"The Ambassadors," Henry James

 As a reminder, these short essays are not critical reviews, but to provide a sense of the book, and to convey, I hope, why I found it enjoyable and/or informative. Henry James’ books tend to be longer, as he wrote for a people whose time was not taken up by television and social media. But, if you can find the time you will appreciate his characters and their lives. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Burrowing into Books

The Ambassadors, Henry James

October 2, 2021

 

“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter

what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.”

                                                                                                             Lambert Strether speaking to Little Bilham

                                                                                                             The Ambassadors

 

Lambert Strether, a 50-something, educated but impoverished, widower, has been sent, as an ambassador, by Mrs. Newsom of Woollett, Massachusetts, to retrieve her son Chad who has spent the past five years in Paris, allegedly beguiled by a “foreign” woman. His reward is a promise of matrimony by the widowed Mrs. Newsom. Upon arriving in Liverpool, he makes the acquaintance of Maria Gostrey, an American woman in her mid 30s. They become friendly. She questions him about his ambassadorial duties: “You’ve accepted the mission of separating him from the wicked woman. Are you quite sure she’s bad for him?” He responds: “Of course we are. Wouldn’t you be?” They both travel, independently, to Paris where Chad has been living and where Maria, a former schoolmate of the “wicked woman,” becomes confidant to Strether. 

 

The woman is Madame de Vionnet. Several months later Chad’s sister Sarah, her husband Jim Pocock and sister-in-law Mamie Pocock (whom Chad’s mother had pre-selected for her son) arrived in Paris, also as “ambassadors,” to check on Strether. We see him closeted with Chad’s friend “Little” Bilham who asks him whom Chad should marry: Strether replies: “Not marry at all events Mamie.” “And who then?” “Ah, that I’m not obliged to say. But Madame de Vionnet – I suggest – when he can.” The strait-laced Strether has been seduced by the sexual freedom that is late 19^th Century Paris, anticipating Walter Donaldson’s 1919 song, “How You Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm.”

 

While the allures of Paris can be catching, they do not infect everyone. Chad’s sister Sarah is immune from the city’s attractions. On the other hand, “charming” and “funny” Mamie Pocock blossoms. Strether had met her in Woollett, as she was in a literature class he had taught in Mrs. Newsome’s parlor, but he had no real memory of her; “it not being in the nature of things at Woolett that the freshest of buds should find herself in the same basket with the most withered of winter apples.” 

 

While reading 19^th and early 20^th Century novels can be challenging because of the syntax and vocabulary, one of the pleasures is seeing how definitions have changed: gay – happy; glass – mirror; festal – festive; drollery – comical gestures. Other words common at the time, like mirth, twigged, verily and fortnight are rarely used today.

 

But back to the story; it is the change in Strether that is at its essence – from a conservative “stuffed shirt” to a renewed free spirit, as can be seen in his quote that heads this essay. Nevertheless, in the end, Chad, on his own, chooses to return to Woollett and the family business, while Strether, despite offers of intimacy from Madame de Vionnet and Maria Gostrey, dismisses the appeal of Paris and decides to return to Puritan Massachusetts. “To what do you go home?” asks Maria Gostrey. “I don’t know. There will always be something,” answers Strether. 

 

What happens back in Woollett is left to our imagination.