Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/69

 operas, or fine portraits, or handsome "sets" of the classics, or even elegant "show" cemeteries, to his earnest side. He was not shy and, so far as awkwardness proceeds from a struggle with shyness, was not awkward: grave, attentive, submissive, often silent, he was simply swimming in a sort of rapture of respect. This emotion was not at all theoretic, it was not even in a high degree romantic; he had thought very little about the "position" of women, and he was not familiar, either sympathetic ally or otherwise, with the image of a President in petticoats. His attitude was simply the flower of his general good-nature and a part of his instinctive and genuinely democratic assumption of every one's right to lead an easy life. If a shaggy pauper had a right to bed and board and wages and a vote, women, of course, who were weaker than paupers, and whose physical tissue was in itself an appeal, should be maintained, sentimentally, at the public expense. Newman was willing to be taxed for this purpose, largely, in proportion to his means. Moreover many of the common traditions with regard to women were with him fresh personal impressions. He had never read a page of printed romance.

He spent a great deal of time in listening to advice from Mrs. Tristram; advice, it must be added, for which he had never asked. He would have been incapable of asking for it, inasmuch as he had no perception of difficulties and consequently no curiosity about remedies. The complex Parisian world about him seemed a very simple affair; it was an 39