ABSTRACT
The fineness of Henry James's mind may have been a barrier to ideas, but it was not fatal to a curious, almost anachronistic survival of the moral interest which approximates Hawthorne's allegorizing themes. The protagonist is an artist searching for the best models to help him illustrate a book with an upper-class scene. The particular irony in this story is that he is misdirected by the "real thing" itself, represented by Major and Mrs. Monarch, genteel folk, who are in life exactly what the painter wishes to portray in his art. The "real thing" is particularly misconceived as the way in which life freezes in convention, routine, and stereotype. The "method of Henry James" is the exhibit of a rarely unified sensibility, and he gave himself up to his art with a clear conscience, one that Hawthorne might have envied, because it was at once, without distinction, the deeper consciousness active in life.
