John Kinnaird
THE PArRADOX OF AN
AMERICAN ' IDENTITY '
The world of Henry James Seems an unlikely source for
even the slightest analogy to Whitman, yet there is at least one scene
in
a James novel, in
Roderick Hudson ,
that might well be called a
Whitmanesque occasion. We forget, perhaps, that as Americans and
as near contemporaries Whitman and James had necessary affinities;
that originally, as F. W. Dupee reminds us, we find in James, as
in Whitman and Melville, the characteristic idealism, the "romantic
disposition" of nineteenth-century America. Occurring as it does in
his first "international" novel, the scene I have in mind might be
said to symbolically mark the beginnings of the young James's
di–
vergence from Whitman's America, exactly as it does for the pro–
tagonists of his story. Shortly before they sail for Europe, Roderick,
a young sculptor, and his friend, Rowland Mallet, are out walking
on a beautiful summer's day; they have just flung themselves down
on a grassy bank above the Connecticut River, when Rowland sud–
denly turns to his friend to express a strange feeling of "prospective
regret" :
"I t's a wretched business," he said, "this practical quarrel of ours with
our own country, this everlasting impatience to get out of it. Is one's
only safety then in flight? This is an American day, an American land–
scape, an American atmosphere. It certainly has its merits, and some
day when I am shivering with ague in classic Italy, I shall accuse myself
of having slighted them."
Roderick kindled with a sympathetic glow, and declared that
America was good enough for him, and that he had always thought it
the duty of an honest citizen to stand by his own country and help it
along.... The doctrine expanded with the occasion, and he declared
that he was above all an advocate for American art. We were the big-
