The Fine and the Good - Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America - page 92

SEVEN
The Fine and the Good
Old and New Worlds
Europeans are fine, while Americans are good. This, at least, would seem to be the opinion
of Henry James, who knew both civilisations from the inside and never ceased to compare
them. Europe for James is the home of style, form, evil, civility, enjoyment, corruption, sur-
face, experience, artifice and exploitation. America is the land of innocence, substance, earn-
estness, integrity, barrenness, nature, monotony and morality. The European self is diverse,
fuzzy at the edges, saturated in history and culture; the American self is raw, solid and uni-
fied, and lives in an eternal present. As puritans, Americans are hyperconscious of evil, but
they are largely free of it themselves. The strenuous moral conscience that alerts them to
it also shields them against it. As an American character remarks in The Europeans , those
around her have nothing to repent of and yet are always repenting. James himself comments
of Emerson's writing that it has “no sense of the dark, the foul, the base,” which one might
have thought was more of a compliment than a criticism. Yet it is not intended to be.
Even so, James associates Americans with evil in the sense that their innocence and good
nature tend to attract it. The fresh-faced American heiress on the loose in Europe can easily
fall prey to civilised predators. The problem with Americans, as James sees it, is that they
are innocent yet avid for experience, which makes them especially vulnerable to being ab-
used by wicked adventurers. It is hard to have an innocence which also looks out for itself. If
Americans were guileless but stayed at home, or if they ventured abroad but had a sharp eye
for deceivers, all would be well. It is the combination of innocence and a hunger for experi-
ence which is so dangerous, not least if you happen to be fabulously well-off. So, as long as
there are rapacious types around, there will also be a need for tedious, high-toned moralists.
In this as in other ways, moralist and immoralist are sides of the same coin. The good tend
not to be stylish and amusing, and this can count heavily against them. They are commend-