A Little Tour of France   By: Henry James (1843-1916)

[Illustration]

Novels by

HENRY JAMES

Six Shillings each

THE AWKWARD AGE

THE TWO MAGICS

WHAT MAISIE KNEW

THE OTHER HOUSE

THE SPOILS OF POYNTON

EMBARRASSMENTS TERMINATIONS

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 21 Bedford Street, W.C.

[Illustration]

A LITTLE TOUR IN FRANCE

By HENRY JAMES

[Illustration]

WITH NINETY FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOSEPH PENNELL

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1900

[Illustration]

Preface

The notes presented in this volume were gathered, as will easily be perceived, a number of years ago and on an expectation not at that time answered by the event, and were then published in the United States. The expectation had been that they should accompany a series of drawings, and they themselves were altogether governed by the pictorial spirit. They made, and they make in appearing now, after a considerable interval and for the first time, in England, no pretension to any other; they are impressions, immediate, easy, and consciously limited; if the written word may ever play the part of brush or pencil, they are sketches on "drawing paper" and nothing more. From the moment the principle of selection and expression, with a tourist, is not the delight of the eyes and the play of fancy, it should be an energy in every way much larger; there is no happy mean, in other words, I hold, between the sense and the quest of the picture, and the surrender to it, and the sense and the quest of the constitution, the inner springs of the subject springs and connections social, economic, historic.

One must really choose, in other words, between the benefits of the perception of surface a perception, when fine, perhaps none of the most frequent and those of the perception of very complex underlying matters. If these latter had had, for me, to be taken into account, my pages would not have been collected. At the time of their original appearance the series of illustrations to which it had been their policy to cling for countenance and company failed them, after all, at the last moment, through a circumstance not now on record; and they had suddenly to begin to live their little life without assistance. That they have seemed able in any degree still to prolong even so modest a career might perhaps have served as a reason for leaving them undisturbed. In fact, however, I have too much appreciated for any renewal of inconsistency the opportunity of granting them at last, in an association with Mr. Pennell's admirable drawings, the benefit they have always lacked. The little book thus goes forth finally as the picture book it was designed to be. Text and illustrations are, altogether and alike, things of the play of eye and hand and fancy views, head pieces, tail pieces; through the artist's work, doubtless, in a much higher degree than the author's.