234 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



'takes' the form, as the great cook says, and is more or less com- 

 pactly held by it: one lives in fine as one can. Still, one has the 

 illusion of freedom; therefore don't be, like me, without the memory 

 of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too 

 intelligent to have it; I don't quite know which. Of course at present 

 I'm a case of reaction against the mistake; and the voice of reaction 

 should, no doubt, always be taken with an allowance. But that 

 doesn't affect the point that the right time is now yours. The right 

 time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have. You've plenty; 

 that's the great thing; you're, as I say, damn you, so happily and 

 hatefully young. Don't at any rate miss things out of stupidity. Of 

 course I don't take you for a fool, or I shouldn't be addressing you 

 thus awfully. Do what you like so long as you don't make my 

 mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!' Slowly and socially with 

 full pauses and straight dashes, Strether had so delivered himself; 

 holding little Bilham from step to step deeply and gravely attentive. 

 The end of all was that the young man had turned quite solemn, and 

 that this was a contradiction of the innocent gaiety the speaker had 

 wished to promote. He watched for a moment the consequence of 

 his words, and then, laying a hand on his listener's knee and as if to end 

 with the proper joke: 'And now for the eye I shall keep on you!'" 



This unusually prolonged utterance is the focal point of the 

 book. James has deliberately passed by the rich emotional possi- 

 bilities of a first hand study of the relations of Chad and Madame de 

 Vionnet, and has bent himself to catch the image of the European 

 world as it fashions itself in Strether's sad reflecting eyes. Chad's 

 affair is but one item in the glittering register. It is Strether's purga- 

 torial penance to see, to know and to sympathise without the privilege 

 of participation, and to feel his old prejudices wearing away with no 

 power vouchsafed to supplant them by permanent contact with the 

 renovating forces of which he is so yearningly aware. His enjoy- 

 ments are vicarious and imaginative, and are always upon the high 

 plane of feeling where sensation is instantly converted into thought. 

 Such as he is, too little romantic or tragic for the purposes of the 

 ordinary romance, Strether suits James's book exactly. The least 

 querulous of heroes his stoic quality subdues his own particular 

 problem to the proper pitch of subordination, while by his quick 

 responsiveness to impressions he enables his creator to focus the 

 whole bright picture in his reflecting mind. 



Except in the autobiographical novel, which for our author 

 does not exist, we are usually permitted access to the range of thought 

 and feeling of several of the characters, and James himself is custom- 

 arily more liberal in his concessions to our curiosity than in the book 



