The Nexus Archive
Psychological Realism · Novel
The Ambassadors
by Henry James · The Analyst of Appearances · Transatlantic Nineteenth Century, 1843-1916
Lambert Strether enters Paris to retrieve another man and discovers the cost of his own unlived life.
- Brutal
- ~12 hr read
- 2 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the Book Third guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The Errand That Changes Its Messenger
At fifty-five, Lambert Strether crosses the Atlantic on someone else’s business. A wealthy widow in Woollett, Massachusetts, has sent him to bring her son Chad home from Paris. Strether’s own hopes are bound up with hers. The errand seems to offer a clear division between duty at home and temptation abroad, until the man he finds unsettles the terms of his mission.
James makes the drama out of Strether’s delayed recognition. A dinner, an unanswered question or a change of tone can alter his understanding of another person. The account he takes for certainty may be an inference, and the people who help him interpret Paris have interests of their own. Nearly everything reaches us through this thoughtful, susceptible man.
Strether has spent much of his life accepting limits and postponing pleasures. Paris brings the possibility of another way to live close enough to touch. His wish to judge Chad fairly becomes entangled with the longing to recover something for himself. The novel gives that longing both its beauty and its danger.
The opening pages
Book First
I
Strether’s first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted. A telegram from him bespeaking a room “only if not noisy,” reply paid, was produced for the enquirer at the office, so that the understanding they should meet at Chester rather than at Liverpool remained to that extent sound. The same secret principle, however, that had prompted Strether not absolutely to desire Waymarsh’s presence at the dock, that had led him thus to postpone for a few hours his enjoyment of it, now operated to make him feel he could still wait without disappointment. They would dine together at the worst, and, with all respect to dear old Waymarsh—if not even, for that matter, to himself—there was little fear that in the sequel they shouldn’t see enough of each other. The principle I have just mentioned as operating had been, with the most newly disembarked of the two men, wholly instinctive—the fruit of a sharp sense that, delightful as it would be to find himself looking, after so much separation, into his comrade’s face, his business would be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the nearing steamer as the first “note,” of Europe. Mixed with everything was the apprehension, already, on Strether’s part, that it would, at best, throughout, prove the note of Europe in quite a sufficient degree.
That note had been meanwhile—since the previous afternoon, thanks to this happier device—such a consciousness of personal freedom as he hadn’t known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider, as promised already, if headlong hope were not too foolish, to colour his adventure with cool success. There were people on the ship with whom he had easily consorted—so far as ease could up to now be imputed to him—and who for the most part plunged straight into the current that set from the landing-stage to London; there were others who had invited him to a tryst at the inn and had even invoked his aid for a “look round” at the beauties of Liverpool; but he had stolen away from every one alike, had kept no appointment and renewed no acquaintance, had been indifferently aware of the number of persons who esteemed themselves fortunate in being, unlike himself, “met,” and had even independently, unsociably, alone, without encounter or relapse and by mere quiet evasion, given his afternoon and evening to the immediate and the sensible. They formed a qualified draught of Europe, an afternoon and an evening on the banks of the Mersey, but such as it was he took his potion at least undiluted. He winced a little, truly, at the thought that Waymarsh might be already at Chester; he reflected that, should he have to describe himself there as having “got in” so early, it would be difficult to make the interval look particularly eager; but he was like a man who, elatedly finding in his pocket more money than usual, handles it a while and idly and pleasantly chinks it before addressing himself to the business of spending. That he was prepared to be vague to Waymarsh about the hour of the ship’s touching, and that he both wanted extremely to see him and enjoyed extremely the duration of delay—these things, it is to be conceived, were early signs in him that his relation to his actual errand might prove none of the simplest. …
Chapter guides · 2
Book Third
The Chad he did not expect
Strether’s first meeting with Chad overturns the picture he brought from Woollett.
An absent host
Strether finds Chad’s Paris apartment occupied by his friend Little Bilham while Chad is away in Cannes. The young artist welcomes him. At dinner with Waymarsh that evening, Strether confides how much his own future depends on bringing the errand off. The next day Strether breakfasts at Chad’s rooms with Bilham and Miss Barrace, and Waymarsh comes too. Bilham and Barrace’s ease makes Chad’s world more inviting than Strether expected. Waymarsh remains suspicious.
A stranger in the box
Maria Gostrey helps Strether interpret these new acquaintances. When Bilham fails to join them at the theatre, she suspects that he has been acting on instructions from Chad. Then a polished, greying young man enters their box. It takes Strether a moment to recognize Chad himself. His manners and appearance disturb the old image of a wayward son awaiting rescue.
The conversation begins
Strether sits through the rest of the act beside Chad without speaking to him. After the play, Waymarsh escorts Maria home, while Strether and Chad go to a café on the Avenue de l’Opéra. There Strether begins to explain his mission. He has reached the man he came to retrieve, but his first encounter has made the task less simple. The impressive change in Chad asks for an explanation before it can support a judgment.
Book Eighth
Taking Madame de Vionnet’s side
Sarah Pocock arrives for her mother, and Strether’s sympathy becomes a public allegiance.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read The Ambassadors?
- About 12 hr in total.
- How difficult is The Ambassadors?
- Brutal. A long novel; about 12 hours of reading.
- Can I read The Ambassadors for free?
- The Ambassadors is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and one chapter guide on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 2 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. One opens in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Henry James
Henry James was an American-born novelist and short-story writer whose fiction explores consciousness, social perception, art, class, Europe and America, and the cost of misreading people.
“What do people become when they are seen as material for someone else's art?”
James gives Nexus a demanding but rewarding path into psychological fiction, where style becomes a way of tracking moral attention.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. The Ambassadors is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.