John Fox - "In Happy Valley"

Ignatius Donnelly - "The Antediluvian World"

Ernest Arthur Gardner - "Religion and Art in Ancient Greece"

Huguette Bertrand - "Espace perdu, poesie"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 1]

H >> Henry James >> The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 1]




I seem to myself to have waked up one morning in possession of
them--of Ralph Touchett and his parents, of Madame Merle, of
Gilbert Osmond and his daughter and his sister, of Lord
Warburton, Caspar Goodwood and Miss Stackpole, the definite array
of contributions to Isabel Archer's history. I recognised them, I
knew them, they were the numbered pieces of my puzzle, the
concrete terms of my "plot." It was as if they had simply, by an
impulse of their own, floated into my ken, and all in response to
my primary question: "Well, what will she DO?" Their answer seemed
to be that if I would trust them they would show me; on which,
with an urgent appeal to them to make it at least as interesting
as they could, I trusted them. They were like the group of
attendants and entertainers who come down by train when people
in the country give a party; they represented the contract for
carrying the party on. That was an excellent relation with them
--a possible one even with so broken a reed (from her slightness
of cohesion) as Henrietta Stackpole. It is a familiar truth to
the novelist, at the strenuous hour, that, as certain elements
in any work are of the essence, so others are only of the form;
that as this or that character, this or that disposition of the
material, belongs to the subject directly, so to speak, so this
or that other belongs to it but indirectly--belongs intimately to
the treatment. This is a truth, however, of which he rarely gets
the benefit--since it could be assured to him, really, but by
criticism based upon perception, criticism which is too little of
this world. He must not think of benefits, moreover, I freely
recognise, for that way dishonour lies: he has, that is, but one
to think of--the benefit, whatever it may be, involved in his
having cast a spell upon the simpler, the very simplest, forms of
attention. This is all he is entitled to; he is entitled to
nothing, he is bound to admit, that can come to him, from the
reader, as a result on the latter's part of any act of reflexion
or discrimination. He may ENJOY this finer tribute--that is
another affair, but on condition only of taking it as a gratuity
"thrown in," a mere miraculous windfall, the fruit of a tree he
may not pretend to have shaken. Against reflexion, against
discrimination, in his interest, all earth and air conspire;
wherefore it is that, as I say, he must in many a case have
schooled himself, from the first, to work but for a "living
wage." The living wage is the reader's grant of the least
possible quantity of attention required for consciousness of a
"spell." The occasional charming "tip" is an act of his
intelligence over and beyond this, a golden apple, for the
writer's lap, straight from the wind-stirred tree. The artist may
of course, in wanton moods, dream of some Paradise (for art) where
the direct appeal to the intelligence might be legalised; for to
such extravagances as these his yearning mind can scarce hope
ever completely to close itself. The most he can do is to
remember they ARE extravagances.

All of which is perhaps but a gracefully devious way of saying that
Henrietta Stackpole was a good example, in "The Portrait," of the
truth to which I just adverted--as good an example as I could name
were it not that Maria Gostrey, in "The Ambassadors," then in the
bosom of time, may be mentioned as a better. Each of these persons
is but wheels to the coach; neither belongs to the body of that
vehicle, or is for a moment accommodated with a seat inside. There
the subject alone is ensconced, in the form of its "hero and
heroine," and of the privileged high officials, say, who ride with
the king and queen. There are reasons why one would have liked
this to be felt, as in general one would like almost anything to
be felt, in one's work, that one has one's self contributively felt.
We have seen, however, how idle is that pretension, which I should
be sorry to make too much of. Maria Gostrey and Miss Stackpole
then are cases, each, of the light ficelle, not of the true
agent; they may run beside the coach "for all they are worth,"
they may cling to it till they are out of breath (as poor Miss
Stackpole all so visibly does), but neither, all the while, so
much as gets her foot on the step, neither ceases for a moment
to tread the dusty road. Put it even that they are like the
fishwives who helped to bring back to Paris from Versailles, on
that most ominous day of the first half of the French Revolution,
the carriage of the royal family. The only thing is that I may
well be asked, I acknowledge, why then, in the present fiction,
I have suffered Henrietta (of whom we have indubitably too much)
so officiously, so strangely, so almost inexplicably, to pervade.
I will presently say what I can for that anomaly--and in the most
conciliatory fashion.

A point I wish still more to make is that if my relation of
confidence with the actors in my drama who WERE, unlike Miss
Stackpole, true agents, was an excellent one to have arrived at,
there still remained my relation with the reader, which was
another affair altogether and as to which I felt no one to be
trusted but myself. That solicitude was to be accordingly
expressed in the artful patience with which, as I have said, I
piled brick upon brick. The bricks, for the whole counting-over--
putting for bricks little touches and inventions and enhancements
by the way--affect me in truth as well-nigh innumerable and as
ever so scrupulously fitted together and packed-in. It is an
effect of detail, of the minutest; though, if one were in this
connexion to say all, one would express the hope that the
general, the ampler air of the modest monument still survives. I
do at least seem to catch the key to a part of this abundance of
small anxious, ingenious illustration as I recollect putting my
finger, in my young woman's interest, on the most obvious of her
predicates. "What will she 'do'? Why, the first thing she'll
do will be to come to Europe; which in fact will form, and all
inevitably, no small part of her principal adventure. Coming to
Europe is even for the 'frail vessels,' in this wonderful age, a
mild adventure; but what is truer than that on one side--the side
of their independence of flood and field, of the moving accident,
of battle and murder and sudden death--her adventures are to be
mild? Without her sense of them, her sense FOR them, as one may
say, they are next to nothing at all; but isn't the beauty and
the difficulty just in showing their mystic conversion by that
sense, conversion into the stuff of drama or, even more
delightful word still, of 'story'?" It was all as clear, my
contention, as a silver bell. Two very good instances, I think,
of this effect of conversion, two cases of the rare chemistry,
are the pages in which Isabel, coming into the drawing-room at
Gardencourt, coming in from a wet walk or whatever, that rainy
afternoon, finds Madame Merle in possession of the place, Madame
Merle seated, all absorbed but all serene, at the piano, and
deeply recognises, in the striking of such an hour, in the
presence there, among the gathering shades, of this personage, of
whom a moment before she had never so much as heard, a
turning-point in her life. It is dreadful to have too much, for
any artistic demonstration, to dot one's i's and insist on one's
intentions, and I am not eager to do it now; but the question
here was that of producing the maximum of intensity with the
minimum of strain.

The interest was to be raised to its pitch and yet the elements
to be kept in their key; so that, should the whole thing duly
impress, I might show what an "exciting" inward life may do for
the person leading it even while it remains perfectly normal. And
I cannot think of a more consistent application of that ideal
unless it be in the long statement, just beyond the middle of the
book, of my young woman's extraordinary meditative vigil on the
occasion that was to become for her such a landmark. Reduced to
its essence, it is but the vigil of searching criticism; but it
throws the action further forward that twenty "incidents" might
have done. It was designed to have all the vivacity of incidents
and all the economy of picture. She sits up, by her dying fire,
far into the night, under the spell of recognitions on which she
finds the last sharpness suddenly wait. It is a representation
simply of her motionlessly SEEING, and an attempt withal to make
the mere still lucidity of her act as "interesting" as the
surprise of a caravan or the identification of a pirate. It
represents, for that matter, one of the identifications dear to
the novelist, and even indispensable to him; but it all goes on
without her being approached by another person and without her
leaving her chair. It is obviously the best thing in the book,
but it is only a supreme illustration of the general plan. As to
Henrietta, my apology for whom I just left incomplete, she
exemplifies, I fear, in her superabundance, not an element of my
plan, but only an excess of my zeal. So early was to begin my
tendency to OVERTREAT, rather than undertreat (when there was
choice or danger) my subject. (Many members of my craft, I
gather, are far from agreeing with me, but I have always held
overtreating the minor disservice.) "Treating" that of "The
Portrait" amounted to never forgetting, by any lapse, that the
thing was under a special obligation to be amusing. There was the
danger of the noted "thinness"--which was to be averted, tooth
and nail, by cultivation of the lively. That is at least how I
see it to-day. Henrietta must have been at that time a part of my
wonderful notion of the lively. And then there was another
matter. I had, within the few preceding years, come to live in
London, and the "international" light lay, in those days, to my
sense, thick and rich upon the scene. It was the light in which
so much of the picture hung. But that IS another matter. There is
really too much to say.

HENRY JAMES




THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

CHAPTER I

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more
agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as
afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you
partake of the tea or not--some people of course never do,--the
situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in
beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable
setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little
feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English
country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a
splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but
much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and
rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but
the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown
mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They
lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of
leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one's
enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o'clock to
eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an
occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of
pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure
quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to
furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned.
The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they
were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair
near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two
younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of
him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually
large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the set and
painted in brilliant colours. He disposed of its contents with
much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to his
chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had
either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege;
they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them,
from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention
at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his
eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose
beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and
was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English
picture I have attempted to sketch.

It stood upon a low hill, above the river--the river being the
Thames at some forty miles from London. A long gabled front of
red brick, with the complexion of which time and the weather had
played all sorts of pictorial tricks, only, however, to improve
and refine it, presented to the lawn its patches of ivy, its
clustered chimneys, its windows smothered in creepers. The house
had a name and a history; the old gentleman taking his tea would
have been delighted to tell you these things: how it had been
built under Edward the Sixth, had offered a night's hospitality
to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had extended itself
upon a huge, magnificent and terribly angular bed which still
formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments), had been
a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell's wars, and then,
under the Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how,
finally, after having been remodelled and disfigured in the
eighteenth century, it had passed into the careful keeping of a
shrewd American banker, who had bought it originally because
(owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth) it was
offered at a great bargain: bought it with much grumbling at its
ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end
of twenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion
for it, so that he knew all its points and would tell you just
where to stand to see them in combination and just the hour when
the shadows of its various protuberances which fell so softly
upon the warm, weary brickwork--were of the right measure.
Besides this, as I have said, he could have counted off most of
the successive owners and occupants, several of whom were known
to general fame; doing so, however, with an undemonstrative
conviction that the latest phase of its destiny was not the least
honourable. The front of the house overlooking that portion of
the lawn with which we are concerned was not the entrance-front;
this was in quite another quarter. Privacy here reigned supreme,
and the wide carpet of turf that covered the level hill-top
seemed but the extension of a luxurious interior. The great still
oaks and beeches flung down a shade as dense as that of velvet
curtains; and the place was furnished, like a room, with
cushioned seats, with rich-coloured rugs, with the books and
papers that lay upon the grass. The river was at some distance;
where the ground began to slope the lawn, properly speaking,
ceased. But it was none the less a charming walk down to the
water.

The old gentleman at the tea-table, who had come from America
thirty years before, had brought with him, at the top of his
baggage, his American physiognomy; and he had not only brought it
with him, but he had kept it in the best order, so that, if
necessary, he might have taken it back to his own country with
perfect confidence. At present, obviously, nevertheless, he was
not likely to displace himself; his journeys were over and he was
taking the rest that precedes the great rest. He had a narrow,
clean-shaven face, with features evenly distributed and an
expression of placid acuteness. It was evidently a face in which
the range of representation was not large, so that the air of
contented shrewdness was all the more of a merit. It seemed to
tell that he had been successful in life, yet it seemed to tell
also that his success had not been exclusive and invidious, but
had had much of the inoffensiveness of failure. He had certainly
had a great experience of men, but there was an almost rustic
simplicity in the faint smile that played upon his lean, spacious
cheek and lighted up his humorous eye as he at last slowly and
carefully deposited his big tea-cup upon the table. He was neatly
dressed, in well-brushed black; but a shawl was folded upon his
knees, and his feet were encased in thick, embroidered slippers.
A beautiful collie dog lay upon the grass near his chair, watching
the master's face almost as tenderly as the master took in the
still more magisterial physiognomy of the house; and a little
bristling, bustling terrier bestowed a desultory attendance upon
the other gentlemen.

One of these was a remarkably well-made man of five-and-thirty,
with a face as English as that of the old gentleman I have just
sketched was something else; a noticeably handsome face, fresh-
coloured, fair and frank, with firm, straight features, a lively
grey eye and the rich adornment of a chestnut beard. This person
had a certain fortunate, brilliant exceptional look--the air of a
happy temperament fertilised by a high civilisation--which would
have made almost any observer envy him at a venture. He was
booted and spurred, as if he had dismounted from a long ride; he
wore a white hat, which looked too large for him; he held his two
hands behind him, and in one of them--a large, white, well-shaped
fist--was crumpled a pair of soiled dog-skin gloves.

His companion, measuring the length of the lawn beside him, was a
person of quite a different pattern, who, although he might have
excited grave curiosity, would not, like the other, have provoked
you to wish yourself, almost blindly, in his place. Tall, lean,
loosely and feebly put together, he had an ugly, sickly, witty,
charming face, furnished, but by no means decorated, with a
straggling moustache and whisker. He looked clever and ill--a
combination by no means felicitous; and he wore a brown velvet
jacket. He carried his hands in his pockets, and there was
something in the way he did it that showed the habit was
inveterate. His gait had a shambling, wandering quality; he was
not very firm on his legs. As I have said, whenever he passed the
old man in the chair he rested his eyes upon him; and at this
moment, with their faces brought into relation, you would easily
have seen they were father and son. The father caught his son's
eye at last and gave him a mild, responsive smile.

"I'm getting on very well," he said.

"Have you drunk your tea?" asked the son.

"Yes, and enjoyed it."

"Shall I give you some more?"

The old man considered, placidly. "Well, I guess I'll wait and
see." He had, in speaking, the American tone.

"Are you cold?" the son enquired.

The father slowly rubbed his legs. "Well, I don't know. I can't
tell till I feel."

"Perhaps some one might feel for you," said the younger man,
laughing.

"Oh, I hope some one will always feel for me! Don't you feel for
me, Lord Warburton?"

"Oh yes, immensely," said the gentleman addressed as Lord
Warburton, promptly. "I'm bound to say you look wonderfully
comfortable."

"Well, I suppose I am, in most respects." And the old man looked
down at his green shawl and smoothed it over his knees. "The fact
is I've been comfortable so many years that I suppose I've got
so used to it I don't know it."

"Yes, that's the bore of comfort," said Lord Warburton. "We only
know when we're uncomfortable."

"It strikes me we're rather particular," his companion remarked.

"Oh yes, there's no doubt we're particular," Lord Warburton
murmured. And then the three men remained silent a while; the two
younger ones standing looking down at the other, who presently
asked for more tea. "I should think you would be very unhappy
with that shawl," Lord Warburton resumed while his companion
filled the old man's cup again.

"Oh no, he must have the shawl!" cried the gentleman in the
velvet coat. "Don't put such ideas as that into his head."

"It belongs to my wife," said the old man simply.

"Oh, if it's for sentimental reasons--" And Lord Warburton made a
gesture of apology.

"I suppose I must give it to her when she comes," the old man
went on.

"You'll please to do nothing of the kind. You'll keep it to cover
your poor old legs."

"Well, you mustn't abuse my legs," said the old man. "I guess
they are as good as yours."

"Oh, you're perfectly free to abuse mine," his son replied,
giving him his tea.

"Well, we're two lame ducks; I don't think there's much
difference."

"I'm much obliged to you for calling me a duck. How's your tea?"

"Well, it's rather hot."

"That's intended to be a merit."

"Ah, there's a great deal of merit," murmured the old man,
kindly. "He's a very good nurse, Lord Warburton."

"Isn't he a bit clumsy?" asked his lordship.

"Oh no, he's not clumsy--considering that he's an invalid
himself. He's a very good nurse--for a sick-nurse. I call him my
sick-nurse because he's sick himself."

"Oh, come, daddy!" the ugly young man exclaimed.

"Well, you are; I wish you weren't. But I suppose you can't help
it."

"I might try: that's an idea," said the young man.

"Were you ever sick, Lord Warburton?" his father asked.

Lord Warburton considered a moment. "Yes, sir, once, in the
Persian Gulf."

"He's making light of you, daddy," said the other young man.
"That's a sort of joke."

"Well, there seem to be so many sorts now," daddy replied,
serenely. "You don't look as if you had been sick, any way, Lord
Warburton."

"He's sick of life; he was just telling me so; going on fearfully
about it," said Lord Warburton's friend.

"Is that true, sir?" asked the old man gravely.

"If it is, your son gave me no consolation. He's a wretched
fellow to talk to--a regular cynic. He doesn't seem to believe in
anything."

"That's another sort of joke," said the person accused of
cynicism.

"It's because his health is so poor," his father explained to
Lord Warburton. "It affects his mind and colours his way of
looking at things; he seems to feel as if he had never had a
chance. But it's almost entirely theoretical, you know; it
doesn't seem to affect his spirits. I've hardly ever seen him
when he wasn't cheerful--about as he is at present. He often
cheers me up."

The young man so described looked at Lord Warburton and laughed.
"Is it a glowing eulogy or an accusation of levity? Should you
like me to carry out my theories, daddy?"

"By Jove, we should see some queer things!" cried Lord Warburton.

"I hope you haven't taken up that sort of tone," said the old
man.

"Warburton's tone is worse than mine; he pretends to be bored.
I'm not in the least bored; I find life only too interesting."

"Ah, too interesting; you shouldn't allow it to be that, you
know!"

"I'm never bored when I come here," said Lord Warburton. "One
gets such uncommonly good talk."

"Is that another sort of joke?" asked the old man. "You've no
excuse for being bored anywhere. When I was your age I had never
heard of such a thing."

"You must have developed very late."

"No, I developed very quick; that was just the reason. When I was
twenty years old I was very highly developed indeed. I was
working tooth and nail. You wouldn't be bored if you had
something to do; but all you young men are too idle. You think
too much of your pleasure. You're too fastidious, and too
indolent, and too rich."

"Oh, I say," cried Lord Warburton, "you're hardly the person to
accuse a fellow-creature of being too rich!"

"Do you mean because I'm a banker?" asked the old man.

"Because of that, if you like; and because you have--haven't
you?--such unlimited means."

"He isn't very rich," the other young man mercifully pleaded. "He
has given away an immense deal of money."

"Well, I suppose it was his own," said Lord Warburton; "and in
that case could there be a better proof of wealth? Let not a
public benefactor talk of one's being too fond of pleasure."

"Daddy's very fond of pleasure--of other people's."

The old man shook his head. "I don't pretend to have contributed
anything to the amusement of my contemporaries."

"My dear father, you're too modest!"

"That's a kind of joke, sir," said Lord Warburton.

"You young men have too many jokes. When there are no jokes
you've nothing left."

"Fortunately there are always more jokes," the ugly young man
remarked.

"I don't believe it--I believe things are getting more serious.
You young men will find that out."

"The increasing seriousness of things, then that's the great
opportunity of jokes."

"They'll have to be grim jokes," said the old man. "I'm convinced
there will be great changes, and not all for the better."

"I quite agree with you, sir," Lord Warburton declared. "I'm very
sure there will be great changes, and that all sorts of queer
things will happen. That's why I find so much difficulty in
applying your advice; you know you told me the other day that I
ought to 'take hold' of something. One hesitates to take hold of
a thing that may the next moment be knocked sky-high."

"You ought to take hold of a pretty woman," said his companion.
"He's trying hard to fall in love," he added, by way of
explanation, to his father.

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