Collected Stories by Henry James

  ‘That’s all very well; and if your idea is to do nothing better there is no reason why you shouldn’t have as many good things as I – as many human and material appendages, as many sons or daughters, a wife with as many gowns, a house with as many servants, a stable with as many horses, a heart with as many aches.’ He got up when he had spoken thus, and then stood a moment near the sofa, looking down on his agitated pupil. ‘Are you possessed of any money?’ it occurred to him to ask.

  ‘None to speak of.’

  ‘Oh, well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t make a goodish income – if you set about it the right way. Study me for that – study me well. You may really have a carriage.’

  Paul Overt sat there for some moments without speaking. He looked straight before him – he turned over many things. His friend had wandered away from him, taking up a parcel of letters that were on the table where the roll of proofs had lain. ‘What was the book Mrs St George made you burn – the one she didn’t like?’ he abruptly inquired.

  ‘The book she made me burn – how did you know that?’ St George looked up from his letters.

  ‘I heard her speak of it at Summersoft.’

  ‘Ah, yes; she’s proud of it. I don’t know – it was rather good.’

  ‘What was it about?’

  ‘Let me see.’ And St George appeared to make an effort to remember. ‘Oh, yes, it was about myself.’ Paul Overt gave an irrepressible groan for the disappearance of such a production, and the elder man went on: ‘Oh, but you should write it – you should do me. There’s a subject, my boy: no end of stuff in it!’

  Again Paul was silent, but after a little he spoke. ‘Are there no women that really understand – that can take part in a sacrifice?’

  ‘How can they take part? They themselves are the sacrifice. They’re the idol and the altar and the flame.’

  ‘Isn’t there even one who sees further?’ Paul continued.

  For a moment St George made no answer to this; then, having torn up his letters, he stood before his disciple again, ironic. ‘Of course I know the one you mean. But not even Miss Fancourt.’

  ‘I thought you admired her so much.’

  ‘It’s impossible to admire her more. Are you in love with her?’ St George asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Paul Overt.

  ‘Well, then, give it up.’

  Paul stared. ‘Give up my love?’

  ‘Bless me, no; your idea.’

  ‘My idea?’

  ‘The one you talked with her about. The idea of perfection.’

  ‘She would help it – she would help it!’ cried the young man.

  ‘For about a year – the first year, yes. After that she would be as a millstone round its neck.’

  ‘Why, she has a passion for completeness, for good work – for everything you and I care for most.’

  ‘ “You and I” is charming, my dear fellow! She has it indeed, but she would have a still greater passion for her children; and very proper too. She would insist upon everything’s being made comfortable, advantageous, propitious for them. That isn’t the artist’s business.’

  ‘The artist – the artist! Isn’t he a man all the same?’

  St George hesitated. ‘Sometimes I really think not. You know as well as I what he has to do: the concentration, the finish, the independence that he must strive for, from the moment that he begins to respect his work. Ah, my young friend, his relation to women, especially in matrimony, is at the mercy of this damning fact – that whereas he can in the nature of things have but one standard, they have about fifty. That’s what makes them so superior,’ St George added, laughing. ‘Fancy an artist with a plurality of standards,’ he went on. ‘To do it – to do it and make it divine is the only thing he has to think about. “Is it done or not?” is his only question. Not “Is it done as well as a proper solicitude for my dear little family will allow?” He has nothing to do with the relative, nothing to do with a dear little family!’

  ‘Then you don’t allow him the common passions and affections of men?’

  ‘Hasn’t he a passion, an affection, which includes all the rest? Besides, let him have all the passions he likes – if he only keeps his independence. He must afford to be poor.’

  Paul Overt slowly got up. ‘Why did you advise me to make up to her, then?’

  St George laid his hand on his shoulder. ‘Because she would make an adorable wife! And I hadn’t read you then.’

  ‘I wish you had left me alone!’ murmured the young man.

  ‘I didn’t know that that wasn’t good enough for you,’ St George continued.

  ‘What a false position, what a condemnation of the artist, that he’s a mere disfranchised monk and can produce his effect only by giving up personal happiness. What an arraignment of art!’ Paul Overt pursued, with a trembling voice.

  ‘Ah, you don’t imagine, by chance, that I’m defending art? Arraignment, I should think so! Happy the societies in which it hasn’t made its appearance; for from the moment it comes they have a consuming ache, they have an incurable corruption in their bosom. Assuredly, the artist is in a false position. But I thought we were taking him for granted. Pardon me,’ St George continued; ‘Ginistrella made me!’

  Paul Overt stood looking at the floor – one o’clock struck, in the stillness, from a neighbouring church-tower. ‘Do you think she would ever look at me?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Miss Fancourt – as a suitor? Why shouldn’t I think it? That’s why I’ve tried to favour you – I have had a little chance or two of bettering your opportunity.’

  ‘Excuse my asking you, but do you mean by keeping away yourself?’ Paul said, blushing.

  ‘I’m an old idiot – my place isn’t there,’ St George replied, gravely.

  ‘I’m nothing, yet; I’ve no fortune; and there must be so many others.’

  ‘You’re a gentleman and a man of genius. I think you might do something.’

  ‘But if I must give that up – the genius?’

  ‘Lots of people, you know, think I’ve kept mine.’

  ‘You have a genius for torment!’ Paul Overt exclaimed; but taking his companion’s hand in farewell as a mitigation of this judgement.

  ‘Poor child, I do bother you. Try, try, then! I think your chances are good, and you’ll win a great prize.’

  Paul held the other’s hand a minute; he looked into his face. ‘No, I am an artist – I can’t help it!’

  ‘Ah, show it then!’ St George broke out – ‘let me see before I die the thing I most want, the thing I yearn for – a life in which the passion is really intense. If you can be rare, don’t fail of it! Think what it is – how it counts – how it lives!’ They had moved to the door and St George had closed both his own hands over that of his companion. Here they paused again and Paul Overt ejaculated – ‘I want to live!’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘In the greatest sense.’

  ‘Well then, stick to it – see it through.’

  ‘With your sympathy – your help?’

  ‘Count on that – you’ll be a great figure to me. Count on my highest appreciation, my devotion. You’ll give me satisfaction! – if that has any weight with you.’ And as Paul appeared still to waver, St George added: ‘Do you remember what you said to me at Summersoft?’

  ‘Something infatuated, no doubt!’

  ‘ “I’ll do anything in the world you tell me.” You said that.’

  ‘And you hold me to it?’

  ‘Ah, what am I?’ sighed the master, shaking his head.

  ‘Lord, what things I shall have to do!’ Paul almost moaned as he turned away.

  VI

  ‘IT goes on too much abroad – hang abroad!’ These, or something like them, had been St George’s remarkable words in relation to the action of Ginistrella; and yet, though they had made a sharp impression on Paul Overt, like almost all the master’s spoken words, the young man, a week after the conversation I have narrated, left England for a long
absence and full of projects of work. It is not a perversion of the truth to say that that conversation was the direct cause of his departure. If the oral utterance of the eminent writer had the privilege of moving him deeply it was especially on his turning it over at leisure, hours and days afterward, that it appeared to yield its full meaning and exhibit its extreme importance. He spent the summer in Switzerland, and having, in September, begun a new task, he determined not to cross the Alps till he should have made a good start. To this end he returned to a quiet corner that he knew well, on the edge of the Lake of Geneva, within sight of the towers of Chillon: a region and a view for which he had an affection springing from old associations, capable of mysterious little revivals and refreshments. Here he lingered late, till the snow was on the nearer hills, almost down to the limit to which he could climb when his stint was done, on the shortening afternoons. The autumn was fine, the lake was blue, and his book took form and direction. These circumstances, for the time, embroidered his life, and he suffered it to cover him with its mantle. At the end of six weeks he appeared to himself to have learned St George’s lesson by heart – to have tested and proved its doctrine. Nevertheless he did a very inconsistent thing: before crossing the Alps he wrote to Marian Fancourt. He was aware of the perversity of this act, and it was only as a luxury, an amusement, the reward of a strenuous autumn, that he justified it. She had not asked any such favour of him when he went to see her three days before he left London – three days after their dinner in Ennismore Gardens. It is true that she had no reason to, for he had not mentioned that he was on the eve of such an excursion. He hadn’t mentioned it because he didn’t know it; it was that particular visit that made the matter clear. He had paid the visit to see how much he really cared for her, and quick departure, without so much as a farewell, was the sequel to this inquiry, the answer to which had been a distinct superlative. When he wrote to her from Clarens he noted that he owed her an explanation (more than three months after!) for the omission of such a form.

  She answered him briefly but very promptly, and gave him a striking piece of news: the death, a week before, of Mrs St George. This exemplary woman had succumbed, in the country, to a violent attack of inflammation of the lungs – he would remember that for a long time she had been delicate. Miss Fancourt added that she heard her husband was overwhelmed with the blow; he would miss her unspeakably – she had been everything to him. Paul Overt immediately wrote to St George. He had wished to remain in communication with him, but had hitherto lacked the right excuse for troubling so busy a man. Their long nocturnal talk came back to him in every detail, but this did not prevent his expressing a cordial sympathy with the head of the profession, for had not that very talk made it clear that the accomplished lady was the influence that ruled his life? What catastrophe could be more cruel than the extinction of such an influence? This was exactly the tone that St George took in answering his young friend, upwards of a month later. He made no allusion, of course, to their important discussion. He spoke of his wife as frankly and generously as if he had quite forgotten that occasion, and the feeling of deep bereavement was visible in his words. ‘She took every thing off my hands – off my mind. She carried on our life with the greatest art, the rarest devotion, and I was free, as few men can have been, to drive my pen, to shut myself up with my trade. This was a rare service – the highest she could have rendered me. Would I could have acknowledged it more fitly!’

  A certain bewilderment, for Paul Overt, disengaged itself from these remarks: they struck him as a contradiction, a retraction. He had certainly not expected his correspondent to rejoice in the death of his wife, and it was perfectly in order that the rupture of a tie of more than twenty years should have left him sore. But if she was such a benefactress as that, what in the name of consistency had St George meant by turning him upside down that night – by dosing him to that degree, at the most sensitive hour of his life, with the doctrine of renunciation? If Mrs St George was an irreparable loss, then her husband’s inspired advice had been a bad joke and renunciation was a mistake. Overt was on the point of rushing back to London to show that, for his part, he was perfectly willing to consider it so, and he went so far as to take the manuscript of the first chapters of his new book out of his table-drawer, to insert it into a pocket of his portmanteau. This led to his catching a glimpse of some pages he had not looked at for months, and that accident, in turn, to his being struck with the high promise they contained – a rare result of such retrospections, which it was his habit to avoid as much as possible. They usually made him feel that the glow of composition might be a purely subjective and a very barren emotion. On this occasion a certain belief in himself disengaged itself whimsically from the serried erasures of his first draft, making him think it best after all to carry out his present experiment to the end. If he could write as well as that under the influence of renunciation, it would be a pity to change the conditions before the termination of the work. He would go back to London of course, but he would go back only when he should have finished his book. This was the vow he privately made, restoring his manuscript to the table-drawer. It may be added that it took him a long time to finish his book, for the subject was as difficult as it was fine and he was literally embarrassed by the fullness of his notes. Something within him told him that he must make it supremely good – otherwise he should lack, as regards his private behaviour, a handsome excuse. He had a horror of this deficiency and found himself as firm as need be on the question of the lamp and the file. He crossed the Alps at last and spent the winter, the spring, the ensuing summer, in Italy, where still, at the end of a twelvemonth, his task was unachieved. ‘Stick to it – see it through’: this general injunction of St George’s was good also for the particular case. He applied it to the utmost, with the result that when in its slow order, the summer had come round again he felt that he had given all that was in him. This time he put his papers into his portmanteau, with the address of his publisher attached, and took his way northward.

  He had been absent from London for two years – two years which were a long period and had made such a difference in his own life (through the production of a novel far stronger, he believed, than Ginistrella) that he turned out into Piccadilly, the morning after his arrival, with an indefinite expectation of changes, of finding that things had happened. But there were few transformations in Piccadilly (only three or four big red houses where there had been low black ones), and the brightness of the end of June peeped through the rusty railings of the Green Park and glittered in the varnish of the rolling carriages as he had seen it in other, more cursory Junes. It was a greeting that he appreciated; it seemed friendly and pointed, added to the exhilaration of his finished book, of his having his own country and the huge, oppressive, amusing city that suggested everything, that contained everything, under his hand again. ‘Stay at home and do things here – do subjects we can measure,’ St George had said; and now it appeared to him that he should ask nothing better than to stay at home for ever. Late in the afternoon he took his way to Manchester Square, looking out for a number he had not forgotten. Miss Fancourt, however, was not within, so that he turned, rather dejectedly, from the door. This movement brought him face to face with a gentleman who was approaching it and whom he promptly perceived to be Miss Fancourt’s father. Paul saluted this personage, and the General returned his greeting with his customary good manner – a manner so good, however, that you could never tell whether it meant that he placed you. Paul Overt felt the impulse to speak to him; then, hesitating, became conscious both that he had nothing particular to say and that though the old soldier remembered him he remembered him wrong. He therefore passed on, without calculating on the irresistible effect that his own evident recognition would have upon the General, who never neglected a chance to gossip. Our young man’s face was expressive, and observation seldom let it pass. He had not taken ten steps before he heard himself called after with a friendly, semi-articulate ‘A – I beg your pardo
n!’ He turned round and the General, smiling at him from the steps, said: ‘Won’t you come in? I won’t leave you the advantage of me!’ Paul declined to come in, and then was sorry he had done so, for Miss Fancourt, so late in the afternoon, might return at any moment. But her father gave him no second chance; he appeared mainly to wish not to have struck him as inhospitable. A further look at the visitor told him more about him, enough at least to enable him to say – ‘You’ve come back, you’ve come back?’ Paul was on the point of replying that he had come back the night before, but he bethought himself to suppress this strong light on the immediacy of his visit, and, giving merely a general assent, remarked that he was extremely sorry not to have found Miss Fancourt. He had come late, in the hope that she would be in. ‘I’ll tell her – I’ll tell her,’ said the old man; and then he added quickly, gallantly, ‘You’ll be giving us something new? It’s a long time, isn’t it?’ Now he remembered him right.

  ‘Rather long. I’m very slow,’ said Paul. ‘I met you at Summersoft a long time ago.’

  ‘Oh, yes, with Henry St George. I remember very well. Before his poor wife—’ General Fancourt paused a moment, smiling a little less. ‘I daresay you know.’

  ‘About Mrs St George’s death? Oh yes, I heard at the time.’

  ‘Oh no; I mean – I mean he’s to be married.’

  ‘Ah! I’ve not heard that.’ Just as Paul was about to add, ‘To whom?’ the General crossed his intention with a question.

  ‘When did you come back? I know you’ve been away – from my daughter. She was very sorry. You ought to give her something new.’

  ‘I came back last night,’ said our young man, to whom something had occurred which made his speech, for the moment, a little thick.