The Ambassadors | Page 8

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 story-teller 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 connexion, 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