Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/108

82 HENRY JAMES ritual — you miss above all the eager care for humanity, the desire to render intimate aid. To see these things you must realize that it was a sweet affection for the earth that sent the whole edifice soaring and that all this pomp and splendour is at heart a protest against pride. So that it is with no idea of being just frightfully original and all that — it is simply out of a decent desire to be useful — that one now hauls down that heading — gives it an added humility — and runs it up again as "The Humility of Henry James." Now the cleanest way of catching up this Ariadne- clue is to turn at once to the very earliest of his tales — the earliest, at all events, of those that find a place in the finished scheme of his Works. It is forty years, all but, since A Passionate Pilgrim, first appeared — it is more than forty since it was written — and yet so clearly had Mr. James already perceived his true task, so firmly has he held to his course, that the story still stands as the perfect porch to his work — an epitome as well as a prelude. Its title is the best brief definition of Mr. James the artist. A Passionate Pilgrim is just the name one would choose for that other fine story, of which these twenty -four books are single chapters, and in which Mr. James plays the part of chief character. The tale itself will be widely remembered : with its bright objective charm, and its purple velvet " curtain," it has always been one of the pieces that even rugged anti-Jacobites have been able to allow them- selves, without loss of caste, to enjoy. Poor Clement Searle, a toil-weary American, comes, fine and faded, at the close of his life, to the England he has dreamed of all his days; and surveys it with the famished