But James did not see art as, in this sense, innocent. We touch
and as James goes on with the episode of the Galerie d'Apollon, he
again on autobiography, for on this point there is a significant conspeaks of the experience as having the effect not only of a "lovenection between James's own life and Hyacinth's.
philtre" but also of a "fear-philtre." Aggression brings guilt and
In Chapter xxv of A Small Boy and Others, his first autobiothen fear. And James concludes the episode with the account of a graphic volume, James tells how he was initiated into a knowledge
nightmare in which the Galerie figures; he calls it "the most appallof style in the Galerie d'Apollon of the Louvre. As James represents ing and yet most admirable" nightmare of his life. He dreamed that
the event, the varieties of style in that gallery assailed him so inhe was defending himself from an intruder, trying to keep the door tensely that their impact quite transcended aesthetic experience.
shut against a terrible invading form; then suddenly there came
For they seemed to speak to him not visually at all but in some
"the great thought that I, in my appalled state, was more appalling
"complicated sound" and as a "deafening chorus"; they gave him
than the awful agent, .creature or presence"; whereupon he opened
what he calls "a general sense of glory." About this sense of glory
the door and, surpassing the invader for "straight aggression and
he is quite explicit. "The glory meant ever so many things at once,
dire intention," pursued him down a long corridor in a great storm
not only beauty and art and supreme design, but history and fame
of lightning and thunder; the corridor was seen to be the Galerie
and power, the world in fine raised to the richest and noblest exd'Apollon. We do not have to presume very far to find the meaning pression."
in the dream, for James gives us all that we might want; he tells us
Hazlitt said that "the language of poetry naturally falls in with
that the dream was important to him, that, having experienced art
the language of power," and goes on to develop an elaborate comas "history and fame and power," his arrogation seemed a guilty parison between the processes of the imagination and the processes
one and represented itself as great fear which he overcame by an
of autocratic rule. He is not merely indulging in a flight of fancy
inspiration of straight aggression and dire intention and triumphed
or a fashion of speaking; no stauncher radical democrat ever lived
in the very place where he had had his imperious fantasy. An admithan Hazlitt and no greater lover of imaginative literature, yet he rable nightmare indeed. One needs to be a genius to counterattack
believed that poetry has an affinity with political power in its autonightmare; perhaps this· is the definition of genius.
cratic and aristocratic form and that it is not a friend of the demo
When James came to compose Hyacinth's momentous letter from
cratic virtues. We are likely not to want to agree with Hazlitt; we
Venice, the implications of the analogue of art with power had
prefer to speak of art as if it lived in a white bungalow with a gardeveloped and become clearer and more objective. Hyacinth has had den, had a wife and two children, and were harmless and quiet and
his experience of the glories of Europe, and when he writes to the
cooperative. But James is of Hazlitt's opinion; his first great revela
Princess his view of human misery is matched by a view of the
tion of art came as an analogy with the triumphs of the world; art
world "raised to the richest and noblest expression." He understands
spoke to him of the imperious will, with the music of an army with
no less clearly than before "the despotisms, the cruelties, the exbanners. Perhaps it is to the point that James's final act of imaginaclusions, the monopolies and the rapacities of the past." But now tion, as he lay dying, was to call his secretary and give her as his
he recognizes that "the fabric of civilization as we know it" is in-
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THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
The Princess Casamassima
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extricably bound up with this injustice; the monuments of art and
surrogate of James's snobbery. But if Hyacinth is a snob, he is of
learning and taste have been reared upon coercive power. Yet never
the company of Rabelais, Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, Balzac, and
before has he had the full vision of what the human spirit can
Lawrence, men who saw the lordliness and establishment of the
accomplish to make the world "less impracticable and life more
aristocrat and the gentleman as the proper condition for the spirit
tolerable." He finds that he is ready to fight for art-and what art
of man, and who, most of them, demanded it for themselves,. as poor
suggests of glorious life-against the low and even hostile estimate
Hyacinth never does, for "it was not so much that he wished to
which his revolutionary friends have made of it, and this involves
enjoy as that he wished to know; his desire was not to be pampered
of course some reconciliation with established coercive power.
but to be initiated." His snobbery is no other than that of John
It is easy enough, by certain assumptions, to condemn Hyacinth
Stuart Mill when he diSf:overed that a grand and spacious room
and even to call him names. But first we must see what his position
could have so enlarging an effect upon his mind; when Hyacinth
really means and what heroism there is in it. Hyacinth recognizes
at Medley had his first experience of a great old house, he admired
what very few people wish to admit, that civilization has a price,
nothing so much as the ability of a thing to grow old without loss
and a high one. Civilizations differ from one another as much in
but rather with gain of dignity and interest: "the spectacle of long
what they give up as in what they acquire; but all civilizations are
duration unassociated with some sordid infirmity or poverty was
alike in that they renounce something for something else. We do
new to him; for he had lived with people among whom old age
right to protest this in any given case that comes under our notice
meant, for the most part, a grudged and degraded survival." Hyaand we do right to get as much as possible for as little as possible; cinth has Yeats's awareness of the dream that a great house embodies,
but we can never get everything for nothing. Nor, indeed, do we
that here the fountain of life "overflows without ambitious pains,"
really imagine that we can. Thus, to stay within the present context,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
every known theory of popular revolution gives up the vision of
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
the world "raised to the richest and noblest expression." To achieve
And never stoop to a mechanical
the ideal of widespread security, popular revolutionary theory con
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
demns the ideal of adventurous experience. It tries to avoid doing
&nbs
p; this explicitly and it even, although seldom convincingly, denies
But no less than Yeats he has the knowledge that the rich man
that it does it at all. But all the instincts or necessities of radical
who builds the house and the architect and artists who plan and
democracy are against the superbness and arbitrariness which often
decorate it are "bitter and violent men" and that the great houses
mark great spirits. It is sometimes said in the interests of an ideal or
"but take our greatness with our violence" and our "greatness with
abstract completeness that the choice need not be made, that security
our bitterness." 4
can be imagined to go with richness and nobility of expression. But
By the time Hyacinth's story draws to its end, his mind is in a
we have not seen it in the past and nobody really strives to imagine it
perfect equilibrium, not of irresolution but of awareness. His sense
in the future. Hyacinth's choice is made under the pressure of the
of the social horror of the world is not diminished by his newer
counterchoice made by Paul and the Princess; their "general rectifisense of the glory of the world. On the contrary, just as his pledge cation" implies a civilization from which the idea of life raised to
of his life to the revolutionary cause had in effect freed him to
the richest and noblest expression will quite vanish.
4 "Ancestral Houses" in Collected Poems. The whole poem may be read as a
There have been critics who said that Hyacinth is a snob and the
most illuminating companion-piece to The Princess Casamassima.
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
The Princess Casamassima
83
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understand human glory, so the sense of the glory quickens his
understanding of the truth of The Princess Casamassima. To be
response to human misery-never, indeed, is he so sensitive to the
sure, the legend of James does not associate him with love; indeed,
sordid life of the mass of mankind as after he has had the revelait is a fact symptomatic of the condition of American letters that tion of art. And just as he is in an equilibrium of awareness, he is
Sherwood Anderson, a writer who himself spoke much of love, was
also in an equilibrium of guilt. He has learned something of what
able to say of James that he was the novelist of "those who hate."
may lie behind abstract ideals, the envy, the impulse to revenge and
Yet as we read The Princess Casamassima it is possible to ask
to dominance. He is the less inclined to forgive what he sees because,
whether any novel was ever written which, dealing with decisive
as we must remember, the triumph of the revolution presents itself
moral action and ultimate issues, makes its perceptions and its
to him as a certainty and the act of revolution as an ecstasy. There
judgments with so much loving-kindness.
is for him as little doubt of the revolution's success as there is of the
Since James wrote, we have had an increasing number of novels
fact that his mother had murdered his father. And when he thinks
which ask us to take cognizance of those whom we call the underof revolution, it is as a tremendous tide, a colossal force; he is privileged. These novels are of course addressed to those of us who
tempted to surrender to it as an escape from his isolation-one
have the money and the leisure to buy books and read them and the
would be lifted by it "higher on the sun-touched billows than one
security to assail our minds with accounts of the miseries of our
could ever be by a lonely effort of one's own." But if the revolufellow men; on the whole, the poor do not read about the poor. And tionary passion thus has its guilt, Hyacinth's passion for life at its
in so far as the middle class has been satisfied and gratified by the
richest and noblest is no less guilty. It leads him to consent to the
moral implications of most of these books, it is not likely to admire
established coercive power of the world, and this can never be in
Henry James's treatment of the poor. For James represents the poor
nocent. One cannot "accept" the suffering of others, no matter for
as if they had dignity and intelligence in the same degree as people
what ideal, no matter if one's own suffering be also accepted, withof the reading class. More, he assumes this and feels no need to out incurring guilt. It is the guilt in which every civilization is iminsist that it is so. This is a grace of spirit that we are so little likely plicated.
to understand that we may resent it. Few of our novelists are able
Hyacinth's death, then, is not his way of escaping from irresoluto write about the poor so as to make them something more than the tion. It is truly a sacrifice, an act of heroism. He is a hero of civilizapitied objects of our facile sociological minds. The literature of our tion because he dares do more than civilization does: embodying
liberal democracy pets and dandles its underprivileged characters,
two ideals at once, he takes upon himself, in full consciousness, the
and, quite as if it had the right to do so, forgives them what faults
guilt of each. He acknowledges both his parents. By his death he
they may have. But James is sure that in such people, who are nuinstructs us in the nature of civilized life and by his consciousness merous, there are the usual human gradations of understanding, inhe transcends it.
terest, and goodness. Even if my conjecture about the family connection of the novel be wholly mistaken, it will at least suggest what is unmistakably true, that James could write about a workingman
VI
quite as if he were as large, willful, and complex as the author of
Suppose that truth be the expression, not of intellect, nor even,
The Principles of Psychology. At the same time that everything in
as we sometimes now think, of will, but of love. It is an outmoded
the story of The Princess Casamassima is based on social difference,
idea, and yet if it has still any force at all it will carry us toward an
everything is also based on the equality of the members of the hu-
THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
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The Princess Casamassima
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man· family. People at the furthest extremes of class are easily
The nature of James's moral realism may most easily be exembrought into relation because they are all contained in the novelist's plified by his dealings with the character of Rosy Muniment. Rosy
affection. In that context it is natural for the Princess and Lady
is in many ways similar to Jennie Wren, the dolls' dressmaker of
Aurora Langrish to make each other's acquaintance by the side of
Our Mutual Friend; both are crippled, courageous, quaint, sharp
Rosy Muniment's bed and to contend for the notice of Paul. That
tongued, and dominating, and both are admired by the charatters
James should create poor people so proud and intelligent as to
among whom they have their existence. Dickens unconsciously
make it impossible for anyone, even the reader who has paid for the
recognizes the cruelty that lie
s hidden in Jennie, but consciously he
privilege, to condescend to them, so proud and intelligent indeed
makes nothing more than a brusque joke of her habit of threatening
that it is not wholly easy for them to be "good," is, one ventures to
people's eyes with her needle. He allows himself to be deceived and
guess, an unexpressed, a never-to-be-expressed reason for finding
is willing to deceive us. But James manipulates our feelings about
him "impotent in matters sociological." We who are liberal and
Rosy into a perfect ambivalence. He forces us to admire her courage,
progressive know that the poor are our equals in-every sense except
pride, and intellect and seems to forbid us to take account of her
that of being equal to us.
cruelty because she directs it against able-bodied or aristocratic
But James's special moral quality, his power of love, is not wholly
people. Only at the end does he permit us the release of our amcomprised by his impulse to make an equal distribution of dignity bivalence-the revelation that Hyacinth doesn't like Rosy and
among his characters. It goes beyond this to create his unique moral
that we don't have to is an emotional relief and a moral enlightenrealism, his particular gift of human understanding. If in his later ment. But although we by the author's express permission are free
novels James, as many say he did, carried awareness of human comto dislike Rosy, the author does not avail himself of the same plication to the point of virtuosity, he surely does not do so here,
privilege. In the family of the novel Rosy's status has not changed.
and yet his knowledge of complication is here very considerable.
Moral realism is the informing spirit of The Princess Casamas
But this knowledge is not an analytical one, or not in the usual
sima and it yields a kind of social and political knowledge which is
sense in which that word is taken, which implies a cool dissection.
hard to come by. It is at work in the creation of the character of
If we imagine a father of many children who truly loves them all, we
Millicent Henning, whose strength, affectionateness, and warm
may suppose that he will see very vividly their differences from
sensuality move James to the series of remarkable prose arias in her
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