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DEATH OF THE LION.TXT-Part1_HENRY JAMES(1843-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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occasion a thing he hated. I had begun my visit to the great man

on a Monday, and on the Wednesday his book came out. A copy of it



arrived by the first post, and he let me go out into the garden

with it immediately after breakfast, I read it from beginning to



end that day, and in the evening he asked me to remain with him the

rest of the week and over the Sunday.



That night my manuscript came back from Mr. Pinhorn, accompanied

with a letter the gist of which was the desire to know what I meant



by trying to fob off on him such stuff. That was the meaning of

the question, if not exactly its form, and it made my mistake



immense to me. Such as this mistake was I could now only look it

in the face and accept it. I knew where I had failed, but it was



exactly where I couldn't have succeeded. I had been sent down to

be personal and then in point of fact hadn't been personal at all:



what I had dispatched to London was just a little finicking

feverish study of my author's talent. Anything less relevant to



Mr. Pinhorn's purpose couldn't well be imagined, and he was visibly

angry at my having (at his expense, with a second-class ticket)



approached the subject of our enterprise only to stand off so

helplessly. For myself, I knew but too well what had happened, and



how a miracle - as pretty as some old miracle of legend - had been

wrought on the spot to save me. There had been a big brush of



wings, the flash of an opaline robe, and then, with a great cool

stir of the air, the sense of an angel's having swooped down and



caught me to his bosom. He held me only till the danger was over,

and it all took place in a minute. With my manuscript back on my



hands I understood the phenomenon better, and the reflexions I made

on it are what I meant, at the beginning of this anecdote, by my



change of heart. Mr. Pinhorn's note was not only a rebuke

decidedly stern, but an invitation immediately to send him - it was



the case to say so - the genuine article, the revealing and

reverberating sketch to the promise of which, and of which alone, I



owed my squandered privilege. A week or two later I recast my

peccant paper and, giving it a particular application to Mr.



Paraday's new book, obtained for it the hospitality of another

journal, where, I must admit, Mr. Pinhorn was so far vindicated as



that it attracted not the least attention.

CHAPTER III.



I WAS frankly, at the end of three days, a very prejudiced critic,

so that one morning when, in the garden, my great man had offered



to read me something I quite held my breath as I listened. It was

the written scheme of another book - something put aside long ago,



before his illness, but that he had lately taken out again to

reconsider. He had been turning it round when I came down on him,



and it had grown magnificently under this second hand. Loose

liberal confident, it might have passed for a great gossiping



eloquent letter - the overflow into talk of an artist's amorous

plan. The theme I thought singularly rich, quite the strongest he



had yet treated; and this familiar statement of it, full too of

fine maturities, was really, in summarised splendour, a mine of



gold, a precious independent work. I remember rather profanely

wondering whether the ultimate production could possibly keep at



the pitch. His reading of the fond epistle, at any rate, made me

feel as if I were, for the advantage of posterity, in close



correspondence with him - were the distinguished person to whom it

had been affectionately addressed. It was a high distinction



simply to be told such things. The idea he now communicated had

all the freshness, the flushed fairness, of the conception



untouched and untried: it was Venus rising from the sea and before

the airs had blown upon her. I had never been so throbbingly



present at such an unveiling. But when he had tossed the last

bright word after the others, as I had seen cashiers in banks,



weighing mounds of coin, drop a final sovereign into the tray, I

knew a sudden prudent alarm.



"My dear master, how, after all, are you going to do it? It's

infinitely noble, but what time it will take, what patience and






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