“He May Have Got Brutalized; He May Have Got Refined”

(Post #2: The Ambassadors, Books First and Second; beginning – p. 83)

Given Strether’s affection for Europe, it seems ironic that he is so very convinced that Chad has gone to the bad during his time there. It is Ms. Gostrey that broaches the possibility of an opposite result:

“...there are all the same,” she went on, “two quite distinct things that—give the wonderful place he’s in—may have happened to him. One is that he may have got brutalized. The other is that he may have got refined.”

Strether remains highly skeptical of Chad’s refinement, but that certainty is exposed to an initial crack when Strether goes to the neighborhood and locates the house where Chad lives.

“What call had he, at such a juncture, for example, to like Chad’s very house? High broad clear—he was expert enough to make out in a moment that it was admirably built…the quality produced by measure and balance, the fine relation of part to part and space to space, was probably—aided by the presence of ornament as positive as it was discreet, and by the complexion of the stone, a cold fair grey, warmed and polished a little by life—neither more nor less than a case of distinction, such a case as he could only feel unexpectedly as a sort of delivered challenge?”

Strether is spotted on the boulevard as he studies the house by a young man looking out over the balcony. Possibly, Strether thinks, a friend of Chad’s. When Strether crosses the street to enter the house he thinks of his friend and traveling companion Waymarsh, concluding that the latter is the very opposite of the “light bright and alert” young man on the balcony and that entering the house “was like consciously leaving Waymarsh out.”

Why is Waymarsh, an old friend from the States so disagreeable to Strether now? Waymarsh is “joyless” from the instant he arrives in Chester to meet up with Strether. He’s been in Europe already for some three months and tells Strether when they are alone,

“…it’s this wild hunt for rest that takes all the life out of me…such a country as this ain’t my kind of country anyway…I’ve gained so little. I haven’t had the first sign of the lift I was led to expect…I want to go back.”

Strether thinks that for Waymarsh, the enemy is “exactly society, exactly the multiplication of shibboleths, exactly the discrimination of types and tones, exactly the wicked Old Rows of Chester, rank with feudalism; exactly in short Europe.”

This is such a contrast to the emotional and spiritual lift that Strether feels just by being in Europe, talking and going to the theater with Ms. Gostrey, sitting in the sun at the Tuileries, walking amongst the outdoor book stalls. So, it’s not surprising that when Strether sees Chad’s attractive home and the light bright and alert young man on the balcony there, he approaches it with some apprehension—he doesn’t know how Chad will react to his presence—but even more so as the possibility of experiencing a sensibilities that are the antithesis of joyless Waymarsh.