives a certain amount of notice. 
 In the London of The Princess 
 Casamassima are even nooks and 
 byways that add to the suggestion in 
 that book of a momentary inclination 
 toward the art of Dickens, on the part 
 of the author, a queer plunge into the 
 region of the grotesque. The miser 
 able room in which the crippled sister 
 
Ube (Benius ot place 105 
 
 of Paul Muniment holds her fantastic 
 court, touched with its quaint charm 
 compounded of pitiful gay suggestions ; 
 the pink dressing-gown so becoming 
 to the cripple s complexion; the multi 
 tude of enlivening prints on the walls ; 
 the gaudy variegated counterpane; 
 then, too, the dark prison to which 
 Hyacinth Robinson is carried by his 
 foster-mother for his final ignorant, 
 haunting visit to his real mother, 
 hideously immured there; the little 
 sordid house in Lomax Place, all 
 these show something of the salient 
 quality, the heightened colour, the 
 touch of strangeness to be found in 
 such luxuriance on the pages of Little 
 Dorrit and Great Expectations. 
 
 When, however, we reach the years 
 signalised by The Spoils of Poynton, 
 The Sacred Fount, The Golden Bowl, 
 
106 TbentE James 
 
 the years in which Mr. James defines 
 himself in his work as "a man habit 
 ually ridden by the twin demons of 
 imagination and observation" and 
 " never enough for his own peace out of 
 anything," we find a change in the 
 character of the scenes presented, a 
 hint that the tranquillising element of 
 order in beauty has become for him 
 too valuable a property to be dispensed 
 with under whatever pressing urgency 
 of the exceptional and curious. Or 
 perhaps it would be a truer statement 
 to say that his interpretation of the 
 "grand manner," in places as in 
 character offers a more positive reve 
 lation of the side of his mind that 
 escapes into the Hellenic spirit for 
 its relief from "the weary weight of 
 this unintelligible world." In such a 
 description as that of Newmarch in 
 
Zlbe Genius of place 107 
 
 The Sacred Fount, the tortured real 
 is corrected by the calm ideal, and 
 abstract synthetised beauty hangs like 
 a brooding angel over the tangled 
 human spectacle: 
 
 There was a general shade in all the lower 
 reaches a fine clear dusk in garden and 
 grove, a thin suffusion of twilight out of 
 which the greater things, the high tree-tops 
 and pinnacles, the long crests of motionless 
 wood and chimnied roof, rose into golden air. 
 The last calls of the birds sounded extra 
 ordinarily loud; they were like the timed 
 serious splashes in wide, still, water, of divers 
 not expecting to rise again. I scarce know 
 what odd consciousness I had of roaming at 
 close of day in the grounds of some castle of 
 enchantment. My few steps brought me to 
 a spot where another perspective crossed 
 our own, so that they made together a ver 
 durous circle with an evening sky above and 
 great lengthening, arching recesses in which 
 the twilight thickened. Oh, it was quite 
 sufficiently a castle of enchantment, and 
 when I noticed four old stone seats, massive 
 
and mossy and symmetrically placed, I recog 
 nised not only the influence, in my adventure 
 of the grand style, but the familiar identity 
 of this consecrated nook, which was so much 
 the type of all the bemused and remembered. 
 We were in a beautiful old picture, we were 
 in a beautiful old tale, and it would n t be 
 the fault of Newmarch if some other carre- 
 four, not far off , did n t balance with this one 
 and offer the alternative of niches in the green 
 ness, occupied by weather-stained statues on 
 florid pedestals. 
 
 The consummate felicity of such a 
 picture is the natural outcome of an 
 inextinguishable zest in the writer for 
 art in which the qualities of grace and 
 largeness and discretion are conspicu 
 ous. Antiquity in these lovely land 
 scapes " awakes and sings," with a 
 classic note. Where the classic note 
 is impossible, there is still the sugges 
 tion in all the pleasant places of an 
 aspect unmeretricious and sincere, as 
 
Ube (Benius ot place 109 
 
 in the dower house at Plash, with its 
 bright, durable, sociable air; its air of 
 "being meant for daily life, for long 
 periods, for uses of high decency." 
 When one comes upon an English 
 drawing-room, it is invariably the 
 picture composed for the intelligent 
 recognition of the artist s eye that 
 meets one. What, for example, could 
 be more reminiscent of some rich ex 
 ample of Venetian painting than the 
 room at Stayes, in that gem of the 
 story-teller s art, The Liar? 
 
 Oliver Lyon took but a few steps into the 
 wide saloon; he stood there a moment look 
 ing at the bright composition of the lamp-lit 
 group of fair women, the single figures, the 
 great setting of white and gold, the panels of 
 old damask, in the centre of each of which 
 was a single celebrated picture. There was a 
 subdued lustre in the scene, and an air as of 
 the shining trains of dresses tumbled over the 
 carpet. 
 
no Ifoenrg James 
 
 The separate units of these big, 
 unified impressions also are lovingly 
 defined as part of the beautiful world 
 in which we Americans "see so much/ 
 It is novel in our fiction to find so 
 much attention paid to what the con 
 ventional moralist is bound to regard 
 as trivial accessories of life, and we of 
 the race of Waymarsh are even inclined 
 to look with suspicion on such a pro 
 fusion of aesthetic detail. 
 
 In this field it is quite conceivable 
 that Mr. James may have learned his 
 lesson from Balzac, but only a pro 
 found interest in the agreeable subject 
 could have carried him so far. There 
 is hardly a book early or late of 
 his in which we do not pass through 
 rooms filled with precious bibelots, 
 veritable mor$eaux de musee, treasures 
 of passionate collectors, triumphs of 
 
Ube Genius of place 
 
 texture, surface, colour, and modelling. | 
 In The Portrait of a Lady, we see the / 
 darker side of the dilettante spirit, . 
 which flowers obnoxiously in Gilbert I 
 Osmond s arid mind. In The Spoils of 
 Poynton, the human figures grow dim 
 and wavering in the presence of fresh 
 old tapestry and deep old damasks, old 
 golds and brasses, ivories and laces. 
 In The Golden Bowl, the collection of 
 Adam Verver and his infallible au 
 thority lend an air of high distinction 
 to the drama played out among ob 
 jects of such inestimable beauty and 
 value. 
 
 All of which for the uninitiated is a 
 tremendous education, a saturation in 
 subtle appreciations that can have but 
 one result that of quickening interest 
 in all that man has beautified, and of 
 quickening resentment of the much 
 
H2 Ifoenrp 3ames 
 
 that man has done to vulgarise and 
 debase. 
 
 And for the initiated the pleasure is 
 still keener, since the commerce of 
 beauty-loving minds is a revel in 
 aesthetic rapture. It is not until Mr. 
 James returns to America, to receive 
 there, after his many years of absence, 
 his "Autumn impressions," that we 
 realise, and undeniably with a pang, the 
 truth of the ancient saying, that we 
 cannot have our cake and eat it too. 
 He has fed us with the great rich cake 
 of art, and the response of our palate 
 to the delicious flavour has been keen 
 and constant; but when, as in the 
 rural communities of New England, he 
 is compelled reluctantly to "fall back 
 on the land," frankly confessing to the 
 sense of starvation accompanying the 
 act ; when we learn from him that the 
 
Genius ot place 113 
 
 adventure on this occasion of finding 
 in the wilderness a house containing 
 examples of Manet, Degas, Monet, 
 Whistler * made everything else shrivel 
 and fade," that it was "like the sud 
 den trill of a nightingale, lord of the 
 hushed evening," we are suddenly 
 and lugubriously aware that the atten 
 tion he has given to the cultivated 
 scene has worked for many years 
 against his paying any attention a1 
 all to the scene of which tonic wildnej 
 is the essence. Yet few writers in all 
 the world and all the ages could be 
 trusted so implicitly with a sunset or a 
 dawn, with the ocean or the sweet, 
 wild fields. How little their poignanl 
 poetry would suffer from his dis 
 criminating touch is attested by his 
 rare references to the lonelier aspects 
 of nature. The perfect expressive- 
 
H4 Denn? 3ame0 
 
 ness of these stirs in the mind a 
 rebellious, an ungracious regret that, 
 having given us so much, he could not 
 give us all. As an irritating, stimu 
 lating proof of what he could have 
 done for the lovely, careless land of 
 ours and his, he has scattered over the 
 pages published during his visit here 
 jewels of description for the decora 
 tion of his autumn tour. This of the 
 charming Berkshire hill-country: 
 
 The grand manner was in the winding as 
 cent, the rocky defile, the sudden rest for 
 wonder, and all the splendid reverse of the 
 medal, the world belted afresh as with purple 
 sown with pearls melting, in other words, 
 into violet hills with vague white towns on 
 their breasts. 
 
 And of the noble Saco valley, where, 
 for a moment at least, curious question 
 of human documents seems to drop 
 
TOe Genius of place 115 
 
 even for so faithful a student, who has 
 sacrificed, since sacrifice of one kind or 
 another was inevitable, the frequency of 
 his interrogation of the soul of nature : 
 
 I went down into the valley that was an 
 impression to woo by stages ; I walked beside 
 one of those great fields of standing Indian 
 corn which make, to the eye, so perfect a note 
 for the rest of the American rural picture, 
 throwing the conditions back as far as our 
 past permits, rather than forward, as so many 
 other things do, into the age to come. The 
 maker of these reflections betook himself at 
 last, in any case, to an expanse of rock by a 
 large bend of the Saco and lingered there 
 under the infinite charm of the place. The 
 rich full lapse of the river, the perfect brown- 
 ness, clear and deep, as of liquid agate, in its 
 wide swirl, the large indifferent ease in its 
 pace and motion, as of some great benevolent 
 institution smoothly working; all this, with 
 the sense of the deepening autumn about, 
 gave, I scarce know what pastoral nobleness 
 to the scene, something raising it out of the 
 reach of even the most restless of analysts. 
 The analyst, in fact, could scarce be restless 
 
n6 1benr James 
 
 here; the impression, so strong and so final, 
 persuaded him perfectly to peace. This, 
 on September Sunday mornings, was what 
 American beauty should be; it filled to the 
 brim its idea and its measure, albeit Mount 
 Washington, hazily overhung, happened not 
 to contribute to the effect. It was the great, 
 gay river, singing as it went, like some reck 
 less adventurer, good-humoured for the hour 
 and with his hands in his pockets, that 
 argued the whole case and carried everything 
 assentingly before it. 
 
 Not all the references are as happy 
 as these, or as full of the splendid and 
 tranquil joy of the season. Readers 
 of the Impressions," will not have 
 missed in them the frequent mention 
 of taste, the frequent assumption of it 
 in the land itself, its natural arrange 
 ment, its recondite suggestions of draw 
 ing-rooms, and dining-tables. These 
 are vagaries of instinct, noted only as 
 determining the individual bent of the 
 
Ube Genius of place 117 
 
 writer s mind away from the uncivil 
 ised and uninhabited, that make one 
 realise how familiarity may breed, not, 
 indeed, contempt, but its opposite in 
 certain exclusive sympathies and ap 
 preciations. The whole explanation 
 lies, perhaps, in the question following 
 one of the freer one of the perfect 
 passages of description: 
 
 Did one by chance exaggerate, did one 
 rhapsodise amiss, and was the apparent 
 superior charm of the whole thing mainly 
 but an accident of one s situation, the state 
 of having happened to be deprived to excess 
 that is, far too long of naturalism in 
 quantity f Here it was in such quantity as 
 one hadn t for years had to deal with; and 
 that might by itself be a luxury corrupting 
 the judgment. 
 
 For the American reader it is the 
 rhapsody that attests a judgment 
 still uncorrupted, and a taste for the 
 
Dent James 
 
 purest in "style," and that makes the 
 covetous wish that a writer so equipped 
 with the faculties of observation and 
 reflection could oftener have looked 
 upon "nature unadorned/ to record 
 its richer suggestions. 
 
Ill 
 
 BUT we have gained from this long 
 relinquishment of "naturalism," no 
 doubt, the sense, quite as valuable and 
 perhaps more persistently interesting, 
 of civilisation and the presence of 
 wealth. 
 
 In all the work of Mr. James we are 
 conscious of a massive material splen 
 dour against which are thrown the 
 shimmering reflections of character 
 and temperament. However elusive 
 these may be, the world we see about 
 us is firm and rich as cloth of gold; and 
 while money is infrequently given a 
 prominent place in the discussion of 
 
 human experience, the results of large, 
 119 
 
120 Ibenrg 3ames 
 
 of immense expenditures are every 
 where. The wealth of centuries is 
 distilled in these wonderful houses, 
 these private galleries of priceless art, 
 these scattered, precious objects ; while 
 the magnificence of the social scale, 
 the innumerable festivities, the vast, 
 if not entirely noble hospitality, speak 
 of great present incomes and a lavish 
 disposition of them. The mere im 
 pression of assimilated and inexhaust 
 ible material resources is not, however, 
 so uncommon in English fiction as to 
 be especially worthy of note, unless 
 with it we are shown a mode of 
 thought or an attitude of mind to 
 which the possession and conscious 
 ness of wealth bears an intimate 
 relation. 
 
 It is not important in a world of 
 acts and motives that people have 
 
S\* THE^P 
 
 ft l ; vGRSITY 
 
 v _ 
 
 TTbe (Question of Tffllealtb T 2 i 
 
 money: it is greatly important what 
 they do with it, and how they think 
 of it, how it influences their lives and 
 the lives of others. What is the 
 temper of Mr. James s characters to 
 ward the solid substance of their 
 fortunes, often of such heroic propor 
 tions? Do they hoard it, do they 
 spend with lack of thrift, do they give 
 it away? It is suggestive to reflect 
 that in the case of the Americans they 
 chiefly give it away. In The Portrait 
 of a Lady, that story of multitudinous 
 threads, the attitude of Isabel Archer 
 toward her inherited means indicates 
 how literally, for her, money is means, 
 the means in this instance of endow 
 ing a scoundrel, but that is a matter 
 apart. After receiving her uncle s leg 
 acy the question at once became how 
 to get rid of it. But for her money 
 
122 Ibenrs 3ames 
 
 she would not have married as she 
 did: 
 
 At bottom her money had been a burden, 
 had been on her mind, which was filled with 
 the desire to transfer the weight of it to 
 some other conscience. What would lighten 
 her own conscience more effectually than to 
 make it over to the man who had the best 
 taste in the world? Unless she should give 
 it to a hospital, there was nothing better she 
 could do with it ; and there was no charitable 
 institution in which she was as much in 
 terested as in Gilbert Osmond. He would 
 use her fortune in a way that would make 
 her think better of it, and rub off a certain 
 grossness which attached to the good luck of 
 an unexpected inheritance. There had been 
 nothing very delicate in inheriting seventy 
 thousand pounds; the delicacy had been all 
 in Mr. Touchett s leaving them to her. But 
 to marry Gilbert Osmond and bring him 
 such a portion in that there would be deli 
 cacy for her as well. 
 
 In The Bostonians the same hesita 
 tion to enjoy the sweet fruits of pro- 
 
ZTbe Question of Tldealtb 123 
 
 sperity is conspicuous in the attitude 
 of Olive Chancellor toward the * elegant 
 home " to which her cousin makes 
 brazen reference: "Do you make it a 
 reproach to me that I happen to have 
 a little money?" she bitterly asks, 
 "The dearest wish of my life is to do 
 something with it for others for the 
 miserable. " The kind old father in 
 The Reverberator is a helplessly mon 
 eyed person, but, once having made 
 his fortune, the last thing that occurs 
 to him is the desirability of keeping it. 
 His prospective son-in-law announces 
 to him his own disinherited state : 
 
 "I ought to let you know," he says, "that 
 my father now declines to do anything for 
 me." 
 
 "To do anything for you?" 
 
 "To give me any money." 
 
 "Well, that makes me feel better," said 
 Mr. Dosson. 
 
124 IbentE James 
 
 "There 11 be enough for all especially if 
 we economise in newspapers," Delia declared, 
 jocosely. 
 
 To have " enough for all" appears 
 to be the financial ideal of the Ameri 
 can parent, as Mr. James conceives 
 him: this seems to him the chief use 
 of his millions. Adam Verver, in The 
 Golden Bowl, plans, to be sure, an in 
 vestment of his wealth unsurpassed 
 in "style" by the methods of the 
 Renaissance princes. What could be 
 more definitely in the "grand man 
 ner" than his fastidious search for 
 morceauoc de muse*e, his odyssey for 
 the love of stainless trophies, his 
 willingness in the presence of superior 
 value to "give the price," yet the 
 conscious motive of his life is accumu 
 lation for the sake of bestowal; for 
 the final enrichment of American City, 
 
TTbe (Question of Wealtb 125 
 
 the place where he started in business 
 and toward which, characteristically, 
 he feels a sentiment of indebtedness, a 
 desire to make up to it for having 
 benefited him. And "his easy way 
 with his millions," it is thrown out, 
 taxes to small purpose, in the case 
 of the legal arrangements for his 
 daughter s marriage, the principle of 
 reciprocity. The beautiful heroine of 
 The Wings of the Dove has even an 
 easier way with her millions, a way so 
 easy that mere death is made to seem 
 a small price to pay for a piece of be 
 neficence so "good" in the collector s 
 sense as that with which she proposes 
 to cap her accumulations of kind 
 attentions to her fellow mortals. 
 
 In choosing this mild, beneficent type 
 to represent the "successful person" 
 so prominent in his native country, 
 
126 Ibenrs James 
 
 Mr. James has carried on his predi 
 lection for that quality in character 
 which, like culture, is the most easily 
 recognisable and the least easily de 
 fined. Like culture it suggests per 
 fection as "an inward condition of the 
 mind and spirit" and is wholly in 
 dependent of outward circumstances. 
 "Delicacy" is a word too light and 
 frail and unimportant to carry its 
 mysterious significance. It haunts the 
 spiritual kingdom of his men, his wo 
 men, and his children; if it is present, 
 beauty is present; if it is absent, 
 all ornamental attributes wear the 
 aspect presented to Maggie Verver 
 by the Golden Bowl after its connec 
 tion with her unhappiness has been 
 discovered: "As a document/ some 
 how, it was ugly, though it might have 
 a decorative grace." 
 
TTbe Question of Mealtb 127 
 
 It is not, however, to be inferred 
 that Mr. James confines his observa 
 tion of the moneyed class to the dozen 
 or more delightful persons for whom 
 their money is the ripest of opportu 
 nities to display their indifference to 
 it save as the medium of sweet 
 charity. The attitude borne by his 
 characters toward their possessions 
 is always implicitly if not explicitly 
 indicated and has as many variations 
 as the members of the human family 
 show in their manner of holding them 
 selves, of walking, of eating, or of 
 dressing. The gross, careless, stupid 
 way of expenditure takes its place in 
 the total effect; the way of the Brig- 
 stocks in The Spoils of Poynton, with 
 their tragically hideous house, "per 
 versely full of souvenirs of places even 
 more ugly than itself and of things 
 
128 IbentE 3ames 
 
 it would have been a pious duty to 
 forget," their love of the polish that 
 is put on with a brush, their avidity 
 and lack of aesthetic standard :* the 
 immoral way of poor Maisie s various 
 guardians, marked by the money- 
 hunger of depraved appetites; the im 
 moderate, insolent way of a society 
 in which hostesses and guests are per 
 petually occupied with casting big 
 nets for large, unintelligent fish, in 
 which the poor are at the mercy of 
 the opulent and pay with their pride 
 as at Nundham where they do not 
 pay with their money ; and the merely 
 sumptuous, liberal way of such places 
 as the scene of The Sacred Fount, 
 where the writer of the story reflects 
 that he and his companions were so 
 fine and formal that the summer 
 stars called to them in vain " We had 
 
Ube Question ot Mealtb 129 
 
 ignored them in our crystal cage, 
 among our tinkling lamps; no more 
 free really to alight than if we had 
 been dashing in locked railway train 
 across a lovely land." 
 
 The one point usually made in one 
 way or another, directly or by con 
 trast, is that money spells opportunity. 
 What do you mean by rich ? old Mr. 
 Touchett on his death-bed inquires of 
 his son, "I^call people rich," Ralph 
 responds, "when they are able to 
 gratify their imagination." With this 
 superb definition of wealth to start 
 with, much may be done in tracing its 
 correspondence to the actual use of 
 money in life. In nearly all the nov-7 
 els an important part of the web isN 
 furnished by the ability or inability ] 
 of the characters to gratify their im- 
 agination. Occasionally that faculty 
 
 9 
 
130 Ibenrs James 
 
 fattens on diet of the sparest, as in 
 the case of the telegraph operator at 
 Cocker s who enters the homes of 
 luxury vicariously through the tele 
 grams coming in from all sides upon 
 her, bringing her bits of the great life 
 on every hand. Less rarely it takes 
 an immense amount of wealth to 
 furnish a very small imagination. As 
 a rule, too, the pinched, cramped, 
 toiling characters depicted in a few 
 scattered instances rejoice in the ex 
 istence of money in the world, boast 
 an intuitive knowledge of the joys 
 made possible by it, and find their 
 satisfaction in dreaming of lives con 
 trolled by opulent circumstances. It 
 was because Hyacinth Robinson in 
 The Princess Casamassima was the 
 child of a member of the aristocracy, 
 we must infer, that he felt the tug of 
 
ZTbe (Question of TKHealtb 131 
 
 his heritage of fastidious tastes and 
 interests, but the old dressmaker, 
 who rescues him from the gutter, feels 
 a glory in his lineage sufficient to 
 eclipse entirely in her mind the shame 
 of it, and Rosy Mumiment, the sister 
 of the socialist, and, from the worldly 
 standpoint, altogether the most hope 
 lessly afflicted member of the dramatis 
 persona, visits upon her brother ridi 
 cule and reproach for his antagonism 
 toward the "upper classes." This, 
 no doubt, is a rather fine frame of 
 mind. It has, at all events, the air of 
 dignity inseparable from an ungrudg 
 ing willingness to recognise superiority 
 without cringing, even where the su 
 periority is a purely material asset. 
 The opposite frame of mind is shown, 
 as if for the value of contrast, in one 
 conspicuous instance, that of Kate 
 
132 Dents James 
 
 Croy s unscrupulously abject family in 
 The Wings of the Dove. Here are the 
 cringing and the overbearing spirit in 
 cheerless union. The crumpled, soiled 
 and undistinguished poverty of Mar 
 ian Condrip s much -mismanaged home 
 flaunts itself like the flag of pestilence 
 to the recognition of the reader. Her 
 touchiness" on the subject of her 
 disagreeable dwelling and unpolished 
 little ones prepares the mind for the 
 absence of self-respect in her attitude 
 toward wealth, her abasement before 
 possible means of revenue. Her 
 mother had instilled into her mind 
 early in life the proper mental relation 
 to a rich Aunt. To be wounded and 
 stiff while accepting this was the 
 mark of the genuine pride of poverty: 
 "The little she offered was to be ac 
 cepted under protest, yet not, really, 
 
Ube (Sluestton of TKIlealtb 133 
 
 because it was excessive. It wounded 
 them there was the rub! because it 
 it fell short." 
 
 For this type, and for this alone, 
 Mr. James has an almost invidious 
 touch. vGenerously as he treats all 
 members of the human family who in 
 either their intellectual or moral out 
 look show a trace of nobility, for the 
 people who grovel he makes not even 
 the apology of the creator to whom 
 nothing he has created is alien. The 
 story of Kate Croy and Milly Theale 
 is fairly divided among those whose 
 attitude toward money is their dis 
 tinction. Grovelling, brutality, and 
 generosity are all freely exhibited, 
 and the ill-spenders and ill-keepers 
 are, together, as in Dante s Inferno, 
 scuffling over a fair world lost. The 
 tissue of sordid hopes, ignoble schemes, 
 
134 IbentE 3ames 
 
 monstrous treacheries, would be the 
 dreariest product of the human imag 
 ination, not even to be surpassed by 
 the Cousin Betty of Balzac, were it not 
 for the spirit of the "Dove," hovering 
 in pity and tenderness over a world 
 of penury and envious desire. This, 
 to be sure, is saying that life without 
 goodness would be all evil, but with 
 Mr. James the evil is seldom so un 
 mitigated as in this case by tritura- 
 , tions of the good. Of the taste defined 
 by the French as the prompt ability to 
 discern the presence of beauty amid 
 defects he has so much that we are 
 seldom confronted in his work with 
 more than a fragment of purely vicious 
 human nature. Even of poverty as 
 poverty, of the ugly, grim, dismal side 
 of it, there is little. In his total view 
 of life he is inconclusive in that di- 
 
(Question of Mealtb 135 
 
 rection. It is not easy to gather from 
 him that he is curious about the 
 desperately downtrodden and help 
 lessly unfortunate. In The Princess 
 Casamassima, a book entirely dedi 
 cated to the violent social inequalities 
 of a great civilisation, he throws over 
 the scene a light so complex as to be 
 merely bewildering. Carefully as the 
 field is studied there is an absence of 
 concentration, a faltering in message, a 
 sense of confusion, and, one is tempted 
 to suspect, a possible lapse of interest, 
 as if the writer were not wholly won 
 by his theme. The gulf between the 
 heights and depths of London life in 
 its extreme variations is perhaps too 
 great to be bridged in any one novel, 
 especially by an author for whom 
 the smallest problem of our involved 
 human relations presents innumerable 
 
136 tbenrs James 
 
 gradations and shades to be taken 
 account of in the artistic solution. 
 It is in The Princess Casamassima, 
 however, that he introduces Millicent 
 ^Henning, the big, joyous symbol of the 
 /energetic, capable working-class, the 
 Vmost vivid to be found in fiction. No 
 other portrait of a member of this 
 much-depicted class awakens such a 
 sense of life and movement, of health 
 and powers in full activity. Millicent 
 is fine and bold and big of bone, loud- 
 voiced and cheap in taste, fearless, 
 fresh, and beautiful. Her vulgarity 
 is faced with a courage equal to her 
 own; but we think of her finally as 
 something pleasant to remember, some 
 thing like a swift rush of air through 
 close rooms, like vivid blossoms set 
 in dingy window casements. Her im 
 age is as far as possible from the type 
 
Ube (Question of TKIleaitb 137 
 
 of failure; is quite, within its range, 
 the type of success in its abounding 
 physical vigour, its strength of growth 
 and coarseness of texture, its freedom 
 and conventionality, its worldliness 
 and honest kindness. Here, certainly, 
 the author was interested, we may 
 freely imagine, even captivated by 
 the bloom and brightness of his hand 
 some young subject. He says of 
 her: 
 
 She was very handsome, with a shining, 
 bold, good-natured eye, a fine, free, facial 
 oval, an abundance of brown hair, and a 
 smile which showed the whiteness of her 
 teeth. Her head was set upon a fair, strong 
 neck, and her tall young figure was rich in 
 feminine curves. Her gloves, covering her 
 wrists insufficiently, showed the redness of 
 those parts, in the interstices of the numerous 
 silver bracelets that encircled them, and 
 Miss Pynsent made the observation that her 
 hands were not more delicate than her feet. 
 She was not graceful, and even the little 
 
138 fbenrs James 
 
 dressmaker, whose preference for distin 
 guished forms never deserted her, indulged 
 in the mental reflection that she was common, 
 for all her magnificence ; but there was some 
 thing about her indescribably fresh, successful 
 and satisfying. She was, to her blunt, ex 
 panded finger-tips, a daughter of London, of 
 the crowded streets and hustling traffic of 
 the great city ; she had drawn her health and 
 strength from its dingy courts and foggy 
 thoroughfares, and peopled its parks and 
 squares and crescents with her ambitions; 
 it had entered into her blood and her bone, 
 the sound of her voice and the carriage of her 
 head ; she understood it by instinct and loved 
 it with passion; she represented its immense 
 vulgarities and curiosities, its brutality and 
 its knowingness, its good-nature and its im 
 pudence, and might have figured, in an 
 allegorical procession, as a kind of glorified 
 towns-woman, a nymph of the wilderness 
 of Middlesex, a flower of the accumulated 
 parishes, the genius of urban civilisation, the 
 muse of cockneyism. The restrictions under 
 which Miss Pynsent regarded her would have 
 cost the dressmaker some fewer scruples if 
 she had guessed the impression she made 
 upon Millicent, and how the whole place 
 
Ube CJuestton of Mealtb 139 
 
 seemed to that prosperous young lady to 
 smell of poverty and failure. 
 
 One has the feeling in reading this 
 description that this is the normal 
 outcome of poverty, which is a dragon 
 to be laid low by the sword of boldness, 
 of bravery, of confidence; that it is 
 only potentially a monster and ready 
 at the magic touch of efficiency to 
 throw off its shell and declare itself the 
 radiant godmother of the fairy-tale. 
 And this, we may argue, is the healthy, 
 philosophic mood, removed equally 
 from facile optimism and languid pes 
 simism. It is not, however, the mood 
 commonly displayed by Mr. James to 
 ward failure and success. It is, in 
 deed, hardly too bold an inference to 
 draw from the mass of his work that he 
 prefers the former to the latter, but 
 it must be failure that includes success. 
 
140 1foenr James 
 
 It must be failure based on deliberate 
 choice between obvious arrival and 
 subtle detention in the journey toward 
 accomplishment. The artists, writers, 
 the men of business, like Strether, 
 whose moral is that in any affair 
 involving an obligation the saving 
 grace is not to get anything for your 
 self, these are the people who stand 
 a little at one side in the novels, con 
 nected by a temperamental kinship, 
 and always peculiarly likable, inter 
 esting, modest, fine. If they are sel 
 dom greatly endowed with the goods 
 of the world they have found their 
 account in riches of the mind and the 
 imagination. They are the types who 
 " gratify their imagination" with a 
 currency somewhat more precious than 
 the coin of the realm; who are posi 
 tively richer than they could be with 
 
Ube (Question ot Mealtb 
 
 that commodity, since the value of 
 most things lies in the amount that 
 has been sacrificed for them. Even 
 Kate Croy, with her developed liking 
 for material things, saw money as a 
 means a means of obtaining Merton 
 Densher, and it was "on the side of the 
 mind that Densher was rich for her, 
 and mysterious and strong." The side 
 on which in his vacillating, dubious 
 way he becomes rich and strong and 
 mysterious for the reader is a different 
 one; but certainly he is never so 
 much a success as at the moment of 
 his renouncement. Densher, however, 
 is one of the least, as Strether is one of 
 the most, appealing and inspiriting 
 images of failure. The great point 
 made by them all as well as by the 
 images of success is that genuine satis 
 factions are tremendously expensive; 
 
142 Ibenrg James 
 
 that either in life or art or money 
 they cost prodigiously. And the true 
 favourites of fortune are those who, 
 not asquint in mind," are moved to 
 spend "with measure." If gold can 
 be made to "drip colour," to use his 
 happy description of St. Marks, Mr. 
 James approves it. If it adds to the 
 richness and comeliness, the comfort 
 and charm of life, it is in the great 
 tradition of wealth, and if not, the 
 wonderful material of riches is merely 
 poured, inexpensively, into a void from 
 which it must again be gathered, for 
 fresh permutation. 
 
 This is not a new or isolated view of 
 the question of wealth, but one that 
 has been cherished by all philosophers, 
 from the time of the singer of sweet 
 Colonus, who have seen life steadily 
 and seen it whole. The contribution 
 
(SJuestion ot Mealtb 143 
 
 made to it by Mr. James is largely one 
 of the temper in which it is presented; 
 the admirable liberality with which 
 inclusion is made. It is certainly rare 
 for an aesthetic taste so strong and 
 so sensitive to perceive the positive 
 aesthetic value of moral and intellectual 
 visions. It is rare for the temperament 
 of the dreamer and mystic to have so 
 true an intuition for details of form 
 and surface in tangible objects. Ap 
 preciation of the two kinds and uses 
 of wealth, the material and the imma 
 terial, this, perhaps, is the marked 
 characteristic of his representation 
 of society in which the "picture and 
 the idea" are present in such even 
 proportion. 
 
IV 
 
 THE temper of the dreamer and the 
 mystic united to that of the observer 
 and analyst gives an extraordinary 
 chance for the play of imagination, 
 and imagination, of course, is of the 
 very essence of vital fiction. Without 
 it we may have moral force, con 
 scientious observation and report, even 
 charm and the semblance of life, but 
 we shall not have life itself. The 
 "busy inner world-building power of 
 our minds, " continually supported by 
 our experience and the report of our 
 senses, is what makes coherent and 
 sane the "show world" with which, 
 if we happen to be artists, we strive 
 
 to explain the actualities surrounding 
 
 144 
 
(Imagination 145 
 
 us. We all of us, even if we are not 
 artists, have to a certain degree this 
 world-building power; but unless it is 
 present in eminent force in the work 
 of dramatists and novelists we miss 
 from that work the deep, rich flow of 
 character through plastic forms and 
 apparently capricious facts. We miss 
 the compelling sense of reality pro 
 duced by correspondence between the 
 understanding and things seen. If the 
 objects defined for us by the artist 
 follow the outline of his thought and 
 are expressive of an inner life which 
 he shares with the inexpressive portion 
 of humanity, we recognise them, not 
 as dead symbols, but as quick with the 
 universal pulse. If the men and wo 
 men placed by him at different angles 
 for our inspection look out of their 
 eyes with suggestions of a personal 
 
146 Dent 5ames 
 
 "^experience into which we ourselves 
 may enter by the gate of personal 
 interest; if they make us realise per 
 fectly that there are lives other than 
 our own which we may live; other 
 than our own, yet familiar to us so far 
 as we have explored the region of the 
 soul, we know that the world has been 
 enlarged for us and that we have 
 been in the presence not of sterile but 
 of life-producing art; art which, in 
 a word, is at the service of creative 
 imagination. 
 
 This is the only test. The questions 
 of method, style, and theory, so deeply 
 important to the artist himself, are 
 only secondarily interesting to the 
 critic. By whatever method of art 
 the sense of life has been produced, if 
 it is there the performance to one 
 degree or another is successful, and 
 
flmaoinatfon 147 
 
 by the recognition or non- recogni 
 tion of it the critic must stand or 
 fall. But if it is there, one most 
 plausibly may argue, it must affirm 
 itself, it is the business of the artist 
 to make it unmistakable. To whom? 
 To all? 
 
 We must then limit the province of 
 the artist to the basic type of life, if 
 there be one, the simplicity of which is 
 beyond the recognition of none, other 
 wise it would be impossible to draw 
 the line. If not for all, for what class 
 of the public should writers write, 
 painters paint, musicians compose, 
 architects build? If we look at art 
 from the socialist s standpoint we may 
 very well insist that its highest form 
 is a universal form from which all 
 classes of mind can get equal pleasure. 
 But if art means to us the extension of 
 
148 UtentK? James 
 
 our power to link fresh truth to that 
 already within the range of our ex 
 perience; if it means the binding this 
 and that on every hand to the know 
 ledge of life already possessed; if it 
 means the fusion in one emotion of 
 recognition and surprise, as if in the 
 beings of a new world we should 
 recognise the familiars of the old, ob 
 viously we cannot set limits and im 
 pose restrictions. If we wish to be let 
 out into a region of new images and 
 fresh feelings, to bar the door is not the 
 effective first step. If, giving ourselves 
 the utmost freedom, however, and mak 
 ing no restrictive demands, we find in 
 the fictitious characters under our ob 
 servation unreasonableness, lawlessness 
 and incoherence, a want of unifying 
 intelligence behind their activities, of 
 personal feeling behind their exhibited 
 
imagination 149 
 
 traits, we are justified in doubting 
 their source in a constructive or cre 
 ative imagination. Are we thus disap- 
 appointed in the characters Mr. James 
 has made? Are they not stamped 
 with both universal and particular 
 truth, and do they not live as the 
 result of his personal point of view? 
 Are they real and expressive, or are 
 they fantastic and futile, merely liter 
 ary as opposed to human figures ? 
 
 The answer to this query is not to 
 be given by the inattentive reader. 
 The fact that Mr. James surrounds 
 his figures with atmosphere; that he 
 forms them by such an expensive 
 process, to use an expression of his 
 own; that he builds them slowly, 
 richly, with accumulations of experi 
 ence and reflection; that he provides 
 for them a close tissue of relations and 
 
James 
 
 contacts, all this prevents their spring 
 ing full-grown into our consciousness 
 at the first moment of our knowing 
 them. And we may reflect that this 
 is also true of the people with whom 
 we have had our most enduring rela 
 tions in the actual world. We must 
 admit, in any case, that such psycho 
 logically complex creations as Maisie 
 Farange, Nanda Brookenham, and 
 Maggie Verver are not for a merely 
 bowing acquaintance. In life such 
 an acquaintance would present each 
 of them as a perfectly simple person, 
 as even, perhaps, a trifle dull. To 
 show the amount of colour and tone in 
 these apparently pale intelligences Mr. 
 James interprets with precision and 
 subtlety their shades of feeling, and 
 distils from their character its finest 
 essence. It is possible that short cuts 
 
Imagination 151 
 
 exist for producing the same result, 
 but no short cut known to the novelist 
 as yet has done it. The complexity 
 of the simple is a delicate matter to deal 
 with, and the intellectual instrument 
 can hardly be too delicately used. If, 
 however, the attention of the reader is 
 won, the impression left with him is of 
 a whole and human conception. Dis 
 section into small parts is not the same 
 thing as the putting together of small 
 parts to form a large effect ; and a writer 
 of the artistic importance of Mr. James 
 does not, of course, dissect his char 
 acters, although the expression is a 
 favourite one with his critics. His 
 process in its elementary stages may 
 be supposed to be not unlike that of 
 almost any artist worthy of discussion. 
 With him, as with others, no doubt, 
 the idea or conception stands in the 
 
152 Dents James 
 
 secret workshop of his mind, a living 
 model, not a mechanical device, fair 
 and thrilling in its free, primal aspect. 
 The point, then, is to reproduce it in 
 the way best adapted to bringing out 
 its characteristic qualities, and this is 
 where artistic theory may come in. 
 The formula for the production of a 
 masterpiece is given, with as much 
 precision as is possible to any formula, 
 in the following passage from The 
 Tragic Muse, where Sherringham is 
 visited by a perception of 
 
 the perfect presence of mind, unconfused, 
 unhurried by emotion, that any artistic per 
 formance requires, and that all, whatever 
 the instrument, require in exactly the same 
 degree: the application, in other words, 
 clear and calculated, crystal-firm as it were, 
 of the idea conceived in the glow of ex 
 perience, of suffering, of joy. 
 
 It is in the glow of experience, of 
 
Imagination 153 
 
 suffering, of joy, certainly, that the 
 imagination creates its ideal; the rest 
 is workmanship, and the manner of 
 this depends greatly on the fulness 
 of expression desired by the artist. 
 If he begins, as is frequently trie-case, 
 with a swiftly executed cartoon or 
 sketch of his plan, he almost invariably 
 puts into it a fire and spirit which, 
 with equal certainty, more or less 
 evaporate in the elaborated achieve 
 ment. A sketch, however, can be 
 only the suggestion, not the realisa 
 tion of a masterpiece. If we care only 
 for the idea in its simplest aspect, hot 
 from the mind, we may prefer it ; but 
 if we care for the value and function 
 of a developed conception, passion 
 ately true in outline and modelling to 
 the details of the informing thought, 
 exquisitely filled out and refined, we 
 
154 Ibenrs 3ames 
 
 would hardly choose, if the choice 
 were ours to make, to sacrifice the 
 masterpiece. 
 
 If, then, we perceive in such a 
 subject as in the case of Maisie 
 the development of the moral sense 
 in a child under the pressure of vice 
 and deception, an idea demanding the 
 subtlest realisation of the actual nature 
 of a child, and if in the accomplished 
 work we perceive the lovely flowering 
 of the tortured moral sense without a 
 strain on the credulity of the reader, 
 we must suppose that the creative 
 imagination has been effectively at 
 work, whether the craftsmanship has 
 shown as loose and free or fine and 
 close and searching. 
 
 If in The Golden Bowl the moral 
 charm of the theme seems to us to lie 
 in the portrayal of an infrangible 
 
IFmaginatfon 155 
 
 innocence of soul to be found at the 
 core of certain natures, and if Maggie 
 Verver, standing light and clear against 
 a background of infinite complication, 
 is the embodiment of that innocence, 
 we must from all experience of art 
 assume that she first appeared to the 
 artist in her gracious integrity, and 
 that the loading of her lovely portrait 
 with significant detail is the mark of 
 his appreciation of how much existed 
 in her to express. She is, in fact, 
 like Maisie and Nanda Brookenham 
 and Mildred Theale, at once a type 
 and a highly specialised individuality. 
 She is a type of the goodness, of the 
 engaging naturalness enhanced and 
 made beautiful by delicacy and warmed 
 by intense responsible affections, for 
 appreciation of which the common 
 world has no sense fine enough. She 
 
156 t>enr James 
 
 is not, however, left in the spacious 
 region of the general, where a few 
 largely composed conceptions of human 
 qualities wander about for our easy 
 discernment. She has curious intri 
 cacies of feeling and judgment hidden 
 from the casual glance. Her com- 
 munings and doubtings and belie vings. 
 bring her home to our credence as a 
 person beside whom we have walked, 
 in whom we have lived. No such 
 sense of close familiarity broods over 
 our intercourse with Thackeray s Ame 
 lia and Laura Pendennis or George 
 Eliot s Romola and Dorothea and 
 Dinah, who in their way stand also 
 for responsible affections. An imagin 
 ation of the most vital sort is required 
 for such a scene as that between 
 Maggie and her father, ending in the 
 embrace, august and almost stern/ 
 
flmaainatiou 157 
 
 that sealed the expression of their 
 belief in each other. Not even the 
 frank and tender pathos of Colonel 
 Newcome s relation with his son probes 
 so deeply the heart of the filial in 
 stinct. A still broader and swifter 
 movement of the mind is needed for 
 such a scene as that between Maggie 
 and the Prince in the presence of the 
 shattered bowl; for such a scene as 
 the final one between Nanda and Mr. 
 Longdon, or that on which Maisie takes 
 leave of Sir Claude. It is the magic of 
 genius thus to surprise sentiment at 
 its source, and at moments of great 
 moral significance to move the heart 
 with pity. 
 
 Ordinarily, writers possessed of the 
 imagination that produces life to a 
 great measure are lacking in deco 
 rative fancy. Life is so serious to 
 
158 1foenr James 
 
 them even as the subject of satire 
 that the mind declines to play with it, 
 to dress it in costume, and laughingly 
 parade it. Even Thackeray, invete 
 rate joker as he was, could not "have 
 fun with his mind." His fun, where 
 it is not merely the ebullition of high 
 spirits, is too deeply tinged with irony 
 to communicate the pleasure of the 
 game. With Mr. James, however, 
 fancy follows imagination as some 
 fluttering small bird follows, some 
 times, perhaps, impeding, the flight 
 of a larger one. In the use of meta 
 phor especially, this swift - circling, 
 darting humour holds the reader fas 
 cinated by its unexpected flashings 
 and flexions, and continually enter 
 tained by gay parallels and whimsical 
 suggestions. What could be more 
 actively in the comic vein than the 
 
tfmacjination 159 
 
 reflection on Maisie s first parting from 
 Mrs. Wix? "The child had lately 
 been to the dentist s; she had a term 
 of comparison for the screwed-up in 
 tensity of the scene. It was dread 
 fully silent, as it had been when her 
 tooth was taken out." Maisie herself, 
 between her dreadful parents, is "a 
 ready vessel for bitterness, a deep 
 little porcelain cup in which biting 
 acids could be mixed"; and in her 
 pursuit of an education she goes to 
 lectures where the fountain of know 
 ledge in the form of a high voice 
 plashes "in the stillness of rows of 
 faces thrust out like empty jugs." 
 Lady John s "ornamental informa 
 tion" in The Sacred Fount is "as 
 strong as a coat of furniture polish," 
 and that mistress of both culture and 
 slang makes one think of "a hat 
 
160 fbenrE James 
 
 askew on a bust of Virgil," while in the 
 same book May Server s bedimmed 
 smile flutters "like a bird with a 
 broken wing." Before the young wo 
 man in the "Cage" the gathered 
 bloom of London experience passes at 
 close range "the nose of the observer 
 was brushed by the bouquet, yet she 
 could never really pluck even a daisy. " 
 The heroine of "Europe" makes 
 her tremendous preparation for a jour 
 ney to that foreign clime, and her sisters 
 talk of her preparation "as if it were 
 some mixture for application some 
 where, that she kept in a precious bot 
 tle." Strether, wandering in Paris, has 
 a rich consciousness of time * a bag of 
 gold into which he constantly dipped 
 for a handful. " Strether, again, habit 
 ually shakes the bottle in which Life 
 hands him the wine of experience and 
 
Umaotnation 161 
 
 finds the taste of the lees rising into 
 his draught. To this guileless Ameri 
 can, too, there is something in the 
 great world "covertly tigerish," which 
 comes to him in the charmed air of 
 Gloriani s garden-party as a "waft 
 from the jungle." The Boston lady 
 in The Wings of the Dove flits "in and 
 out of the Public Library with the air 
 of conscientiously returning or bravely 
 carrying off in her pocket the key of 
 knowledge itself." In A London Life 
 the witty expression of Lady Daven- 
 ant s face "shines like a lamp through 
 the ground-glass of her good breeding." 
 These copious examples of apt analogy 
 and comparison one could pluck them 
 thus ruthlessly from their context on 
 nearly every page give an air of re 
 markable readiness and brightness to 
 the style. They season it as the best of 
 
162 Ibenrp 3ames 
 
 anecdote seasons talk. They make it as 
 flexible and incidental as talk, and even 
 where they are most like the froth left 
 by the wave of a thought breaking on 
 the mind, they are purely spontaneous 
 and without perversity. They are 
 found in less profusion in the earlier 
 books than in the later, and carry less 
 significance, but even in the earliest 
 they spring up like self-sown flowers 
 in the footprints of experience. In 
 The Golden Bowl they take on a more 
 complex aspect and are oftener loaded 
 with a meaning that haunts the mind. 
 Such a figure as that of Charlotte, 
 led through her husband s galleries 
 by a long silken halter looped round 
 her beautiful neck, Adam s wordless 
 smiles corresponding to soft shakes of 
 the silken rope, -becomes an insistent 
 possession of the reader s thought 
 
ffmaainatton 163 
 
 which follows the unfortunate pair, 
 thus closely held, thus surely separated, 
 to their doom and refuge in American 
 City. 
 
 Nor can one easily put out of mind 
 the remarkable image figuring the 
 arrangement by which Maggie had 
 been able to marry without breaking 
 with her past. The beautiful situa 
 tion, Amerigo and Charlotte living 
 with Maggie and Adam in intimacy 
 for the admiration of all observers, 
 the situation so unusual, so liberal, 
 but at the first moment of alarmed 
 insight so baffling, had been occupy 
 ing the very centre of the garden of 
 Maggie s life; 
 
 but it had reared itself there like some 
 strange, tall tower of ivory, or perhaps 
 rather some wonderful, beautiful, but out 
 landish pagoda, a structure plated with hard, 
 bright porcelain, coloured and figured and 
 
164 Ibenrs James 
 
 adorned, at the overhanging eaves, with 
 silver bells that tinkled, ever so charmingly, 
 when stirred by chance airs. She had 
 walked round and round it that was what 
 she felt; she had carried on her existence in 
 the space left her for circulation, a space that 
 sometimes seemed ample and sometimes 
 narrow: looking up, all the while, at the fair 
 structure that spread itself so amply and 
 rose so high, but never quite making out, as 
 yet, where she might have entered had she 
 wished. She had not wished till now such 
 was the odd case; and what was doubtless 
 equally odd, besides, was that, though her 
 raised eyes seemed to distinguish places that 
 must serve, from within, and especially far 
 aloft, as apertures and outlooks, no door ap 
 peared to give access from her convenient 
 garden level. The great decorated surface 
 had remained consistently impenetrable and 
 inscrutable. At present, however, to her con 
 sidering mind it was as if she had ceased 
 merely to circle and to scan the elevation, 
 ceased so vaguely, so quite helplessly to 
 stare and wonder: she had caught herself 
 distinctly in the act of pausing, then in that 
 of lingering, and finally in that of stepping 
 unprecedentedly near. The thing might have 
 
Imagination 165 
 
 been, by the distance at which it kept her, a 
 Mahometan mosque, with which no base 
 heretic could take a liberty; there so hung 
 about it the vision of one s putting off one s 
 shoes to enter, and even, verily, of one s 
 paying with one s life if found there as an 
 interloper. She had not, certainly, arrived 
 at the conception of paying with her life for 
 anything she might do; but it was neverthe 
 less quite as if she had sounded with a tap or 
 two one of the rare porcelain plates. She 
 had knocked, in short though she could 
 scarce have said whether for admission or for 
 what; she had applied her hand to a cool, 
 smooth spot and had waited to see what 
 would happen. Something had happened; it 
 was as if a sound, at her touch, after a little, 
 had come back to her from within; a sound 
 sufficiently suggesting that her approach had 
 been noted. 
 
 From one point of view such an 
 elaboration of a symbol is fantastic 
 and has in it even an element of 
 perversity. The purely literal reader 
 opening a second volume on such an 
 
166 Ibenrs James 
 
 astonishing passage throws up his 
 hands in despair. "Why not tell us 
 out and out," he says, "that Maggie 
 sees their position to be impossible and 
 is making up her mind to break in on 
 it?" But, as a matter of fact, we are 
 told precisely this "out and out," and 
 
 /"we are given the picture besides, to 
 make more vivid our sense of the deep 
 
 v mystery of soul and conscience in 
 volved. The very charm of it lies in 
 the fact that we are thrown into a 
 childlike state of wonder at the strange 
 beauties to be found in the course of 
 psychological exploration. From the 
 point of view of one who likes it, such 
 an exercise of the imagination brings 
 back the delicious early sense of living 
 in a fairy-tale, but without the sacrifice 
 of our later sense of reality. We gain 
 from it both the show of things and 
 
imagination 167 
 
 their significance, both the fable and 
 the moral, both the text and the 
 picture. Reality puts on for us a 
 coat of many colours and shines and 
 shimmers in a hundred lights. The 
 greater writers dear to the English 
 "facie", Dante and Cervantes and Shake 
 speare, have chosen the happy road 
 of metaphor and illustration to bring 
 home to us subtle moral conditions, 
 and it is perhaps only a somewhat 
 ponderous taste or a somewhat vain 
 solemnity that fails to enjoy the spring 
 of the intelligence toward a play with 
 toys so precious. At all events, if the 
 fancy of The Golden Bowl and The 
 Wings of the Dove, with its tossing 
 balls, its rockets and Roman candles, 
 its jewels and chariots, its outfit of 
 a mimic world, does not lighten for 
 us the journey toward truth sitting 
 
168 Dents James 
 
 austere and beautiful at the heart of 
 the maze; if we find triviality in the 
 union of the real and the pictorial; if 
 we have not patience to look at a 
 theme in all its mingled relations and 
 associations and suggestions, we are 
 simply too much out of it for our own 
 pleasure, and there is nothing to do 
 but turn to the thinner medium of 
 pure allegory or the colder medium of 
 literal prose. 
 
THE only drawback to an eloquent, 
 imaginative style is that it sometimes 
 obscures by its very exuberance of 
 expression the clear philosophic mes 
 sage which from an observer of life and 
 manners we consistently expect. It 
 is perfectly possible with Mr. James to 
 miss his philosophy of life, as more 
 than one critic has demonstrated. It 
 is easy, no doubt, in a wood so closely 
 set with handsome growth, to see only 
 the trees. It may even be difficult, 
 from one or two or three of the novels, 
 particularly the earlier ones, to obtain 
 the synthetic moral effect, the positive 
 
 moral quality of the theme and its 
 169 
 
170 Ifoenrs James 
 
 treatment, without which the most 
 ingenious story in the world lacks 
 interest for the Anglo-Saxon reader. 
 But from the work in mass or from 
 any one of the later examples, save, 
 perhaps, The Sacred Fount, which sav 
 ours of ironic pleasantry rather than 
 serious exercise of power, we can 
 hardly fail to get, in addition to the 
 exhilarating sense of life a sense of the 
 judicial mind back of the performance. 
 Mr. James, in his essay on The Art of 
 Fiction, so frequently quoted for and 
 against his method, has laid especial 
 stress on the air of reality, the necessity 
 of successfully producing the illusion of 
 life, but he also, in the same essay, has 
 called attention to "the very obvious 
 truth that the deepest quality of a 
 work of art will always be the quality 
 of the mind of the producer." 
 
171 
 
 In proportion as that intelligence is fine [he 
 says] will the novel, the picture, the statue 
 partake of the substance of beauty and 
 truth. To be constituted of such elements is, 
 to my vision, to have purpose enough. No 
 good novel will ever proceed from a super 
 ficial mind; that seems to me an axiom 
 which, for the artist in fiction, will cover all 
 needful moral ground: if the youthful as 
 pirant take it to heart it will illuminate for 
 him many of the mysteries of "purpose." 
 
 And while he has said in his essay 
 on Daudet that "life is, immensely, a 
 matter of surface, and if our emotions 
 in general are interesting, the form of 
 those emotions has the merit of being 
 the most definite thing about them"; 
 this is more or less in the way of a 
 civil comment on the fact that Daudet 
 sees "mainly the great surface of life 
 and the parts that lie near the surface." 
 Toward the end of the essay he suggests 
 that Daudet s insight "fails him when 
 
172 Ibenrg James 
 
 he begins to take the soul into account, 
 and "that amounts, after all, to saying 
 that he has no high imagination and, 
 as a consequence, no ideas." "Im 
 aginative writers of the first order," 
 he adds, "always give us an impres 
 sion that they have a kind of philo 
 sophy." If we have been interested in 
 the work of Mr. James we are certainly 
 conscious of that impression from it, 
 whether we analyse it or not for our 
 selves. The reader who considers, not 
 at all as an analyst or a critic, but 
 merely as an interested person, the 
 "tone" in this instance the moral 
 tone of his writings, finds it amply 
 composed of moral emotions, prefer 
 ences, and instincts just the lack of 
 which in Charles de Bernard caused 
 him to define that writer as second-rate. 
 Not that he puts up sign-posts along the 
 
173 
 
 page to show the direction in which he 
 is leading us there would be some 
 thing decidedly not in character in 
 the apologetic nature of that method. 
 We must go with him on trust if we 
 go with him at all, but the timid may 
 find in his criticism of other artists 
 plentiful assurance of the high regard 
 in which he holds the moral element of 
 a work of art. Morality, he some 
 where affirms, is 
 
 simply a part of the essential richness of 
 inspiration it has nothing to do with the 
 artistic process and it has everything to do 
 with the artistic effect. The more a work 
 of art feels it at its source, the richer it is; 
 the less it feels it, the poorer it is. People of 
 a large taste prefer rich works to poor ones, 
 and they are not inclined to assent to the 
 assumption that the process is the whole 
 work. 
 
 This is only one of many utterances 
 that demonstrate his interest in the 
 
174 Ibenrs James 
 
 moral world, but his fullest demonstra 
 tion of it is in his novels and stories 
 themselves, where his subject is nearly 
 always laid in the depths of human; 
 character. His plot turns on how the 
 
 i persons of the drama feel and act in 
 responsible relations. The society in 
 which they move is depicted with true 
 magnificence of detail, detail with 
 him, as with Mrs. Assingham, finds 
 him and leaves him unappalled and 
 unwearied, and the correspondence 
 with life is close enough to satisfy the 
 most exacting of realists. In the mat 
 ter of conversation, for example, the 
 forms of speech are so caught in the 
 fleeting idiom as to make one tremble 
 for their obsolete appearance in the . 
 near future. But the "criticism of 
 life" involved in his choice of types, 
 in his delineation of conduct, and the 
 
175 
 
 importance he gives to special qualities 
 of mind and heart is what, after all, 
 determines his importance in litera 
 ture. These are what suggest the 
 moral reality underlying realities of 
 surface. Charming as we might find 
 the detail in The Golden Bowl, that 
 work would not be greatly significant 
 to us if what we traced in it were 
 merely the movement of shallow pas 
 sions and superficial natures. What is 
 important in The Ambassadors, back 
 of the truly masterly execution of the 
 difficult theme, is the awakening of 
 Strether to responsibilities of which 
 he has become aware through the ir 
 responsibility of others, and his per 
 sonal renunciation in obedience to his 
 sense of his own responsible position. 
 What is morally important in The 
 Awkward Age is the deep response of 
 
1 76 Ibenrg 3ames 
 
 Nanda Brookenham s nature to the 
 refuge held out to her by her grand 
 mother s ancient lover. In What 
 Maisie Knew it is not the dreadful 
 items of her knowledge, but the tri 
 umph of her beautiful little spirit over 
 their vast sum that gives to the book its 
 moral spring. The artistic process by 
 which these interesting and deeply 
 "moral" persons are placed, sur 
 rounded by the "miscellaneous rem- 
 plissage of life," and helped to their 
 air of verisimilitude by the notation of 
 their various points of contact with 
 other lives, is a matter for discussion by 
 the expert critic, not, certainly, by the 
 amateur reader. The only point prop 
 erly to be made by the amateur is that 
 an elevated view of conduct appears 
 in Mr. James s novels and is em 
 phasised by the governing reflection 
 
177 
 
 that holds together notes of incident 
 and observation. If to have a philo 
 sophy of life is, according to the recent 
 definition of a most accomplished critic, 
 "to be profoundly impressed by cer 
 tain truths/* it is pertinent to ask 
 what these truths in the present case 
 are. Among the more obvious is, to 
 use the simplest and most familiar of 
 terms, the beauty of goodness. Since 
 goodness in its latent and hidden and 
 delicate phases is made to play so 
 leading a part, since it is made to 
 comprise so many gracious qualities 
 not always associated with it, the 
 pretty habit, in Maisie and in Maggie 
 Verver, for example, of making pleas 
 ant the paths of their companions by 
 a sweet pliancy of will in matters of 
 personal comfort or choice, since pride 
 and selfishness and vanity are made 
 
178 Ibenrs James 
 
 ugly not by emphasis and exaggera 
 tion, but by mere contiguity with 
 their so much lovelier opposites de 
 picted with persuasive appreciation, 
 we can only infer that goodness in its 
 most pervasive and least aggressive, 
 least alloyed, form presents to Mr. 
 James the appearance of beauty. It 
 may be a question of moral taste or of 
 moral conviction, but the result is the 
 same: the natures that in his novels 
 represent goodness in its purity also 
 represent extraordinary charm. Like 
 the radiant Beatrice they are exceed 
 ing rich in human sympathies," and 
 their exquisite kindness, like the beauty 
 of that fair lady, draws round them 
 the "clear line of love and blessed 
 faith and gentleness. * 
 
 Not even in these guileless natures, 
 however, is goodness the mere passive 
 
IPbtlosopbs 179 
 
 preference for amiable acts and atti 
 tudes of mind. No truth more power 
 fully impresses their author, if we may 
 judge from their conduct, than the 
 accountability of human beings to 
 their human quality. The side of 
 human nature which differentiates it 
 from the nature of the lower animals, 
 the side by which people draw profit 
 from the discipline of life, hold them 
 selves up to the requirements of reason, 
 and recognise their responsibility in 
 the moral world, is that on which he 
 most persistently looks. Few of all 
 his novels and stories, and their num 
 ber has been great, fail to present a 
 problem of choice. The motives are 
 not little, or the solutions mean, 
 although the picture frequently is of 
 a sordid society and a debased code of 
 conduct. The dark side is there in 
 
i8o Ibenrs James 
 
 all its darkness, although, of course, 
 the shadow is not unrelieved. Fre 
 quently we observe in life that weak 
 ness is charming, for example, and 
 many of the weak people drawn by 
 Mr. James are very charming: Vander- 
 bank, Sir Claude, and the Prince even 
 Chad in The Ambassadors has an as 
 pect of charm, which, however, seems 
 to sit superficially upon him and not 
 to belong to his essential temper as 
 with the others it does. But their 
 charm does not save them from the 
 final inference drawn from their his 
 tories, that to be strong and reason 
 able and kind is charming, too, and 
 something more. This, perhaps, is the 
 most vital lesson to be gained from 
 the novels of Mr. James by the people 
 who ask themselves after reading a 
 book how it has made them feel 
 
181 
 
 toward life. It is a moral lesson be 
 cause it proceeds from a profound and 
 definite sense of moral values. It is all 
 the more a moral lesson, one may 
 reasonably suspect, because it is not 
 enunciated with the voice of a teacher 
 for whom art is in a sense a tool of 
 trade, like the old-fashioned ferule or 
 the new-fashioned modelling-clay, but 
 with the voice of the artist for whom 
 his art is his whole expression. 
 
 And it is not less impressive because 
 there is so little of the invidious in the 
 attitude taken toward the human 
 spectacle at large. We are prone to 
 conceive of the ultimate novelist," 
 Mr. James says in his essay on Turge- 
 nieff , as a personage altogether purged 
 of sarcasm." Sarcasm does not, in 
 deed, prevail in his own novels. His 
 treatment of his personages, bad or 
 
 
1 82 f>enr James 
 
 good, is respectful to the extent, at 
 least, that he takes them seriously, 
 looks deep into their minds, into their 
 souls, and gives them the full benefit 
 of all he finds there. If they are in 
 telligent they cannot complain that 
 he has made them stupid; if they have 
 aspirations and enthusiasms and opin 
 ions they cannot bring it up against him 
 that he has missed their point of view. 
 It would be quite absurd to judge his 
 picture of London society a very im 
 portant feature of his work without 
 knowing that society at first hand ; but 
 one does not need to be an initiated 
 person to perceive that his ideal of taste 
 for an observer is that of Mr. Longdon 
 in The Awkward Age, an ideal involv 
 ing an immense effort wholly to under 
 stand before pronouncing judgment. 
 It will be remembered that in the case 
 
183 
 
 of Mr. Longdon the final result of his 
 understanding was a shouldering of 
 personal responsibility in the excellent 
 tradition of his generation and accord 
 ing to the prompting of his own con 
 science and taste. Conscience and 
 taste are not so widely separated with 
 Mr. James as with many writers, and 
 especially with many moralists. He 
 puts a great deal of taste into the 
 exercise of his conscience and a great 
 deal of conscience into the exercise 
 of his taste. But taste as he uses 
 it has a somewhat different func 
 tion from that commonly accorded it. 
 It has both intellectual and moral 
 force, for one thing. It has, to give 
 it the happy definition found for it by 
 Walter Pater in his chapter on Dia- 
 phaneitt, freshness without shallowness, 
 "the range and seriousness of culture 
 
184 Ifoenrs James 
 
 / 
 
 without its strain and over-conscious 
 ness." With Mr. James, it determines 
 his temper toward the people he criti 
 cises and toward the people who criti 
 cise him : 
 
 however incumbent it may be on most of us 
 to do our duty [he says in his essay on 
 Flaubert], there is, in spite of a thousand 
 narrow dogmatisms, nothing in the world 
 that any one is under the least obligation to 
 like not even (one braces oneself to risk the 
 declaration) a particular kind of writing. 
 
 It determines also his attitude toward 
 the "great passions," which are said 
 mainly to be left out of his work. 
 The greatest of them, love, is not so 
 much left out as put in, but oftenest 
 in the guise it takes with responsible 
 persons. In his article on Loti he has 
 told us his opinion about that writer s 
 
 almost inveterate habit of representing the 
 closest and most intimate personal relation 
 
pbflosopbs 185 
 
 as unaccompanied with any moral feeling, 
 any impulse of reflection or reaction [and at 
 the same time he adds]: The closer, the 
 more intimate is a personal relation the 
 more we look in it for the human drama, 
 the variations and complications, the note of 
 responsibility for which we appeal in vain 
 to the loves of the quadrupeds. 
 
 It is passion on this level that we see 
 in his more distinguished characters, dis 
 tinguished by the ability to renounce for 
 the happiness of others, and to renounce 
 without bitterness, or to bear without 
 bitterness, if the case require that. 
 
 "I can bear anything for love," 
 the Princess declares in her talk with 
 Mrs. Assingham, when she is first as 
 sured that her husband and her father s 
 wife are in love with each other. 
 
 "Of your father?" her friend asks her. 
 "For love," she repeats. 
 "Of your husband?" 
 "For love," she says again. 
 
186 t)enr James 
 
 Later in the book she explains to her 
 father as only such a daughter could 
 explain to such a father: 
 
 "My idea is this, that when you only love 
 a little you re naturally not jealous or are 
 only jealous a little, so that it does n t 
 matter. But when you love in a deeper and 
 intenser way, then you are, in the same pro 
 portion, jealous, your jealousy has intensity 
 and, no doubt, ferocity. When, however, 
 you love in the most abysmal and unutter 
 able way of all why then you re beyond 
 everything and nothing can pull you down." 
 
 This, perhaps, is an Anglo-Saxon 
 form of the "overmastering passion " 
 it has, at all events, no striking resem 
 blance to that commemorated in the 
 fiction of the Latin races. Its great 
 virtue is the sense it gives of secur 
 ity, of freedom from vicissitude. But 
 whatever its comparative quality it is 
 the inspiration of the characters espe- 
 
187 
 
 daily celebrated in the novels of Mr. 
 James, and one at least can say for it 
 that it is a very dignified emotion, 
 which does not interfere with the 
 keeping of laws human or divine. If 
 one cared to carry the "lesson" of 
 The Golden Bowl into the region of 
 applied ethics it would be found to 
 emphasise to a degree extraordinary 
 in novels the weight and importance 
 of responsible affection as opposed to 
 the irresponsible elements threaten 
 ing it, and its highly superior power to 
 uphold and put life into the institution 
 of marriage. The affection of Nanda 
 for Vanderbank in The Awkward Age 
 carries with it something of this deep 
 quality, also; it permits her to think 
 for others in their way, so different 
 from her own, and to see, moreover, the 
 lightness of Vanderbank "for himself" 
 
i88 IfoentE James 
 
 in not loving her. This treatment of 
 "questions of the heart" is not con 
 ventional or stereotyped, but may it 
 not be said almost in itself to consti 
 tute a " philosophy of life" worthy of 
 comparison at least with that of other 
 writers of fiction? 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 COMPILED BY 
 FREDERICK ALLEN KING 
 
 THE aim of the present bibliography is to 
 furnish literary guidance. A chronological 
 arrangement has been chosen, bringing each 
 part of the author s work fiction, essay, or 
 biography into one logical scheme which 
 exhibits the development of his genius. 
 Reference is made to the periodical giving 
 initial publication and also, where such is the 
 case, to the volume where the story or essay 
 has been reprinted in book form. It has 
 been thought expedient to dispense with the 
 customary spacing of book-titles. Wherever 
 possible, reference is made to the English as 
 well as American editions. It is feared, 
 however, that the present list does not in 
 clude mention of all the English rearrange 
 ments nor the successive reissues of groups of 
 stories, necessary data being unobtainable on 
 this side the ocean. 
 
 189 
 
190 Ibenrs 3ames 
 
 1865 
 
 The Story of a Year. Atlantic Monthly, March. 
 1866 
 
 A Landscape Painter. Atlantic Monthly, February. 
 A Day of Days. The Galaxy, June. Reprinted in 
 
 Stories Revived (1885). 
 The Novels of George Eliot. Atlantic Monthly, 
 
 October. 
 
 1867 
 
 My Friend Brigham. Atlantic Monthly, March. 
 Poor Richard. Atlantic Monthly, June- August. 
 Reprinted in Stories Revived (1885). 
 
 1868 
 
 The Story of a Masterpiece. The Galaxy, January- 
 February. Illustrated by Gaston Fay. 
 
 The Romance of Certain Old Clothes. Atlantic 
 Monthly, February. Reprinted in A Passion 
 ate Pilgrim (1875), also in Stories Revived (1885). 
 
 A Most Extraordinary Case. Atlantic Monthly, 
 April. Reprinted in Stories Revived (1885). 
 
 A Problem. The Galaxy, June. Illustrated by W. 
 J. Hennessy. 
 
 DeGray: a Romance. Atlantic Monthly, July. 
 
 Osborne s Revenge. The Galaxy, July. 
 
 The Spanish Gypsy. By George Eliot. North 
 American Review, October. 
 
 1869 
 
 Pyramus and Thisbe. The Galaxy, April. Comedi 
 etta. 
 
191 
 
 A Light Man. The Galaxy, July. Reprinted in 
 Stories Revived (1885), also Stories by American 
 Authors (1894). 
 
 Gabrielle de Bergerac. Atlantic Monthly, July- 
 September. 
 
 1870 
 
 Travelling Companions. Atlantic Monthly^ Novem 
 ber-December. 
 
 1871 
 
 A Passionate Pilgrim. Atlantic Monthly, March- 
 April. Reprinted in A Passionate Pilgrim 
 (1875), also Stories Revived (1885). 
 
 Still Waters. Balloon Post (published at the 
 French Fair, Boston, in aid of the destitute 
 people of France), No. 2, April 12, 1871. 
 
 At Isella. The Galaxy, August. 
 
 Master Eustace. The Galaxy, November. Reprinted 
 in Stories Revived (1885). 
 
 Watch and Ward. Atlantic Monthly, August- 
 December. Published in book form in 1878. 
 
 1872 
 
 A Change of Heart. Atlantic Monthly, January. 
 
 Comedietta in 15 scenes. 
 
 Taine s English Literature. Atlantic Monthly, April. 
 Guest s Confession. Atlantic Monthly, October- 
 
 November. 
 
 The Bethnel Green Museum. Atlantic Monthly, 
 January. Criticism of pictures. 
 
192 Ibenrs James 
 
 The Madonna of the Future. Atlantic Monthly, 
 March. Reprinted in A Passionate Pilgrim 
 (1875). 
 
 Theatre de Theophile Gautier: Mysteres, Comedies 
 et Ballets. North American Review, April. Re 
 printed in French Poets and Novelists (1878). 
 
 The Sweetheart of M. Briseux. The Galaxy, June. 
 
 A Roman Holiday. Atlantic Monthly, July. Re 
 printed in Transatlantic Sketches (1875). 
 
 Roman Rides. Atlantic Monthly, August. Re 
 printed in Transatlantic Sketches (1875). 
 
 Roman Note Book. The Galaxy, November. Re 
 printed in Transatlantic Sketches (1875). 
 
 Roman Neighbourhoods. Atlantic Monthly, Decem 
 ber. Reprinted in Transatlantic Sketches (1875). 
 
 1874 
 
 The Last of the Valerii. Atlantic Monthly, January. 
 Reprinted in A Passionate Pilgrim (1875), also 
 Stories Revived (1885). 
 
 A Chain of Italian Cities. Atlantic Monthly, Febru 
 ary. Reprinted in Transatlantic Sketches (1875). 
 
 Madame de Mauves. The Galaxy, February- 
 March. Reprinted in A Passionate Pilgrim 
 (1875). 
 
 An Autumn Journey. The Galaxy, April. 
 
 Fruhlingsfluthen. Ein Konig Lear des Dorfes. 
 Swei Novellen von Iwan Turgeniew. North 
 American Review, April. 
 
 Siena. Atlantic Monthly, June. Reprinted in 
 Transatlantic Sketches (1875). 
 
 Adina. Scribner s Monthly, June-July. 
 
 Professor Fargo. The Galaxy, August. 
 
193 
 
 The"ophile Gautier, Souvenirs Intimes. Par Ernest 
 Feydeau. Histoire du Romantisme, Suivie de 
 Notices Romantiques, etc. Par Theophile 
 Gautier. North American Review, October. 
 
 Eugene Pickering. Atlantic Monthly, October- 
 November. Reprinted in A Passionate Pil 
 grim (1875). 
 
 Duke of Montpensier s Pictures at the Athenaeum. 
 (Boston). Atlantic Monthly, November. 
 
 Roderick Hudson. Atlantic Monthly, January- 
 
 December. Published in book form in 1876; 
 
 again in revised form in 1879. 
 Pictures Lately Exhibited. The Galaxy, July. 
 
 Comments on contemporary American artists. 
 Benvolio. The Galaxy, August. 
 Tennyson s Drama (Queen Mary). The Galaxy, 
 
 September. 
 Letters of Madame de Sabran. The Galaxy, October. 
 
 Reprinted in French Poets and Novelists (1878). 
 Le Dernier des Valerius. La Revue des deux 
 
 Mondes, November 15. 
 The Two Amperes. The Galaxy, November. Re 
 
 printed in French Poets and Novelists (1878). 
 Honore de Balzac. The Galaxy, December. Re- 
 * printed in French Poets and Novelists (1878). 
 A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales. Boston: 
 
 James R. Osgood & Co., (present publisher: 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co.). 
 
 Contains also: The Last of the Valerii (1874) ; 
 
 Eugene Pickering (1874); The Madonna of the 
 
 Future (1873); The Romance of Certain Old 
 
 Clothes (1868); Madame de Mauves (1874). 
 
194 Ibenrg -James 
 
 Transatlantic Sketches. Boston: James R. Osgood 
 & Co., 1875 (present publisher: Houghton, Mif- 
 flin & Co.). 
 
 Contains: Chester (1872); Litchfield and 
 Warwick (1872); North Devon (1872); Wells 
 and Salisbury (1872); Swiss Notes (1872); From 
 Chambery to Milan (1872); From Venice to 
 Strasburg (1873) ; The Parisian Stage (1872); A 
 Roman Holiday (1873); Roman Rides (1873); 
 Roman Neighbourhoods (1873); The After Sea 
 son in Rome (1873); From a Roman Note Book 
 (1872); A Chain of Cities; The St. Gothard 
 (1873); Siena (1873); The Autumn in Flor 
 ence (1873); Florentine Notes (1874); Tuscan 
 Cities (1873); Ravenna (1874); The Spliigen ; 
 Hamburg Reformed (1873); Darmstadt (1873); 
 In Holland (1874); In Belgium (1874). 
 
 Dates after the titles give the years in which 
 the papers were contributed to The Nation and 
 the Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 Roderick Hudson. Boston: James R. Osgood & 
 Co., 1875 (present publisher: Houghton, Mif- 
 flin & Co.). 
 
 1876 
 
 Le premier amour d Eugene Pickering. La Revue 
 
 des deux Mondes, January i. 
 Minor French Novelists. The Galaxy, February 
 
 Treating Charles de Bernard; Flaubert; MM. 
 
 de Goncourt. Reprinted in part in French 
 
 Poets and Novelists (1878). 
 La Madone de 1 avenir. La Revue des deux Mondes, 
 
 April i. 
 
195 
 
 King of Poland and Mme. Geoffrin. The Galaxy, 
 
 April. Criticism of their correspondence. 
 The American. Atlantic Monthly, June-December; 
 
 1877, January-June. 
 Crawford s Consistency. Scribner s Monthly, 
 
 August. 
 
 The Ghostly Rental. Scribner s Monthly, September. 
 Cousin et Cousine. La Revue des deux Mondes t 
 
 October i. 
 Daniel Deronda : a Conversation. Atlantic Monthly, 
 
 December. 
 
 1877 
 
 Normandy and Pyrenees. The Galaxy, January. 
 Letters of Balzac. The Galaxy, February. Re 
 
 printed in French Poets and Novelists (1878). 
 The Theatre Fran9ais. The Galaxy, April. Re 
 
 printed in French Poets and Novelists (1878). 
 Theatres of London. The Galaxy, May. 
 Alfred de Musset. The Galaxy, June. Reprinted 
 
 in French Poets and Novelists (1878). 
 George Sand. The Galaxy, July. Reprinted in 
 
 French Poets and Novelists (1878). 
 The Picture Season in London. The Galaxy, Au 
 
 gust. 
 Three Excursions. The Galaxy, September. Ep 
 
 som; Hatfield House; Oxford at Commemora 
 
 tion. Reprinted in Portraits of Places (1883). 
 Four Meetings. Scribner s Monthly, November. 
 
 Reprinted in The Author of Beltraffo (1884). 
 In Warwickshire. The Galaxy, November. Re 
 
 printed in Portraits of Places (1883), also Eng 
 
 lish Hours (1905). 
 The Suburbs of London. The Galaxy, December. 
 
196 Ifoenrs James 
 
 The American. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 
 1877 (present publish ?r: Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co.). 
 
 1878 
 
 A Little Tour in France. Atlantic Monthly, Janu 
 ary. Journey into sections east of Paris. 
 
 Italy Revisited. Atlantic Monthly, April. 
 
 Recent Florence. Atlantic Monthly, May. 
 
 Daisy Miller: A Study. Cornhill Magazine, June- 
 July. 
 
 An International Episode. Cornhill Magazine. 
 December-January, 1879. 
 
 The Europeans. Atlantic Monthly, July October. 
 
 Langstaff s Marriage. Scribner s Monthly, August. 
 
 Quatre rencontres. La Revue des deux Mondes, 
 December 15. 
 
 The Europeans: A Sketch. Boston: Houghton, 
 Osgood & Co., 1878 (present publisher: Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co.); London: Macmillan & Co. 
 
 Watch and Ward. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & 
 Co., 1878 (present publisher: Houghton, Mif 
 flin & Co.). 
 
 French Poets and Novelists. London and New York : 
 Macmillan & Co., 1878. 
 
 Contains: Alfred de Musset (1877); Theo- 
 phile Gautier (1873); Charles Baudelaire; Hon- 
 ore de Balzac (1875); Balzac s Letters (1877): 
 George Sand (1877); Charles de Bernard and 
 Gustave Flaubert (1876); Ivan Turgenieff 
 (1874); The Two Amperes (1875); Madame de 
 Sabran (1875); Merimee s Letters; The Theatre 
 Franfais (December, 1876). 
 
 2d edition, 1884; reprinted (Globe 8vo.), 
 1893, 1904. 
 
197 
 
 Daisy Miller: a Study. New York: Harper & Bros. 
 (No. 82 of Harper s Half-Hour Series.) Re 
 printed in 1892 with illustrations by Harry 
 McVickar. 
 
 An International Episode. New York: Harper & 
 Bros. (No. 91 of Harper s Half -Hour Series.) 
 Reprinted in 1892 with illustrations by Harry 
 McVickar. 
 
 1879 
 
 The Pension Beaurepas. Atlantic Monthly, April. 
 Reprinted in The Siege of London (1883). 
 
 A Friend of Lord Byron. North American Review, 
 April. Review of Memoir of the Rev. Francis 
 Hodgson, B.D. 
 
 Diary of a Man of Fifty. Harper s Magazine, July ; 
 also Macmillan s Magazine, July. Reprinted 
 in The Madonna of the Future (1879). 
 
 The Madonna of the Future. London and New 
 York: Macmillan & Co., 1879. 
 
 Contains also: A Bundle of Letters; The 
 Diary of a Man of Fifty (1879); Eugene Pick 
 ering (1874). 
 
 Hawthorne. New York: Harper & Bros., 1879; 
 London: Macmillan & Co. (Morley s English 
 Men of Letters.) 
 
 Roderick Hudson. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & 
 Co., 1879 (present publisher: Houghton, Mif- 
 flin & Co.). 
 
 Reverse of title-page contains following note : 
 Roderick Hudson was originally published in 
 Boston in 1875. It has now been minutely 
 revised and has received a large number of 
 verbal alterations. Several passages have been 
 rewritten. 
 
198 Dents James 
 
 The Diary of a Man of Fifty and A Bundle of Let 
 ters. New York: Harper & Bros. (No. 135 
 of Harper s Half -Hour Series.) 
 
 1880 
 
 Sainte-Beuve. North American Review, January. 
 Review of Correspondanee de C. A. Sainte- 
 Beuve. 
 
 Washington Square. Harper s Magazine, July- 
 December. Published in book form in 1881. 
 
 Confidence. Scribner s Monthly, August December, 
 1880; January 1881. 
 
 The Portrait of a Lady. Atlantic Monthly, Novem 
 ber, i88o-December, 1881. 
 
 Confidence. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co., 
 1880 (present publisher: Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co.). 
 
 1881 
 
 The Portrait of a Lady. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin 
 & Co., 1881; London: Macmillan & Co., 3 vols. 
 
 Washington Square. Illustrated by George du 
 Marnier. New York: Harper & Bros., 1881. 
 
 1882 
 
 Alphonse Daudet. Atlantic Monthly, June. 
 Venice. Century Magazine, November. 
 The Point of View. Century Magazine, December. 
 Reprinted in The Siege of London (1882). 
 
 1883 
 
 Tomasso Salvini. Atlantic Monthly, March. 
 Daisy Miller: a Comedy. Atlantic Monthly, April- 
 June. Published in book form in 1883. 
 
199 
 
 Du Maurier and London Society. Century Maga 
 zine, May. Reprinted in Partial Portraits 
 (1888). 
 
 The Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson. Cen 
 tury Magazine, June. 
 
 Anthony Trollope. Century Magazine, July. Re 
 printed in Partial Portraits (1888). 
 
 En Provence. Atlantic Monthly, July-November, 
 1883; February, April, May, 1884. Reprinted 
 as A Little Tour in France (1884). 
 
 Alphonse Daudet. Century Magazine, August. 
 Reprinted in Partial Portraits (1888). 
 
 The Impressions of a Cousin. Century Magazine, 
 November-December. Reprinted in Tales of 
 Three Cities (1883). 
 
 Daisy Miller: a Comedy. In three acts. Boston: 
 James R. Osgood & Co. (present publisher: 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co.). 1883. 
 
 The Siege of London. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co.; London: Macmillan & Co., 1883. James 
 R. Osgood & Co. (present publisher: Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co.). 
 
 Contains also: The Pension Beaurepas 
 (1879); The Point of View (1882). 
 
 Portraits of Places. Boston: James R. Osgood & 
 Co., 1883 (present publisher: Houghton, Mifflin 
 & Co.); London: Macmillan & Co., 1883. 
 
 Contains: Venice (1882); Italy Revisited 
 (1877); Occasional Paris (1877); Reims and 
 Laon; A Little Tour (1876); Chartres (1876); 
 Rouen (1876); Etretat (1876); From Nor 
 mandy to the Pyrenees (1876); An English 
 Easter (1877); London at Midsummer (1877); 
 
200 f>enr James 
 
 Two Excursions: Epsom and Oxford at Com 
 memoration (1877); In Warwickshire (1877); 
 Abbeys and Castles (1877); English Vignettes 
 (1879); An English New Year (1879); An Eng 
 lish Watering- Place (1879); Saratoga (1870); 
 Newport (1870); Quebec (1871); Niagara 
 
 (1871). 
 
 The foregoing dates mark the year in which 
 articles were contributed either to The Nation, 
 The Atlantic Monthly, or The Galaxy. 
 Daisy Miller, Four Meetings, Langstaff s Marriage. 
 London: Macmillan & Co., 1883. 
 
 1884 
 
 Ivan Turgenieff. Atlantic Monthly, January. Re 
 printed in Partial Portraits (1888). 
 
 Lady Barbarina. Century Magazine, May-July. 
 
 A New England Winter. Century Magazine, Au 
 gust-September. Reprinted in Tales of Three 
 Cities (1884). 
 
 The Art of Fiction. Longmans 1 Magazine, Septem 
 ber. Reply to W. Besant s lecture on The Art 
 of Fiction delivered at the Royal Institution, 
 April 25, 1884. Reprinted in Partial Por 
 traits (1888); also combined with Besant s Art 
 of Fiction (Cupples & Ford, Boston, 1884); 
 again in The Writer, September, 1899. 
 
 A Little Tour in France. Boston : James R. Osgood 
 & Co. (present publisher: Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co.), 1884. 
 
 Through Touraine, Gascony, Provence, etc. 
 New edition, with illustrations by Joseph 
 Pennell, in 1900. 
 
201 
 
 Tales of Three Cities. Boston : James R. Osgood & 
 Co., 1884 (present publisher: Houghton, Mifflin 
 & Co.). 
 
 Contains: The Impressions of a Cousin (1883) 
 
 a tale of New York; Lady Barbarina (1884) 
 
 a tale of London and New York; A New 
 England Winter (1884) a tale of Boston. 
 
 1885 
 
 George Eliot s Life. Atlantic Monthly, May. 
 
 The Bostonians. Century Magazine, February, 
 
 i88s-February, 1886. 
 The Princess Casamassima. Atlantic Monthly, Sep 
 
 tember, 1885 -October, 1886. Published in 
 
 book form in 1886. 
 The Author of Beltraffio. Boston : James R. Osgood 
 
 & Co., 1885 (present publisher: Houghton, Mif 
 
 flin & Co.). 
 
 Contains also : Pandora; Georgina s Reasons; 
 
 The Path of Duty; Four Meetings (1877). 
 Stories Revived. First and Second Series. 2 vols.; 
 
 also 3 vols. London: Macmillan & Co., 1885. 
 Contents: Vol. I. The Author of Beltraffio; 
 
 Pandora; The Path of Duty; A Day of Days 
 
 (1866). Vol. II. A Light Man (1869); 
 
 Georgina s Reason; A Passionate Pilgrim 
 
 (1871); Rose-Agathe (1878). Vol. III. Poor 
 
 Richard (1867) ; The Last of the Valerii (1874); 
 
 Master Eustace (1871); The Romance of Cer 
 
 tain Old Clothes (1868); A Most Extraordinary 
 
 Case (1868). 
 
 Not issued in America. 
 
202 Ibenrp 3ames 
 
 1886 
 
 William Dean Howells. Harper s Weekly, June 19. 
 Edwin A. Abbey. Harper s Weekly, December 4. 
 
 Reprinted in Picture and Text (1893). 
 The Bostonians. New York: Macmillan & Co., i 
 
 vol.; London: Macmillan & Co., 3 vols., 1886. 
 The Princess Casamassima. New York : Macmillan 
 
 & Co., i vol.; London: Macmillan & Co., 3 
 
 vols., 1886. 
 
 1887 
 
 Coquelin. Century Magazine, January. 
 Constance Fenimore Woolson. Harper s Weekly, 
 
 February 12. Reprinted in Partial Portraits 
 
 (1888). 
 John S. Sargent. Harper s Magazine, October. 
 
 Reprinted in Picture and Text (1893). 
 Cousin Maria. Harper s Weekly, August 6, 13, 20. 
 
 Illustrated by C. S. Reinhart. 
 Emerson. Macmillan s Magazine, December. 
 
 1888 
 
 Louisa Pallant. Harper s Magazine, February. 
 Illustrated by C. S. Reinhart. Reprinted in 
 The Aspern Papers (1888). 
 
 Guy de Maupassant. Fortnightly Review, March. 
 Reprinted in Partial Portraits (1888). 
 
 The Aspern Papers. Atlantic Monthly, March- 
 May. Published in book form in 1888. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. Century Magazine, April. 
 Reprinted in Partial Portraits (1888). 
 
 The Liar. Century Magazine, May. Reprinted in 
 A London Life (1889). 
 
203 
 
 Two Countries. Harper s Magazine, June. Re 
 printed as The Modern Warning in The Aspern 
 Papers (1888). 
 
 A London Life. Scribner s Magazine, June-Sep 
 tember. Published in book form in 1889. 
 
 London. Century Magazine, December. Illustra 
 tions by Joseph Pennell. Reprinted in Essays 
 in London and Elsewhere (1893). 
 
 The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Modern 
 Warning. London and New York: Macmillan 
 & Co., 1888. 2 vols., also i vol. 
 
 Partial Portraits. London: Macmillan & Co., 1888. 
 Reprinted 1894, 1899. 
 
 Contains; Emerson (1887); The Life of 
 George Eliot (1885); Daniel Deronda: a Con 
 versation (1876); Anthony Trollope (1883); 
 Robert Louis Stevenson (1887); Miss Woolson 
 (1887); Alphonse Daudet (1883); Guy de Mau 
 passant (1888) ; Ivan Turgenieff (1884) ; George 
 du Maurier (1883); The Art of Fiction (1884). 
 
 The Reverberator. London and New York: Mac 
 millan & Co., 1888. 
 
 1889 
 The Tragic Muse. Atlantic Monthly, January, 1889- 
 
 May, 1890. Published in book form in 1890. 
 After the Play. New Review, June. Reprinted in 
 
 Picture and Text (1893). 
 An Animated Conversation. Scribner s Magazine, 
 
 March. Reprinted in Essays in London and 
 
 Elsewhere (1893). 
 Our Artists in Europe. Harper s Magazine, June. 
 
 Reprinted under other titles in Picture and 
 
 Text (1893). 
 
204 Ibenrs James 
 
 Guy de Maupassant. Harper s Weekly, October 19. 
 The Solution. New Review, December, iSSp-Feb- 
 
 ruary, 1890. Reprinted in The Lesson of the 
 
 Master (1892). 
 A London Life, The Patagonia, The Liar, Mrs. 
 
 Temperly. London and New York : Macmillan 
 
 & Co., 1889. 
 The Odd Number. Thirteen Tales. By Guy de 
 
 Maupassant. The Translation by Jonathan 
 
 Sturges. An Introduction by Henry James. 
 
 New York: Harper & Bros., 1889. 
 
 1890 
 
 Daumier, Caricaturist. Century Magazine January. 
 
 With illustrations. Reprinted in Picture and 
 
 Text (1893). 
 Charles S. Reinhart. Harper s Weekly, June 14. 
 
 Reprinted in Picture and Text (1893). 
 Port Tarascon: the Last Adventures of the Illus 
 
 trious Tartarin. Translated by Henry James. 
 
 With preface by the translator. New York: 
 
 Harper & Bros., 1890. 
 The Tragic Muse. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & 
 
 Co., 2 vols., 1890; London: Macmillan & Co., 
 
 3 vols., 1890. 
 
 1891 
 
 The Science of Criticism. New Review, May. 
 Brooksmith. Harper s Weekly, May 2. Reprinted 
 
 in The Lesson of the Master (1891). 
 On the Occasion of Hedda Gabler. New Review, 
 
 June. Reprinted in Essays in London and 
 
 Elsewhere (1893). 
 
205 
 
 The Marriages. Atlantic Monthly, August. Re 
 printed in The Lesson of the Master (1891). 
 
 The Chaperon. Atlantic Monthly, November De 
 cember. Reprinted in The Real Thing (1893). 
 1892 
 
 James Russell Lowell. Atlantic Monthly, January. 
 Reprinted in Essays in London and Elsewhere 
 
 Mrs. Humphry Ward. English Illustrated Maga 
 
 zine, February. Reprinted in Essays in London 
 
 and Elsewhere (1893). 
 Nona Vincent. English Illustrated Magazine, Feb 
 
 ruary-March. Illustrations by W. J. Hen- 
 
 nessy. Reprinted in The Real Thing (1893). 
 The Private Life. Atlantic Monthly, April. Pub 
 
 lished in book form in 1893. 
 Lord Beauprey. Macmillan s Magazine, April- 
 
 June. Reprinted in The Private Life (1893). 
 Wolcott Balestier. Cosmopolitan Magazine, May. 
 Jersey Villas. Cosmopolitan Magazine, July-Au 
 
 gust. Illustrated by Irving R. Wiles. Re 
 
 printed as Sir Dominick Farrand in The Real 
 
 Thing^ (1893). 
 Collaboration. English Illustrated Magazine, Sep 
 
 tember. Reprinted in The Wheel of Time 
 
 (1893)- 
 The Grand Canal. Scribner s Magazine, November. 
 
 Illustrations by Alexander Zezzos. Reprinted 
 
 in The Great Streets of the World. New York: 
 
 Charles Scribner s Sons, 1892. 
 The Wheel of Time. Cosmopolitan Magazine, De 
 
 cember, 1892 January, 1893. Published in 
 
 book form in 1893. 
 
206 Denrs Sames 
 
 Daisy Miller and An International Episode. Illus 
 trated from drawings by Harry W. McVickar. 
 New York: Harper & Bros., 1892. 
 
 The Average Woman. By Wolcott Balestier. Pre 
 face by Henry James. American Publishing 
 Corporation, 1892; United States Book Co. 
 
 The Lesson of the Master. London and New York : 
 Macmillan & Co., 1892. 
 
 Contains also: The Marriages (1891); The 
 Pupil; Brooksmith (1891); Sir Edmund Orme. 
 
 1893 
 
 Gustave Flaubert. Macmillah s Magazine, March. 
 Reprinted in Essays in London and Elsewhere 
 
 (1893)- 
 
 Frances Anne Kemble. Temple Bar, April. Re 
 printed in Essays in London and Elsewhere 
 
 The Middle Years. Scribner s Magazine, May. 
 
 Reprinted in Terminations (1895). 
 
 \ Essays in London and Elsewhere. New York : Har 
 per & Bros., 1893; London: James R. Osgood; 
 Mcllvaine & C^., 1893. 
 
 Contains: .London (1888); James Russell 
 Lowell (1891); Frances Anne Kemble (1893); 
 Gustave Flaubert (1893); Pierre Loti (1888); 
 Journal of the Brothers de Goncourt (1888); 
 Browning in t\^estminster Abbey (1890); Hen- 
 rik Ibsen; On the Occasion of Hedda Gabler; 
 On the Occasion of The Master Builder (1891- 
 1893); Mrs. Humphry Ward (1891); Criti 
 cism (1891); An Animated Conversation 
 (1889). 
 
207 
 
 Picture and Text. New York: Harper & Bros. 
 Contains: Black and White (1889); Edwin 
 A. Abbey; Charles S. Reinhart; Alfred Par 
 sons; John S. Sargent (1887); Honore Dau- 
 mier (1890); After the Play (1889). 
 The Private Life. London: James R. Osgood; 
 Mcllvaine & Co., 1893. 
 
 Contains also: The Wheel of Time (1892); 
 Lord Beaupr6 (1892); The Visits; Collabora 
 tion (1892); Owen Wingrave. 
 The Private Life, The Visits, Lord Beaupre. New 
 
 York: Harper & Bros., 1893. 
 The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave. 
 
 New York: Harper & Bros., 1893. 
 The Real Thing and Other Tales.. New York and 
 London: Macmillan & Co., 1893. 
 
 Contains also: Sir Dominick Farrand (1892); 
 Nona Vincent (1892); The Chaperon (1891); 
 Greville Fane. 
 
 1894 
 
 George du Maurier. Harper s Weekly, April 14. 
 
 The Death of the Lion. The Yellow Book, London, 
 April. Reprinted in Terminations (1895). 
 
 The Coxon Fund. The Yellow Book, London, July. 
 Reprinted in Terminations (1895). 
 
 This volume of The Yellow Book also con 
 tains a portrait sketch of the author by Sargent. 
 
 Theatricals. Two Comedies: Tenants, Disengaged. 
 London: James R. Osgood; Mcllvaine & Co., 
 1894; New York: Harper & Bros., 1894. 
 
 Theatricals. Second Series: The Album, The Re 
 probate. London: James R. Osgood; Mcll 
 vaine & Co. ; New York: Harper & Bros., 1894. 
 
208 E>enrs 3ames 
 
 1895 
 
 The Next Time. The Yellow Book, London, July. 
 
 Reprinted in Embarrassments (1896). 
 Guy Domville. Mr. Henry James Guy Domville: 
 
 An Appreciation, by A. B. Walkley. Harper s 
 
 Weekly, March 2. 
 
 This drama was produced in London at the 
 
 St. James Theatre, January 5, but has never 
 
 been printed. The foregoing article contains 
 
 an analysis of the play and a few citations. 
 Terminations . The Death of the Lion, The Coxon 
 
 Fund, The Middle Years, The Altar of the Dead. 
 
 New York: Harper & Bros., 1895. 
 
 1896 
 The Figure in the Carpet. Cosmopolis, January. 
 
 Simultaneously in The Chap Book, Chicago. 
 
 Reprinted in Embarrassments (1896). 
 Glasses. Atlantic Monthly, February. Reprinted 
 
 in Embarrassments (1896). 
 On the Death of Alexander Dumas the Younger 
 
 (November 27, 1895). New Review, March. 
 The Old Things. Atlantic Monthly, April-October. 
 
 Published in book form as The Spoils of Poyn- 
 
 ton (1897). 
 The Way It Came. The Chap Book, May i. Re 
 
 printed in Embarrassments (1896). 
 Mr. Henry living s Production of Cymbeline. Har 
 
 per s Weekly, November 21. 
 Embarrassments. London and New York: Mac- 
 
 millan & Co., 1896. 
 
 Contains: The Figure in the Carpet (1896); 
 
 Glasses (1896); The Next Time (1895); The 
 
 Way It Came (1896). 
 
209 
 
 The Other House. New York: The Macmillan Co. ; 
 London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1896. Issued 
 October, 1896; reprinted, November, 1896. 
 
 1897 
 
 He and She: Recent Documents. The Yellow 
 Book, London, January. 
 
 On the intimacy of George Sand and Alfred 
 de Musset. 
 
 What Maisie Knew. New Review, February-July. 
 
 Simultaneously in The Chap Book, Chicago, 
 
 January 15 August i. Published in book 
 
 form in 1897. 
 
 George du Maurier. Harper s Magazine, Septem 
 
 ber. 
 What Maisie Knew. London: Heinemann & Co.; 
 
 Chicago: Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897. 
 London Letters in Harper s Weekly. 
 
 Dated January i. Irving s Richard III.; 
 Jane Robins in Ibsen; Watts s pictures. Pub 
 lished January 23. 
 
 January 15. Ibsen s John Gabriel Borkman. 
 Published February 6. 
 
 February i. Marks s Life and Letters of 
 Frederick Walker; Pictures at Burlington 
 House and Grafton Gallery. Published Feb 
 ruary 20. 
 
 March 3. Forty-one Years in India (Lord 
 Roberts); Hunter s The Thackerays in India; 
 Steel, On the Face of the Waters. Published 
 March 27. 
 
 April 3. Mr. Archer on the Drama; Forbes- 
 Robertson; Mrs. Patrick Campbell; Beerbohm 
 
210 Tbenrs James 
 
 Tree; Charles Wyndham. Published April 24, 
 May 5. The Spring Exhibitions Abbey. 
 Sargent. Published June 5. 
 
 June i. Queen s Jubilee. Published June 26. 
 July i. George Gissing. Published July 3 1 . 
 July 31. Paul Bouget at Oxford; Mrs. Oli- 
 phant. Published August 21. 
 
 August 31. Old Suffolk. Published Sep 
 tember 25. Reprinted in English Hours (1905). 
 October 16. English Politics. Published 
 November 6. 
 
 The Spoils of Poynton. Boston and New York: 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1897; London, Heine- 
 mann & Co., 1897. 
 
 Last Studies of Hubert Crackenthorpe. With an 
 Introduction by Henry James. London: 
 Heinemann & Co., November, 1897. 
 
 1898 
 John Delavoy. Cosmopolis, January-February. 
 
 Reprinted in The Soft Side (1900). 
 The Late James Payn. Illustrated London News, 
 
 April 9. 
 The Story-teller at Large: Mr. Henry Harland. 
 
 Fortnightly Review, April. 
 Prosper Merimee. Literature, July 23. 
 The Awkward Age. Harper s Weekly, October i, 
 i898-January 7, 1899. Published in book 
 form in 1899. 
 American Letter. Literature, vol. ii. 
 
 March 26. Question of Opportunities. 
 April 9. The International and the Local; 
 Henry Harland; American Wives and English 
 Husbands (Mrs. Atherton). 
 
211 
 
 April 1 6. General Grant s Letters; Walt 
 Whitman; Richard Harding Davis. 
 
 April 23. American Ideals (Roosevelt); 
 Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction 
 (Dunning); The Workers (Wyckoff). 
 
 April 30. The Celebrity (Churchill) ; Soldier 
 of Manhattan (Altsheler); The General s 
 Double (Captain King). 
 
 June ii. American Magazines; Across the 
 Everglades (Willoughby) ; Cheerful Yester 
 days (Higginson); Emerson and Other Essays 
 (Chapman). 
 
 June 25. Unforeseen Tendencies in Democ 
 racy (Godkin); Meaning of Education (Butler). 
 July 9. The Novel of Dialect; The Durket 
 Sperret (Barn well- Elliott); The Juggler (Crad- 
 dock); The Preference for the Study of the 
 Primitive; The Story of a Play (Howells); 
 Silence (Wilkins). 
 
 Alphonse Daudet. Literature, December 25. 
 
 In the Cage. Chicago and New York: Herbert S. 
 Stone & Co., 1898; London: Duckworth, Au 
 gust, 1898. 
 
 The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw, Covering 
 End. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1898; 
 London: Duckworth, August, 1898. American 
 edition set up and electrotyped, September 18, 
 1898. Reprinted October, 1898; January, 
 April, May, 1899; March, 1905. 
 
 Pierre Loti s Impressions. Introduction by Henry 
 James. London: Constable, November, 1898. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne. Warner Library of the 
 World s Best Literature. 
 
212 1benr 3ames 
 
 James Russell Lowell. Warner Library of the 
 World s Best Literature. 
 
 Ivan Turgenieff. Warner Library of the World s 
 Best Literature. 
 
 1899 
 
 Europe. Scribner s Magazine, June. Reprinted in 
 The Soft Side (1900). 
 
 Present Literary Situation in France. North Ameri 
 can Review, October. 
 
 The Awkward Age. New York: Harper & Bros., 
 1899; London: Heinemann & Co., April, 1899. 
 
 1900 
 
 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. North Ameri 
 can Review, January. 
 
 The Great Good Place. Scribner s Magazine, Janu 
 ary. Reprinted in The Soft Side (1900), 
 
 Maud-Evelyn. Atlantic Monthly, April. Re 
 printed in The Soft Side (1900). 
 
 Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie. Cornhill Magazine, 
 May. Reprinted in The Soft Side (1900). 
 
 The Tone of Time. Scribner s Magazine, November. 
 Reprinted in The Better Sort (1903). 
 
 Broken Wings. Century Magazine, December. 
 Reprinted in The Better Sort (1903). 
 
 The Vicar of Wakefield. A Tale. By Oliver Gold 
 smith. With an Introduction by Henry James. 
 New York: The Century Co., 1900. 
 
 The Soft Side. New York: The Macmillan Co., 
 1900; London: Methuen & Co., 8vo., Sep 
 tember, 1900. 
 
 Contains: The Great Good Place (1900); 
 Europe (1899); Paste; The Real Right Thing; 
 
213 
 
 The Great Condition; The Tree of Knowledge; 
 The Abasement of the Northmores ; The Given 
 Case; John Delavoy (1898); The Third Per 
 son; Maud-Evelyn (1900); Miss Gunton of 
 Poughkeepsie (1900). 
 
 A Little Tour in France. With illustrations by 
 Joseph Pennell. Boston and New York: 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1900. First English 
 edition London: Heinemann & Co., 8vo, pp. 
 350. Published October, 1900. New preface 
 signed London, August 6, 1899. 
 
 1901 
 
 Winchelsea, Rye, and " Denis Duval." Scribner s 
 Magazine, January. Pictures by E. Peixotto. 
 Reprinted in English Hours (1905). 
 
 Matilde Serao. North American Review, March. 
 
 The Two Faces. Cornhill Magazine, June. Re 
 printed in The Better Sort (1903). 
 
 The Beldonald Holbein. Harper s Magazine, Octo 
 ber. Illustrations by Lucius Hitchcock. Re 
 printed in The Better Sort (1903). 
 
 Edmund Rostand. Cornhill Magazine, November; 
 The Critic, November. 
 
 Faces. Harper s Bazaar, December. 
 
 The Sacred Fount. New York: Charles Scribner s 
 Sons, 1901 ; London: Methuen & Co., February, 
 1901. 
 
 1902 
 
 The Late Mrs. Arthur Bronson. The Critic, Feb 
 ruary. 
 
 George Sand: The New Life. North American Re 
 view, April. 
 
214 Ifoenrg James 
 
 Flickerbridge. Scribner s Magazine, February. 
 Reprinted in The Better Sort (1903). 
 
 The Wings of the Dove. 2 vols. New York: 
 Charles Scribner s Sons, 1902 (published Au 
 gust) ; London : Constable, cr. 8vo. (published 
 September, 1902). 
 
 Flaubert s Madame Bovary. With critical intro 
 duction by Henry James. 8vo, pp. 486. 
 Heinemann, May, 1902. 
 
 Balzac s Two Young Brides. With critical intro 
 duction by Henry James. 8vo, pp. 417. 
 Heinemann, September, 1902. 
 
 The two foregoing included in Heinemann s 
 Century of French Romance. 
 
 1903 
 
 The Ambassadors. North American Review, Janu 
 ary-December. Published in book form in 
 1903. 
 
 Emile Zola. Atlantic Monthly, August. 
 
 The Better Sort. New York: Charles Scribner s 
 Sons, 1903; London: Methuen & Co., 8vo, 
 February, 1903. 
 
 Contains: Broken Wings (1900); The Bel- 
 donald Holbein (1901); The Two Faces (1901) ; 
 The Tone of Time (1900); The Special Type; 
 Mrs. Medwin; Flickerbridge (1902); The 
 Story in It; The Beast in the Jungle; The 
 Birthplace; The Papers. 
 
 The Ambassadors. New York : Harper & Bros, (pub 
 lished November, 1903); London: Methuen & 
 Co., 8vo (published September, 1903). 
 
215 
 
 William Wetmore Story and His Friends. From 
 Letters, Diaries, and Recollections. In two 
 volumes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 1903; London: William Blackwood & Sons, 
 2 vols., 8vo, October, 1903. 
 
 1904 
 
 Gabrielle d Annunzio. Quarterly Review, April. 
 Fordham Castle. Harper s Magazine, December. 
 The Golden Bowl. 2 vols. New York: Charles 
 Scribner s Sons, 1904 (published November). 
 
 1905 
 
 New England: An Autumn Impression. North 
 American Review, April-June. 
 
 The Lesson of Balzac. Atlantic Monthly, August. 
 
 The Question of Our Speech. Appleton s Book- 
 lover s Magazine, August. 
 
 The Question of Our Speech. 
 
 Containing also The Lesson of Balzac. Two 
 lectures. By Henry James. Boston and New 
 York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1905. 300 
 copies of the first edition bound uncut. 
 
 English Hours. By Henry James. With illustra 
 tions by Joseph Pennell. Boston and New 
 York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1905. 
 
 Contains: London; Browning in Westmin 
 ster Abbey; Chester; Litchfield and Warwick; 
 North Devon; Wells and Salisbury; An Eng 
 lish Easter; London at Midsummer; Two Ex 
 cursions; In Warwickshire; Abbeys and 
 Castles; English Vignettes; An English New 
 Year; An English Watering-place; Winchel- 
 sea, Rye, and "Denis Duval"; Old Suffolk. 
 
BELLES-LETTRES 
 
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