Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/122

96 96 HENRY JAMES the Jameses — uncles, aunts, cousins — enough to form a mimic community, seeming to dwell in the midst of the alien bustle of New England with the childlike independence of a brotherhood, " genially interested in nothing but themselves " — fairly forming a fraternity, placid, peaceful, quite unworldly, where our small boy might pace and ponder like a funny little friar, getting society without sophistication, seeing nothing of "life," yet being humanized, thinking always of the world as of an enchanted wonderland outside, beyond, and cuddling this wist- fulness quite contentedly, making it a conscious key to joy. A happy " little love of horizons " was what he then chiefly cherished, he sees now : he " took the unknown always easily for the magnificent"; and the fine faith of a parent whom one cannot help thinking of as a twinkling, wise, brotherly Father Superior, found ways of providing knowledge without breaking into those stores of the unknown : there were none of those advance courses of experience which propose to prepare young palates and digestions for existence by cramming them with potted portions of it overnight. For the elder Henry James had a sunny loathing for the literal (" caring for our spiritual decency supremely more than for anything else," he could still stand, in the way of Virtue itself, only the kind that is "more or less ashamed" of its title), and educative specialization would seem to him a sort of deformity suffered for the sake of " success " — and " success " was a thing he had no use for. All he cared to produce was that condition of character which his son calls " accessibility to ex- perience." You were only interested when you were disinterested — your very conscience ought to work unconsciously — and so our Henry James was equipped for life without plundering it, safe as a novice in his cell. The bloom was rubbed off nothing; yet the