Grappling with James

I've finished "The Ambassadors" by Henry James, published 1903.

I liked this book in spite of itself for it was rather a slog: for such upper-class characters, their language is very slangy and implied to be said in some specific tone.

"If you like it, you feel it, this way, that shows you're not in the least out. But you always know things immediately."
"I say, don't lay traps for me!"

"how should I be here?"
"oh for what you tell me. You're part of the perfect choice"

"Do you suppose then Bilham has lied?"
"You must find out"
"Find out any more?"
"Wasn't what you came out for to find out all?"

"She's prettier than any girl I've seen yet"
"That's precisely on what I perhaps most build. I should positively like to take her in hand!"
"Oh but don't, in your zeal, go over to her! I need you most and can't, you know, be left."
"I wish they'd send her out to me."

Reading such dialogue involves a lot of guesswork. The story is told through characters who know nothing about the main character, so there is a lot of guesswork on their behalf too. The style of the prose, typical for James, more often involves the content of feeling more often than the content of action, and tends generally towards the metaphorical over the concrete. For this reason, too, there is a lot of guesswork on behalf of the reader.

This dialogue (which I have abridged), at 150 pages in, is typically mystifying: Strether (the agent of Chad's mother in America) speaks to a European blue-blood woman of whom (and whose daughter) Chad seems to be infatuated with, and who has been asked by Chad to speak to Strether face to face to clear things up: yet with little chance of that...:

Strether: "What was it Chad's idea that you should say to me?"
"His idea was simply to put every effort off onto the woman"
"The "woman?"
"The woman he likes."
"How much do you like Chad?"
"Just as much as that; to take all, with you, on myself... I'm now drawing a long breath from the hope that I don't in fact strike you as impossible."

At this point the appropriate response might have been "well, not impossible, but you might speak more honestly about your intentions with Chad"... yet Strether continues with a remark yet more unclear (in spite of the italics):

"That's in any case clearly the way I don't strike you"
"Well... as you haven't yet said you won't have the patience with me I ask for..."
"You draw splendid conclusions? Fine, but I do not understand them. What, at the worst for you, what, at the best for myself, can I after all do? I've had my say, and here I am."
"Yes, here you are, fortunately!" she laughed. "Chad's mother didn't think you can do so little."
"Well, she thinks so now."
"Do you mean by that...?" she trailed off.
"Do I meant what?"
"Pardon me if I touch on it, but if I'm saying extraordinary things, mayn't I? Doesn't it concern us to know?"
"To know what?"
"Has she given you up?"
"Not yet."
"Is that what Chad has told you will happen to me?"

("that...will happens" on reflection, seems to refer to "she... give you up", i.e. it will happen that she will give you up)

"most certainly, but that is not the least to do with my wishing to see you"
[unabridged: "the question is not what has had least to do with my wishing to see you"]
"Rather, to judge if I'm the sort of man a woman can...?"
"Precisely, you wonderful gentleman! I do judge. I have judged. A woman can't."

(If she has judged, and is a woman, why does she say a woman cannot judge? And what trailed-off sentiment is she intuiting and responding to? She continues:)

"...you are safe, and would be much happier if you only believed it"
"I try to believe it, but it is a marvel how you already get at it!"
"Oh, remember how much I was on the way to it through Chad before I saw you: he thinks everything of you."
"Well, I can bear almost anything! Of course I suit Chad's grand way. He's hasn't had much difficulty in working me in."
"He believes you can keep his mother patient."
"I see... Am how am I to do it? Perhaps you'll tell me that?"
"Simply tell her the truth."
"And what do you call the truth?"
"Well any truth. I leave it to you."
"Thanks! I like the way you leave things!" Strether laughed.
"Be perfectly honest: tell her all."
"All?"
"Tell her the simple truth."
"But what is the simple truth?"
"Tell her, fully and clearly, about us."
"You and your daughter?"
"Yes, Jeanne and me."
"What good will it do me, or you?"
"None, you really believe?"
"She didn't send me out to "like" you."
"No, she sent you out to face the facts."
"But how can I face them until I know what they are? Do you want him to marry your daughter?"
"No - not that."
"And he doesn't want to himself?"
"He likes her too much."
"To be willing to take her to America?"
"To be willing to do anything but be immensely kind and nice."

And so the mystery of Chad's relationship with Mme de Vionnet continues, as it has already done for 150 pages hence. I found it annoying that the story was propelled by such mundane mysteries that only remained hidden by an obscure code of manners that forbid frank insistence on clarity.