Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/124

98 98 HENRY JAMES of revelations and enigmas over which I still hang fascinated" — a visit to Barnum's is a "desperate" day, '* flushed to me now with the very complexion of romance" — a doorstep that goes down instead of up is a feature "profoundly rich and strange." And these thrills and raptures, mind you, are not just the old ones revivified — adroit inventions of the sym- pathetic dramatist placed on the lips of the dead little boy. They are contemporary cries, ringing out spontaneously as the pen pokes the old humdrum relics into view : this Small Boy, you feel (for of course Henry is our hero, let the book paternally affirm what it will), this amazing Small Boy has never grown up — indeed, in a sense, he has grown down. He has grown more densely boyish than ever — Mr. James has never been so childish as now — it can be shown mathematically that he is thrilled by these trifl.es precisely three (3) times as much now as he was then. Take an instance. Take a case even more ordinary than ordinarily — the case, say, of The Incon- spicuous Uncle. In the old days that "dim little gentleman," " a natural platitude," had impressed his small nephew, peering up at him awestruck, as being an absolute nullity : he was impressive because he wasn't, because he was " a case of being no case at all, of not having even the interest of the grievance of not being one." Lured by this recollection our seventy -year-old recorder goes tiptoeing back towards his seventh year, tapping and peering and rummaging gorgeously, fairly given up to the boy's bliss of " exploring," till at length he hits the right corridor — finds the true spring — sees the dim, dusty panel slide softly back to disclose the very hour and the scene : — I am on a visit to Albert. . . but my host seems for the minute to have left me, and I am attached but to the rich