Rome the relics, the remnants of the ancient American group—"much broken up, or rather broken down"—Story's, even Hawthorne's group, that little circle of easy artistry and sociability which had had its high moments, moments of Mazzini, moments of the Brownings, and had listened so long to the sirens that the slow years had lapped it round and left it there, a shadow, an echo, a dream? That, in the golden air, was the doom of the American artist! And as for "Italian life," how could one ever grasp it? Italy, for an alien, was like some strange, iridescent shell-fish in the hands of a child: the living organism lurked too far within, and the shell was irrefrangible, and the shape and the colour were so entrancing that one forgot everything else. Had not Hawthorne, with all his perseverance and all his magic, shown just how helpless, in such conditions, the American novelist was? . . . No, Italy was the casket of gold, but the treasure was not hidden there. He must try the silver casket next, and then the casket of lead.
It was to Paris that James repaired when, at thirty-two, he left America for good, and "it does not seem to have occurred to him at the time," says Mr Lubbock, "to seek a European home anywhere else." Nevertheless, he remained in Paris scarcely a year: why did he go there, what did he gain from his year's adventure, and why did he leave so soon? Between the lines of his letters and his essays we seem to discern the story: to the end of his life James was to look back upon this year as, in a certain sense, his annus mirabile. . . . Paris. . . . It had been the second, the more essential, nursery of his intellect: what secrets he had learned there, secrets of the craft that he was never to forget! He had always known that art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints; he had always felt that the best things come, as a general thing, from the talents that are members of a group. And there in Paris he had been welcomed by the Olympians themselves—by Flaubert and Turgenev. Welcomed? Yes. It was true that they had shown little interest in his own work: they had found it—had they not?—proprement écrit, but terribly pale. The gentle giant from the steppes had even suggested that it had on the surface too many little flowers and knots of ribbon, that it was not quite meat for men. That was a pity: one liked to be appreciated. Still, he had come to Paris, in all piety, for quite an-
