Great literature expands the moral imagination. It reveals hidden truths. And it also shapes our civic consciousness.

　　As Michael Clune recently argued in AEI’s Future of the American University, civics centers must revive the study of the American literary tradition. The brightest gems from it enrich education for citizenship. Great works of American literature are potent means by which to generate piety among students and to reconnect them with thoughtful American forebears, whose works contain vast—at times forgotten—wisdom.

　　Clune rightfully mentions Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Willa Cather as writers whose stories and poems can help us contemplate what it means to live a good life, to die a good death, and to be a good American. One cannot be blamed for leaving names off a list in a short essay with a tight word limit. But I posit that Henry James, absent from Clune’s essay, is an essential author to read as citizens today grapple with what it means to be an American.

　　I doubt Henry James’s lone political novel, The Princess Casamassima, is on many—if any—university syllabi today. But it is worth reading. It is a sustained reflection on the social question, the plight of the working class, which had prompted riots and bombings in London, America, and elsewhere in Europe.

　　Even though James was an American author, the novel takes place in England and Europe. His observations on political life, in this book, are far-ranging, universal, and applicable to our political moment. In fact, Richard Chase wrote in his 1958 book The American Novel and its Tradition that The Princess Casamassima is “the only political melodrama by an American which will bear comparison with those of Dostoevsky, [and] Conrad.” There are undoubted commonalities between Princess Casamassima and Dostoevsky’s Demons in their analysis of—and condemnation of—the revolutionary mindset.

　　James’s novel teaches that there are more important things in this world than immediate political action. It is better to preserve the glories of civilization than to destroy them. Cherishing the achievements of the past—and patiently preserving them for future generations—can keep us from falling victim to the blandishments of destructive ideologies. That is the chief lesson of The Princess Casamassima. Reflecting on this lesson shows how great books can shape our civic consciousness, readying us for the difficult work of preserving our civilizational inheritance.

　　The Restless American

　　Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that the typical American is in perpetual haste to accumulate material goods. The more he can obtain before death, the better. Thus, the typical American is filled “with anxieties, fears, and regrets,” in “a state of constant trepidation that impels him again and again to change plans and places.” This description of American restlessness matches the character of the Princess Casamassima in James’s novel. But this princess is consumed by a desire for novelty, not consumer goods. This desire impels her to leave her husband, give up her possessions, and join the revolutionary cause.

　　The titular princess is a young American woman, Christina Light, who first appeared in James’s 1875 novel Roderick Hudson. This reckless young woman led a “bohemian” life before marrying an Italian prince. She had endured a “horrible education” growing up. And that is at least partially responsible for her grossly disordered “taste for exploration,” and willingness to throw herself into anything “modern.”

　　Beauty, art, skill, craftsmanship, order, and excellence: these, more than “foul things,” should inhabit our minds and instill in us an appreciation for the civilizational splendors we have inherited.

　　In the novel’s preface, James wrote that the princess is guided by “an aversion to the banal.” Her attitude has “its root and its apparent logic in her need to feel freshly about something or other.” In the words of James’s biographer, Leon Edel, the princess uses the revolution as “a retreat from ennui.”

　　This addiction to new sensations, new scenery, and new ideas is dangerous. It leads her to England, where she meets Hyacinth Robinson, a bookbinder, a representative of the lower orders. She considers Hyacinth a “study,” a convenient means by which to learn about the social ills plaguing the “people.”

　　The princess spends her time talking about “the rising democracy, the spread of nihilism, and all that.” But she is clearly disingenuous. Meanwhile, another member of the nobility, Lady Aurora, dedicates “her life and her pocket-money to the poor and sick.” She silently suffers with the poor. And as a saint you would read about in legends, Lady Aurora knew she wanted “to sell all I had and give to the poor.” Lady Aurora’s saintliness is a notable alternative to the princess’s restlessness, which produced a performative radicalism worthy of rebuke.

　　Exclusion from Elite Circles—and Its Consequences

　　The Princess Casamassima and Lady Aurora were willing to dispense with their respective aristocratic lifestyles. But that same aristocratic lifestyle was the stuff of Hyacinth Robinson’s dreams.

　　Hyacinth, the subject of the princess’s “study” in the debased London underworld, was the son of a disreputable, lower-class French woman and an English aristocrat. His maternal grandfather died on the barricades in France. Still, Hyacinth “cherished the belief that he was a gentleman born.” He lived with the poor, but he had noble blood. The two sides of Hyacinth engage in a “death-grapple” throughout the story.

　　Hyacinth was raised by Amanda Pynsent, a dressmaker, who “adored the aristocracy.” Her unremitting devotion to the nobility surely influenced Hyacinth’s self-understanding. She assured Hyacinth that there was “grandeur in his past” belonging to him as heritage and birthright. She claimed Hyacinth belonged to “the highest in the land.”

　　Anastasius Vetch, a neighbor, friend, and father-figure for Hyacinth, took charge of his education. Mr. Vetch “lent him every volume he possessed or could pick up for the purpose.” And reading was Hyacinth’s “happiness.” But he read the wrong books. Vetch educated him in a modern way—one that tended toward transforming nature rather than living in accord with it.

　　Mr. Vetch himself was a “blasphemous republican” with “radical views.” A poor violinist, he felt “excluded from his proper place” in the world. He cynically railed against those of a higher rank.

　　Hyacinth felt excluded, too. He was kept out of the elite social circles once inhabited by his aristocratic English father, whom his lowly mother murdered. Hyacinth, however, did not use exclusion from elite company to excuse his thinking or his actions.

　　Exclusion itself cannot serve as a guiding principle of action to orient one’s relationship to society. Hyacinth insisted on thinking more deeply, pondering what social order, what course of action, was truly “superior.” He aimed “to get hold of the truth and wear it in his heart.” First, though, Hyacinth succumbed to the politics of envy that surrounded him.

　　The Radical Temptation

　　James, in the novel’s preface, stated that Hyacinth was “bitten … with an aggressive, vindictive, destructive social faith.” Hyacinth encountered some of this destructive social faith under the tutelage of Mr. Vetch. But his mind became flooded with subversive ideas in the company of Eustache Poupin, a bookbinder who worked with Hyacinth at Mr. Crookenden’s shop.

　　Poupin, a socialist, departed from France after the failed Paris commune of 1871. He blamed all ills on “the imperfect organization of society.” He thought borders and armies would eventually be abolished. He rhapsodized about how the sentiment of humanity would eventually bind all men together in universal amity. But this splendid age of concord could only emerge by means of “irresistible force.”

　　Hyacinth spent time in workers’ meetings, in taverns, where socialists agitated against the system, until they felt the urge “to go out somewhere and smash something, on the spot.” He caught the “contagion of excited purpose.” He joined “the subterranean crusade against the existing order of things.” He pledged allegiance to the “party of immediate action.” In a dingy back-bedroom on a rainy day, he took a vow of “blind obedience” to the cause, promising to commit any act requested of him, even an assassination, even if it cost him his life.

　　Antidotes to Radicalism

　　The most interesting aspect of Hyacinth’s story, according to James, is that after promising to sacrifice his life and liberty to the “cause,” he fell “in love with the beauty of the world, actual order and all.” His journey from envious revolutionary to grateful defender of civilization started with his acceptance of his inheritance. Miss Pynsent, the dressmaker who raised him, left Hyacinth her savings after she died. Mr. Vetch supplemented her savings with a gift. Hyacinth used the funds to travel to Europe, where the beauty of Paris and Venice filled him with an awe and appreciation potent enough to snuff out the revolutionary flame threatening to consume him.

　　Seek ye first truth, goodness, and beauty, one might say, and the rest—platforms and policies—will follow.

　　He changed his opinions. But it was too late. The revolutionary “cause” had claimed him already. He had devoted himself to it. He had been caught in a trap set by revolutionary agents, and he could not extricate himself from it. He took his own life. Revolutionary politics doomed him.

　　In this tragic tale, James reveals two potential avenues of fulfillment outside of destructive social activity—the unrelenting urge to take immediate action—that could have saved Hyacinth and nearly did.

　　The first antidote is the patient and disciplined practice of a vocation. Madame Grandoni articulates this idea. She is the princess’s confidant, who disapproves of the princess’s revolutionary activities throughout the book. Madame Grandoni tells Hyacinth that he ought to “hold fast” to his trade. “Be diligent, and honest, and good.” Do not plan to “throw bombs into innocent crowds,” she says, and “do not “shoot pistols at … rulers.”

　　The rising tide of democracy threatened to turn all into egalitarian zealots focused only on political matters. But skill and technical know-how, whether in relation to bookbinding, architecture, or dressmaking, were sure safeguards of civilization. They permit their practitioners to pursue excellence. They instill in the practitioner a sense of purpose.

　　Hyacinth’s own experience as a bookbinder contributed to his turn from socialist to guardian of the glories of civilization. By engaging in work with his hands, he learned how to discriminate between beauty and ugliness. He learned patience and, through disciplined effort, endurance, and skillful performance, he experienced fulfilment.

　　The second antidote is gratitude, specifically appreciation of the goodness of one’s inheritance. When Hyacinth first visits the grand estate of Medley, a palatial hall with over forty rooms where the Princess Casamassima stays, we discover that Hyacinth had never really seen a park, a garden, or the beauties of nature. He had never encountered grandeur. That changed when he visited Europe for three months.

　　His trip abroad made him confront the beauty, order, excellence, and achievement of the West. In Europe, what was supreme in Hyacinth’s mind “was not the idea of how the society that surrounded him should be destroyed; it was, much more, the sense of the wonderful, precious things it had produced, of the brilliant, impressive fabric it had raised.” Even if the West’s history and institutions were marred by considerable suffering, violence, and inequality, Hyacinth still thought it was appropriate to praise what was beautiful and good in that tradition, including “the monuments and treasures of art, the great palaces and properties, the conquests of learning and taste” that composed “the general fabric of civilization as we know it.”

　　Hyacinth’s turn in the book results from his turn from “foul things,” including the invidious passion for revolution that he eventually regarded as an “odious stain” on his soul. Beauty, art, skill, craftsmanship, order, and excellence: these, more than “foul things,” should inhabit our minds and instill in us an appreciation for the civilizational splendors we have inherited.

　　James remarks that there can never “be too many pictures and statues and works of art.” These beautiful artifacts, more than party platforms and policy proposals, should populate our minds. Seek ye first truth, goodness, and beauty, one might say, and the rest—platforms and policies—will follow. This is a worthy lesson from an eminent American mind. Let us shape our civic consciousness accordingly.