Henry James, Jr. | Page 4

of
"Lippincott's," of "The Galaxy," of "The Century," it was another affair.
The flavor was so strange, that, with rare exceptions, they had to "learn
to like" it. Probably few writers have in the same degree compelled the
liking of their readers. He was reluctantly accepted, partly through a
mistake as to his attitude--through the confusion of his point of view
with his private opinion--in the reader's mind. This confusion caused
the tears of rage which bedewed our continent in behalf of the "average
American girl" supposed to be satirized in Daisy Miller, and prevented
the perception of the fact that, so far as the average American girl was
studied at all in Daisy Miller, her indestructible innocence, her
invulnerable new-worldliness, had never been so delicately appreciated.
It was so plain that Mr. James disliked her vulgar conditions, that the
very people to whom he revealed her essential sweetness and light were
furious that he should have seemed not to see what existed through him.
In other words, they would have liked him better if he had been a worse
artist--if he had been a little more confidential.
But that artistic impartiality which puzzled so many in the treatment of
Daisy Miller is one of the qualities most valuable in the eyes of those
who care how things are done, and I am not sure that it is not Mr.
James's most characteristic quality. As "frost performs the effect of
fire," this impartiality comes at last to the same result as sympathy. We
may be quite sure that Mr. James does not like the peculiar phase of our
civilization typified in Henrietta Stackpole; but he treats her with such
exquisite justice that he lets US like her. It is an extreme case, but I
confidently allege it in proof.

His impartiality is part of the reserve with which he works in most
respects, and which at first glance makes us say that he is wanting in
humor. But I feel pretty certain that Mr. James has not been able to
disinherit himself to this degree. We Americans are terribly in earnest
about making ourselves, individually and collectively; but I fancy that
our prevailing mood in the face of all problems is that of an abiding
faith which can afford to be funny. He has himself indicated that we
have, as a nation, as a people, our joke, and every one of us is in the
joke more or less. We may, some of us, dislike it extremely, disapprove
it wholly, and even abhor it, but we are in the joke all the same, and no
one of us is safe from becoming the great American humorist at any
given moment. The danger is not apparent in Mr. James's case, and I
confess that I read him with a relief in the comparative immunity that
he affords from the national facetiousness. Many of his people are
humorously imagined, or rather humorously SEEN, like Daisy Miller's
mother, but these do not give a dominant color; the business in hand is
commonly serious, and the droll people are subordinated. They abound,
nevertheless, and many of them are perfectly new finds, like Mr.
Tristram in "The American," the bill-paying father in the "Pension
Beaurepas," the anxiously Europeanizing mother in the same story, the
amusing little Madame de Belgarde, Henrietta Stackpole, and even
Newman himself. But though Mr. James portrays the humorous in
character, he is decidedly not on humorous terms with his reader; he
ignores rather than recognizes the fact that they are both in the joke.
If we take him at all we must take him on his own ground, for clearly
he will not come to ours. We must make concessions to him, not in this
respect only, but in several others, chief among which is the motive for
reading fiction. By example, at least, he teaches that it is the pursuit and
not the end which should give us pleasure; for he often prefers to leave
us to our own conjectures in regard to the fate of the people in whom he
has interested us. There is no question, of course, but he could tell the
story of Isabel in "The Portrait of a Lady" to the end, yet he does not
tell it. We must agree, then, to take what seems a fragment instead of a
whole, and to find, when we can, a name for this new kind in fiction.
Evidently it is the character, not the fate, of his people which occupies
him; when he has fully developed their character he leaves them to

what destiny the reader pleases.
The analytic tendency seems to have increased with him as his work
has gone on. Some of the earlier tales were very dramatic: "A
Passionate Pilgrim," which I should rank above