HENRY JAMES
87
irreconcilable cleavage between the "lowbrows" and the "highbrows"
in
our literature as stemming symbolically from these two writers.
But
it is forgotten that ames himself bridged the gap. At twenty-two,
V
as
the smartest of destructive young reviewers for the newly-launched
Nation,
he wrott' his notorious apostrophe "from the intelligence to
1
the bard" of
Drum Taps.
But in later_ ears, as Edith Wharton.. has
told us, he delighted in reciting Whitman's lines, "in a mood of sub-
dued ecstasy"; and he took satisfaction too in what he called the
"flat, familiar, affectionate, illiterate colloquy" of the letters to Pete
Doyle. Such ripened appreciation does not in itself accomplish a re–
conciliation; but as Santayana observed, James in his own work over- /
came the genteel tradition "in the classic way, by understanding it."
The value of James' figure may be judged, as he insisted, only
~
if
it is sought out through his work as a whole. Only thus may be
decided whether his scruplt's and renunciations are a sterile emptiness,
or the guides to a peculiarly poignant suffering and inner triumph.
One augury for life rather than death in his work has shone through
his
whole relationship with Wells.
As
he said, in
his
final letter in that
intt'rchange, it was when another "personal and intellectual history"
had been determined "in the way most different" from
his
own that
v
he most wanted to get at it-"precisely
for
the extension of life."
It
was the same with his relationship with his brother William, who from
the time of
The Europeans
to
The Golden Bowl
was writing well–
intentioned worried letters of uncomprehending counse'l, only to have
Henry reply at the end that he would "sooner descend to a dishon–
oured grave" than to have written such "things of the current age''
v'
as
he had heard William exprt'.ss admiration for. "Yet," he added,
"I can read
you
with rapture." We appear to have the case then that
the seemingly special novelist is more outgoing in his interests than
either the great journalist or the lively philosopher. Attention, percep–
tion, sympathy, are all on his side.
His
portrait of the artist would
seem to challenge comparable qualities of our ow12J
