There is no further for it to go, for it now covers the whole story.
Henry James was the first writer of fiction, I judge, to use all the
possibilities of the method with intention and thoroughness, and the
full extent of the opportunity which is thus revealed is very great.
The range of method is permanently enlarged; it is proved, once for
all, that the craft of fiction has larger resources than might have
been suspected before. A novelist in these days is handling an
instrument, it may be said, the capacity of which has been very
elaborately tested; and though in any particular case there may be
good reason why its dramatic effects should not be exhausted--the
subject may need none or few of them--yet it must be supposed that the
novelist is aware of the faculties that he refuses. There are kinds of
virtuosity in any art which affect the whole of its future; painting
can never be the same again after some painter has used line and
colour in a manner that his predecessors had not fully developed,
music makes a new demand of all musicians when one of them has once
increased its language. And the language of the novel, extended to the
point which it has reached, gives a possible scope to a novelist
which he is evidently bound to take into account.
It is a scope so wide and so little explored hitherto that the novel
may now be starting upon a fresh life, after the tremendous career it
has had already. The discovery of the degree to which it may be
enhanced dramatically--this may be a point of departure from which it
will set out with vigour renewed; perhaps it has done so by this time.
Anyhow it is clear that an immense variety of possible modulations,
mixtures, harmonies of method, yet untried, are open to it if it
chooses to avail itself; and I should imagine that to a novelist of
to-day, entering the field at this late hour, the thought might be a
stimulating one. There is still so much to be done, after a couple of
centuries of novel-writing without a pause; there are unheard-of
experiments to be made. A novel such as The Ambassadors may give no
more than a hint of the rich and profound effects waiting to be
achieved by the laying of method upon method, and criticism may
presently be called on to analyse the delicate process much more
closely than I now attempt; it is to be hoped so indeed. Meanwhile it
is useful to linger over a book that suggests these possibilities, and
to mark the direction in which they seem to point.
The purpose of the novelist's ingenuity is always the same; it is to
give to his subject the highest relief by which it is capable of
profiting. And the less dramatic, strictly speaking, the subject may
be--the less it is able, that is to say, to express itself in action
and in action only--the more it is needful to heighten its flat,
pictorial, descriptive surface by the arts of drama. It is not managed
by peppering the surface with animated dialogue, by making the
characters break into talk when they really have nothing to contribute
to the subject; the end of this is only to cheapen and discredit their
talk when at length it is absolutely required. The dramatic rule is
applied more fundamentally; it animates the actual elements of the
picture, the description, and makes a drama of these. I have noted how
in The Ambassadors the picture of Strether's mind is transformed into
an enacted play, even where his story, for chapters at a time, is bare
of action in the literal sense. The result, no doubt, is that his mind
emerges from the book with force and authority, its presence is
_felt_. And now I would track the same method and measure the result
in another book, The Wings of the Dove, where the value of this kind
of dramatization is perhaps still more clearly to be seen. Again we
are dealing with a subject that in the plain meaning of the word is
entirely undramatic.
Milly, the Dove, during all that part of the book in which her mind
lies open--in the chapters which give her vision of the man and the
girl, Densher and Kate, not theirs of her--is hoarding in silence two
facts of profoundest import to herself; one is her love for Densher,
the other the mortal disease with which she is stricken. It is of
these two facts that Kate proposes to take advantage, and there is
nothing weak or vague about Kate's design. She and Densher are
penniless, Milly is rich, but they can afford to bide their time and
Milly cannot; let them do so, therefore, let Densher accept his
opportunity, and let him presently return to Kate, well endowed by the
generosity of an exquisite young wife, dead in her prime. That is how
Milly's condition is to be turned to account by a remarkably
clear-headed young woman; but Milly herself is still unaware of any
confederation between her two friends, and she silently broods over
the struggle in her mind--her desire for life, her knowledge of her
precarious hold on life. The chapters I speak of are to give the sense
of this conflict, to show unmistakably the pair of facts upon which
Kate's project is founded. Milly has nothing to _do_ in the story, but
she has to _be_ with great intensity, for it is on what she is that
the story turns. Of that in a moment, however; in these chapters,
which are the central chapters of the book, Milly's consciousness is
to the fore, the deep agitation within her is the concern of the
moment.
Once more it is the superficial play of thought that is put before us.
The light stir and vibration of Milly's sensibility from hour to hour
is all we actually see; for the most part it is very light, very easy
and airy, as she moves with her odd poetry and grace and freedom. She
comes from New York, it will be remembered, a "pale angular princess,"
loaded with millions, and all alone in the world save for her small
companion, Mrs. Stringham. She is a rare and innocent creature,
receptive and perceptive, thrown into the middle of a situation in
which she sees everything, excepting only the scheme by which it is
proposed to make use of her. Of that she knows nothing as yet; her
troubles are purely her own, and gradually, it is hard to say where or
how, we discover what they are. They are much too deeply buried in her
mind to appear casually upon the surface at any time; but now and
then, in the drama of her meditation, there is a strange look or a
pause or a sudden hasty motion which is unexplained, which is
portentous, which betrays everything. Presently her great hidden facts
have passed into the possession of the reader _whole_, so to
speak--not broken into detail, bit by bit, not pieced together
descriptively, but so implied and suggested that at some moment or
other they spring up complete and solid in the reader's attention.
Exactly how and where did it happen? Turning back, looking over the
pages again, I can mark the very point, perhaps, at which the thing
was liberated and I became possessed of it; I can see the word that
finally gave it to me. But at the time it may easily have passed
unnoticed; the enlightening word did not seem peculiarly emphatic as
it was uttered, it was not announced with any particular circumstance;
and yet, presently--there was the piece of knowledge that I had not
possessed before.
Not to walk straight up to the fact and put it into phrases, but to
_surround_ the fact, and so to detach it inviolate--such is Henry
James's manner of dramatizing it. Soon after Milly's first appearance
there are some pages that illustrate his procedure very clearly, or
very clearly, I should say, when the clue has been picked up and
retraced. There is an hour in which Milly gazes open-eyed upon her
prospect, measuring its promises and threats, gathering herself for
the effort they demand. She sits on a high Italian mountain-ledge,
with a blue plain spread out beneath her like the kingdoms of the
world; and there she looks at her future with rapt absorption, lost to
all other thought. Her mind, if we saw it, would tell us everything
then at least; she searches its deepest depth, it is evident. And that
is the very reason why her mind should not be exposed in that hour;
the troubling shapes that lurk in it are not to be described, they are
to make their presence known of their own accord. Instead of intruding
upon Milly's lonely rumination, therefore, the author elects to leave
her, to join company with her friend in the background, and in that
most crucial session to reveal nothing of Milly but the glimpse that
her friend catches of her in passing.
The glimpse, so rendered, _tells_ nothing. But in Milly's attitude,
while she sits enthroned above the world, there is a certain
expression, deep and strange, not to be missed, though who shall say
exactly what it implies? Is it hope, is it despair? At any rate the
clear picture of her remains, and a little later, when her mind is
visible again, the memory of her up there on the mountain has
quickened the eye of the onlooker. The images in her mind are not at
all portentous now; she is among her friends, she is harvesting
impressions; there is not a word of anything dark or distressing or
ill-omened. But still, but still--we have seen Milly when she believed
herself unseen, and it is certain that there is more in her mind than
now appears, and though she seems so full of the new excitement of
making friends with Kate Croy there must be some preoccupation
beneath; and then, in a flash, _these_ are the troubles that engage
her in solitude, that have ached in her mind, and yet there has never
been a single direct allusion to them. Skirting round and round them,
giving one brief sight of her in eloquent circumstances, then
displaying the all but untroubled surface of her thought on this side
and that, the author has encompassed the struggle that is proceeding
within her, and has lifted it bodily into the understanding of the
reader.
The profit which the story gains from this treatment is easily
recognized. Solidity, weight, a third dimension, is given to the
impression of Milly's unhappy case. Mere emphasis, a simple
underlining of plain words, could never produce the same effect. What
is needed is some method which will enable an onlooker to see round
the object, to left and right, as far as possible, just as with two
eyes, stereoscopically, we shape and solidify the flat impression of a
sphere. By such a method the image will be so raised out of its
setting that the stream of vision will wash it on either side, leaving
no doubt of its substantial form. And so, dealing with the case of
Milly, Henry James proceeds to cut behind it, lavishing his care on
any but its chief and most memorable aspect. That may wait; meanwhile
the momentary flutter of her nerves and fancies is closely noted,
wherever her life touches the lives about her, or the few of them that
are part of her story. The play draws a steady curve around the
subject in the midst; more and more of this outer rim of her
consciousness moves into sight. She is seen in the company of the
different people who affect her nearly, but in all their intercourse
the real burden of her story is veiled under the trembling, wavering
delicacy of her immediate thought. Her manner of living and thinking
and feeling in the moment is thus revealed in a wide sweep, and at
last the process is complete; her case is set free, stands out, and
casts its shadow.
These difficulties, these hopes and fears that have been buried in
silence, are all included in the sphere of experience which the author
has rounded; and by leaving them where they lie he has given us a
sense of their substance, of the space they occupy, which we could not
have acquired from a straight, square account of them. Milly desired
to live, she had every reason in the world for so desiring, and she
knew, vaguely at first, then with certainty, that she had no life to
hope for; it is a deep agitation which is never at rest. It is far
out of sight; but its influence spreads in every direction, and here
and there it must touch the surface, even one upon which appearances
are maintained so valiantly. And if the surface (which is all we know)
is thus high above the depths, and yet there are instants when it is
just perceptibly disturbed by things unseen, is it not proved, as it
could be proved in no other way, how active and forcible they must be?
By no picture of them but by an enactment of their remotest
manifestations--that is how their strength, their bulk, their range in
a harassed existence is represented. Such is the object gained by the
method of dramatization, applied in this way (as with Strether) to the
story of a mind. Milly's case, which seemed to be as pictorial, as
little dramatic, as could be--since it is all a condition and a
situation to be portrayed, not an action--has been turned into drama,
the advantages of drama have been annexed on its behalf. There is no
action, properly speaking, and yet the story of her troubles has acted
itself before our eyes, as we followed the transient expression of her
mood.
And now look at a single scene, later on, when the issue of Milly's
situation has at last been precipitated. Look, for example, at the
scene in which good Susan Stringham, her faithful companion, visits
Densher in his Venetian lodging, on an evening of wild autumn rain, to
make a last and great appeal to him. An appeal for what? Milly, in her
palace hard by, lies stricken, she has "turned her face to the wall."
The vision of hope which had supported her is at an end, not by reason
of her mere mortal illness, but because of some other blow which has
fallen. Susan knows what it is, and Densher is to learn. Till lately
Milly was living in ignorance of the plot woven about her, the
masterly design to make use of her in order that Densher and Kate Croy
may come together in the end. The design was Kate's from the first;
Densher has been much less resolute, but Kate was prepared to see it
through. Conceal from Milly that an old engagement holds between her
two friends, persuade her that neither has any interest in the other,
and all will go well. Milly, believing in Densher's candour, will fall
into the plot and enjoy her brief happiness. It cannot be more than
brief, for Milly is certainly doomed. But when she dies, and Densher
is free for Kate again, who will be the worse for the fraud? Milly
will have had what she wants, her two friends will have helped
themselves in helping her. So Kate argues plausibly; but it all
depends on keeping poor exquisite Milly safely in the dark. If she
should discover that Kate and Densher are in league to profit by her,
it would be a sharper stroke than the discovery of her malady. And by
this autumn evening, when Susan Stringham appears before Densher,
Milly _has_ discovered--has learned that she has been tricked, has
lost her desire of life, has turned her face to the wall.
Susan appears, big with the motive that has brought her. This visit
of hers is an appeal to Densher, so much is clear in all her looks and
tones. There is only one way to save Milly, to restore to Milly, not
indeed her life, but her desire of it. Densher has it in his power to
make her wish to live again, and that is all that he or any one else
could achieve for her. The thought is between him and the good woman
as they talk; the dialogue, with its allusions and broken phrases,
slowly shapes itself to the form of the suppressed appeal. It hangs in
the air, almost visibly, before it is uttered at all; and by that time
a word is enough, one stroke, and the nature of the appeal and all its
implications are in view. The scene has embodied it; the cheerless
little room and the falling light and Densher's uneasy movements and
Susan's flushed, rain-splashed earnestness have all contributed; the
broken phrases, without touching it, have travelled about it and
revealed its contour. Densher might tell Milly that she is wrong,
might convince her that he and Kate have not beguiled and misled her
as she supposes; Densher, in other words, might mislead her again, and
Mrs. Stringham entreats him to do so. That is why she has come, and
such is the image which has been gradually created, and which at last
is actual and palpable in the scene. It has not appeared as a
statement or an announcement; Susan's appeal and Densher's tormented
response to it are _felt_, establishing their presence as matters
which the reader has lived with for the time. They have emerged out
of the surface of the scene into form and relief.
And finally the subject of the whole book is rendered in the same way.
The subject is not in Milly herself, but in her effect upon the
relation existing between Densher and Kate. At the beginning of the
book these two are closely allied, and by the end their understanding
has been crossed by something that has changed it for ever. Milly has
come and gone, nothing is afterwards the same. Their scheme has been
successful, for Milly in dying has bequeathed a fortune to Densher.
But also she has bequeathed the memory of her last signal to them,
which was one that neither could foresee and which the man at any rate
could never forget. For Densher had _not_ practised that final
disloyalty which was begged of him, and Milly had died in full
knowledge of their design, and yet she had forgiven, dove-like to the
end, and her forgiveness stands between them. Kate recognizes it in
the word on which the book closes--"We shall never be again as we
were." Whether they accept the situation, whether they try to patch up
their old alliance--these questions are no affair of the story. With
Kate's word the story is finished; the first fineness of their
association is lost, nothing will restore it. Milly has made the
change by being what she was, too rare an essence for vulgar uses.
Those who wanted the intelligence to understand her must pay their
penalty; at least they are intelligent enough to see it.
It is once more the picture of a moral, emotional revolution, the kind
of subject that seems to demand a narrator. The story is so little a
matter of action that when the revolution is complete there is nothing
more to be said. Its result in action is indifferent; the man and the
woman may marry or part, the subject is unaffected either way. The
progress of the tale lies in the consciousness of the people in it,
and somebody is needed, it might have been supposed, to tell us how it
all came to pass. Not the author, perhaps, or any of the characters in
person; but at least it must be told, at any given juncture, from
somebody's point of view, composing and reflecting the story of an
experience. But in The Wings of the Dove there is next to no narrative
at all, strictly speaking. Who is there that narrates? The author a
little, it is true, for the people have to be described, placed,
brought on the scene to begin with. But afterwards? Densher, Kate,
Milly, Susan Stringham, each in turn _seems_ to take up the story and
to provide the point of view, and where it is absolutely needful they
really do so; they give the mirror for the visible scene about them,
Alpine heights, London streets, Venetian palaces. But that is
incidental; of the progress of the tale they offer no account. They
_act_ it, and not only in their spoken words, but also and much more
in the silent drama that is perpetually going forward within them.
They do not describe and review and recapitulate this drama, nor does
the author. It is played before us, we see its actual movement.
The effect is found here and there in all well-made fiction, of
course. The undercutting, as I call it, of a flat impression is seen
wherever a turn of events is carefully prepared and deliberately
approached. But I do not know that anywhere, except in the later
novels of Henry James, a pictorial subject is thus handed over in its
entirety to the method of drama, so that the intervention of a seeing
eye and a recording hand, between the reader and the subject, is
practically avoided altogether. I take it as evident that unless the
presence of a seer and a recorder is made a value in itself,
contributing definitely to the effect of the subject, he is better
dispensed with and put out of the way; where other things are equal a
direct view of the matter in hand is the best. But it has been made
clear in the foregoing pages, I hope, that the uses of a narrator are
many and various; other things are _not_ equal where the subject asks
for no more than to be reflected and pictured. In that case the
narrator, standing in front of the story, is in a position to make the
most of it, all that can be made; and so he represents the great
principle of economy, and is a value in himself, and does contribute
to the effect. Many a story, from the large panoramic chronicle to the
small and single impression, postulates the story-teller, the
picture-maker, and by that method gives its best. Speaking in person
or reported obliquely, the narrator serves his turn. But where there
is no positive reason for him there is a reason, equally positive, for
a different method, one that assigns the point of view to the reader
himself. An undramatic subject, we find, can be treated dramatically,
so that the different method is at hand.
The story that is concerned, even entirely concerned, with the impact
of experience upon a mind (Strether's, say) can be enhanced to the
pitch of drama, because thought has its tell-tale gestures and its
speaking looks, just as much as an actor on the stage. Make use of
these looks and gestures, express the story through them, leave them
to enact it--and you have a story which in its manner is effectually
drama. Method upon method, the vision _of_ a vision, the process of
thinking and feeling and seeing exposed objectively to the view of the
reader--it is an ingenious art; criticism seems to have paid it less
attention than it deserves. But criticism has been hindered, perhaps,
by the fact that these books of Henry James's, in which the art is
written large, are so odd and so personal and so peculiar in all their
aspects. When the whole volume is full of a strongly-marked
idiosyncrasy, quite unlike that of anyone else, it is difficult to
distinguish between this, which is solely the author's, and his method
of treating a story, which is a general question, discussible apart.
And thus it happens that the novelist who carried his research into
the theory of the art further than any other--the only real _scholar_
in the art--is the novelist whose methods are most likely to be
overlooked or mistaken, regarded as simply a part of his own original
quiddity. It should be possible to isolate them, to separate them in
thought from the temperament by which they were coloured; they belong
to the craft, which belongs to no man in particular. They still wait
to be fully assimilated into the criticism of fiction; there is much
more in them, no doubt, than the few points that I touch on here. But
I pass on to one or two of the rest.