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PARTISAN REVIEW
James presently found himself holding the line against the democrati–
zation of manners among Englishmen themselves, of whom Browning
impressed him as coarse, Tennyson as inept and preoccupied. Dubious,
even absurd as all this was, he held to it with a passion. He was
unique among novelists in his feeling for the conventional, his power
to associate it with the good and the beautiful. Literary traditional–
ism, which on philosophic grounds has since gone far beyond James,
has not followed him in this. Prufrock's dandyism is a sign of Pruf–
rock's desperation. "Do I dare to eat a peach?"
James's personal legend was still in the making in the 70's and
80's and he was not yet so freakishly ceremonial in appearance as he
afterwards became. Yet he had a shadowy look in the eyes which
made someone liken him to an Elizabethan and add that he ought to
wear earrings. His beard and close-cropped hair were a Paris fashion.
Gosse, who first met
him
in 1882, says that "his manner was grave,
extremely courteous, but a little formal and frightened, which seemed
strange in a man living in constant communication with the world."
Nevertheless "his talk, which flowed best with one of us alone, was
enchanting."
Mter the reselVes of his Paris year, he opened up considerably
to the English. There was the bond of language and morality, and
there was the conservative English genius and power. France was
"clever" but England was "great"; in fact, "the English are the
only people who can do great things without being clever." He said
this repeatedly in various ways, playing the nations off against one
another and himself off against both. But chiefly England was pow–
erful and London was a sign of it: "the great grey Babylon" of the
modern world, deficient in style but wearing "proudly and publicly
the stamp of her imperial history." He first took rooms within hear–
ing of Piccadilly traffic, although in time convenience forced his
removal, first to Kensington, at last to the country town of Rye.
These lodgings were the centers of his dual existence as an
immense worker in literature and a perpetual guest at dinner parties
and week-end gatherings in the country. London society, as pictured
in his novels, lies open to easy conquest by anyone who can in the
least amuse it. And so it appears to have been with him. "I can hardly
say how it was," he obselVes in the notebooks, "but little by little I
came to know people, to dine out, etc. I did, I was able to do, nothing
