Customer Reviews

A Passionate Pilgrim

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This is one of James's earliest novellas, and it shows some weaknesses as a technical matter. We read this novella aloud and it flows in a very fluent manner. There are many, rather lengthy passages of local color ["colour"?] that break up the narrative when read silently, but which work very well when read aloud.

The story involves a sensitive American, Clement Searle, who is defeated by a blunter and coarser adversary, in this case ironically an Englishman. One meets many "poor sensitive gentlemen" in James's fiction; this is one who ironically weakens as his goal comes closer and closer to realization. Irony infuses the final outcome of the story in more ways than one.

James relates early in the story how important European culture was to the, or at least, to his American mind:

"The latent preparedness of the American mind even for the most characteristic features of English life was a matter I meanwhile failed to get to the bottom of. The roots of it are indeed so deeply buried in the soil of our early culture that, without some great upheaval of feeling, we are at a loss to say exactly when and where and how it begins. It makes an American's enjoyment of England an emotion more searching than anything Continental. I had seen the coffee-room of the Red Lion years ago, at home -- at Saragossa Illinois -- in books, in visions, in dreams, in Dickens, in Smollett, in Boswell. It was small and subdivided into six narrow compartments by a series of perpendicular screens of mahogany, something higher than a man's stature, furnished on either side with a meagre uncushioned ledge, denominated in ancient Britain a seat. In each of these rigid receptacles was a narrow table -- a table expected under stress to accommodate no less than four pairs of active British elbows. High pressure indeed had passed away from the Red Lion for ever. It now knew only that of memories and ghosts and atmosphere."

Howells, perhaps, writing in the "The Atlantic Monthly" in April, 1875, summarized how popular James was from the very beginning: "Since his earliest appearance, "Atlantic" people have strongly liked or disliked his writing.... He has not had to struggle with indifference, the subtlest enemy of the literary reputations."

I must confess that as a much younger reader, I was in the "dislike" camp -- James's parenthetical phrases, piled one upon the other, were very off putting. But as I've matured as a reader and especially as I've started to read James aloud, I've found that there is a lyrical beauty in his writing, and that his phrases roll off the tongue. Even this early work, despite its technical weaknesses, was very satisfying to this reader. (I wonder if its the slower pace of reading aloud that makes the difference; I read at about 200 words a minute aloud, and between 400 and 800 when reading silently.)

Robert C. Ross 2010

Note: I'm baffled by why Amazon would publish two versions of this novella within a few days of each other and at the same price point. There is no apparent difference between the two editions. Pick either one, as far as I can see. B