The American Scene

The American Scene
Henry James
1907
Contents
I. New England: An Autumn Impression
II. New York Revisited
III. New York and The Hudson: A Spring Impression
IV. New York: Social Notes
V. The Bowery and Thereabouts
VI. The Sense of Newport
VII. Boston
VIII. Concord and Salem
IX. Philadelphia
X. Baltimore
XI. Washington
XII. Richmond
XIII. Charleston
XIV. Florida
PREFACE

THE following pages duly explain themselves, I judge, as to the
Author's point of view and his relation to his subject; but I prefix this
word on the chance of any suspected or perceived failure of such
references. My visit to America had been the first possible to me for
nearly a quarter of a century, and I had before my last previous one,
brief and distant to memory, spent other years in continuous absence;
so that I was to return with much of the freshness of eye, outward and
inward, which, with the further contribution of a state of desire, is
commonly held a precious agent of perception. I felt no doubt, I
confess, of my great advantage on that score; since if I had had time to
become almost as "fresh" as an inquiring stranger, I had not on the
other hand had enough to cease to be, or at least to feel, as acute as an
initiated native. I made no scruple of my conviction that I should
understand and should care better and more than the most earnest of
visitors, and yet that I should vibrate with more curiosity--on the extent
of ground, that is, on which I might aspire to intimate intelligence at
all--than the pilgrim with the longest list of questions, the sharpest
appetite for explanations and the largest exposure to mistakes.
I felt myself then, all serenely, not exposed to grave mistakes--though
there were also doubtless explanations which would find me, and quite
as contentedly, impenetrable. I would take my stand on my gathered
impressions, since it was all for them, for them only, that I returned; I
would in fact go to the stake for them--which is a sign of the value that
I both in particular and in general attach to them and that I have
endeavoured (vi) to preserve for them in this transcription. My
cultivated sense of aspects and prospects affected me absolutely as an
enrichment of my subject, and I was prepared to abide by the law of
that sense--the appearance that it would react promptly in some
presences only to remain imperturbably inert in others. There would be
a thousand matters--matters already the theme of prodigious reports and
statistics--as to which I should have no sense whatever, and as to
information about which my record would accordingly stand naked and
unashamed. It should unfailingly be proved against me that my
opportunity had found me incapable of information, incapable alike of
receiving and of imparting it; for then, and then only, would it be
clearly enough attested that I had cared and understood.

There are features of the human scene, there are properties of the social
air, that the newspapers, reports, surveys and blue-books would seem to
confess themselves powerless to "handle," and that yet represented to
me a greater array of items, a heavier expression of character, than my
own pair of scales would ever weigh, keep them as clear for it as I
might. I became aware soon enough, on the spot, that these elements of
the human subject, the results of these attempted appreciations of life
itself, would prove much too numerous even for a capacity all given to
them for some ten months; but at least therefore, artistically concerned
as I had been all my days with the human subject, with the appreciation
of life itself, and with the consequent question of literary representation,
I should not find such matters scant or simple. I was not in fact to do so,
and they but led me on and on. How far this might have been my
several chapters show; and yet even here I fall short. I shall have to take
a few others for the rest of my story.
H. J.
THE AMERICAN SCENE
I
NEW ENGLAND AN AUTUMN IMPRESSION
I
CONSCIOUS that the impressions of the very first hours have always
the value of their intensity, I shrink from wasting those that attended
my arrival, my return after long years, even though they be out of order
with the others that were promptly to follow and that I here gather in,
as best I may, under a single head. They referred partly, these instant
vibrations, to a past recalled from very far back; fell into a train of
association that receded, for its beginning, to the dimness of extreme
youth. One's extremest youth had been full of New York, and one was
absurdly finding