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William Wetmore Story and his friends (1903)
William Wetmore Story and his friends - 1903 Author:Henry James Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IX. ENGLAND AND SOCIETY. It was, as I have mentioned, during the years immediatedly following Story's first artistic " success " in London that his English... more » visits, friendships, familiarities of every cordial kind, most increased and multiplied, nourished as they moreover were by frequent Roman opportunities, points of contact with the English colony abroad, comings and goings of old acquaintances and " introduced " travellers. Both his reputation and his activity continued to grow, and the twelve or fifteen years from 1862 were doubtless in all sorts of ways the happiest of his life. He liked the " world," and the world also thoroughly liked him; he was not the artist to whom solitary brooding is a need or a luxury; concentration he arrived at (with the artist's usual struggle) during the fresh, the early hours of the insidious Roman day; but on the basis of that common and consecrated triumph there THE BETTER TIME 165 were doubtless few things of more relish for him than his easy hospitality and, as may be frankly said, his personal success. Talk was his joy and pleasantry his habit—to all of which the human, the social panorama constantly, richly ministered. Living in a large circle—for during all the brightest years it grew and grew—he carried about with him, in every direction, his handsome, charming face, his high animation, his gaiety, jocosity, mimicry, and, even more than these things, his interest in ideas, in people, in everything—his vivacity of question, answer, demonstration, disputation. In England at least " he was still in time for the " good" years, the period during which, in society, it was possible to be yet a while longer unconscious of the emphasised rule of the mob. He may have heard . the growl of the rising tide, the roar of the flooding waters...« less