XI

And now for the method by which the picture of a mind is fully

dramatized, the method which is to be seen consistently applied in The

Ambassadors and the other later novels of Henry James. How is the

author to withdraw, to stand aside, and to let Strether's thought tell

its own story? The thing must be seen from our own point of view and

no other. Author and hero, Thackeray and Esmond, Meredith and Harry

Richmond, have given their various accounts of emotional and

intellectual adventure; but they might do more, they might bring the

facts of the adventure upon the scene and leave them to make their

impression. The story passes in an invisible world, the events take

place in the man's mind; and we might have to conclude that they lie

beyond our reach, and that we cannot attain to them save by the help

of the man himself, or of the author who knows all about him. We might

have to make the best of an account at second hand, and it would not

occur to us, I dare say, that anything more could be forthcoming; we

seem to touch the limit of the possibilities of drama in fiction. But

it is not the final limit--there is fiction here to prove it; and it

is this further stroke of the art that I would now examine.

The world of silent thought is thrown open, and instead of telling the

reader what happened there, the novelist uses the look and behaviour

of thought as the vehicle by which the story is rendered. Just as the

writer of a play embodies his subject in visible action and audible

speech, so the novelist, dealing with a situation like Strether's,

represents it by means of the movement that flickers over the surface

of his mind. The impulses and reactions of his mood are the players

upon the new scene. In drama of the theatre a character must bear his

part unaided; if he is required to be a desperate man, harbouring

thoughts of crime, he cannot look to the author to appear at the side

of the stage and inform the audience of the fact; he must express it

for himself through his words and deeds, his looks and tones. The

playwright so arranges the matter that these will be enough, the

spectator will make the right inference. But suppose that instead of a

man upon the stage, concealing and betraying his thought, we watch the

thought itself, the hidden thing, as it twists to and fro in his

brain--watch it without any other aid to understanding but such as its

own manner of bearing may supply. The novelist, more free than the

playwright, could of course _tell_ us, if he chose, what lurks behind

this agitated spirit; he could step forward and explain the restless

appearance of the man's thought. But if he prefers the dramatic way,

admittedly the more effective, there is nothing to prevent him from

taking it. The man's thought, in its turn, can be made to reveal its

own inwardness.

Let us see how this plan is pursued in The Ambassadors. That book is

entirely concerned with Strether's experience of his peculiar mission

to Europe, and never passes outside the circle of his thought.

Strether is despatched, it will be remembered, by a resolute New

England widow, whose son is living lightly in Paris instead of

attending to business at home. To win the hand of the widow, Strether

must succeed in snatching the young man from the siren who is believed

to have beguiled him. The mission is undertaken in all good faith,

Strether descends upon Paris with a mind properly disposed and

resolved. He comes as an ambassador representing principle and duty,

to treat with the young man, appeal to him convincingly and bear him

off. The task before him may be difficult, but his purpose is simple.

Strether has reckoned, however, without his imagination; he had

scarcely been aware of possessing one before, but everything grows

complicated as it is touched and awakened on the new scene. By degrees

and degrees he changes his opinion of the life of freedom; it is most

unlike his prevision of it, and at last his purpose is actually

inverted. He no longer sees a misguided young man to be saved from

disaster, he sees an exquisite, bountiful world laid at a young man's

feet; and now the only question is whether the young man is capable

of meeting and grasping his opportunity. He is incapable, as it turns

out; when the story ends he is on the verge of rejecting his freedom

and going back to the world of commonplace; Strether's mission has

ended successfully. But in Strether's mind the revolution is complete;

there is nothing left for him, no reward and no future. The world of

commonplace is no longer _his_ world, and he is too late to seize the

other; he is old, he has missed the opportunity of youth.

This is a story which must obviously be told from Strether's point of

view, in the first place. The change in his purpose is due to a change

in his vision, and the long slow process could not be followed unless

his vision were shared by the reader. Strether's predicament, that is

to say, could not be placed upon the stage; his outward behaviour, his

conduct, his talk, do not express a tithe of it. Only the brain behind

his eyes can be aware of the colour of his experience, as it passes

through its innumerable gradations; and all understanding of his case

depends upon seeing these. The way of the author, therefore, who takes

this subject in hand, is clear enough at the outset. It is a purely

pictorial subject, covering Strether's field of vision and bounded by

its limits; it consists entirely of an impression received by a

certain man. There can accordingly be no thought of rendering him as a

figure seen from without; nothing that any one else could discern,

looking at him and listening to his conversation, would give the full

sense of the eventful life he is leading within. The dramatic method,

as we ordinarily understand it, is ruled out at once. Neither as an

action set before the reader without interpretation from within, nor

yet as an action pictured for the reader by some other onlooker in the

book, can this story possibly be told.

Strether's real situation, in fact, is not his open and visible

situation, between the lady in New England and the young man in Paris;

his grand adventure is not expressed in its incidents. These, as they

are devised by the author, are secondary, they are the extension of

the moral event that takes place in the breast of the ambassador, his

change of mind. That is the very middle of the subject; it is a matter

that lies solely between Strether himself and his vision of the free

world. It is a delightful effect of irony, indeed, that he should have

accomplished his errand after all, in spite of himself; but the point

of the book is not there, the ironic climax only serves to bring out

the point more sharply. The reversal of his own idea is underlined and

enhanced by the reversal of the young man's idea in the opposite

sense; but essentially the subject of the book would be unchanged if

the story ended differently, if the young man held to his freedom and

refused to go home. Strether would still have passed through the same

cycle of unexpected experience; his errand might have failed, but

still it would not have been any the more impossible for him to claim

his reward, for his part, than it is impossible as things are, with

the quest achieved and the young man ready to hasten back to duty of

his own accord. And so the subject can only be reached through

Strether's consciousness, it is plain; that way alone will command the

impression that the scene makes on him. Nothing in the scene has any

importance, any value in itself; what Strether sees in it--that is the

whole of its meaning.

But though in The Ambassadors the point of view is primarily

Strether's, and though it _appears_ to be his throughout the book,

there is in fact an insidious shifting of it, so artfully contrived

that the reader may arrive at the end without suspecting the trick.

The reader, all unawares, is placed in a better position for an

understanding of Strether's history, better than the position of

Strether himself. Using his eyes, we see what _he_ sees, we are

possessed of the material on which his patient thought sets to work;

and that is so far well enough, and plainly necessary. All the other

people in the book face towards him, and it is that aspect of them,

and that only, which is shown to the reader; still more important, the

beautiful picture of Paris and spring-time, the stir and shimmer of

life in the Rue de Rivoli and the gardens of the Tuileries, is

Strether's picture, _his_ vision, rendered as the time and the place

strike upon his senses. All this on which his thought ruminates, the

stuff that occupies it, is represented from his point of view. To see

it, even for a moment, from some different angle--if, for example, the

author interposed with a vision of his own--would patently disturb the

right impression. The author does no such thing, it need hardly be

said.

When it comes to Strether's treatment of this material, however, when

it is time to learn what he makes of it, turning his experience over

and over in his mind, then his own point of view no longer serves. How

is anybody, even Strether, to _see_ the working of his own mind? A

mere account of its working, after the fact, has already been barred;

we have found that this of necessity is lacking in force, it is

statement where we look for demonstration. And so we must see for

ourselves, the author must so arrange matters that Strether's thought

will all be made intelligible by a direct view of its surface. The

immediate flaw or ripple of the moment, and the next and the next,

will then take up the tale, like the speakers in a dialogue which

gradually unfolds the subject of the play. Below the surface, behind

the outer aspect of his mind, we do not penetrate; this is drama, and

in drama the spectator must judge by appearances. When Strether's mind

is dramatized, nothing is shown but the passing images that anybody

might detect, looking down upon a mind grown visible. There is no

drawing upon extraneous sources of information; Henry James knows all

there is to know of Strether, but he most carefully refrains from

using his knowledge. He wishes us to accept nothing from him, on

authority--only to watch and learn.

For suppose him to begin sharing the knowledge that he alone

possesses, as the author and inventor of Strether; suppose that

instead of representing only the momentary appearance of Strether's

thought he begins to expound its substance: he must at once give us

the whole of it, must let us into every secret without delay, or his

exposition is plainly misleading. It is assumed that he tells all, if

he once begins. And so, too, if the book were cast autobiographically

and Strether spoke in person; he could not hold back, he could not

heighten the story of his thought with that touch of suspense, waiting

to be resolved, which stamps the impression so firmly into the memory

of the onlooker. In a tale of murder and mystery there is one man who

cannot possibly be the narrator, and that is the murderer himself; for

if he admits us into his mind at all he must do so without reserve,

thereby betraying the secret that we ought to be guessing at for

ourselves. But by this method of The Ambassadors the mind of which the

reader is made free, Strether's mind, is not given away; there is no

need for it to yield up all its secrets at once. The story in it is

played out by due degrees, and there may be just as much deliberation,

refrainment, suspension, as in a story told scenically upon the stage.

All the effect of true drama is thus at the disposal of the author,

even when he seems to be describing and picturing the consciousness

of one of his characters. He arrives at the point where apparently

nothing but a summary and a report should be possible, and even there

he is precluded from none of the privileges of a dramatist.

It is necessary to show that in his attitude towards his European

errand Strether is slowly turning upon himself and looking in another

direction. To announce the fact, with a tabulation of his reasons,

would be the historic, retrospective, undramatic way of dealing with

the matter. To bring his mind into view at the different moments, one

after another, when it is brushed by new experience--to make a little

scene of it, without breaking into hidden depths where the change of

purpose is proceeding--to multiply these glimpses until the silent

change is apparent, though no word has actually been said of it: this

is Henry James's way, and though the _method_ could scarcely be more

devious and roundabout, always refusing the short cut, yet by these

very qualities and precautions it finally produces the most direct

impression, for the reader has _seen_. That is why the method is

adopted. The author has so fashioned his book that his own part in the

narration is now unobtrusive to the last degree; he, the author, could

not imaginably figure there more discreetly. His part in the effect is

no more than that of the playwright, who vanishes and leaves his

people to act the story; only instead of men and women talking

together, in Strether's case there are innumerable images of thought

crowding across the stage, expressing the story in their behaviour.

But there is more in the book, as I suggested just now, than

Strether's vision and the play of his mind. In the _scenic_ episodes,

the colloquies that Strether holds, for example, with his sympathetic

friend Maria Gostrey, another turn appears in the author's procedure.

Throughout these clear-cut dialogues Strether's point of view still

reigns; the only eyes in the matter are still his, there is no sight

of the man himself as his companion sees him. Miss Gostrey is clearly

visible, and Madame de Vionnet and little Bilham, or whoever it may

be; the face of Strether himself is never turned to the reader. On the

evening of the first encounter between the elderly ambassador and the

young man, they sat together in a café of the boulevards and walked

away at midnight through quiet streets; and all through their

interview the fact of the young man's appearance is strongly dominant,

for it is this that first reveals to Strether how the young man has

been transformed by his commerce with the free world; and so his

figure is sharply before the reader as they talk. How Strether seemed

to Chad--this, too, is represented, but only by implication, through

Chad's speech and manner. It is essential, of course, that it should

be so, the one-sided vision is strictly enjoined by the method of the

whole book. But though the seeing eye is still with Strether, there is

a noticeable change in the author's way with him.

In these scenic dialogues, on the whole, we seem to have edged away

from Strether's consciousness. He sees, and we with him; but when he

_talks_ it is almost as though we were outside him and away from him

altogether. Not always, indeed; for in many of the scenes he is busily

brooding and thinking throughout, and we share his mind while he joins

in the talk. But still, on the whole, the author is inclined to leave

Strether alone when the scene is set. He talks the matter out with

Maria, he sits and talks with Madame de Vionnet, he strolls along the

boulevards with Chad, he lounges on a chair in the Champs Elysées with

some one else--we know the kind of scene that is set for Strether,

know how very few accessories he requires, and know that the scene

marks a certain definite climax, wherever it occurs, for all its

everyday look. The occasion is important, there is no doubt about

that; its importance is in the air. And Strether takes his part in it

as though he had almost become what he cannot be, an objective figure

for the reader. Evidently he cannot be that, since the centre of

vision is still within him; but by an easy sleight of hand the author

gives him almost the value of an independent person, a man to whose

words we may listen expectantly, a man whose mind is screened from us.

Again and again the stroke is accomplished, and indeed there is

nothing mysterious about it. Simply it consists in treating the scene

as dramatically as possible--keeping it framed in Strether's vision,

certainly, but keeping his consciousness out of sight, his thought

un-explored. He talks to Maria; and to us, to the reader, his voice

seems as much as hers to belong to somebody whom we are

_watching_--which is impossible, because our point of view is his.

A small matter, perhaps, but it is interesting as a sign, still

another, of the perpetual tendency of the novel to capture the

advantages which it appears to forego. The Ambassadors is without

doubt a book that deals with an entirely non-dramatic subject; it is

the picture of an _état d'âme_. But just as the chapters that are

concerned with Strether's soul are in the key of drama, after the

fashion I have described, so too the episode, the occasion, the scene

that crowns the impression, is always more dramatic in its method than

it apparently has the means to be. Here, for instance, is the central

scene of the whole story, the scene in the old Parisian garden, where

Strether, finally filled to the brim with the sensation of all the

life for which his own opportunity has passed, overflows with his

passionate exhortation to little Bilham--warning him, adjuring him not

to make _his_ mistake, not to let life slide away ungrasped. It is the

hour in which Strether touches his crisis, and the first necessity of

the chapter is to show the sudden lift and heave of his mood within;

the voices and admonitions of the hour, that is to say, must be heard

and felt as he hears and feels them himself. The scene, then, will be

given as Strether's impression, clearly, and so it is; the old garden

and the evening light and the shifting company of people appear as

their reflection in his thought. But the scene is _also_ a piece of

drama, it strikes out of the book with the strong relief of dramatic

action; which is evidently an advantage gained, seeing the importance

of the hour in the story, but which is an advantage that it could not

enjoy, one might have said.

The quality of the scene becomes clear if we imagine the story to be

told by Strether himself, narrating in the first person. Of the damage

that this would entail for the picture of his brooding mind I have

spoken already; but suppose the book to have taken the form of

autobiography, and suppose that Strether has brought the story up to

this point, where he sits beside little Bilham in Gloriani's garden.

He describes the deep and agitating effect of the scene upon him,

calling to him of the world he has missed; he tells what he thought

and felt; and then, he says, I broke out with the following tirade to

little Bilham--and we have the energetic outburst which Henry James

has put into his mouth. But is it not clear how the incident would be

weakened, so rendered? That speech, word for word as we have it, would

lose its unexpected and dramatic quality, because Strether, arriving

at it by narration, could not suddenly spring away from himself and

give the impression of the worn, intelligent, clear-sighted man

sitting there in the evening sun, strangely moved to unwonted

eloquence. His narration must have discounted the effect of his

outburst, leading us up to the very edge of it, describing how it

arose, explaining where it came from. He would be _subjective_, and

committed to remain so all the time.

Henry James, by his method, can secure this effect of drama, even

though his Strether is apparently in the position of a narrator

throughout. Strether's are the eyes, I said, and they are more so than

ever during this hour in the garden; he is the sentient creature in

the scene. But the author, who all through the story has been treating

Strether's consciousness as a play, as an action proceeding, can at

any moment use his talk almost as though the source from which it

springs were unknown to us from within. I remember that he himself, in

his critical preface to the book, calls attention to the way in which

a conversation between Strether and Maria Gostrey, near the beginning,

puts the reader in possession of all the past facts of the situation

which it is necessary for him to know; a _scene_ thus takes the place

of that "harking back to make up," as he calls it, which is apt to

appear as a lump of narrative shortly after the opening of a story. If

Strether were really the narrator, whether in the first person or the

third, he could not use his own talk in this manner; he would have to

tell us himself about his past. But he has never _told_ us his

thought, we have looked at it and drawn our inferences; and so there

is still some air of dramatic detachment about him, and his talk may

seem on occasion to be that of a man whom we know from outside. The

advantage is peculiarly felt on that crucial occasion at Gloriani's,

where Strether's sudden flare of vehemence, so natural and yet so

unlike him, breaks out with force unimpaired. It strikes freshly on

the ear, the speech of a man whose inmost perturbations we have indeed

inferred from many glimpses of his mind, but still without ever

learning the full tale of them from himself.

The Ambassadors, then, is a story which is seen from one man's point

of view, and yet a story in which that point of view is itself a

matter for the reader to confront and to watch constructively.

Everything in the novel is now dramatically rendered, whether it is a

page of dialogue or a page of description, because even in the page of

description nobody is addressing us, nobody is reporting his

impression to the reader. The impression is enacting itself in the

endless series of images that play over the outspread expanse of the

man's mind and memory. When the story passes from these to the scenes

of dialogue--from the silent drama of Strether's meditation to the

spoken drama of the men and women--there is thus no break in the

method. The same law rules everywhere--that Strether's changing sense

of his situation shall appeal directly to the onlooker, and not by way

of any summarizing picture-maker. And yet _as a whole_ the book is all

pictorial, an indirect impression received through Strether's

intervening consciousness, beyond which the story never strays. I

conclude that on this paradox the art of dramatizing the picture of

somebody's experience--the art I have been considering in these last

chapters--touches its limit. There is indeed no further for it to go.