The Ambassadors

500 Pages·2004·2.28 MB·English

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The Ambassadors.
Henry James.
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About the author Papers" and The Turn of the Screw) is often considered to be more readable
to contemporary audiences than the longer novels, and early works tend to be
more accessible than later ones.
Henry James (April 15, 1843 - Feb- For much of his life he was an expatriate, an outsider, living in Europe.
ruary 28, 1916), younger brother of the Much of The Portrait of a Lady was written while he lived in Venice, a city
philosopher and psychologist William whose beauty he found distracting; he was better pleased with the small town
James, was a British-American author of of Rye in England. This feeling of being an American in Europe came
the late 19th and early 20th century, best through as a recurring theme in his books, which contrasted American inno-
known for novels and novellas based upon cence (or a lack of sophistication) with European sophistication (or deca-
themes of morality. dence) - see for example The Portrait of a Lady or The Golden Bowl.
He made only a modest living from his books, yet was often the houseguest
He favored internal, psychological drama; his work is frequently about of the wealthy. While not really one of them, James was able to observe them
alienation, his prose frequently serpentine. His earlier work is considered at close range. (He said he got some of his best story ideas from dinner table
Realist, but in fact throughout his long career he maintained a strong interest gossip.) He was a man whose sexuality was indefinite and some of whose
in a variety of artistic effects and movements. In the late 20th century, many tastes and interests were rather feminine; yet as a male he could travel and act
of James's novels were filmed by the team of Ismail Merchant & James Ivory, with an independence denied the women of his time. Being a permanent
causing a small resurgence of interest in his works. Among the best known of outsider in so many ways may have helped him in his detailed psychological
these include the short works "Daisy Miller", "Washington Square", and analysis of situations — one of the strongest features of his writing —
"The Turn of the Screw", and the novels The Portrait of a Lady, The Golden because he was never a full member of any camp. (See The Bostonians,
Bowl, The Ambassadors, and The American. especially Verena's speech about always looking at the world from behind a
James's prose style is frequently marked by long, periodical sentences and sheet of glass.)
highly descriptive passages that defer the verb for a longer space than is usual. This analytical strain to his work is quite strong. It is possible to see many
This somewhat florid prose style has been given many causes by biographers of his stories as psychological thought-experiments. The Portrait of a Lady
and critics of his work. Because James's style seems to change during his might be an experiment to see what happens when an idealistic young woman
career from a straightforward style early on and a more languid style later, suddenly becomes very rich; alternatively, it has been suggested that the
biographers have noted that the change of style occurred at approximately storyline was inspired by Charles Darwin's theory of sexual selection. The
the time that James began employing an amanuensis. He was afflicted with novella The Turn of the Screw is a ghost story that deals with the psychologi-
a mild stutter. He overcame this by cultivating the habit of speaking very cal impact on an unmarried (and possibly sexually repressed) young governess
slowly and deliberately. Since he believed that good writing should resemble who stumbles into an ongoing tragic love affair complicated by the fact that
the conversation of an intelligent man, the process of dictating his works may the lovers are dead. His late novel The Wings of the Dove deals with the
s
t account for a shift in style from direct to conversational sentences. The result question of how far a woman in love will go to get what she wants and what
n was that his prose is at times baroque. (His friend Edith Wharton, who it costs her when she does.
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admired him greatly, admitted that there were some passages in his works
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n which were almost incomprehensible.) His short fiction (such as "The Aspern
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Contents Volume 2.
Book the Seventh.
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Volume 1.
Chapter 3.
Preface.
Book the Eighth.
Book One.
Chapter 1.
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 3. Click on a number in the chapter list to go
to the first page of that chapter.
Book the Ninth.
Book the Second.
Chapter 1.
Chapter 1. Note:
Chapter 2. Chapter 2. The best way to read this ebook is in Full
Chapter 3. Screen mode: click View, Full Screen to set
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Book the Third.
Book the Tenth. allows you to use Page Down to go to the next
Chapter 1.
Chapter 1. page, and affords the best reading view. Press
Chapter 2.
Chapter 2. Escape to exit the Full Screen View.
Chapter 3.
Book the Fourth.
Chapter 1.
Book the Eleventh.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Book the Fifth.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 1.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Book the Twelfth.
Chapter 1.
Book the Sixth.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 1.
s Chapter 3.
t Chapter 2.
n Chapter 4.
Chapter 3.
e Chapter 5.
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1
The Ambassadors.
Volume 1.
Preface.
Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of “The
Ambassadors,” which first appeared in twelve numbers of The
North American Review (1903) and was published as a whole
the same year. The situation involved is gathered up betimes,
that is in the second chapter of Book Fifth, for the reader’s
benefit, into as few words as possible— planted or “sunk,”
stiffly and saliently, in the centre of the current, almost per-
haps to the obstruction of traffic. Never can a composition of
NOTICE this sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of sug-
Copyright © 2004 thewritedirection.net
s Please note that although the text of this ebook is in the public domain, gestion, and never can that grain, developed, overgrown and
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smothered, have yet lurked more in the mass as an indepen-
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t COLLEGEBOOKSHELF.NET/COPYRIGHTS dent particle. The whole case, in fine, is in Lambert Strether’s
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2 3
irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham on the Sunday after- qualified for a better part, and he wakes up to it in conditions
noon in Gloriani’s garden, the candour with which he yields, that press the spring of a terrible question. WOULD there
for his young friend’s enlightenment, to the charming admo- yet perhaps be time for reparation?—reparation, that is, for
nition of that crisis. The idea of the tale resides indeed in the the injury done his character; for the affront, he is quite ready
very fact that an hour of such unprecedented ease should have to say, so stupidly put upon it and in which he has even him-
been felt by him AS a crisis, and he is at pains to express it for self had so clumsy a hand? The answer to which is that he
us as neatly as we could desire. The remarks to which he thus now at all events SEES; so that the business of my tale and
gives utterance contain the essence of “The Ambassadors,” the march of my action, not to say the precious moral of ev-
his fingers close, before he has done, round the stem of the erything, is just my demonstration of this process of vision.
full-blown flower; which, after that fashion, he continues of- Nothing can exceed the closeness with which the whole
ficiously to present to us. “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not fits again into its germ. That had been given me bodily, as
to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular so usual, by the spoken word, for I was to take the image over
long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what HAVE exactly as I happened to have met it. A friend had repeated
you had? I’m too old—too old at any rate for what I see. to me, with great appreciation, a thing or two said to him by
What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. Still, a man of distinction, much his senior, and to which a sense
we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t, like me to- akin to that of Strether’s melancholy eloquence might be im-
day, be without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at puted—said as chance would have, and so easily might, in
the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it, and Paris, and in a charming old garden attached to a house of art,
now I’m a case of reaction against the mistake. Do what you and on a Sunday afternoon of summer, many persons of great
like so long as you don’t make it. For it WAS a mistake. Live, interest being present. The observation there listened to and
live!” Such is the gist of Strether’s appeal to the impressed gathered up had contained part of the “note” that I was to
youth, whom he likes and whom he desires to befriend; the recognise on the spot as to my purpose—had contained in
word “mistake” occurs several times, it will be seen, in the fact the greater part; the rest was in the place and the time
s course of his remarks— which gives the measure of the signal and the scene they sketched: these constituents clustered and
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n warning he feels attached to his case. He has accordingly combined to give me further support, to give me what I may
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t missed too much, though perhaps after all constitutionally call the note absolute. There it stands, accordingly, full in the
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4 5
tideway; driven in, with hard taps, like some strong stake for intermittence, never one of those alarms as for a suspected
the noose of a cable, the swirl of the current roundabout it. hollow beneath one’s feet, a felt ingratitude in the scheme
What amplified the hint to more than the bulk of hints in adopted, under which confidence fails and opportunity seems
general was the gift with it of the old Paris garden, for in that but to mock. If the motive of “The Wings of the Dove,” as I
token were sealed up values infinitely precious. There was of have noted, was to worry me at moments by a sealing-up of
course the seal to break and each item of the packet to count its face—though without prejudice to its again, of a sudden,
over and handle and estimate; but somehow, in the light of fairly grimacing with expression—so in this other business I
the hint, all the elements of a situation of the sort most to my had absolute conviction and constant clearness to deal with;
taste were there. I could even remember no occasion on which, it had been a frank proposition, the whole bunch of data,
so confronted, I had found it of a livelier interest to take stock, installed on my premises like a monotony of fine weather.
in this fashion, of suggested wealth. For I think, verily, that (The order of composition, in these things, I may mention,
there are degrees of merit in subjects—in spite of the fact was reversed by the order of publication; the earlier written of
that to treat even one of the most ambiguous with due de- the two books having appeared as the later.) Even under the
cency we must for the time, for the feverish and prejudiced weight of my hero’s years I could feel my postulate firm; even
hour, at least figure its merit and its dignity as POSSIBLY under the strain of the difference between those of Madame
absolute. What it comes to, doubtless, is that even among de Vionnet and those of Chad Newsome, a difference liable
the supremely good—since with such alone is it one’s theory to be denounced as shocking, I could still feel it serene. Noth-
of one’s honour to be concerned—there is an ideal BEAUTY ing resisted, nothing betrayed, I seem to make out, in this full
of goodness the invoked action of which is to raise the artistic and sound sense of the matter; it shed from any side I could
faith to its maximum. Then truly, I hold, one’s theme may be turn it to the same golden glow. I rejoiced in the promise of
said to shine, and that of “The Ambassadors,” I confess, wore a hero so mature, who would give me thereby the more to bite
this glow for me from beginning to end. Fortunately thus I into—since it’s only into thickened motive and accumulated
am able to estimate this as, frankly, quite the best, “all round,” character, I think, that the painter of life bites more than a
s of all my productions; any failure of that justification would little. My poor friend should have accumulated character,
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n have made such an extreme of complacency publicly fatuous. certainly; or rather would be quite naturally and handsomely
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t I recall then in this connexion no moment of subjective possessed of it, in the sense that he would have, and would
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6 7
always have felt he had, imagination galore, and that this yet of the actual reported speaker. HE remains but the happiest
wouldn’t have wrecked him. It was immeasurable, the oppor- of accidents; his actualities, all too definite, precluded any
tunity to “do” a man of imagination, for if THERE mightn’t range of possibilities; it had only been his charming office to
be a chance to “bite,” where in the world might it be? This project upon that wide field of the artist’s vision—which hangs
personage of course, so enriched, wouldn’t give me, for his there ever in place like the white sheet suspended for the fig-
type, imagination in PREDOMINANCE or as his prime ures of a child’s magic-lantern—a more fantastic and more
faculty, nor should I, in view of other matters, have found moveable shadow.) No privilege of the teller of tales and the
that convenient. So particular a luxury —some occasion, that handler of puppets is more delightful, or has more of the
is, for study of the high gift in SUPREME command of a suspense and the thrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly
case or of a career—would still doubtless come on the day I played, than just this business of looking for the unseen and
should be ready to pay for it; and till then might, as from far the occult, in a scheme half-grasped, by the light or, so to
back, remain hung up well in view and just out of reach. The speak, by the clinging scent, of the gage already in hand. No
comparative case meanwhile would serve—it was only on the dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave with bloodhounds
minor scale that I had treated myself even to comparative and the rag of association can ever, for “excitement,” I judge,
cases. have bettered it at its best. For the dramatist always, by the
I was to hasten to add however that, happy stopgaps as the very law of his genius, believes not only in a possible right
minor scale had thus yielded, the instance in hand should issue from the rightly-conceived tight place; he does much
enjoy the advantage of the full range of the major; since most more than this—he believes, irresistibly, in the necessary, the
immediately to the point was the question of that SUPPLE- precious “tightness” of the place (whatever the issue) on the
MENT of situation logically involved in our gentleman’s strength of any respectable hint. It being thus the respect-
impulse to deliver himself in the Paris garden on the Sunday able hint that I had with such avidity picked up, what would
afternoon—or if not involved by strict logic then all ideally be the story to which it would most inevitably form the cen-
and enchantingly implied in it. (I say “ideally,” because I tre? It is part of the charm attendant on such questions that
s need scarce mention that for development, for expression of the “story,” with the omens true, as I say, puts on from this
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n its maximum, my glimmering story was, at the earliest stage, stage the authenticity of concrete existence. It then is, essen-
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t to have nipped the thread of connexion with the possibilities tially—it begins to be, though it may more or less obscurely
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8 9
lurk, so that the point is not in the least what to make of it, est salary paid to a chief accountant. Not, however, that the
but only, very delightfully and very damnably, where to put chief accountant hasn’t HIS gleams of bliss; for the felicity, or
one’s hand on it. at least the equilibrium of the artist’s state dwells less, surely,
In which truth resides surely much of the interest of that in the further delightful complications he can smuggle in
admirable mixture for salutary application which we know as than in those he succeeds in keeping out. He sows his seed at
art. Art deals with what we see, it must first contribute full- the risk of too thick a crop; wherefore yet again, like the gentle-
handed that ingredient; it plucks its material, otherwise ex- men who audit ledgers, he must keep his head at any price.
pressed, in the garden of life—which material elsewhere grown In consequence of all which, for the interest of the matter, I
is stale and uneatable. But it has no sooner done this than it might seem here to have my choice of narrating my “hunt”
has to take account of a PROCESS—from which only when for Lambert Strether, of describing the capture of the shadow
it’s the basest of the servants of man, incurring ignominious projected by my friend’s anecdote, or of reporting on the oc-
dismissal with no “character,” does it, and whether under some currences subsequent to that triumph. But I had probably
muddled pretext of morality or on any other, pusillanimously best attempt a little to glance in each direction; since it comes
edge away. The process, that of the expression, the literal to me again and again, over this licentious record, that one’s
squeezing-out, of value is another affair—with which the bag of adventures, conceived or conceivable, has been only
happy luck of mere finding has little to do. The joys of find- half-emptied by the mere telling of one’s story. It depends so
ing, at this stage, are pretty well over; that quest of the subject on what one means by that equivocal quantity. There is the
as a whole by “matching,” as the ladies say at the shops, the story of one’s hero, and then, thanks to the intimate connexion
big piece with the snippet, having ended, we assume, with a of things, the story of one’s story itself. I blush to confess it,
capture. The subject is found, and if the problem is then but if one’s a dramatist one’s a dramatist, and the latter im-
transferred to the ground of what to do with it the field opens broglio is liable on occasion to strike me as really the more
out for any amount of doing. This is precisely the infusion objective of the two.
that, as I submit, completes the strong mixture. It is on the The philosophy imputed to him in that beautiful out-
s other hand the part of the business that can least be likened break, the hour there, amid such happy provision, striking for
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n to the chase with horn and hound. It’s all a sedentary part— him, would have been then, on behalf of my man of imagina-
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t involves as much ciphering, of sorts, as would merit the high- tion, to be logically and, as the artless craft of comedy has it,
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10 11
“led up” to; the probable course to such a goal, the goal of so of course a perfect train of secrets tumbled for me into the
conscious a predicament, would have in short to be finely light. They had to be sifted and sorted, and I shall not repro-
calculated. Where has he come from and why has he come, duce the detail of that process; but unmistakeably they were
what is he doing (as we Anglo-Saxons, and we only, say, in all there, and it was but a question, auspiciously, of picking
our foredoomed clutch of exotic aids to expression) in that among them. What the “position” would infallibly be, and
galere? To answer these questions plausibly, to answer them why, on his hands, it had turned “false”—these inductive steps
as under cross-examination in the witness-box by counsel for could only be as rapid as they were distinct. I accounted for
the prosecution, in other words satisfactorily to account for everything—and “everything” had by this time become the
Strether and for his “peculiar tone,” was to possess myself of most promising quantity—by the view that he had come to
the entire fabric. At the same time the clue to its where- Paris in some state of mind which was literally undergoing, as
abouts would lie in a certain principle of probability: he a result of new and unexpected assaults and infusions, a change
wouldn’t have indulged in his peculiar tone without a reason; almost from hour to hour. He had come with a view that
it would take a felt predicament or a false position to give him might have been figured by a clear green liquid, say, in a neat
so ironic an accent. One hadn’t been noting “tones” all one’s glass phial; and the liquid, once poured into the open cup of
life without recognising when one heard it the voice of the APPLICATION, once exposed to the action of another air,
false position. The dear man in the Paris garden was then had begun to turn from green to red, or whatever, and might,
admirably and unmistakeably IN one—which was no small for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to black, to yellow. At
point gained; what next accordingly concerned us was the the still wilder extremes represented perhaps, for all he could
determination of THIS identity. One could only go by prob- say to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he would at
abilities, but there was the advantage that the most general of first, naturally, but have gazed in surprise and alarm; whereby
the probabilities were virtual certainties. Possessed of our the SITUATION clearly would spring from the play of wild-
friend’s nationality, to start with, there was a general prob- ness and the development of extremes. I saw in a moment
ability in his narrower localism; which, for that matter, one that, should this development proceed both with force and
s had really but to keep under the lens for an hour to see it give logic, my “story” would leave nothing to be desired. There is
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n up its secrets. He would have issued, our rueful worthy, from always, of course, for the story-teller, the irresistible determi-
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t the very heart of New England—at the heels of which matter nant and the incalculable advantage of his interest in the story
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AS SUCH; it is ever, obviously, overwhelmingly, the prime advance of him. As the case completed itself he had in fact,
and precious thing (as other than this I have never been able from a good way behind, to catch up with them, breathless
to see it); as to which what makes for it, with whatever head- and a little flurried, as he best could. THE false position, for
long energy, may be said to pale before the energy with which our belated man of the world— belated because he had en-
it simply makes for itself. It rejoices, none the less, at its best, deavoured so long to escape being one, and now at last had
to seem to offer itself in a light, to seem to know, and with the really to face his doom—the false position for him, I say, was
very last knowledge, what it’s about—liable as it yet is at obviously to have presented himself at the gate of that bound-
moments to be caught by us with its tongue in its cheek and less menagerie primed with a moral scheme of the most ap-
absolutely no warrant but its splendid impudence. Let us proved pattern which was yet framed to break down on any
grant then that the impudence is always there—there, so to approach to vivid facts; that is to any at all liberal apprecia-
speak, for grace and effect and ALLURE; there, above all, tion of them. There would have been of course the case of the
because the Story is just the spoiled child of art, and because, Strether prepared, wherever presenting himself, only to judge
as we are always disappointed when the pampered don’t “play and to feel meanly; but HE would have moved for me, I
up,” we like it, to that extent, to look all its character. It confess, enveloped in no legend whatever. The actual man’s
probably does so, in truth, even when we most flatter our- note, from the first of our seeing it struck, is the note of dis-
selves that we negotiate with it by treaty. crimination, just as his drama is to become, under stress, the
All of which, again, is but to say that the STEPS, for my drama of discrimination. It would have been his blest imagi-
fable, placed themselves with a prompt and, as it were, func- nation, we have seen, that had already helped him to dis-
tional assurance—an air quite as of readiness to have dispensed criminate; the element that was for so much of the pleasure
with logic had I been in fact too stupid for my clue. Never, of my cutting thick, as I have intimated, into his intellectual,
positively, none the less, as the links multiplied, had I felt less into his moral substance. Yet here it was, at the same time,
stupid than for the determination of poor Strether’s errand just here, that a shade for a moment fell across the scene.
and for the apprehension of his issue. These things contin- There was the dreadful little old tradition, one of the plati-
s ued to fall together, as by the neat action of their own weight tudes of the human comedy, that people’s moral scheme DOES
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n and form, even while their commentator scratched his head break down in Paris; that nothing is more frequently observed;
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t about them; he easily sees now that they were always well in that hundreds of thousands of more or less hypocritical or
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