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Show "distinctness about General Grant's first cabinet, upon the formation of which the light of the newspaper happened then to beat." The question was embarrassing. '·There were, it appeared, things of interest taking place in America, and I had had, in this absurd manner, to come to England to learn it: I had had over there on the ground itself no conception of any such matternothing of the smallest interest, by anY percept; on of mine, as I suppose I should still blush to recall, had taken place in America since the War." Nothing of any great public interest, by any perception of his, was to take place in Europe until the outbreak of another War at that time far beyond the range of speculation. But if cabinets and parties and politics were and remained outside the pale of his sensibility, he was none the less charmed by the customs of a country where Members of Parliament and Civil Servants could meet tc gether for a leisurely breakfast, thus striking "the exciting note of a social order in which everyone wasn't hurled straight, ;~ith the momentum of rising, upon an office or a store. IX Henry James came to England to admire. But his early reverence for the men and women of an island with so fine and ancient a historic tone as Great Britain soon faded. He had forgotten, in the first passion of acquaintance, that the English are born afresh in every generation and are about as new as young Americans, differing from them chiefly in having other forms of domestic and ecclesiastical architecture and smoother lawns to take for granted. He looked at old stone castles and Tudor brickwork, at great hanging eaves and immemorial gardens, and then he looked at the heirs of this heritage and l ist- 2.8 ened intently for their speech. T his was disappointing, partly because they spoke so little. "I rarely remember," he wrote when he had lived through several London months, "to have heard on English lips any other intellectual verdict (no matter under what provocation) than this broad synthesis 'so immensely clever.' What exasperates you is not that they can't say more but that they wouldn't if they could." How dill-"erent was this inarticulate world from the fine civilisation of Boston, from the cultivated circle that gathered round Charles Eliot Norton at Shady !-Iii!. To that circle he appealed for sympathy, compla1111ng that he was "sinking into dull British acceptance and conformity . . . I am losing my standard-my charming iittle standard that I used to think so high; my standard of wit, of grace, of good manners, of VIVacity, of urbanity, of intelligence, of what makes an easy and natural style of intercourse! And this in consequence of having d'ned out during the past wi~1ter 107 times!" Great men, or at the least men w1th great names, swam into his ken and he condemned them. Ruskin was " weakness pure and simple." In Paris he found that he could "easily-more than easily-see all round Flaubert intellectually." A happy Sunday evening at Madame Viardot's provoked a curious reflection on the capacity of cdebratcd Europeans to bellave absurdly and the incapacity of celebrated Americans to indulge in similar antics. "It was both strange and sweet to see poor T urgenev acting charades of the most extravagant description, dressed out in old shawls, and masb, going on all fours etc. T he charades a;e t h~1r usual Sunday evening occupation and the good fa1th w1th which Turgenev, at his age and with his glories, can go into them is a st~;iking example of the truth of t hat spontaneity which Europeans have and we have not. Fancy Longfellow, Lowell, or Charles Norton doing the like 29 |
