Henry James

The Ambassadors Henry James

Nothing is more easy than to state the subject of "The Ambassadors," which first appeared intwelve numbers of The North American Review (1903) and was published as a whole the sameyear. 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, inthe centre of the current, almost perhaps to the obstruction of traffic. Never can a composition ofthis sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of suggestion, and never can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have yet lurked more in the mass as an independentparticle. The whole case, in fine, is in Lambert Strether's irrepressible outbreak to little Bilhamon the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani's garden, the candour with which he yields, for his youngfriend's enlightenment, to the charming admonition of that crisis. The idea of the tale residesindeed in the very fact that an hour of such unprecedented ease should have been felt by him as acrisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as neatly as we could desire. The remarks to which hethus gives utterance contain the essence of "The Ambassadors," his fingers close, before he hasdone, round the stem of the full-blown flower; which, after that fashion, he continues officiouslyto present to us. "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do inparticular so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? I'm tooold-too old at any rate for what I see. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don't, like me to-day, be without the memory ofthat illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it, and now I'm acase of reaction against the mistake. Do what you like so long as you don't make it. For it was amistake. Live, live!" Such is the gist of Strether's appeal to the impressed youth, whom he likesand whom he desires to befriend; the word "mistake" occurs several times, it will be seen, in thecourse of his remarks-which gives the measure of the signal warning he feels attached to hiscase. He has accordingly missed too much, though perhaps after all constitutionally qualified fora better part, and he wakes up to it in conditions that press the spring of a terrible question. Would there yet perhaps be time for reparation?-reparation, that is, for the injury done hischaracter; for the affront, he is quite ready to say, so stupidly put upon it and in which he haseven himself had so clumsy a hand? The answer to which is that he now at all events sees; so thatthe business of my tale and the march of my action, not to say the precious moral of everything, is just my demonstration of this process of visi