Some Skepticism about Henry James

The Mr. and Mrs. Buce reaadaloud club has embarked on a perusal of The Ambassadors by Henry James, the only one of the three big Henrys that we never read before. Mrs. B is a pretty big Henry fan; I am more ambivalent: I acknowledge a certain hypnotic charm, but I can never quite sell myself that the old buffer really knows what he is talking about. And right here on page 97, The Ambassadors offers something to chew on.

You may know the plot: at the behest of Mrs. Newsome, Lambert Strether has come to Europe to rescue her son Chad from what she takes to be a life of sin. Here early in the book, Lambert is trying to explain it all to his new friend, the mysteriously captivating Miss Gostrey.

As Lambert tells it, there a business back home in Wollett. Papa built it but papa is dead. Now matters stand at a critical juncture; but if young Chad will come home and pull an oar, then all will be well.

Now, right here, the skeptical reader may wish to enter a demurral. If Chad is truly a young scapegrace, then the last thing in the world you want is to let him interfere with the money machine: he'll burn it dry and never know he has done any harm until it is all gone. But write that off to willing suspension of disbelief. My particular point is further on--the nature of the business itself. Here Henry is persistently, you would have to say maddeningly, imprecise:

'Is there a business?'
'Lord, yes--a big brave bouncing business. A roaring trade.'
'A great shop?'
'Yes--a workshop; a great production, a great industry ...'
'And what is the article produced?'
Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the curtain, which he saw was about to rise, came to his aid. I'll tell you next time.'

'Next time' he is equally coy:

'Unmentionable? Oh no, we constantly talk of it; we are quite familair and brazen about it. Only, as a small, trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest domestic use, it's just wanting in-what shall I say? Well, dignity, or the least approach to distinction. Right here therefore, with everything about us so grand--!' In short he shrank.
'It's a false note?'
'Sadly. It's vulgar.'

Henry James, The Ambassadors 96-97 (Penguin Paperback ed. 1986)

I admit I have a silly and extraneous reason for not taking rthis all too seriously. That is: nearly 50 years ago, I worked for a little newspaper outside Cleveland, hard by the Ohio Rubber Company (as I think it was called). There was a tubby, pompous, cigar-smoking PR man from the factory who used to come to call at the paper, just to touch base. If you wanted to torment him, there was one sure-fire technique: just ask him if they made contraceptives. He'd get all huffy and harrumphy and hide behind his cigar smoke. Sadly, you'd have to say, he'd find them vulgar.

I admit that the comparison here is a bit unfair. I don't really think old Newsome built the family fortune around a condom (overshoes, maybe, but that is another matter). What I do think is that poor Henry really didn't have a clue what went on back in Wollett, nor how it might affect the life of his hero. This in itself is not a crippling vice. The greater problem is that I think he doesn't know what he doesn't know--and doesn't seem to realize, not even for an instant, that his insight might be somehow impaired by his utter innocence of anything that might lie behind the dividend check.

I admit also that Henry may not be in very select company here. Lots of novelists--most, perhaps--betray little or no conception of the raw grit making a living. But most seem to sidestep it altogether, or to dance around it. James, I think is almost alone in his serene self-confidence that he knows all there is to know, and his serene indifference to anything he can't bring under his command.

This isn't quite a dismissal. As I said above, I'm ambivalent, which is to say that there is a lot I like about Henry James, a lot that keeps me going in spite of my reservations. But maybe I'll save that for another day.