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Show ablltty have reached much the same conclusion that he arrived at by the way of America, France and England. When he walked out of the refuge of his study mto the world and looked about him he saw a place of torment, where creatures of prey pe;petually thrust their claws into the quivering flesh of the doomed, defenceless chtldren of light. He had the abiding comfort of an tnner certainty (and perhaps he did bring that from New England) that the children of light had an eternal advantage; he was aware to the finest fibre of his being that the "poor sensitive gentlemen" he so numerously treated possessed a treasure that would outlast all the glittering paste of the world and the flesh; he knew that nothing in life mattered compared with spiritual decency. We may conclude that the nationalities of his betrayed and triumphant victims are not an important factor. They may equally well be innocent Americans maltreated by odious Europeans, refined Europeans fleeced by unscrupulous Americans, or young children of any race exposed to evil influences. The essential fact is that wherever he looked Henry James saw fineness apparently sacrificed to grossness, beauty to avarice, truth to a bold front. He realised how constantly the tenderness of growing life is at the mercy of personal tyranny and he hated the tyranny of persons over each other. His novels are a repeated exposure of this wickedness a reiterated and passionate plea for the fullest freed~m of development, unimperilled by reckless and barbarous stupidity. He was himself most scrupulously careful not to exercise any tyrannical power over other people. The only advice he ever permitted himself to offer to a friend was a recommendation to "let your soul live". Towards the end of his days his horror of interfering or seeming to interfere, with the freedom of others bec;me so overpowering that it was a misery for him to suspect that 32 ~~e plans of his friends might be made with reference to litmself. !vluch as he enjoyed seeing them, he so diso: ed to thmk tha~ they were un~ergoing the discomfort h voyages and ratlway JOUrneys m order to be near him t at he W?uld gladly have prevented their start if he could. H~s Utopia was an anarchy where nobody would be resp_o~~tble for any other human being but only for his ow? ClVlhzed character. His circle of friends will eastly rec.~l how finely Henry James had fitted himself to be a Cttlzen of this commonwealth. 33 |
