The Ambassadors is a 1903 novel by Henry James, originally published as a serial in the North American Review. This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James' final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of his widowed fiancée's supposedly wayward son. Strether is to bring the young man back to the family business, but he encounters unexpected complications. The third-person narrative is told exclusively from Strether's point of view.

Plot summary

On his way to Paris to rescue his fiancée's son Chad Newsome from the clutches of a presumably wicked woman, Lambert Strether stops in England and meets Maria Gostrey, an American woman who has lived in Paris for many years. Her cynical wit and worldly-wise opinions start to rattle Strether's preconceived view of the situation.

In Paris Strether meets Chad and is impressed by the much greater sophistication he seems to have gained during his years in Europe. Chad takes him to a garden party where Strether meets Marie de Vionnet, a beautiful and gracious woman separated from her reportedly obnoxious husband, and her daughter Jeanne. Strether is confused as to whether Chad is more attracted to the mother or the daughter.

Chad's sister Sarah Pocock, the most important of the new emissaries, harshly dismisses Strether's impression that Chad has improved and condemns Marie as an indecent woman. She demands that Chad immediately return to the family business in America.

Strether takes a small tour in the French countryside to escape these troubles, and accidentally meets Chad and Marie at a rural inn. Strether now realizes the full extent of the pair's romantic involvement. After he returns to Paris he counsels Chad not to leave Marie. But Strether finds that he is no longer comfortable in Europe. He declines what amounts to a marriage proposal from Maria Gostrey and returns to America. (wikipedia)

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The Ambassadors by Henry James, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18202-1291 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them.

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Henry James, OM (April 15 1843(1843--) – February 28 1916), son of theologian Henry James Sr. and brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an American-born author and literary critic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He spent much of his life in Europe and became a British subject shortly before his death. He is primarily known for novels, novellas and short stories based on themes of consciousness and morality.

James significantly contributed to the criticism of fiction, particularly in his insistence that writers be allowed the greatest freedom possible in presenting their view of the world. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and possibly unreliable narrators in his own novels and tales brought a new depth and interest to narrative fiction. An extraordinarily productive writer, he published substantive books of travel writing, biography, autobiography and visual arts criticism.

New York Edition (1909). Volume I

PREFACE
NOTHING IS MORE EASY than to state the subject of “The Ambassadors,” which first appeared in twelve numbers of The North American Review (1903) and was published as a whole the same year. The situation involved is gathered up betimes, that is in the second chapter of Book Fifth, for the reader’s benefit, into as few words as possible—planted or “sunk,” stiffly and saliently, in the centre of the current, almost perhaps to the obstruction of traffic.

Never can a composition of this sort have sprung straighter from a dropped grain of suggestion, and never can that grain, developed, overgrown and smothered, have yet lurked more in the mass as an independent particle. The whole case, in fine, is in Lambert Strether’s irrepressible outbreak to little Bilham on the Sunday afternoon in Gloriani’s garden, the candour with which he yields, for his young friend’s enlightenment, to the charming admonition of that crisis. The idea of the tale resides indeed in the very fact that an hour of such unprecedented ease should have been felt by him as a crisis, and he is at pains to express it for us as neatly as we could desire.

The remarks to which he thus gives utterance contain the essence of “The Ambassadors,” his fingers close, before he has done, round the stem of the full-blown flower; which, after that fashion, he continues officiously to present to us. “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? 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 to-day, 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. Do what you like so long as you don’t make it. For it was a mistake. Live, live!” Such is the gist of Strether’s appeal to the impressed youth, whom he likes and whom he desires to befriend; the word “mistake” occurs several times, it will be seen, in the course of his remarks— which gives the measure of the signal warning he feels attached to his case. He has accordingly missed too much, though perhaps after all constitutionally qualified for a better part, and he wakes up to it in conditions that press the spring of a terrible question.

Would there yet perhaps be time for reparation?—reparation, that is, for the injury done his character; for the affront, he is quite ready to say, so stupidly put upon it and in which he has even himself had so clumsy a hand? The answer to which is that he now at all events sees; so that the business of my tale and the march of my action, not to say the precious moral of everything, is just my demonstration of this process of vision. ...

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