And yet
every American writer must feel a little proud that there was one
of our race who could make the great refusal of popularity, sever,
with those intricate pen strokes of his, the bonds of interest
that might have held the "general reader," and write just as well
as he knew how.
Whether his novels and short stories gained by this heroic
"highbrowism," is another question. Certainly they did not always
do so. To get a million of readers is no sure sign of greatness;
but to find only thousands, as did Henry James in his later books,
is to be deplored. In "Daisy Miller" and "The Bostonians" he was
a popular novelist of the best kind, a novelist who drew the best
people to be his readers. But men read "The Golden Bowl" and "The
Wings of the Dove" because they were skilful rather than because
they were interesting. They were novelists' novels, like the
professional matinees that "stars" give on Tuesday afternoons for
the benefit of rivals and imitators in art.
But to stop here would be to misunderstand totally the greatest
craftsman that has come out of America. The flat truth is that
Henry James was not a novelist at all, at least in the good, old-
fashioned sense that we usually give to the word.
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