By Lena Milman 75
He is the least self-conscious of writers, but surely when, in
“The Middle Years,” he describes Duncombe as “a passionate
corrector, a fingerer of style,” he lets slip an autobiographical detail;
and, indeed, supposing all other sources of information to be
closed to us, we might construct a tolerably correct biography of
Mr. James from the evidence of his works. We might detect,
for instance, his American birth and education in his idiom, his
Celtic blood in his satire, his sympathy with English convention
in his dainty morality, his intimate knowledge of French in his
lapses of Gallicism.
With provincial France, indeed, where the poplars twinkle
beside the white ways, he is as familiar as are but two of our
English writers, Miss Thackeray and Mr. Wedmore ; and with
Paris too he is acquainted, not only in those her obvious aspects
which opulent but illiterate youth can learn superficially in a week
or so, but also as the Paris beyond Seine that lounges in the shade
of the Luxembourg chestnut-trees, that saunters through the book-
lined arcades of the Odeon, that hides its dignity in the bastion-
like palaces of the Faubourg Saint Germain ; the Paris that dis-
plays its wealth in the Parc Monceaux, that flaunts its poverty on
the Buttes Chaumont.
Occasionally Mr. James’s unremitting warfare against the
Obvious, whether of epithet or of incident, has misled him into
artificiality. He should remember that whereas the Obvious in
life is always the most easily attainable, in art, convention has so
fenced it round as to place it almost out of reach, and that some-
times startling effect is best produced by perfect simplicity of
phrase. We cannot recall any passage in Mr James’s stories as
poignant as poor wandering Clifford’s cry in the “ House of the
Seven Gables ” :
“ I want my happiness ! Many, many years have I waited for
it!