"JIMJR10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howells William Dean)

call them ideas!" he returns, which is delicious and makes you
love him. He, too, has his moments of misgiving, apparently in
regard to his nobility, and his acceptance of Newman on the basis
of something like "manhood suffrage" is very charming. It is of
course difficult for a remote plebeian to verify the pictures of
legitimist society in "The American," but there is the probable
suggestion in them of conditions and principles, and want of
principles, of which we get glimpses in our travels abroad; at
any rate, they reveal another and not impossible world, and it is
fine to have Newman discover that the opinions and criticisms of
our world are so absolutely valueless in that sphere that his
knowledge of the infamous crime of the mother and brother of his
betrothed will have no effect whatever upon them in their own
circle if he explodes it there. This seems like aristocracy
indeed! and one admires, almost respects, its survival in our
day. But I always regretted that Newman's discovery seemed the
precursor of his magnanimous resolution not to avenge himself; it
weakened the effect of this, with which it had really nothing to
do. Upon the whole, however, Newman is an adequate and
satisfying representative of Americanism, with his generous
matrimonial ambition, his vast good-nature, and his thorough good
sense and right feeling. We must be very hard to please if we
are not pleased with him. He is not the "cultivated American"
who redeems us from time to time in the eyes of Europe; but he is
unquestionably more national, and it is observable that his
unaffected fellow-countrymen and women fare very well at Mr.
James's hand always; it is the Europeanizing sort like the
critical little Bostonian in the "Bundle of Letters," the ladies
shocked at Daisy Miller, the mother in the "Pension Beaurepas"
who goes about trying to be of the "native" world everywhere,
Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond, Miss Light and her mother, who
have reason to complain, if any one has. Doubtless Mr. James
does not mean to satirize such Americans, but it is interesting
to note how they strike such a keen observer. We are certainly
not allowed to like them, and the other sort find somehow a place
in our affections along with his good Europeans. It is a little
odd, by the way, that in all the printed talk about Mr.
James--and there has been no end of it--his power of engaging
your preference for certain of his people has been so little
commented on. Perhaps it is because he makes no obvious appeal
for them; but one likes such men as Lord Warburton, Newman,
Valentin, the artistic brother in "The Europeans," and Ralph
Touchett, and such women as Isabel, Claire Belgarde, Mrs.
Tristram, and certain others, with a thoroughness that is one of
the best testimonies to their vitality. This comes about through
their own qualities, and is not affected by insinuation or by
downright petting, such as we find in Dickens nearly always and
in Thackeray too often.

The art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day