The Ambassadors quotes

it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had? I’m too old—too old at any rate for what I see.

What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that.

Still, we have the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t, like me today, be without the memory of that illusion. I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it, and now I’m a case of reaction against the mistake.

He was burdened, poor Strether—it had better be confessed at the outset—with the oddity of a double consciousness.

There was detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference.

After the young woman in the glass cage had held up to him across her counter the pale-pink leaflet bearing his friend’s name, which she neatly pronounced, he turned away to find himself, in the hall, facing a lady who met his eyes as with …

He shook his mane; he fixed, with his admirable eyes, his auditor or his observer; he wore no glasses and had a way, partly formidable, yet also partly encouraging, as from a representative to a constituent, of looking very hard at those who approached him.

He met you as if you had knocked and he had bidden you enter.

Strether, who hadn’t seen him for so long an interval, apprehended him now with a freshness of taste, and had perhaps never done him such ideal justice. The head was bigger, the eyes finer, than they need have been for the career;

It suggested to his comrade something that always, when kept up, worried him—a person established in a railway-coach with a forward inclination.

It represented the angle at which poor Waymarsh was to sit through the ordeal of Europe.

Thanks to the stress of occupation, the strain of professions, the absorption and embarrassment of each, they had not, at home, during years before this sudden brief and almost bewildering reign of comparative ease, found so much as a day for a meeting;

One might one’s self easily have left Mrs. Waymarsh; and one would assuredly have paid one’s tribute to the ideal in covering with that attitude the derision of having been left by her.

Her husband had held his tongue and had made a large income; and these were in especial the achievements as to which Strether envied him.

Our friend had had indeed on his side too a subject for silence, which he fully appreciated;

“

I always want them to go, and I send them as fast as I can.

”

“

Any port will serve in a storm.

I’m—with all my other functions—an agent for repatriation. I want to re-people our stricken country. What will become of it else? I want to discourage others.”

“He makes it—to my belief. And I,” said Strether, “though with a back quite as bent, have never made anything.

I’m a perfectly equipped failure.

”

He feared an instant she’d ask him if he meant he was poor; and he was glad she didn’t, for he really didn’t know to what the truth on this unpleasant point mightn’t have prompted her. She only, however, confirmed his assertion. “

Thank goodness you’re a failure⁠—it’s why I so distinguish you!

Anything else today is too hideous. Look about you—look at the successes. Would you be one, on your honour? Look, moreover,” she continued, “at me.”

“I beg your pardon—that’s exactly what I do put it on for. It’s exactly the thing that I’m reduced to doing for myself.

It seems to rescue a little, you see, from the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the refuse-heap of disappointments and failures, my one presentable little scrap of an identity.

”

“

Oh we’re not loved. We’re not even hated. We’re only just sweetly ignored.

”

Again she met his eyes, but to the result that after an instant her own turned away with impatience. “You don’t sell? Oh I’m glad of that!” After which however, and before he could protest, she was off again. “

She’s just a moral swell.

”

Strether stared—this was a novelty. “Refined?”

“Oh,” she said quietly, “there are refinements.”

The way of it made him, after looking at her, break into a laugh. “You have them!”

Newsome, expressed him doubtless just enough to make the world—the world as distinguished, both for more and for less, from Woollett—ask who he was. He had incurred the ridicule of having to have his explanation explained.

He was Lambert Strether because he was on the cover, whereas it should have been, for anything like glory, that he was on the cover because he was Lambert Strether.

He would have done anything for Mrs. Newsome, have been still more ridiculous—as he might, for that matter, have occasion to be yet; which came to saying that this acceptance of fate was all he had to show at fifty-five.

Strether had read somewhere of a Latin motto, a description of the hours, observed on a clock by a traveller in Spain; and he had been led to apply it in thought to Chad’s number one, number two, number three.

Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat⁠—they had all morally wounded, the last had morally killed.

The last had been longest in possession—in possession, that is, of whatever was left of the poor boy’s finer mortality.

the impression—substituting one kind of low-priced consommation for another—might have been that of one of the pleasant cafés that overlapped, under an awning, to the pavement; but he edged along, grazing the tables, with his hands firmly behind him.

He wasn’t there to dip, to consume⁠—he was there to reconstruct.

He wasn’t there for his own profit—not, that is, the direct; he was there on some chance of feeling the brush of the wing of the stray spirit of youth. He felt it in fact, he had it beside him;

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. I couldn’t. It was impossible. You wouldn’t either. Besides I didn’t want to. No more would you.” Strether in short explained it at a stroke. “

You can’t make out over here what people do know.

”

“No—damn your tone. I mean your nosing round. Quit the whole job. Let them stew in their juice. You’re being used for a thing you ain’t fit for.

People don’t take a fine-tooth comb to groom a horse.

”

“It’s what you are, all the same.

You ain’t so young as you were, but you’ve kept your teeth.

”

Waymarsh had smoked of old, smoked hugely; but Waymarsh did nothing now, and that gave him his advantage over people who took things up lightly just when others had laid them heavily down.

Strether had never smoked, and he felt as if he flaunted at his friend that this had been only because of a reason. The reason, it now began to appear even to himself, was that he had never had a lady to smoke with.

It was this lady’s being there at all, however, that was the strange free thing; perhaps, since she was there, her smoking was the least of her freedoms.

Well, the effect of it for Strether was an abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his own tendency to temporise. Where was that taking him anyway?

It was one of the quiet instants that sometimes settle more matters than the outbreaks dear to the historic muse.

The only qualification of the quietness was the synthetic “Oh hang it!” into which Strether’s share of the silence soundlessly flowered. It represented, this mute ejaculation, a final impulse to burn his ships.

The phenomenon that had suddenly sat down there with him was a phenomenon of change so complete that his imagination, which had worked so beforehand, felt itself, in the connection, without margin or allowance.

It had faced every contingency but that Chad should not be Chad, and this was what it now had to face with a mere strained smile and an uncomfortable flush.

He asked himself if, by any chance, before he should have in some way to commit himself, he might feel his mind settled to the new vision, might habituate it, so to speak, to the remarkable truth. But oh it was too remarkable, the truth;

This sage consideration too, distinctly, seemed to leave untouched the fact that he was going to be conscious.

He was conscious of everything but of what would have served him.

He was to know afterwards, in the watches of the night, that nothing would have been more open to him than after a minute or two to propose to Chad to seek with him the refuge of the lobby.

Whether or no he had a grand idea of the lucid, he held that nothing ever was in fact—for anyone else—explained. One went through the vain motions, but it was mostly a waste of life.

A personal relation was a relation only so long as people either perfectly understood or, better still, didn’t care if they didn’t.

From the moment they cared if they didn’t it was living by the sweat of one’s brow; and the sweat of one’s brow was just what one might buy one’s self off from by keeping the ground free of the wild weed of delusion.

and at the same time that it had given him a form and a surface, almost a design, it had toned his voice, established his accent, encouraged his smile to more play and his other motions to less.

He had formerly, with a great deal of action, expressed very little; and he now expressed whatever was necessary with almost none at all.

It was as if in short he had really, copious perhaps but shapeless, been put into a firm mould and turned successfully out. The phenomenon—Strether kept eyeing it as a phenomenon, an eminent case—was marked enough to be touched by the finger.

He had formerly, with a great deal of action, expressed very little; and he now expressed whatever was necessary with almost none at all.

It was as if in short he had really, copious perhaps but shapeless, been put into a firm mould and turned successfully out.

The phenomenon—Strether kept eyeing it as a phenomenon, an eminent case—was marked enough to be touched by the finger. He finally put his hand across the table and laid it on Chad’s arm.

He had appeared stupidly to misrepresent what they thought at Woollett; but before he had time to rectify Chad again was upon him. “

I must say then you show a low mind!

”

Again she laughed out. “Yes, and even when the man is! There’s always a caution in such cases,” she more seriously explained—“for what it may seem to show.

There’s nothing that’s taken as showing so much here as sudden unnatural goodness.

”

“

Oh I always give too much!

” Strether helplessly sighed. “But you don’t,” he went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of that doom, “answer my question. Why isn’t he free?”

Little Bilham looked him full in the face. “

Because it’s a virtuous attachment.

”

He had dropped on a sofa for dismay; but she seemed, as she stood over him, to have the last word. “

Wasn’t what you came out for to find out all?

”

“I can only tell you that it’s what they pass for. But isn’t that enough?

What more than a vain appearance does the wisest of us know?

I commend you,” the young man declared with a pleasant emphasis, “the vain appearance.”

“Not even!” the young man woefully confessed: “they haven’t gone through that form. They’ve simply—the cannibals!—eaten me; converted me if you like, but converted me into food.

I’m but the bleached bones of a Christian.

”

one lives in fine as one can.

Still, one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don’t be, like me, without the memory of that illusion.

I was either, at the right time, too stupid or too intelligent to have it; I don’t quite know which. Of course at present I’m a case of reaction against the mistake;

I don’t quite know which. Of course at present I’m a case of reaction against the mistake; and the voice of reaction should, no doubt, always be taken with an allowance. But that doesn’t affect the point that the right time is now yours.

The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.

You’ve plenty; that’s the great thing; you’re, as I say, damn you, so happily and hatefully young. Don’t at any rate miss things out of stupidity. Of course I don’t take you for a fool, or I shouldn’t be addressing you thus awfully.

All the same don’t forget that you’re young—blessedly young; be glad of it on the contrary and live up to it.

Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.

If you haven’t had that what have you had? This place and these impressions—mild as you may find them to wind a man up so;

I see it now. I haven’t done so enough before—and now I’m old; too old at any rate for what I see. Oh I do see, at least; and more than you’d believe or I can express. It’s too late.

And it’s as if the train had fairly waited at the station for me without my having had the gumption to know it was there. Now I hear its faint receding whistle miles and miles down the line.

What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that. The affair—I mean the affair of life—couldn’t, no doubt, have been different for me;

Miss Gostrey was on her feet; it was time for them to go. “

She has brought him up for her daughter.

”

He for a moment entertained the question, then found for it the frankest of answers. “

Yes. If she were worse she’d be better for our purpose. It would be simpler.

”

“Well,” Miss Barrace explained, “she’s just brilliant, as we used to say. That’s all.

She’s various. She’s fifty women.

”

“

Well, he thinks, you know, that I’ve a life of my own. And I haven’t!

”

It sufficiently lighted up at least the folly of holding off. Ancient proverbs sounded, for his memory, in the tone of their words and the clink of their glasses, in the hum of the town and the plash of the river.

It was clearly better to suffer as a sheep than as a lamb. One might as well perish by the sword as by famine.

“Maria’s still away?”—that was the first thing she had asked him;

There were reasons that made him by no means sure, yet he nevertheless answered “Tremendously”; which she took in as if it were all she had wished to prove. Then,

“A man in trouble must be possessed somehow of a woman,” she said; “if she doesn’t come in one way she comes in another.”

“Why do you call me a man in trouble?”

He had a pause that matched her own; then he had, with an adequate spirit, a complete admission. “It’s quite true.

I’m extremely wonderful just now. I dare say in fact I’m quite fantastic, and I shouldn’t be at all surprised if I were mad.

”

“No—worse. It will make me old.”

“Ah nothing can do that! The wonderful and special thing about you is that you are, at this time of day, youth.”

Then she always made, further, one of those remarks that she had completely ceased to adorn with hesitations or apologies, and that had, by the same token, in spite of their extreme straightness, ceased to produce in Strether the least embarrassment.

He liked always, where Lambert Strether was concerned, to know the worst, and what he now seemed to know was not only that he was bribeable, but that he had been effectually bribed. The only difficulty was that he couldn’t quite have said with what.

It was as if he had sold himself, but hadn’t somehow got the cash.

That, however, was what, characteristically, would happen to him. It would naturally be his kind of traffic.

they let you come quite close. They wear their fur the smooth side out—the warm side in. Do you know what they are?” Jim pursued as he looked about him, giving the question, as Strether felt, but half his care—“do you know what they are?

They’re about as intense as they can live.

”

“Ah Sarah’s prostrate?” Strether vaguely murmured.

“It’s when they’re prostrate that they most sit up.”

“And Mrs. Newsome’s sitting up?”

“Because I’m made so—I think of everything.”

“Ah one must never do that,” she smiled. “One must think of as few things as possible.”

“Then,” he answered, “one must pick them out right. But all I mean is—for I express myself with violence—that she’s in a position to watch me. There’s an element of suspense for me, and she can see me wriggle.

Strether turned away under his quick perception; she was so odd a mixture of lucidity and mystery. She fell in at moments with the theory about her he most cherished, and she seemed at others to blow it into air.

She spoke now as if her art were all an innocence, and then again as if her innocence were all an art.

“Oh he’s giving himself up, and he’ll do so to the end. How can he but want, now that it’s within reach, his full impression?—which is much more important, you know, than either yours or mine.

He was sorry again, gratefully sorry she was so out of it—she who had really put him in; but she had fortunately always her appetite for news.

The pure flame of the disinterested burned in her cave of treasures as a lamp in a Byzantine vault.

It was just now, as happened, that for so fine a sense as hers a near view would have begun to pay. Within three days, precisely, the situation on which he was to report had shown signs of an equilibrium;

He had a laugh at his tribute to the ideal, but he explained after a moment his impression.

“I mean they’re living. They’re rushing about. I’ve already had my rushing. I’m waiting.”

“But aren’t you,” she asked by way of cheer, “waiting with me?”

Mamie bloomed and bridled with her best reception manner. “

Any man’s nice when he’s in love.

”

“It’s just her pride that has made her. Chad,” little Bilham loyally went on, “has really been as kind to her as possible.

It’s awkward for a man when a girl’s in love with him.

”

Little Bilham fixed it all a moment, and then with a small headshake that diffused a tenderness: “

She’s too late. Too late for the miracle.

”

“Wonderfully—but just so that it does build her out.

She’s bricked up, she’s buried alive!

”

Strether seemed for a moment to look at it; but it brought him to a sigh. “

Oh but she’s not dead! It will take more than this to kill her.

”

But she gave it to him back. “

It’s nothing to the way you will when you must.

”

It came to him in fact that just here was his usual case: he was forever missing things through his general genius for missing them, while others were forever picking them up through a contrary bent.

And it was others who looked abstemious and he who looked greedy; it was he somehow who finally paid, and it was others who mainly partook.

Yes, he should go to the scaffold yet for he wouldn’t know quite whom. He almost, for that matter, felt on the scaffold now and really quite enjoying it.

He wondered again; he waited. “

Ah dear Sarah, you must leave me this person here!

”

She made for it with decision, and the manner of her break, the sharp shaft of her rejoinder, had an intensity by which Strether was at first kept in arrest.

She had let fly at him as from a stretched cord, and it took him a minute to recover from the sense of being pierced.

It was not the penetration of surprise; it was that, much more, of certainty; his case being put for him as he had as yet only put it to himself. She was away at any rate;

All voices had grown thicker and meant more things; they crowded on him as he moved about—it was the way they sounded together that wouldn’t let him be still.

He felt, strangely, as sad as if he had come for some wrong, and yet as excited as if he had come for some freedom.

But the freedom was what was most in the place and the hour, it was the freedom that most brought him round again to the youth of his own that he had long ago missed.

“

I’m true, but I’m incredible.

I’m fantastic and ridiculous—I don’t explain myself even to myself. How can they then,” Strether asked, “understand me? So I don’t quarrel with them.”

“

Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get me neatly stuck there she would triumph.

”

On which—though as if for an instant it had hung fire—Chad remarkably replied: “

Well, if they hate my good friend, that comes to the same thing.

” It had a note of inevitable truth that made Strether take it as enough, feel he wanted nothing more.

“No—it’s only to you I speak. I’ve been like a lamb to Sarah.

I’ve only put my back to the wall. It’s to that one naturally staggers when one has been violently pushed there.

”

But her friend threw back his head. “

I haven’t touched her. She won’t be touched.

I see it now as I’ve never done; and she hangs together with a perfection of her own,” he went on, “that does suggest a kind of wrong in any change of her composition.

It turned Miss Gostrey to deeper thought. “

Fancy having to take at the point of the bayonet a whole moral and intellectual being or block!

”

though it wasn’t to be denied that he was already a little afraid of her “What on earth—that’s what I want to know now—had you then supposed?” He recognised at last that he had really been trying all along to suppose nothing.

Verily, verily, his labour had been lost. He found himself supposing innumerable and wonderful things.

One does it to cheat one’s self and to stop one’s mouth—but that’s only at the best for a little. The wretched self is always there, always making one somehow a fresh anxiety.

What it comes to is that it’s not, that it’s never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take.

The only safe thing is to give. It’s what plays you least false.” Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet puzzled and troubled him—so fine was the quaver of her quietness.

The wretched self is always there, always making one somehow a fresh anxiety. What it comes to is that it’s not, that it’s never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take.

The only safe thing is to give. It’s what plays you least false.

” Interesting, touching, strikingly sincere as she let these things come from her, she yet puzzled and troubled him—so fine was the quaver of her quietness.

The good of what he had done, if he had done so much, wasn’t there to enliven him quite to the point that would have been ideal for a grand gay finale.

Women were thus endlessly absorbent, and to deal with them was to walk on water.

What was at bottom the matter with her, embroider as she might and disclaim as she might—what was at bottom the matter with her was simply Chad himself. It was of Chad she was after all renewedly afraid;

But he had already stopped her. “

I didn’t think anything. I never think a step further than I’m obliged to.

”

“

Ah but you’ve had me!

” he declared, at the door, with an emphasis that made an end.