The Craft of Fiction Read online

  XI

  And now for the method by which the picture of a mind is fullydramatized, the method which is to be seen consistently applied in TheAmbassadors and the other later novels of Henry James. How is theauthor to withdraw, to stand aside, and to let Strether's thought tellits own story? The thing must be seen from our own point of view andno other. Author and hero, Thackeray and Esmond, Meredith and HarryRichmond, have given their various accounts of emotional andintellectual adventure; but they might do more, they might bring thefacts of the adventure upon the scene and leave them to make theirimpression. The story passes in an invisible world, the events takeplace in the man's mind; and we might have to conclude that they liebeyond our reach, and that we cannot attain to them save by the helpof the man himself, or of the author who knows all about him. We mighthave to make the best of an account at second hand, and it would notoccur to us, I dare say, that anything more could be forthcoming; weseem to touch the limit of the possibilities of drama in fiction. Butit is not the final limit--there is fiction here to prove it; and itis this further stroke of the art that I would now examine.

  The world of silent thought is thrown open, and instead of telling thereader what happened there, the novelist uses the look and behaviourof thought as the vehicle by which the story is rendered. Just as thewriter of a play embodies his subject in visible action and audiblespeech, so the novelist, dealing with a situation like Strether's,represents it by means of the movement that flickers over the surfaceof his mind. The impulses and reactions of his mood are the playersupon the new scene. In drama of the theatre a character must bear hispart unaided; if he is required to be a desperate man, harbouringthoughts of crime, he cannot look to the author to appear at the sideof the stage and inform the audience of the fact; he must express itfor himself through his words and deeds, his looks and tones. Theplaywright so arranges the matter that these will be enough, thespectator will make the right inference. But suppose that instead of aman upon the stage, concealing and betraying his thought, we watch thethought itself, the hidden thing, as it twists to and fro in hisbrain--watch it without any other aid to understanding but such as itsown manner of bearing may supply. The novelist, more free than theplaywright, could of course _tell_ us, if he chose, what lurks behindthis agitated spirit; he could step forward and explain the restlessappearance of the man's thought. But if he prefers the dramatic way,admittedly the more effective, there is nothing to prevent him fromtaking it. The man's thought, in its turn, can be made to reveal itsown inwardness.

  Let us see how this plan is pursued in The Ambassadors. That book isentirely concerned with Strether's experience of his peculiar missionto Europe, and never passes outside the circle of his thought.Strether is despatched, it will be remembered, by a resolute NewEngland widow, whose son is living lightly in Paris instead ofattending to business at home. To win the hand of the widow, Strethermust succeed in snatching the young man from the siren who is believedto have beguiled him. The mission is undertaken in all good faith,Strether descends upon Paris with a mind properly disposed andresolved. He comes as an ambassador representing principle and duty,to treat with the young man, appeal to him convincingly and bear himoff. The task before him may be difficult, but his purpose is simple.Strether has reckoned, however, without his imagination; he hadscarcely been aware of possessing one before, but everything growscomplicated as it is touched and awakened on the new scene. By degreesand degrees he changes his opinion of the life of freedom; it is mostunlike his prevision of it, and at last his purpose is actuallyinverted. He no longer sees a misguided young man to be saved fromdisaster, he sees an exquisite, bountiful world laid at a young man'sfeet; and now the only question is whether the young man is capableof meeting and grasping his opportunity. He is incapable, as it turnsout; when the story ends he is on the verge of rejecting his freedomand going back to the world of commonplace; Strether's mission hasended successfully. But in Strether's mind the revolution is complete;there is nothing left for him, no reward and no future. The world ofcommonplace is no longer _his_ world, and he is too late to seize theother; he is old, he has missed the opportunity of youth.

  This is a story which must obviously be told from Strether's point ofview, in the first place. The change in his purpose is due to a changein his vision, and the long slow process could not be followed unlesshis vision were shared by the reader. Strether's predicament, that isto say, could not be placed upon the stage; his outward behaviour, hisconduct, his talk, do not express a tithe of it. Only the brain behindhis eyes can be aware of the colour of his experience, as it passesthrough its innumerable gradations; and all understanding of his casedepends upon seeing these. The way of the author, therefore, who takesthis subject in hand, is clear enough at the outset. It is a purelypictorial subject, covering Strether's field of vision and bounded byits limits; it consists entirely of an impression received by acertain man. There can accordingly be no thought of rendering him as afigure seen from without; nothing that any one else could discern,looking at him and listening to his conversation, would give the fullsense of the eventful life he is leading within. The dramatic method,as we ordinarily understand it, is ruled out at once. Neither as anaction set before the reader without interpretation from within, noryet as an action pictured for the reader by some other onlooker in thebook, can this story possibly be told.

  Strether's real situation, in fact, is not his open and visiblesituation, between the lady in New England and the young man in Paris;his grand adventure is not expressed in its incidents. These, as theyare devised by the author, are secondary, they are the extension ofthe moral event that takes place in the breast of the ambassador, hischange of mind. That is the very middle of the subject; it is a matterthat lies solely between Strether himself and his vision of the freeworld. It is a delightful effect of irony, indeed, that he should haveaccomplished his errand after all, in spite of himself; but the pointof the book is not there, the ironic climax only serves to bring outthe point more sharply. The reversal of his own idea is underlined andenhanced by the reversal of the young man's idea in the oppositesense; but essentially the subject of the book would be unchanged ifthe story ended differently, if the young man held to his freedom andrefused to go home. Strether would still have passed through the samecycle of unexpected experience; his errand might have failed, butstill it would not have been any the more impossible for him to claimhis reward, for his part, than it is impossible as things are, withthe quest achieved and the young man ready to hasten back to duty ofhis own accord. And so the subject can only be reached throughStrether's consciousness, it is plain; that way alone will command theimpression that the scene makes on him. Nothing in the scene has anyimportance, any value in itself; what Strether sees in it--that is thewhole of its meaning.

  But though in The Ambassadors the point of view is primarilyStrether's, and though it _appears_ to be his throughout the book,there is in fact an insidious shifting of it, so artfully contrivedthat the reader may arrive at the end without suspecting the trick.The reader, all unawares, is placed in a better position for anunderstanding of Strether's history, better than the position ofStrether himself. Using his eyes, we see what _he_ sees, we arepossessed of the material on which his patient thought sets to work;and that is so far well enough, and plainly necessary. All the otherpeople 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, thebeautiful picture of Paris and spring-time, the stir and shimmer oflife in the Rue de Rivoli and the gardens of the Tuileries, isStrether's picture, _his_ vision, rendered as the time and the placestrike upon his senses. All this on which his thought ruminates, thestuff that occupies it, is represented from his point of view. To seeit, even for a moment, from some different angle--if, for example, theauthor interposed with a vision of his own--would patently disturb theright impression. The author does no such thing, it need hardly besaid.

  When it comes to Strether's treatment of this material, however, whenit is time
to learn what he makes of it, turning his experience overand over in his mind, then his own point of view no longer serves. Howis anybody, even Strether, to _see_ the working of his own mind? Amere account of its working, after the fact, has already been barred;we have found that this of necessity is lacking in force, it isstatement where we look for demonstration. And so we must see forourselves, the author must so arrange matters that Strether's thoughtwill all be made intelligible by a direct view of its surface. Theimmediate flaw or ripple of the moment, and the next and the next,will then take up the tale, like the speakers in a dialogue whichgradually unfolds the subject of the play. Below the surface, behindthe outer aspect of his mind, we do not penetrate; this is drama, andin drama the spectator must judge by appearances. When Strether's mindis dramatized, nothing is shown but the passing images that anybodymight detect, looking down upon a mind grown visible. There is nodrawing upon extraneous sources of information; Henry James knows allthere is to know of Strether, but he most carefully refrains fromusing his knowledge. He wishes us to accept nothing from him, onauthority--only to watch and learn.

  For suppose him to begin sharing the knowledge that he alonepossesses, as the author and inventor of Strether; suppose thatinstead of representing only the momentary appearance of Strether'sthought he begins to expound its substance: he must at once give usthe whole of it, must let us into every secret without delay, or hisexposition is plainly misleading. It is assumed that he tells all, ifhe once begins. And so, too, if the book were cast autobiographicallyand Strether spoke in person; he could not hold back, he could notheighten the story of his thought with that touch of suspense, waitingto be resolved, which stamps the impression so firmly into the memoryof the onlooker. In a tale of murder and mystery there is one man whocannot possibly be the narrator, and that is the murderer himself; forif 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 forourselves. But by this method of The Ambassadors the mind of which thereader is made free, Strether's mind, is not given away; there is noneed for it to yield up all its secrets at once. The story in it isplayed 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 consciousnessof one of his characters. He arrives at the point where apparentlynothing but a summary and a report should be possible, and even therehe is precluded from none of the privileges of a dramatist.

  It is necessary to show that in his attitude towards his Europeanerrand Strether is slowly turning upon himself and looking in anotherdirection. To announce the fact, with a tabulation of his reasons,would be the historic, retrospective, undramatic way of dealing withthe matter. To bring his mind into view at the different moments, oneafter another, when it is brushed by new experience--to make a littlescene of it, without breaking into hidden depths where the change ofpurpose is proceeding--to multiply these glimpses until the silentchange is apparent, though no word has actually been said of it: thisis Henry James's way, and though the _method_ could scarcely be moredevious and roundabout, always refusing the short cut, yet by thesevery qualities and precautions it finally produces the most directimpression, for the reader has _seen_. That is why the method isadopted. The author has so fashioned his book that his own part in thenarration is now unobtrusive to the last degree; he, the author, couldnot imaginably figure there more discreetly. His part in the effect isno more than that of the playwright, who vanishes and leaves hispeople to act the story; only instead of men and women talkingtogether, in Strether's case there are innumerable images of thoughtcrowding across the stage, expressing the story in their behaviour.

  But there is more in the book, as I suggested just now, thanStrether's vision and the play of his mind. In the _scenic_ episodes,the colloquies that Strether holds, for example, with his sympatheticfriend Maria Gostrey, another turn appears in the author's procedure.Throughout these clear-cut dialogues Strether's point of view stillreigns; the only eyes in the matter are still his, there is no sightof the man himself as his companion sees him. Miss Gostrey is clearlyvisible, and Madame de Vionnet and little Bilham, or whoever it maybe; the face of Strether himself is never turned to the reader. On theevening of the first encounter between the elderly ambassador and theyoung man, they sat together in a cafe of the boulevards and walkedaway at midnight through quiet streets; and all through theirinterview the fact of the young man's appearance is strongly dominant,for it is this that first reveals to Strether how the young man hasbeen transformed by his commerce with the free world; and so hisfigure is sharply before the reader as they talk. How Strether seemedto Chad--this, too, is represented, but only by implication, throughChad's speech and manner. It is essential, of course, that it shouldbe so, the one-sided vision is strictly enjoined by the method of thewhole book. But though the seeing eye is still with Strether, there isa noticeable change in the author's way with him.

  In these scenic dialogues, on the whole, we seem to have edged awayfrom 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 himaltogether. Not always, indeed; for in many of the scenes he is busilybrooding and thinking throughout, and we share his mind while he joinsin the talk. But still, on the whole, the author is inclined to leaveStrether alone when the scene is set. He talks the matter out withMaria, he sits and talks with Madame de Vionnet, he strolls along theboulevards with Chad, he lounges on a chair in the Champs Elysees withsome one else--we know the kind of scene that is set for Strether,know how very few accessories he requires, and know that the scenemarks a certain definite climax, wherever it occurs, for all itseveryday look. The occasion is important, there is no doubt aboutthat; its importance is in the air. And Strether takes his part in itas though he had almost become what he cannot be, an objective figurefor the reader. Evidently he cannot be that, since the centre ofvision is still within him; but by an easy sleight of hand the authorgives him almost the value of an independent person, a man to whosewords we may listen expectantly, a man whose mind is screened from us.Again and again the stroke is accomplished, and indeed there isnothing mysterious about it. Simply it consists in treating the sceneas dramatically as possible--keeping it framed in Strether's vision,certainly, but keeping his consciousness out of sight, his thoughtun-explored. He talks to Maria; and to us, to the reader, his voiceseems 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, stillanother, of the perpetual tendency of the novel to capture theadvantages which it appears to forego. The Ambassadors is withoutdoubt a book that deals with an entirely non-dramatic subject; it isthe picture of an _etat d'ame_. But just as the chapters that areconcerned with Strether's soul are in the key of drama, after thefashion I have described, so too the episode, the occasion, the scenethat crowns the impression, is always more dramatic in its method thanit apparently has the means to be. Here, for instance, is the centralscene of the whole story, the scene in the old Parisian garden, whereStrether, finally filled to the brim with the sensation of all thelife for which his own opportunity has passed, overflows with hispassionate exhortation to little Bilham--warning him, adjuring him notto make _his_ mistake, not to let life slide away ungrasped. It is thehour in which Strether touches his crisis, and the first necessity ofthe 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 heardand felt as he hears and feels them himself. The scene, then, will begiven as Strether's impression, clearly, and so it is; the old gardenand the evening light and the shifting company of people appear astheir reflection in his thought. But the scene is _also_ a piece ofdrama, it strikes out of the book with the strong relief of dramaticaction; which is evidently an advantage gained, seeing the importanceof the hour in the story,
but which is an advantage that it could notenjoy, one might have said.

  The quality of the scene becomes clear if we imagine the story to betold by Strether himself, narrating in the first person. Of the damagethat this would entail for the picture of his brooding mind I havespoken already; but suppose the book to have taken the form ofautobiography, and suppose that Strether has brought the story up tothis 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 thoughtand felt; and then, he says, I broke out with the following tirade tolittle Bilham--and we have the energetic outburst which Henry Jameshas put into his mouth. But is it not clear how the incident would beweakened, so rendered? That speech, word for word as we have it, wouldlose its unexpected and dramatic quality, because Strether, arrivingat it by narration, could not suddenly spring away from himself andgive the impression of the worn, intelligent, clear-sighted mansitting there in the evening sun, strangely moved to unwontedeloquence. His narration must have discounted the effect of hisoutburst, leading us up to the very edge of it, describing how itarose, explaining where it came from. He would be _subjective_, andcommitted to remain so all the time.

  Henry James, by his method, can secure this effect of drama, eventhough his Strether is apparently in the position of a narratorthroughout. Strether's are the eyes, I said, and they are more so thanever during this hour in the garden; he is the sentient creature inthe scene. But the author, who all through the story has been treatingStrether's consciousness as a play, as an action proceeding, can atany moment use his talk almost as though the source from which itsprings were unknown to us from within. I remember that he himself, inhis critical preface to the book, calls attention to the way in whicha conversation between Strether and Maria Gostrey, near the beginning,puts the reader in possession of all the past facts of the situationwhich it is necessary for him to know; a _scene_ thus takes the placeof that "harking back to make up," as he calls it, which is apt toappear as a lump of narrative shortly after the opening of a story. IfStrether were really the narrator, whether in the first person or thethird, he could not use his own talk in this manner; he would have totell us himself about his past. But he has never _told_ us histhought, we have looked at it and drawn our inferences; and so thereis still some air of dramatic detachment about him, and his talk mayseem on occasion to be that of a man whom we know from outside. Theadvantage is peculiarly felt on that crucial occasion at Gloriani's,where Strether's sudden flare of vehemence, so natural and yet sounlike him, breaks out with force unimpaired. It strikes freshly onthe ear, the speech of a man whose inmost perturbations we have indeedinferred from many glimpses of his mind, but still without everlearning the full tale of them from himself.

  The Ambassadors, then, is a story which is seen from one man's pointof view, and yet a story in which that point of view is itself amatter for the reader to confront and to watch constructively.Everything in the novel is now dramatically rendered, whether it is apage of dialogue or a page of description, because even in the page ofdescription nobody is addressing us, nobody is reporting hisimpression to the reader. The impression is enacting itself in theendless series of images that play over the outspread expanse of theman's mind and memory. When the story passes from these to the scenesof dialogue--from the silent drama of Strether's meditation to thespoken drama of the men and women--there is thus no break in themethod. The same law rules everywhere--that Strether's changing senseof his situation shall appeal directly to the onlooker, and not by wayof any summarizing picture-maker. And yet _as a whole_ the book is allpictorial, an indirect impression received through Strether'sintervening consciousness, beyond which the story never strays. Iconclude that on this paradox the art of dramatizing the picture ofsomebody's experience--the art I have been considering in these lastchapters--touches its limit. There is indeed no further for it to go.