The Ambassadors Henry James (novel24 txt) 📖

relation, his so interesting complexity of relations. Strether’s appointed stage, in fine, could be but Chad’s most luckily selected one. The young man had gone in, as they say, for circumjacent charm; and where he would have found it, by the turn of his mind, most “authentic,” was where his earnest friend’s analysis would most find him; as well as where, for that matter, the former’s whole analytic faculty would be led such a wonderful dance.

“The Ambassadors” had been, all conveniently, “arranged for”; its first appearance was from month to month, in the The North American Review during 1903, and I had been open from far back to any pleasant provocation for ingenuity that might reside in one’s actively adopting⁠—so as to make it, in its way, a small compositional law⁠—recurrent breaks and resumptions. I had made up my mind here regularly to exploit and enjoy these often rather rude jolts⁠—having found, as I believed an admirable way to it; yet every question of form and pressure, I easily remember, paled in the light of the major propriety, recognised as soon as really weighed; that of employing but one centre and keeping it all within my hero’s compass. The thing was to be so much this worthy’s intimate adventure that even the projection of his consciousness upon it from beginning to end without intermission or deviation would probably still leave a part of its value for him, and a fortiori for ourselves, unexpressed. I might, however, express every grain of it that there would be room for⁠—on condition of contriving a splendid particular economy. Other persons in no small number were to people the scene, and each with his or her axe to grind, his or her situation to treat, his or her coherency not to fail of, his or her relation to my leading motive, in a word, to establish and carry on. But Strether’s sense of these things, and Strether’s only, should avail me for showing them; I should know them but through his more or less groping knowledge of them, since his very gropings would figure among his most interesting motions, and a full observance of the rich rigour I speak of would give me more of the effect I should be most “after” than all other possible observances together. It would give me a large unity, and that in turn would crown me with the grace to which the enlightened storyteller will at any time, for his interest, sacrifice if need be all other graces whatever. I refer of course to the grace of intensity, which there are ways of signally achieving and ways of signally missing⁠—as we see it, all round us, helplessly and woefully missed. Not that it isn’t, on the other hand, a virtue eminently subject to appreciation⁠—there being no strict, no absolute measure of it; so that one may hear it acclaimed where it has quite escaped one’s perception, and see it unnoticed where one has gratefully hailed it. After all of which I am not sure, either, that the immense amusement of the whole cluster of difficulties so arrayed may not operate, for the fond fabulist, when judicious not less than fond, as his best of determinants. That charming principle is always there, at all events, to keep interest fresh: it is a principle, we remember, essentially ravenous, without scruple and without mercy, appeased with no cheap nor easy nourishment. It enjoys the costly sacrifice and rejoices thereby in the very odour of difficulty⁠—even as ogres, with their “Fee-faw-fum!” rejoice in the smell of the blood of Englishmen.

Thus it was, at all events, that the ultimate, though after all so speedy, definition of my gentleman’s job⁠—his coming out, all solemnly appointed and deputed, to “save” Chad, and his then finding the young man so disobligingly and, at first, so bewilderingly not lost that a new issue altogether, in the connection, prodigiously faces them, which has to be dealt with in a new light⁠—promised as many calls on ingenuity and on the higher branches of the compositional art as one could possibly desire. Again and yet again, as, from book to book, I proceed with my survey, I find no source of interest equal to this verification after the fact, as I may call it, and the more in detail the better, of the scheme of consistency “gone in” for. As always⁠—since the charm never fails⁠—the retracing of the process from point to point brings back the old illusion. The old intentions bloom again and flower⁠—in spite of all the blossoms they were to have dropped by the way. This is the charm, as I say, of adventure transposed⁠—the thrilling ups and downs, the intricate ins and outs of the compositional problem, made after such a fashion admirably objective, becoming the question at issue and keeping the author’s heart in his mouth. Such an element, for instance, as his intention that Mrs. Newsome, away off with her finger on the pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less felt as to be reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest portrayal at first hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I say, once it’s unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too much impaired by the comparative dimness of the particular success. Cherished intention too inevitably acts and operates, in the book, about fifty times as little as I had fondly dreamt it might; but that scarce spoils for me the pleasure of recognising the fifty ways in which I had sought to provide for it. The mere charm of seeing such an idea constituent, in its degree; the fineness of the measures taken⁠—a real extension, if successful, of the very terms and possibilities of representation and figuration⁠—such things alone were, after this fashion, inspiring, such things alone were a gage of the probable success of that dissimulated calculation with which the whole effort