Library of America Archives

The American National Quality?

“She had the American national quality—she had ‘faculty’ in a supreme degree.”

The “she” is the titular character in Henry James’ short story “Mrs. Temperly” (included in the Library of America’s Complete Stories 1884-1891).

Like every work by James, the story is calculated to describe with exquisite precision how life works. Our protagonist, Raymond, is in love with Mrs. Temperly’s daughter, Dora, and wants to marry her. Without ever saying to either Raymond or Dora that the marriage should not happen, Mrs. Temperly ensures it will not. That is the story.

Mrs. Temperly does indeed have faculty in a supreme degree.

What does that mean? “Faculty” is not a word used much these days to describe a person. Do I know anyone with faculty in a supreme degree? I don’t think so. I have certainly never described anyone that way. I have never even herd someone described that was before. I suspect neither have you.

More than that, I was not even sure what exactly it would mean to say someone had faculty in a supreme degree.

The Oxford English Dictionary comes to the rescue, which begins by pointing to Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, which defines the term most succinctly as “The power of doing any thing.”

Ah. Mrs. Temperly certainly has faculty in a supreme degree. It is, without a doubt her defining characteristic. She sets forth what she wants to do, and then arranges for it to happen, seemingly without effort, not just inhibiting a marriage, but every other thing she wants to do.

Chance for her is a lighthearted joke: “Oh, a chance! what do you call by that fine name?”

Is Mrs. Temperly realistic? Since she is in a Henry James short story, she certainly meant to be realistic. But is it possible to have such a high degree of faculty? Is it possible to arrange one’s world so perfectly, so neatly, that nothing is left to chance, and things will work out exactly as you would have them work?

Even more interestingly, if you were to meet someone with a supreme degree of faculty, would you like that person? Would you want to be friends with someone like that? Would you hire someone like that?

Probably not. You, being a person with a lower degree of faculty, will become merely another set piece in that other person‘s perfectly arranged life.

Raymond does not make out too well in his interactions with the woman of supreme faculty. He has ideas of his own, he is unhappy with the status quo, but he ends up living out his life in exactly the way Mrs. Temperly would choose without her ever needing to cajole or force him to do anything at all.

Having faculty seems like a good thing. I would like to have faculty.

But, others having faculty may not be such a good thing for you. What if your plans are not the same as the plans of the person with faculty? “I am sorry you have ideas that make you unhappy,” Mrs. Temperly tells Raymond. “I guess you are the only person here who hasn’t enjoyed himself to-night.”

Part of me wants to just dismiss the whole idea of a supreme degree of faculty as an oddity in a Henry James story. Surely not every character in Henry James is someone I can actually imagine meeting. But, James won’t let us dismiss the term so easily. It is, he said, “the American national quality.” That is intriguing.

James is setting up Mrs. Temperly as the personification of America in the drawing rooms of France in the late 1800s.

She “was an optimist for others as well as for herself, which doubtless had a great deal to do…with the headway she made in a society tired of its own pessimism.”

Not a bad description of America in the late 1800s compared to European continent in the midst of centuries of perpetual struggle.

Over a century later, is it still true? Curiously, James’ story may provide insight into the divisions currently deepening in American society. One the one side, we have those who see America as the land of Faculty, that optimism that the good old USA can do any thing. On the other side, there is a society tired of its own pessimism. When the former enters into the land of the latter, what happens?

Henry James is a prophet.

The Oddity of Trust

Trust is a strange thing.

I started Melville’s The Confidence-Man expecting a novel. I discovered something else. What? I am not sure what it was. There is a story here, if you define story loosely, very loosely. On a Mississippi riverboat, there are a lot of conversations. The whole book is conversations.

There is presumably—it is never stated explicitly—one person—presumably the titular character—again, it is never stated—who is a party in all the conversations in the book. But, said person is constantly changing everything about himself from conversation to conversation. In one conversation he is a wealthy seller of stock, in another he is a seller of patent medicine, in another he is dressed as a harlequin. The parties with whom our titular character converses change too, but not always. Sometimes the same person has conversations with multiple incarnations of The Confidence–Man. Confused? It gets better. There is no narrative progression from conversation to conversation. The book starts with a blind man (presumably the main character) walking through the crowd with a signboard. It ends with a conversation in the dark with (presumably) our main character leading a blind man to his bunk. In between? Uh…never mind about it getting easier to describe.

So, this isn’t really a novel. It isn’t really anything. The closest thing would be a series of conversations all of which more or less, usually less, are about confidence. At first, I thought the book was going to be a long build-up to finding out how The Confidence-Man was setting up some elaborate scam on board a ship. But, the scam never materializes. There are lots of scams—well, at least I assume they were scams, but since there never really is a story which goes anywhere, why do I mistrust the Confidence Man? Maybe they weren’t scams at all. Maybe the stock being sold was real. Maybe the charity was real. Maybe the crippled guy really was a crippled guy.

All of which leads to the question of trust. I don’t trust the Confidence-Man in this book. I think it was one guy who kept changing his appearance. But why? Why don’t I believe all these people were genuine and different people? Why do I have no confidence that the characters in this book are actually who they say they are?

This is a whole book with conversations about the nature of confidence. It is meandering and convoluted and odd.

So, getting at the question another way: Why does anyone ever trust you? We often talk about when you should trust other people. But, why should you, the Reader, be trusted? What makes you, the Reader, worthy of trust? And if you had to convince someone that you were worthy of trust, how would you do that? Is the way you would convince someone you were worthy of trust the same as the way others could convince you that they are worthy of trust?

I think about trust a lot, actually. Why do people trust me? I am never quite sure. It is not that I think I am unworthy of trust. It is that I have no idea how anyone ever arrives at the conclusion that I am worthy of trust. What is it that I do that signals to someone else that I can be trusted? How do people know I am not running some elaborate scam? How do people know I won’t instantly betray them?

Could I sell patent medicine to total strangers on a Mississippi riverboat? I don’t think so. But, that is because I cannot imagine ever perpetrating such a scam and so I have an impossible time imagining I could be convincing.

I realize that a trustworthy person would have a difficult time gaining trust under false pretenses. But, how is a trustworthy person able to convey that aspect of his nature? If trustworthiness is by definition not amenable to experimentation, then how is it displayed? This is not some hypothetical problem. Every day, every person has to constantly face the question of whether someone who was just encountered is trustworthy. We make the decision on trustworthiness instantly, all the time. How do we know?

Which gets me back to the book. Why do I mistrust the character in this book? Why do I assume all these people are really one person? Why do I assume that this is not one person is trying to demonstrate the importance of trust? Why don’t I just think this is a book all about a virtuous person who got on a boat with the sole intention of improving the lives of everyone on the boat by enabling them to demonstrate trust in a complete stranger?

Trust is odd. And, after reading a book about it, I have no more answers to the quandaries of trust than I had before I read it. Indeed, I feel betrayed by this book. I thought it was going to be a novel, and it wasn’t. I thought there would be a story, and there wasn’t. Melville has betrayed my trust.

Watching the World Go By

“An occasion for serious study and reflection.”

In the late 19th century, Stephen
Crane (shortly before he published The Red Badge of Courage) spent a few years writing accounts of New York City, collected by the ever-invaluable Library of America. In “Coney Island’s Failing Days,” we read this:

As we walked toward the station the stranger stopped often to observe types which interested him. He did it with an unconscious calm insolence as if the people were bugs. Once a bug threatened to beat him. “What ‘cher lookin’ at?” he asked of him. “My friend, said the stranger, “if any one displays real interest in you in this world, you should take it as an occasion for serious study and reflection. You should be supremely amazed to find that a man can be interested in anybody but himself!”

The quotation there could stand in for a summary of the whole section. One imagines Crane wandering through the town for three years simply observing and writing down what he sees. We get portraits of the lowest of the low and the wealthiest. We get snapshots of odd moments in the life of the city. All done with Crane’s eye for the telling detail.

Is such observation enough? Crane certainly observes more than most. Is he right that the objects of notice should be grateful for the simple fact of being noticed?

Consider: “When Man Falls, a Crowd Gathers.” In this brief sketch a man walking along with his boy falls to the ground, insensible. A crowd gathers. (The alert and perceptive reader can see from whence the title of this piece comes.) Five pages later, an ambulance has carried the man off. And what have we learned?

Curiously, Crane’s story is much like watching the evening news. Man falls. CNN reports on it. Next story. Sometimes we continue to stare after the ambulance as it leaves the scene. “It was as if they had been cheated. Their eyes expressed discontent at this curtain which had been rung down in the midst of the drama. And this impenetrable fabric suddenly intervening between a suffering creature and their curiosity, seemed to appear to them as an injustice.”

After finishing reading this set of pieces by Crane, I am quite troubled by it all. Compare it to, say, Evangelii Gaudium, Francis’ first encyclical. Francis was desperately trying to convince the Church, Christians everywhere, and indeed the whole world, that we need to pay more attention to the poor, the disenfranchised, the weak, the lowly. And surely he is right. But, Francis is missing the bigger point being made by Crane: do we pay sufficient attention to the not-so-poor and not-so-weak? Indeed, do we pay sufficient attention to anyone, anyone at all?

Man falls. Not just the poor man, but the rich man too. Perhaps the crowd surrounding the rich man is bigger than that surrounding the poor man, but is that enough? Shouldn’t we do more than watch, shouldn’t we also help the poor man out a bit? Obviously. But, what about the rich man? Should we say that since he has wealth, it is enough to gather around when he falls?

We don’t notice people as people. We notice that they fall, and we gather when they do, but who are these nameless people? Who was that student I just saw walk past my office? Shouldn’t I care?

Crane offers no solution; this is voyeurism, pure and simple. I am not sure what to make of it. I read about people in the depths of a coal mine in the late 19^th century and I think…I have no idea what I think. I read about gawkers gathered around a fire and I think, “Here I am gawking at the gawkers. I am being exactly as helpful as they are.”