Tony Tanner, Henry James.

The writer and his work, University of Massachusetts Press, 1989,

pp.
107-111

“Frankly, quite the best, 'all round,' of my productions”, was James's own assessment of The
Ambassadors, written in about ten months in 1900. It centers on a man, very much of James's
age and disposition, who is sent to Europe to retrieve a young man, Chad, from what his
excessively moralistic mother (Mrs. Newsome) regards as inevitable corruption in Europe. But
the man, Lambert Strether, has an epiphany or a "crisis" of vision in Paris and breaks out to
another young man with these central words: "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so
much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that,
what have you had. I'm too old at any rate for what I see. What one loses one loses; make no
mistake about that ... I'm a case of reaction against the mistake. Do what you like so long as you
don't make it. For it was a mistake. Live, Live!" ''Mistake'' is a key recurring word, and the
questions of the nature of Strether's mistake, and of whether he can yet make any reparation,
constitute the central interest and drama of the novel. A crucial problem or endless ambiguity is,
of course, What exactly is it to live? So that you have your life? On such central questions the
book, through Strether, ponders with extraordinary subtlety and delicacy.

It is in The Ambassadors that James, for the first time, makes the consciousness of the onlooker
the central focus of a major novel. Discussing his initial conception of Strether, James wrote:
"He would have issued, our rueful worthy, from the very heart of New England" and "he had
come to Paris in some state of mind which was literally undergoing, as a result of new and
unexpected assaults and infusions, a change from hour to hour." It is a central Jamesian theme: a
person confronting new facts with an old vision, or set of values or system of belief, and
experiencing a convulsion of values because the old vision" will not adequately account for the
newly perceived facts. Thus, James goes on, "the false position for him ... was obviously to have
presented himself at the gate of that boundless menagerie with a moral scheme of the most
approved pattern which was yet framed to break down on any approach to vivid facts." The
book, then, is to be about an approved moral scheme challenged by confusing vivid facts, and the
consequent attempt to find a new adequate scheme, a more inclusive vision that can contain the
new range of facts even if it loses its old approval. The drama is to be ''the drama of
discrimination." How excessively narrow and life-denying is the New England conscience?
What is fine and what is fraudulent in the rich aggregation of life's possibilities that Paris
represents? The book is, as James says, about a revolution of consciousness in Strether, a
revolution that has nothing to do with any carnal temptations offered by Paris, but is rather about
its power to stimulate the sensitive and appreciative imagination, to feed the senses with rich and
novel impressions. It is notable that on at least three important occasions Strether is depicted
meditating alone on a balcony ("a perched privacy appeared to him the last of luxuries"), taking
in, as it were, the whole scene. As he looks down on one occasion, James writes ''Strether found
himself in possession as he had never yet been": visual possession, possession from above. A
possession that is generous and grateful nonexploitative.

There are a number of American "ambassadors" (note the plural title) and for the most part they
refuse Europe, judging and condemning, never trying to appreciate. And yet they are also
enthusiastic purchasers and collectors (in its way a power gesture reducing Europe to a shop and
treating it like a contemptuous patron). Strether is a notable nonpurchaser. Behind the
ambassadors is Mrs. Newsome, who is also the employer of Strether. She is the image of the
moral "iceberg." From her, through other characters, emanates a steady cold force of disapproval
and self-righteous negation. She gets all her money from a vulgar business which, it is implied,
won its power through corrupt means. The combination of unscrupulous commercial exploitation
and moral self-congratulation is clearly established. Over against her is the ultimately pathetic
figure of Madame de Vionnet, who incorporates the distilled essence of an old European
civilization. She is Chad's mistress. Mrs. Newsome and all the other ambassadors threaten
financial punishment as well as moral disapproval to force Strether to return to America. In not
returning when they return, Strether is refusing their attitude to life. He stands firm Madame de
Vionnet, stands by the perceptible, as opposed to the purchasable, values of Europe.

The worst ambassador will turn out to be Chad. He is completely egotistical: as he claims, he has
always had his own way. He is a "taker" supreme, for he takes and keeps and uses all the love
and care that Madame de Vionnet lavishes on him with no true reciprocations. Because Chad has
acquired a European veneer and to some extent been civilized by Madame de Vionnet, Strether is
initially taken in by Chad's improved appearance. But by the end he can perceive that Chad is
really just another one of those Americans who have come to Europe to exploit its valuable
things before returning to America and the profits of big business. Chad's intention to return to
America is not announced but clearly inferred. By the end Strether is trying to work on Chad to
keep him in Europe (a major ironic reversal, since earlier Chad has to work on Strether to gain
his permission to stay longer in Europe), and he feels it necessary to utter a strong prospective
indictment: "You'll be a brute, you know you'll be guilty of the last infamy if you ever forsake
her." Chad glibly says that he will never tire of her, but "he spoke of being 'tired' of her almost as
he might have spoken of being tired of roast mutton for dinner." A rank selfishness of mere
appetite is hinted at here. And even while Strether is showing him how vile it would be to
abandon Madame de Vionnet, Chad suddenly switches the conversation to ''advertising'': "It
really does the thing, you know", the "thing" being to make money. He is still oblivious to
intrinsic values. What for Madame de Vionnet is a real and lasting love is for him a passing
amusement to be indulged in before going into business.

But she has a sort of wisdom that the egotistical American ambassadors could never attain. As
when she says "What I hate is myself when I think that one has to take so much to be happy, out
of the lives of others, and that one isn't happy even then.... The wretched self is always there,
always happiness at all, to take. The only safe thing is to give." She has given, and, we feel, she
alone of the characters will achieve the dignity and stature of real suffering. But only Strether
can really appreciate her for what she is. And he too attempts to transcend "the wretched self" by
refusing to take anything that the world seems to offer including two possible and very secure
and comfortable marriages. For in the Jamesian world, those who consult and pander to the self
are capable of cruel obliquities of vision and a ruthless insensitivity of conduct. Really "living'' is
a subtler affair than that. Strether does "have his life'' in the form of accumulated treasures of
consciousness and capacious generosities of vision.

At one point he visits Madame de Vionnet (after he has discovered that she and Chad are lovers):
he perceives her fear and achieves an ethical sense that goes far beyond a mere disapprobation
for a socially illicit deed. His fine insight (James calls it "his sharpest perception yet") is that "it
was almost appalling, that a creature so fine could be, by mysterious forces, a creature so
exploited." It is the "exploitation" of people that is the cardinal sin in the Jamesian world: evil is
the callous manipulation and selfish appropriation of other peoples' lives of life itself. For such
people such as most of the American ambassadors, supremely Chad, it is not a matter of "living
all you can," but rather of "getting" all you can. With his acquired subtlety of vision and refined
ethical sense and pity Strether by the end approaches very close to the Jamesian view of the
world and, indeed, by the end, the values of character and author would seem to overlap to a
large extent. This leaves one interesting question. Why does Strether, at the end, go back to
America? Madame de Vionnet's question is very relevant here. She asks him: "Where is your
home moreover now what “has become of it?" The “unhomeing” of Strether is important. His
vision is now too wide and comprehensive to be limited to commitment to identification with
any one home. Just as, from the balcony the watcher is "well out of it," but most aware of it all
going on. In addition, in a strange Jamesian way, "it was he somehow who finally paid, and it
was the others who mainly partook." He seems to become the containing, all-embracing
consciousness of the various participants; but he must pay by forfeiting his place on the stage.
That is what is behind the reason he gives for not staying in Europe. In going back to America he
is, it is made very clear, going back to completely nothing, a blank, a nowhere. But that is the
whole point. He explains: "But all the same I must go.... To be right.... That, you see, is my only
logic. Not, out of the whole affair, to have got anything for myself." He must not appear to have
opted for one culture as opposed to the other. It is not to be simply a matter of changing sides, it
is getting beyond sides altogether, and the geographical equivalent of this is his refusal to seek
around for a comfortable corner for himself in Europe. To show that Strether's vision has passed
beyond all the demands of "the wretched self," it is important that he must not get any material
loot or swag for himself (as, for instance, even his friend Maria Gostrey has her little museum of
sharp acquisitions). He must be above all collecting, all purchasing, all possessing. His gain must
be all of the imagination, even if there does seem to be something excessively ascetic in this
attitude; what he has acquired are gems of appreciation, understanding, and a range of sympathy
that transcends any fixed moral schemes. Thus we have our last glimpse of Strether looking,
perhaps, not unlike James himself, alone, ''unhomed" in a profound sense, somehow out of life,
but full of a priceless vision.