Saturday commute ci: Where is James traveling?

The little watering-place of

Ilfracombe is seated at the

lower verge of one of these

seaward-lunging valleys, be-

tween a couple of magnificent

headlands which hold it in a

hollow slope and offer it se-

curely to the caress of the

Bristol Channel..

                 My chief conclusion, perhaps,

                 from all these things was that

                 the English are masters of the

                 art of not losing sight of ease

                 and convenience in the pastoral

                 life - unlike our own people,

                 who, when seeking rural beguile-

                 ment, are apt but to find a new

                 rudeness added to nature.

   

  I'm honestly not one of

  those admirers of James

  who insist that he real-

  ly meant to be gross,

  and crude and awful, but

  was constrained and ruin-

  ed in life and in art by

  conditioning. I just cop-

  ied, above the previous

  illustration, a classic
  example of his gift for
  appreciation, because it
  renewed my apprehension
  that our "sympathy" only
  substantiates his impres-
  sion of the second excerpt.
  I urge a truce with James,
  even at the beach.

                                and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open, and show

              riches

              Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd,

              I cried to dream again.

Henry James

English Hours

op. cit.

William Shakespeare
The Tempest
  III, ii, 138-41
op. cit.