The vain appearance

vision and the ambassadors

pp. 79-105

in: Hazel Hutchison, Seeing and believing, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Abstract

When I was an undergraduate discovering Henry James, my friend Stephen Henderson, who was better-read than I, suggested that as I had enjoyed The American, I should try The Ambassadors next. "There's this great scene near the end," he enthused, "when Strether—he's the American chap in Paris—sees his two friends in a rowing boat and realizes they"ve been having an affair all along." Then he added rather wistfully, "I don't think I ought to have told you that." Indeed not.