Henry James, Jr. | Page 6

that it seems probable and that it is
charming. It makes one wish that it were in Mr. James's way to paint in
some story the present phase of change in England. A titled personage

is still mainly an inconceivable being to us; he is like a goblin or a fairy
in a storybook. How does he comport himself in the face of all the
changes and modifications that have taken place and that still impend?
We can hardly imagine a lord taking his nobility seriously; it is some
hint of the conditional frame of Lord Warburton's mind that makes him
imaginable and delightful to us.
It is not my purpose here to review any of Mr. James's books; I like
better to speak of his people than of the conduct of his novels, and I
wish to recognize the fineness with which he has touched-in the pretty
primness of Osmond's daughter and the mild devotedness of Mr. Rosier.
A masterly hand is as often manifest in the treatment of such
subordinate figures as in that of the principal persons, and Mr. James
does them unerringly. This is felt in the more important character of
Valentin Belgarde, a fascinating character in spite of its
defects,--perhaps on account of them--and a sort of French Lord
Warburton, but wittier, and not so good. "These are my ideas," says his
sister-in-law, at the end of a number of inanities. "Ah, you call them
ideas!" he returns, which is delicious and makes you love him. He, too,
has his moments of misgiving, apparently in regard to his nobility, and
his acceptance of Newman on the basis of something like "manhood
suffrage" is very charming. It is of course difficult for a remote
plebeian to verify the pictures of legitimist society in "The American,"
but there is the probable suggestion in them of conditions and
principles, and want of principles, of which we get glimpses in our
travels abroad; at any rate, they reveal another and not impossible
world, and it is fine to have Newman discover that the opinions and
criticisms of our world are so absolutely valueless in that sphere that
his knowledge of the infamous crime of the mother and brother of his
betrothed will have no effect whatever upon them in their own circle if
he explodes it there. This seems like aristocracy indeed! and one
admires, almost respects, its survival in our day. But I always regretted
that Newman's discovery seemed the precursor of his magnanimous
resolution not to avenge himself; it weakened the effect of this, with
which it had really nothing to do. Upon the whole, however, Newman
is an adequate and satisfying representative of Americanism, with his
generous matrimonial ambition, his vast good-nature, and his thorough

good sense and right feeling. We must be very hard to please if we are
not pleased with him. He is not the "cultivated American" who redeems
us from time to time in the eyes of Europe; but he is unquestionably
more national, and it is observable that his unaffected
fellow-countrymen and women fare very well at Mr. James's hand
always; it is the Europeanizing sort like the critical little Bostonian in
the "Bundle of Letters," the ladies shocked at Daisy Miller, the mother
in the "Pension Beaurepas" who goes about trying to be of the "native"
world everywhere, Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond, Miss Light
and her mother, who have reason to complain, if any one has.
Doubtless Mr. James does not mean to satirize such Americans, but it is
interesting to note how they strike such a keen observer. We are
certainly not allowed to like them, and the other sort find somehow a
place in our affections along with his good Europeans. It is a little odd,
by the way, that in all the printed talk about Mr. James--and there has
been no end of it--his power of engaging your preference for certain of
his people has been so little commented on. Perhaps it is because he
makes no obvious appeal for them; but one likes such men as Lord
Warburton, Newman, Valentin, the artistic brother in "The Europeans,"
and Ralph Touchett, and such women as Isabel, Claire Belgarde, Mrs.
Tristram, and certain others, with a thoroughness that is one of the best
testimonies to their vitality. This comes about through their own
qualities, and is not affected by insinuation or by downright petting,
such as we find in Dickens nearly always and in Thackeray too often.
The art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than it was
with Dickens and Thackeray. We could not suffer the confidential
attitude of the latter now, nor the mannerism of the former, any more
than we could endure the prolixity of Richardson or the coarseness of
Fielding.