"The comic poet," according to George Meredith, "is in the narrow field or enclosed square of the society he depicts, and he addresses the still narrower enclosure of men’s Intellect, with reference to the operation of the social world upon their characters."¹ What he produces is an elevated comedy of manners which appeals to the intelligence and arouses cerebral laughter by exhibiting the inconsistencies and Incongruities of man’s private and social behavior.

Henry James Is such a comic poet in The Ambassadors. He, too, deals with a narrow field: "a certain momentous and interesting period, of some six months or so, in the history of a man no longer in his prime of life, yet still able to live with sufficient intensity to be a source of what may be called excitement to himself, not less than to the reader of his record."³ James, too, confines himself to the "still narrower enclosure of men’s intellect." Throughout The Ambassadors he reveals the hero’s consciousness with all of its inconsistencies and incongruities and emphasizes the "operation of the social world" upon character. Creating a trans-Atlantic comedy of manners, he brings to bear upon his protagonist the dual social worlds of parochial New England and secular Paris, each with its corresponding follies. The laughter which The Ambassadors evokes is cerebral in that Is it filled with serious overtones as II exposes the absurdities of polite men and women.

The locus of Meredith’s comedy exists within the character’s interior. "It laughs through the mind, for the mind directs it and it might be called the humor of the mind."⁴ In The Ambassadors James turns the eye of his comedy inward. Unfolding the inner life of Lambert Strether, he subtly reveals the intimate comedy going on within Strether’s vulnerable self.

Strether, James tells us in his "Project of the Novel," is a fifty-five year old American of "sufficiently typical New England origin" who has enjoyed a moderately successful career in the circumscribed world in which he lives. He is, nevertheless, "vaguely haunted by the feeling of what he has missed, though this is a quantity and a quality, that he would rather be at a loss to name."⁵ He is also "burdened by a double consciousness. There Is a detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference" (p. 18). Yet it is this "double consciousness," the ability to stand off and look at himself engaged in the process of living, which is largely responsible for his comic sense. Always a spectator of himself and of life, he is vaguely attuned to the incongruous in his character and in the world about him. Possessing an over-developed imagination as well, he always sees the preposterous in situations, even if it isn’t there.

At the outset of the novel when Strether encounters Maria Gostrey, the sophisticated guide of Europe and of human nature, he receives a strong impression of the comic within him. Through her pointed questions amid her mock-heroic treatment of his activities, he realizes some of the absurdity of his present position, lie is aware that he has magnified his trip to Paris into a diplomatic venture, complete with instructions from the all-powerful home-office, the vital communiqués, the elaborate protocol, the rewards for success, the penalties for failure, and the ever-present danger of going over to the enemy. By being able to see the folly of his role-playing, Strether possesses the principal qualification for comic perception cited by Meredith: "You may estimate your capacity for comic perception by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love without loving them less, and more by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes and accepting the correction their image of you proposes."⁶ Strether is able to accept the particular correction of his image which Maria proposes. His image, however, is still not entirely free of the ridiculous. His further correction is left to the spirit of Paris, which initially fosters his comic myopia, but ultimately cures him of it and enlarges his vision.

Strether enters Paris with his certain Woollett, Massachusetts, assumptions. It is a vast, glittering Babylon which mesmerizes American youth. Chad Newsome, the young man whose mother has enlisted Strether to bring him home, must be lingering in Paris because he is caught tip in its degradation, no doubt in a sordid involvement with a vulgar woman. The boy must be "brutalized, perverted, poisoned" by such a noxious environment. Strether, however, soon realizes how ridiculous such notions are when he meets the prodigal. Instead of Chad’s being coarsened by his Parisian moral holiday, he is more refined than lie ever has been. Overawed by the youth’s improvement, Strether completely reverses his earlier evil-minded opinion and makes, what lie hater discovers to be, another foolish judgment. An idealistic American who believes in the doctrine of perfectibility, Strether now sees Chad a changed man, someone improved by culture and experience. Amid if a woman is responsible for such a change, Strether can only conclude that she must be of a higher order than he had supposed. Indeed, Chad’s friend, Madame de Vionnet, far exceeds his expectations. First meeting her at an elegant garden party on a glorious Parisian summer afternoon, Strether is at once dazzled by her charm and beauty as well as her "common humanity." Amid like other credulous Americans, he is moved to trust by the presence of her young daughter, a perfect jeune fille whose exquisite innocence testifies to the "tone" of her mother. And since the novels of Woollett contain only wicked liaisons or ideal love affairs, Strether naturally imagines Chad not adulterously

involved with Madame de Vionnet but innocently in love with her daughter.

At this same garden party where the beauty and freedom of Paris inundate him, Strether begins to feel his own deficiencies. The new sense of ease which he has experienced on European soil has made him realize how inane his past life has been. His "tin-moulded" ideas, the Woollett ideas of the proper and the calculable, have made a fool of him. They have deprived him of the memory of the "illusion of freedom." And now at his age all he can be is a "case of reaction against that mistake," knowing full well that even his "voice of reaction" must be taken with a humorous "allowance." Hoping, therefore, "to find a kind of vicarious joy in the freedom of another,"⁷ he admonishes the young artist Bilham not to repeat his own New England folly.

Too late to take up with sensual adventure, Strether now pursues the adventure of ideas and moves from one comically misconceived situation to another. Encountering Madame de Vionnet at Notre Dame, he naively supposes she is a virtuous woman because she attends church. He therefore deems her a fit educator to instruct him In the wisdom of Europe. The more he comes to know her and her rare perceptions, the more the liberates himself from his former absurd views and removes himself from the Influence of Mrs. Newsome and Woollett. It is not long, however, before his shift of allegiance is discovered. As a devoted student of the enemy, he has discredited himself as an official emissary, and Mrs. Newsome sends her daughter, Sarah Pocock, to retrieve the renegade ambassador. Strether, however, refuses to be saved by her; nor does he aid her in rescuing Chad-There is In fact a comic reversal in his position. Instead of urging Chad to return to Woollett to take up his rightful duties, Strether now pleads with him to remain in Paris to benefit from the edifying civilization which Madame de Vionnet embodies. The circumspect older man momentarily changes places with the imprudent younger man. Strether’s youth, however, is short-lived. His aging is effected by a masterful stroke of irony. Visiting the country in search of something French, some quintessentially French scene to satisfy a desire awakened by a Lambinet landscape which he has treasured through the years, he encounters the adulterous couple. Strether experiences a rueful version of the discovery or recognition of the hero in the ancient comedy rites. Although his final illusion is shattered, he still receives the anagnorises or new knowledge of the comic hero. He will no longer oversimplify. He has learned that "the moral sense of individuals, as distinguished from the practical simplifications forced upon actual ambassadors, is complex and tenuous, and sometimes consists in a willed suspension of judgement."’ If Strether judges anyone, he convicts himself for his failures of perception. Nevertheless, he profits from Chad’s

The higher the comedy, according to Meredith, the more prominent part women play in it, for they usually display "wit on the side of sound sense."¹⁰ Maria Gostrey’s wit entitles her to play a prominent role in James’s high comedy. He says of her in his "Project of the Novel":

From the moment this singular woman makes her appearance in the novel, she is perpetually amusing. She is adroit at categorizing her fellow man and displays an almost childlike delight in demonstrating her capacity. "Site pigeon-holed her fellow mortals with a hand as free as that of a compositor scattering type" (p. 21). She exhibits a "strange and cynical wit" in mocking her own functions. Maria jocosely speaks of herself as a "superior courier-maid" who puts people through Europe. She improvises amusing lines of melodrama and is often just as entertained by her impromptu cleverness as is her auditor. Analyzing her unusual life she declaims:

She is humorously self-conscious about her tenuous American identity, for she exaggerates: "I bear on my back the huge load of our national consciousness, or in other words—for it comes to that—of our nation itself. Of what is our nation composed but of the men and women individually on my shoulders" (p. 26)? About herself and her fellow expatriates, she deprecatingly jests: "We’re abysmal. May we never be less so" (p. 24). Aware of herself as a failure, a "beaten brother in arms" (p. 40), Maria

thus possesses what Constance Rourke calls "James’s low-keyed humor of defeat."¹²

Since everything at her age is "either a bore or a delusion," Maria prefers to give free flight to her fancy by interpreting other people’s lives. Most amusing is her interpretation of Strether’s life. Once enlisting the client "to give himself up to her," she proceeds to extract from him Information about his forthcoming mission to Paris. Totally lacking in subtlety and thus all the more delightful, she plies him with impertinent questions about his past life. So clever are her observations that he can not be offended. Brazenly eliciting the bare outlines of his relationship with Mrs. Newsome, she fills in the details with her lively imagination. She reconstructs the story for him as if she were narrating it for a stranger. Mrs. Newsome has proposed to him, and naturally flattered, he has accepted. However, he must carry out his mission if this rich, powerful woman is to look after him and protect his future. "He must carry the young man home in triumph and be led to the altar as his reward."¹³

Maria thus gives Strether’s venture a humorous turn, thereby hastening his sophistication of the true state of affairs. In this case her comic flare has served a more important function than a mere idle diversion or a camouflage for personal failure. Instead, her "wit on the side of sound sense" has made her an indispensable agent for heightening the hero’s comic perception and thus his total insight.

As a comic character, Maria Gostrey. Is fully aware of her own idiosyncrasies and is equally aware of the humorous effect she has on other people. Such is not the case with Waymarsh, Strether’s amusing lawyer friend from Milrose, Connecticut.. Unlike Maria and Strether, who both possess a high degree of self-consciousness, he is totally lacking In self-knowledge. If we accept Bergson’s view that a "comic character is generally comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself,"¹⁴ we can conclude that Waymarsh is exceedingly comic.

Contrasting Waymarsh with Strether, James writes in the "Project of the Novel":

Thus Waymarsh’s most distinguishing feature seems to be his inelasticity. Bergson would contend that what is most laughable about Waymarsh is

this "mechanical inelasticity just where one would expect to find the wideawake adaptability and living pliableness of a human being."¹⁶ Because of his inflexibility, all of Waymarsh’s attitudes are set, and his actions are predictable. Instead of being a spontaneous individual, he is a comic type.

From the moment Waymarsh enters, he exhibits a certain rigidity in his appearance, the physical extension of his psychic inelasticity. His large back is always "much bent"; he always sits "stiff" and holds his elbows "tight." His posture reminds Strether of 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" (p. 30).

More comic is the rigidity of his attitudes. A representative of stern New England, Waymarsh has ready-made puritan values. He has no use for the cosmopolitan Maria Gostrey or the expatriate artist Bilbam who fritter away their lives in faraway places instead of engaging in purposeful work in their native land. Only full-fledged Americans command his respect and are worth saving. Conversely, all things foreign seem to him to be interconnected in a conspiracy against good will. Thus, the Catholic Church was for Waymarsh "the enemy, the monster of bulging eyes and far-reaching quivering groping tentacles—was exactly society, exactly the multiplication of shibboleths, exactly the discrimination of types and tones, exactly the wicked old Rows of Chester, rank with feudalism; exactly, in short Europe" (p. 38). It is not surprising therefore, that Waymarsh, who has been abroad for three months, has not as yet received any "message" and has "almost renounced the expectation of receiving any.

As a comic type, Way marsh resembles the agroikos, the churlish, literary rustic, one of four comic figures categorized in Aristotle’s Ethics. According to Northrop Frye’s elaboration of the agroikos, he is often "the straight man, the solemn or inarticulate character who allows the humor to bounce off him, so to speak. We find such churls in the miserly, snobbish, or priggish characters whose role is that of the refuser of festivity, the killjoy who tries to stop the fun."¹⁷ Clearly, Waymarsh is rustic and often hilariously incongruous with urban, sophisticated Europe. Scratching his beard at the opera, he is described as "shaking his mane." In the midst of scintillating gatherings, he is said to take on the aspects of Sitting Bull, awkward and sullen. His own language also reflects the untutored rustic. Fatigued, he announces he is "dog-tired" and that "this wild hunt for rest takes all the life" out of him. Exasperated with traveling, he claims, "This ain’t my kind of country anyway. There ain’t a country I’ve seen over here that does seem my kind." Urging Strether to give up his mission, he gruffly orders: "Quit the whole job. Let them Stew in their own 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." His rustic outlook oversimplifying life, he doesn’t consider a case of adultery worth the soiling of honest hands to intervene.

In addition to being churlish, Waymarsh is like the agroikos in that he is joyless. The very personification of the New World austerity, he is not sure he ought to enjoy himself. In Milrose, Connecticut, he has led a "full life," which is to say that he has narrowly escaped a nervous breakdown from overwork. The life he is now leading in Europe he considers to be inordinately frivolous and sinful. He can derive no pleasure from his glorious surroundings. Instead, all he can do is strike the grim pose of a later-day Ezekial or Jeremiah, who issues diatribes against the hedonistic Old World. Unfortunately, his cries in the pagan wilderness evoke not fear but laughter.

The female counterpart of Waymarsh is Sarah Pocock, who also embodies the same comic inelasticity. She, too, is rigid in appearance and manner. As the extremely proper New England ambassador, she never risks extremes in her hair-styling, never chooses flamboyant colors, or experiments with daring costumes. A zealous emissary, she, like Waymarsh, possesses fixed puritanical views. Paris to her is the "consecrated scene of rash infatuations." According to her Woollett conception of morality, any attachment of a young American to a French woman is "wicked" by definition. Lacking in perception, she cannot detect any change in her brother Chad or any alteration in Strether, except that he appears a trifle dissipated for a man his age. Unmindful of the complexities of the situation, she can see only one sensible course of action. Strether must renounce his profligate ways, admonish Chad to follow his example, and return to Massachusetts for ultimate redemption. Like Waymarsh, she believes that New England is the only place for an American to save himself.

In a final confrontation with Strether, Sarah Pocock takes on the proportions of the stock comic figure, the shrewish wife. At once, she assumes an aggressive stand. Her tail parasol stick is upright and at arm’s length, "quite as if she had struck the place to plant her flag" She then proceeds to character-assassinate the other woman, Madame de Vionnet. Next, she accuses Strether of the grossest kind of ingratitude. Such a fickle man, such a heartless wretch, she fulminates, no longer deserves the privilege of further association with her mother, "the most distinguished woman in the world." Thus, she concludes her verbal brow-beating with the inexorable judgement that "all is at an end" (p. 280).

Just as Sarah Pocock’s moral rigidity makes her comic, so her husband’s moral laxity makes him ludicrous. "Giving way too freely"¹⁸ to French ecstasies, Jim Pocock is a caricature of the American in Paris.

Compensating for his lack of physical distinction, he dons the proverbial flashy clothes, smokes the usual big cigars, and tells the customary off-color jokes. Above all, he views the European city away from home as an intriguing amatory playground, complete with exotic new games and wicked playmates. Assuming that Strether shares his interests, he gives him suggestive digs in the side and knowing claps on the knee. Because Strether ignores his insinuations and acts as dignified and reserved as ever, Jim appears by contrast to be even more risibly vulgar. In addition to being the dissolute buffoon, Jim is also "the traitor in the camp, the humorous surreptitious backer of his brother-in-law."¹⁹ Usually the comic hen-pecked husband and son-in-law, he now retaliates by criticizing his wife and mother-in-law and by revealing their forthcoming strategy. Anything he can do to impede the success of the Woollett contingency he does. Anything he can do to amuse us he does.

A final comic character who, like Jim, entertains us with her moral laxity is Miss Barrace, the Parisian femme du monde. This droll young woman with her "convex Parisian eyes" and her tortoise-shelled glass is a permanent fixture at every witty gathering. "Picturesque and original," "antique and modern," her free spirit is totally in accord with the liberal atmosphere of Paris. "Eminently gay, highly adorned, perfectly familiar and freely contradictious" (p. 76), she is a "trap" for every self-respecting American male, including Waymarsh. the dour straight-laced pilgrim of Milrose. Aware of his censure, she brazenly smokes before him, scandalously flirts with him, and happily confesses all of her vices. And in no time at all she has throughly captivated her harshest critic and is escorting him about Paris as one would convey a "portable Moses" (p. 125).

In the introduction to The Egoist, Meredith thinks of the game of comedy as dealing with human nature in the drawing room "where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes."²⁰ It is also James’s preference to assemble his limited cast of characters in the drawing room. Although he does emphasize comedy of character there, he does include his special kind of comedy of situation which involves a polite but distressing confrontation of opposing parties with the protagonist-spectator suffering more than the actual combatants. Representative of such a jocular clash between urbane adversaries is the drawing room scene in which Strether is caught in the middle between Sarah Pocock and Madame de Vionnet with Waymarsh present as the unsympathetic bystander. Madame de Vionnet, "all kindness and ease," has come to extend her hospitality to Mrs. Pocock, who, in turn, greets her with suspicion and "flushed formalism." Meanwhile, Strether, who just happens to drop in, suddenly finds himself a pawn between the two ladies.

So charming is Madame de Vionnet to him that he feels he is on the brink Iof ruin. Her undue familiarity, he fears, leads Mrs. Pocock and Waymarsh

to believe that his relations with her have been intimate. Yet it is the exact opposite he hopes to convey. He desperately wants to convince Mrs. Pocock, the surrogate for Mrs. Newsome, that his conduct in Europe has been above reproach. He wants above all to sustain his friendship with Mrs. Pocock and thus remain on good terms with Woollett. At the same time, however, he cannot offend Madame de Vionnet by not reciprocating her cordiality, nor can he leave her bereft of an ally in a hostile salon. Consequently, Strether, all too aware of his predicament, can only wince inwardly as his dual allegiances tear him apart. Only Waymarsh observes the entire performance with a "dry, bare humor."

In dealing with the comedy of language Bergson writes that there may be "something artificial in making a special category for the comic in words since most of the varieties of the comic . . . are produced through the medium of language."²¹ However, he goes on to distinguish between the "comic expressed" and "the comic created by language":

In The Ambassadors it is very legitimate to talk about the comedy created by language. The most obvious kind is the humorous nomenclature which James employs. The name "Waymarsh," for example, is especially fitting for the oppressive, humorless lawyer, since it suggests being "bogged down," stagnant, acidic, damp, and gloomy. Jim Pocock’s name is also appropriate, since the surname is similar to the word "poppycock," meaning empty talk or nonsense. Thus the name "Sarah Pocock" is all the more funny, since it results in the pairing of incongruities: "Sarah" with its stern matriarchal Old Testament connotation and "poppycock" with its definition of inane chatter. It Is not coincidental that Mrs. Newsome, who lives in New England, but whose overbearing presence weighs upon Strether in Europe, should have a name closely resembling the word "nuisance." Not so uncomplimentary is the name of Maria Gostrey, Strether’s droll traveling companion, since her surname sounds like the word "goose" with its connotation of silliness, or like the words "osprey" or "ostrich," both birds which are in constant motion or flight. The only amusingly risqué name in the novel is that of Miss Barrace, which James may have derived from the word "embarrass," but even more likely from

the indecorous "bare ass," a designation especially in keeping with the shocking femme fatale.

A more subtle kind of comedy of language in The Ambassadors is James’s use of the mock heroic, or as Richard Poirier describes it, "the habit of verbal exaggeration by which relatively small things assume extraordinary proportions, accompanied by extremely imposing discriminations about them."²³ In the novel this verbal exaggeration is expressed in the language of violence. The title itself suggests that the principal character is a member of a military mission who must retrieve the traitor in the camp. Suspecting dangerous intrigue in the wicked city, Strether decides to confront Chad immediately, "to advance, to overwhelm, with a rush" and thereby "anticipate—by a night attack, as might be—any forced maturity that a crammed consciousness of Paris was likely to assert on behalf of the boy." He also considers "carrying the war into the enemy’s country by showing surprise at the enemy’s ignorance."

Especially harmful are Strether’s encounters with Madame de Vionnet. "The air of supreme respectability" which he discovers in her residence is described as a "strange blank wall for his adventure to have brought him to break his nose against." Having interested him in her daughter, the Countess is said to have "driven in, by a single word, a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt." Finally tricked into committing himself to her cause, he feels "as if he had been tripped up and had a fall."

Such mock-heroic language serves to underscore the comic antiheroism of character and action. Moreover, the sheer extravagance of the imagery succeeds in rendering both of them in terms of highly skillful caricature and burlesque.

A final variety of comedy of language found in The Ambassadors is the witty dialogue of comedy of manners. Such dialogue generally reflects the conventions and outlook of an artificial and highly sophisticated society. The favorite topic of conversation usually deals with some aspect of morality. In the novel the chief originator of such comedy-of-manners language is Miss Barrace. Reminding Strether of "some last-century portrait of a clever head without a powder" (p. 76), she discusses most scintillatingly the Parisians’ lack of moral sense. Her flippant explanation is that it is simply due to an overdeveloped visual perspective. She saucily comments:

On another occasion, she gaily overwhelms Strether with her unconventional views .on marriage. In reply to his comment that Madame de Vionnet has done wonders for Chad, she retorts in an Oscar Wilde epigrammatic fashion: "Well then, how could she do more? Marrying a man, or a woman either . . . is never the wonder, for any Jill can bring that off. The wonder is their doing such things without marrying" (p. 156). She is equally tolerant of Count de Vionnet’s extra-marital activities. The fact that he can still be charming to his wife as well as to other women does not strike her as particularly unusual. Thus James intends Miss Barrace’s witty expression of her liberal point of view to be not only entertaining but also reflective of the free-spirited society she represents.

James ranked The Ambassadors as "quite the best, all round" of his productions because of the supreme beauty of its organic structure.²⁴ He could also have justifiably ranked it as one of his most comic novels. Dealing with serious as well as trilling concerns, it is a comedy of subtle musing and obvious manners. It, like Meredith’s conception of comedy, addresses "our united social intelligence"²⁵ and aims at civilizing us. But above all, it is a humane comedy whose "laughter is qualified by tolerance, and whose criticism is modulated by a sympathy that conies only from wisdom.²⁶

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT ALBANY

NOTES

    ¹George Meredith, "An Essay on Comedy," reprinted in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (Gasden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956), p. 46.
   ²Citations from this novel in my text are to The Ambassadors, the Norton
Critical Edition (New York, 1964), a corrected and annotated reprint of the New York Edition.
   ³The Notebooks of Henry James, ed. F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1961), p. 374.
   ⁴Meredith, p.47.
   ⁵The Notebooks of Henry James, p. 375.
   ⁶Meredith, p. 42,
   ⁷The Notebooks of Henry James, p. 393.
   ⁸F. W. Dupee, Henry James (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956), p. 213.
   ⁹Frederick C. Crews, The Tragedy of Manners (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1957), p. 56.
   ¹⁰Meredith, p. 14.
   ¹¹The Notebooks of Henry James, p. 378.
   ¹²Constance Rourke,_, Native American Humor (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931 ), p. 202.
   ¹³The Notebooks of Henry James, p. 386.
   ¹⁴Henri Bergson, "Laughter," reprinted in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher, p. 71.
   ¹⁵The Notebooks of Henry James, p. 377.
   ¹⁶Bergson, p. 67.
   ¹⁷Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), p. 175.

   ¹⁸The Notebooks of henry James, p. 400.
   ¹⁹Ibid.
   ²⁰George Meredith, The Egoist, quoted in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher, p. 193.
   ²¹Bergson, p. 127
   ²²Ibid.
   ²³ Richard Poirier, The Comic Sense of Henry James (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1960), p. 191.
   ²⁴Henry James, quoted in Leon Edel, "Introduction" to The Ambassadors (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. vi.
   ²⁵George Meredith, quoted by Wylie Sypher In "The Social Meanings of Comedy," Comedy, p. 252.
   ²⁶Wylie Sypher, "Our New Sense of the Comic," Comedy, p. 212.