Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini - "Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing"

Joseph Cottle - "Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey"

Henry James - "The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 2]"

Metta Victoria Full Victor - "The Blunders of a Bashful Man"

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 2]

H >> Henry James >> The Portrait of a Lady [Volume 2]



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Etext created by Eve Sobol, South Bend, Indiana, USA





The Portrait of a Lady

by Henry James





VOLUME II



CHAPTER XXVIII

On the morrow, in the evening, Lord Warburton went again to see
his friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned
that they had gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the
idea of paying them a visit in their box after the easy Italian
fashion; and when he had obtained his admittance--it was one of
the secondary theatres--looked about the large, bare, ill-lighted
house. An act had just terminated and he was at liberty to pursue
his quest. After scanning two or three tiers of boxes he
perceived in one of the largest of these receptacles a lady whom
he easily recognised. Miss Archer was seated facing the stage and
partly screened by the curtain of the box; and beside her,
leaning back in his chair, was Mr. Gilbert Osmond. They appeared
to have the place to themselves, and Warburton supposed their
companions had taken advantage of the recess to enjoy the
relative coolness of the lobby. He stood a while with his eyes on
the interesting pair; he asked himself if he should go up and
interrupt the harmony. At last he judged that Isabel had seen
him, and this accident determined him. There should be no marked
holding off. He took his way to the upper regions and on the
staircase met Ralph Touchett slowly descending, his hat at the
inclination of ennui and his hands where they usually were.

"I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel
lonely and want company," was Ralph's greeting.

"You've some that's very good which you've yet deserted."

"Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn't want
me. Then Miss Stackpole and Bantling have gone out to a cafe to
eat an ice--Miss Stackpole delights in an ice. I didn't think
they wanted me either. The opera's very bad; the women look like
laundresses and sing like peacocks. I feel very low."

"You had better go home," Lord Warburton said without
affectation.

"And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch
over her."

"She seems to have plenty of friends."

"Yes, that's why I must watch," said Ralph with the same large
mock-melancholy.

"If she doesn't want you it's probable she doesn't want me."

"No, you're different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk
about."

Lord Warburton went to the box, where Isabel's welcome was as to
a friend so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what
queer temporal province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings
with Mr. Osmond, to whom he had been introduced the day before
and who, after he came in, sat blandly apart and silent, as if
repudiating competence in the subjects of allusion now probable.
It struck her second visitor that Miss Archer had, in operatic
conditions, a radiance, even a slight exaltation; as she was,
however, at all times a keenly-glancing, quickly-moving,
completely animated young woman, he may have been mistaken on
this point. Her talk with him moreover pointed to presence of
mind; it expressed a kindness so ingenious and deliberate as to
indicate that she was in undisturbed possession of her faculties.
Poor Lord Warburton had moments of bewilderment. She had
discouraged him, formally, as much as a woman could; what
business had she then with such arts and such felicities, above
all with such tones of reparation--preparation? Her voice had
tricks of sweetness, but why play them on HIM? The others came
back; the bare, familiar, trivial opera began again. The box was
large, and there was room for him to remain if he would sit a
little behind and in the dark. He did so for half an hour, while
Mr. Osmond remained in front, leaning forward, his elbows on his
knees, just behind Isabel. Lord Warburton heard nothing, and from
his gloomy corner saw nothing but the clear profile of this young
lady defined against the dim illumination of the house. When
there was another interval no one moved. Mr. Osmond talked to
Isabel, and Lord Warburton kept his corner. He did so but for a
short time, however; after which he got up and bade good-night to
the ladies. Isabel said nothing to detain him, but it didn't
prevent his being puzzled again. Why should she mark so one of
his values--quite the wrong one--when she would have nothing to
do with another, which was quite the right? He was angry with
himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry.
Verdi's music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre
and walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the
tortuous, tragic streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his
had been carried under the stars.

"What's the character of that gentleman?" Osmond asked of Isabel
after he had retired.

"Irreproachable--don't you see it?"

"He owns about half England; that's his character," Henrietta
remarked. "That's what they call a free country!"

"Ah, he's a great proprietor? Happy man!" said Gilbert Osmond.

"Do you call that happiness--the ownership of wretched human
beings?" cried Miss Stackpole. "He owns his tenants and has
thousands of them. It's pleasant to own something, but inanimate
objects are enough for me. I don't insist on flesh and blood and
minds and consciences."

"It seems to me you own a human being or two," Mr. Bantling
suggested jocosely. "I wonder if Warburton orders his tenants
about as you do me."

"Lord Warburton's a great radical," Isabel said. "He has very
advanced opinions."

"He has very advanced stone walls. His park's enclosed by a
gigantic iron fence, some thirty miles round," Henrietta
announced for the information of Mr. Osmond. "I should like him
to converse with a few of our Boston radicals."

"Don't they approve of iron fences?" asked Mr. Bantling.

"Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were
talking to YOU over something with a neat top-finish of broken
glass."

"Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?" Osmond went on,
questioning Isabel.

"Well enough for all the use I have for him."

"And how much of a use is that?"

"Well, I like to like him."

"'Liking to like'--why, it makes a passion!" said Osmond.

"No"--she considered--"keep that for liking to DISlike."

"Do you wish to provoke me then," Osmond laughed, "to a passion
for HIM?"

She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question
with a disproportionate gravity. "No, Mr. Osmond; I don't think I
should ever dare to provoke you. Lord Warburton, at any rate,"
she more easily added, "is a very nice man."

"Of great ability?" her friend enquired.

"Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks."

"As good as he's good-looking do you mean? He's very good-looking.
How detestably fortunate!--to be a great English magnate, to be
clever and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off,
to enjoy your high favour! That's a man I could envy."

Isabel considered him with interest. "You seem to me to be always
envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it's poor
Lord Warburton."

"My envy's not dangerous; it wouldn't hurt a mouse. I don't want
to destroy the people--I only want to BE them. You see it would
destroy only myself."

"You'd like to be the Pope?" said Isabel.

"I should love it--but I should have gone in for it earlier. But
why"--Osmond reverted--"do you speak of your friend as poor?"

"Women--when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after
they've hurt them; that's their great way of showing kindness,"
said Ralph, joining in the conversation for the first time and
with a cynicism so transparently ingenious as to be virtually
innocent.

"Pray, have I hurt Lord Warburton?" Isabel asked, raising her
eyebrows as if the idea were perfectly fresh.

"It serves him right if you have," said Henrietta while the
curtain rose for the ballet.

Isabel saw no more of her attributive victim for the next
twenty-four hours, but on the second day after the visit to the
opera she encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he
stood before the lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying
Gladiator. She had come in with her companions, among whom, on
this occasion again, Gilbert Osmond had his place, and the party,
having ascended the staircase, entered the first and finest of
the rooms. Lord Warburton addressed her alertly enough, but said
in a moment that he was leaving the gallery. "And I'm leaving
Rome," he added. "I must bid you goodbye." Isabel, inconsequently
enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps because she
had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was
thinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her
regret, but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy
journey; which made him look at her rather unlightedly. "I'm
afraid you'll think me very 'volatile.' I told you the other day
I wanted so much to stop."

"Oh no; you could easily change your mind."

"That's what I have done."

"Bon voyage then."

"You're in a great hurry to get rid of me," said his lordship
quite dismally.

"Not in the least. But I hate partings."

"You don't care what I do," he went on pitifully.

Isabel looked at him a moment. "Ah," she said, "you're not
keeping your promise!"

He coloured like a boy of fifteen. "If I'm not, then it's because
I can't; and that's why I'm going."

"Good-bye then."

"Good-bye." He lingered still, however. "When shall I see you
again?"

Isabel hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration:
"Some day after you're married."

"That will never be. It will be after you are."

"That will do as well," she smiled.

"Yes, quite as well. Good-bye."

They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room,
among the shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of
the circle of these presences, regarding them vaguely, resting
her eyes on their beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were,
to their eternal silence. It is impossible, in Rome at least, to
look long at a great company of Greek sculptures without feeling
the effect of their noble quietude; which, as with a high door
closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on the spirit the large
white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially, because the
Roman air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The golden
sunshine mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so
vivid yet, though it is nothing but a void full of names, seems
to throw a solemn spell upon them. The blinds were partly closed
in the windows of the Capitol, and a clear, warm shadow rested on
the figures and made them more mildly human. Isabel sat there a
long time, under the charm of their motionless grace, wondering
to what, of their experience, their absent eyes were open, and
how, to our ears, their alien lips would sound. The dark red
walls of the room threw them into relief; the polished marble
floor reflected their beauty. She had seen them all before, but
her enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater because
she was glad again, for the time, to be alone. At last, however,
her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide of life. An
occasional tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the
Dying Gladiator, and then passed out of the other door, creaking
over the smooth pavement. At the end of half an hour Gilbert
Osmond reappeared, apparently in advance of his companions. He
strolled toward her slowly, with his hands behind him and his
usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing smile. "I'm surprised to
find you alone, I thought you had company.

"So I have--the best." And she glanced at the Antinous and the
Faun.

"Do you call them better company than an English peer?"

"Ah, my English peer left me some time ago." She got up, speaking
with intention a little dryly.

Mr. Osmond noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the
interest of his question. "I'm afraid that what I heard the other
evening is true: you're rather cruel to that nobleman."

Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. "It's not
true. I'm scrupulously kind."

"That's exactly what I mean!" Gilbert Osmond returned, and with
such happy hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know
that he was fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior and
the exquisite; and now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he
thought a very fine example of his race and order, he perceived a
new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a young lady who
had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice
objects by declining so noble a hand. Gilbert Osmond had a high
appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so much for its
distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for its
solid actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing
him to an English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness
of such conduct as Isabel's. It would be proper that the woman he
might marry should have done something of that sort.



CHAPTER XXIX

Ralph Touchett, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather
markedly qualified, as we know, his recognition of Gilbert
Osmond's personal merits; but he might really have felt himself
illiberal in the light of that gentleman's conduct during the
rest of the visit to Rome. Osmond spent a portion of each day
with Isabel and her companions, and ended by affecting them as
the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn't have seen that he
could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?--which perhaps
was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial
sociability a reproach to him. Even Isabel's invidious kinsman
was obliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate.
His good humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right
fact, his production of the right word, as convenient as the
friendly flicker of a match for your cigarette. Clearly he was
amused--as amused as a man could be who was so little ever
surprised, and that made him almost applausive. It was not that
his spirits were visibly high--he would never, in the concert of
pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a knuckle: he had a
mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to what he called random
ravings. He thought Miss Archer sometimes of too precipitate a
readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if she had
not had it she would really have had none; she would have been
as smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the
palm. If he was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and
during these closing days of the Roman May he knew a complacency
that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the
Villa Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the
mossy marbles. He was pleased with everything; he had never
before been pleased with so many things at once. Old impressions,
old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening, going home to
his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to which he
prefixed the title of "Rome Revisited." A day or two later he
showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel,
explaining to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate
the occasions of life by a tribute to the muse.

He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he
would have admitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong,
something ugly; the fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too
seldom descended on his spirit. But at present he was happy--
happier than he had perhaps ever been in his life, and the
feeling had a large foundation. This was simply the sense of
success--the most agreeable emotion of the human heart. Osmond
had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the
irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often
reminded himself. "Ah no, I've not been spoiled; certainly I've
not been spoiled," he used inwardly to repeat. "If I do succeed
before I die I shall thoroughly have earned it." He was too apt
to reason as if "earning" this boon consisted above all of
covertly aching for it and might be confined to that exercise.
Absolutely void of it, also, his career had not been; he might
indeed have suggested to a spectator here and there that he was
resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were, some of them,
now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had been
less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--
that is had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether
exceptional effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in
him to make. The desire to have something or other to show for
his "parts"--to show somehow or other--had been the dream of his
youth; but as the years went on the conditions attached to any
marked proof of rarity had affected him more and more as gross
and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs of beer to advertise
what one could "stand." If an anonymous drawing on a museum wall
had been conscious and watchful it might have known this peculiar
pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified--as from
the hand of a great master--by the so high and so unnoticed fact
of style. His "style" was what the girl had discovered with a
little help; and now, beside herself enjoying it, she should
publish it to the world without his having any of the trouble.
She should do the thing FOR him, and he would not have waited in
vain.

Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this
young lady received from Mrs. Touchett a telegram running as
follows: "Leave Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if
you have not other views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome."
The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but Isabel had different
views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately join her.
She told Gilbert Osmond that she had done so, and he replied
that, spending many of his summers as well as his winters in
Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the cool shadow
of Saint Peter's. He would not return to Florence for ten days
more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio. It
might be months in this case before he should see her again. This
exchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied
by our friends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and
Ralph Touchett was to take his cousin back to Florence on the
morrow. Osmond had found the girl alone; Miss Stackpole had
contracted a friendship with a delightful American family on the
fourth floor and had mounted the interminable staircase to pay
them a visit. Henrietta contracted friendships, in travelling,
with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages several
that were among her most valued ties. Ralph was making
arrangements for the morrow's journey, and Isabel sat alone in a
wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were
orange; the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The
mirrors, the pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling
was deeply vaulted and painted over with naked muses and cherubs.
For Osmond the place was ugly to distress; the false colours, the
sham splendour were like vulgar, bragging, lying talk. Isabel had
taken in hand a volume of Ampere, presented, on their arrival in
Rome, by Ralph; but though she held it in her lap with her
finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient to pursue
her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink
tissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a
strange pale rosiness over the scene.

"You say you'll come back; but who knows?" Gilbert Osmond said.

"I think you're much more likely to start on your voyage round
the world. You're under no obligation to come back; you can do
exactly what you choose; you can roam through space."

"Well, Italy's a part of space," Isabel answered. "I can take it
on the way."

"On the way round the world? No, don't do that. Don't put us in a
parenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don't want to see
you on your travels. I'd rather see you when they're over. I
should like to see you when you're tired and satiated," Osmond
added in a moment. "I shall prefer you in that state."

Isabel, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. "You
turn things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I
think, without intending it. You've no respect for my travels--
you think them ridiculous."

"Where do you find that?"

She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with
the paper-knife. "You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I
wander about as if the world belonged to me, simply because--
because it has been put into my power to do so. You don't think a
woman ought to do that. You think it bold and ungraceful."

"I think it beautiful," said Osmond. "You know my opinions--I've
treated you to enough of them. Don't you remember my telling you
that one ought to make one's life a work of art? You looked
rather shocked at first; but then I told you that it was
exactly what you seemed to me to be trying to do with your own."

She looked up from her book. "What you despise most in the world
is bad, is stupid art."

"Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good."

"If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me," she
went on.

Osmond gave a smile--a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of
their conversation was not jocose. Isabel had in fact her
solemnity; he had seen it before. "You have one!"

"That's exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd."

"I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it's one of the
countries I want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my
taste for old lacquer?"

"I haven't a taste for old lacquer to excuse me," said Isabel.

"You've a better excuse--the means of going. You're quite wrong
in your theory that I laugh at you. I don't know what has put it
into your head."

"It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I
should have the means to travel when you've not; for you know
everything and I know nothing."

"The more reason why you should travel and learn," smiled Osmond.
"Besides," he added as if it were a point to be made, "I don't
know everything."

Isabel was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely;
she was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life--so it
pleased her to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she
might musingly have likened to the figure of some small princess
of one of the ages of dress overmuffled in a mantle of state and
dragging a train that it took pages or historians to hold up--
that this felicity was coming to an end. That most of the
interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Osmond was a reflexion
she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done the
point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there
were a danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it
would be as well. Happy things don't repeat themselves, and her
adventure wore already the changed, the seaward face of some
romantic island from which, after feasting on purple grapes, she
was putting off while the breeze rose. She might come back to
Italy and find him different--this strange man who pleased her
just as he was; and it would be better not to come than run the
risk of that. But if she was not to come the greater the pity
that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a pang that
touched the source of tears. The sensation kept her silent, and
Gilbert Osmond was silent too; he was looking at her. "Go
everywhere," he said at last, in a low, kind voice; "do everything;
get everything out of life. Be happy,--be triumphant."

"What do you mean by being triumphant?"

"Well, doing what you like."

"To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain
things one likes is often very tiresome."

"Exactly," said Osmond with his quiet quickness. "As I intimated
just now, you'll be tired some day." He paused a moment and then
he went on: "I don't know whether I had better not wait till then
for something I want to say to you."

"Ah, I can't advise you without knowing what it is. But I'm
horrid when I'm tired," Isabel added with due inconsequence.

"I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes--that I can
believe, though I've never seen it. But I'm sure you're never
'cross.'"

"Not even when I lose my temper?"

"You don't lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful."
Osmond spoke with a noble earnestness. "They must be great
moments to see."

"If I could only find it now!" Isabel nervously cried.

"I'm not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I'm
speaking very seriously." He leaned forward, a hand on each knee;
for some moments he bent his eyes on the floor. "What I wish to
say to you," he went on at last, looking up, "is that I find I'm
in love with you."

She instantly rose. "Ah, keep that till I am tired!"

"Tired of hearing it from others?" He sat there raising his eyes
to her. "No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But
after all I must say it now." She had turned away, but in the
movement she had stopped herself and dropped her gaze upon him.
The two remained a while in this situation, exchanging a long look
--the large, conscious look of the critical hours of life. Then he
got up and came near her, deeply respectful, as if he were afraid
he had been too familiar. "I'm absolutely in love with you."

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