by Henry James
“Of course one can’t like everyone,” said Lady Pimlico.
“It depends upon one’s society,” Mrs. Westgate rejoined.
The Duchess meanwhile had addressed herself to Bessie. “My son tells me the young ladies in America are so clever.”
“I am glad they made so good an impression on him,” said Bessie, smiling.
The Duchess was not smiling; her large fresh face was very tranquil. “He is very susceptible,” she said. “He thinks everyone clever, and sometimes they are.”
“Sometimes,” Bessie assented, smiling still.
The duchess looked at her a little and then went on; “Lambeth is very susceptible, but he is very volatile, too.”
“Volatile?” asked Bessie.
“He is very inconstant. It won’t do to depend on him.”
“Ah,” said Bessie, “I don’t recognize that description. We have depended on him greatly—my sister and I—and he has never disappointed us.”
“He will disappoint you yet,” said the duchess.
Bessie gave a little laugh, as if she were amused at the duchess’s persistency. “I suppose it will depend on what we expect of him.”
“The less you expect, the better,” Lord Lambeth’s mother declared.
“Well,” said Bessie, “we expect nothing unreasonable.”
The duchess for a moment was silent, though she appeared to have more to say. “Lambeth says he has seen so much of you,” she presently began.
“He has been to see us very often; he has been very kind,” said Bessie Alden.
“I daresay you are used to that. I am told there is a great deal of that in America.”
“A great deal of kindness?” the young girl inquired, smiling.
“Is that what you call it? I know you have different expressions.”
“We certainly don’t always understand each other,” said Mrs. Westgate, the termination of whose interview with Lady Pimlico allowed her to give her attention to their elder visitor.
“I am speaking of the young men calling so much upon the young ladies,” the duchess explained.
“But surely in England,” said Mrs. Westgate, “the young ladies don’t call upon the young men?”
“Some of them do—almost!” Lady Pimlico declared. “What the young men are a great parti.”
“Bessie, you must make a note of that,” said Mrs. Westgate. “My sister,” she added, “is a model traveler. She writes down all the curious facts she hears in a little book she keeps for the purpose.”
The duchess was a little flushed; she looked all about the room, while her daughter turned to Bessie. “My brother told us you were wonderfully clever,” said Lady Pimlico.
“He should have said my sister,” Bessie answered—”when she says such things as that.”
“Shall you be long at Branches?” the duchess asked, abruptly, of the young girl.
“Lord Lambeth has asked us for three days,” said Bessie.
“I shall go,” the duchess declared, “and my daughter, too.”
“That will be charming!” Bessie rejoined.
“Delightful!” murmured Mrs. Westgate.
“I shall expect to see a great deal of you,” the duchess continued. “When I go to Branches I monopolize my son’s guests.”
“They must be most happy,” said Mrs. Westgate very graciously.
“I want immensely to see it—to see the castle,” said Bessie to the duchess. “I have never seen one—in England, at least; and you know we have none in America.”
“Ah, you are fond of castles?” inquired her Grace.
“Immensely!” replied the young girl. “It has been the dream of my life to live in one.”
The duchess looked at her a moment, as if she hardly knew how to take this assurance, which, from her Grace’s point of view, was either very artless or very audacious. “Well,” she said, rising, “I will show you Branches myself.” And upon this the two great ladies took their departure.
“What did they mean by it?” asked Mrs. Westgate, when they were gone.
“They meant to be polite,” said Bessie, “because we are going to meet them.”
“It is too late to be polite,” Mrs. Westgate replied almost grimly. “They meant to overawe us by their fine manners and their grandeur, and to make you lacher prise.”
“Lacher prise? What strange things you say!” murmured Bessie Alden.
“They meant to snub us, so that we shouldn’t dare to go to Branches,” Mrs. Westgate continued.
“On the contrary,” said Bessie, “the duchess offered to show me the place herself.”
“Yes, you may depend upon it she won’t let you out of her sight. She will show you the place from morning till night.”
“You have a theory for everything,” said Bessie.
“And you apparently have none for anything.”
“I saw no attempt to ‘overawe’ us,” said the young girl. “Their manners were not fine.”
“They were not even good!” Mrs. Westgate declared.
Bessie was silent a while, but in a few moments she observed that she had a very good theory. “They came to look at me,” she said, as if this had been a very ingenious hypothesis. Mrs. Westgate did it justice; she greeted it with a smile and pronounced it most brilliant, while, in reality, she felt that the young girl’s skepticism, or her charity, or, as she had sometimes called it appropriately, her idealism, was proof against irony. Bessie, however, remained meditative all the rest of that day and well on into the morrow.
On the morrow, before lunch, Mrs. Westgate had occasion to go out for an hour, and left her sister writing a letter. When she came back she met Lord Lambeth at the door of the hotel, coming away. She thought he looked slightly embarrassed; he was certainly very grave. “I am sorry to have missed you. Won’t you come back?” she asked.
“No,” said the young man, “I can’t. I have seen your sister. I can never come back.” Then he looked at her a moment and took her hand. “Goodbye, Mrs. Westgate,” he said. “You have been very kind to me.” And with what she thought a strange, sad look in his handsome young face, he turned away.
She went in, and she found Bessie still writing her letter; that is, Mrs. Westgate perceived she was sitting at the table with the pen in her hand and not writing. “Lord Lambeth has been here,” said the elder lady at last.
Then Bessie got up and showed her a pale, serious face. She bent this face upon her sister for some time, confessing silently and a little pleading. “I told him,” she said at last, “that we could not go to Branches.”
Mrs. Westgate displayed just a spark of irritation. “He might have waited,” she said with a smile, “till one had seen the castle.” Later, an hour afterward, she said, “Dear Bessie, I wish you might have accepted him.”
“I couldn’t,” said Bessie gently.
“He is an excellent fellow,” said Mrs. Westgate.
“I couldn’t,” Bessie repeated.
“If it is only,” her sister added, “because those women will think that they succeeded—that they paralyzed us!”
Bessie Alden turned away; but presently she added, “They were interesting; I should have liked to see them again.”
“So should I!” cried Mrs. Westgate significantly.
“And I should have liked to see the castle,” said Bessie. “But now we must leave England,” she added.
Her sister looked at her. “You will not wait to go to the National Gallery?”
“Not now.”
“Nor to Canterbury Cathedral?”
Bessie reflected a moment. “We can stop there on our way to Paris,” she said.
Lord Lambeth did not tell Percy Beaumont that the contingency he was not prepared at all to like had occurred; but Percy Beaumont, on hearing that the two ladies had left London, wondered with some intensity what had happened; wondered, that is, until the Duchess of Bayswater came a little to his assistance. The two ladies went to Paris, and Mrs. Westgate beguiled the j
ourney to that city by repeating several times— “That’s what I regret; they will think they petrified us.” But Bessie Alden seemed to regret nothing.
Italian Hours
PREFACE
The chapters of which this volume is composed have with few exceptions already been collected, and were then associated with others commemorative of other impressions of (no very extensive) excursions and wanderings. The notes on various visits to Italy are here for the first time exclusively placed together, and as they largely refer to quite other days than these—the date affixed to each paper sufficiently indicating this—I have introduced a few passages that speak for a later and in some cases a frequently repeated vision of the places and scenes in question. I have not hesitated to amend my text, expressively, wherever it seemed urgently to ask for this, though I have not pretended to add the element of information or the weight of curious and critical insistence to a brief record of light inquiries and conclusions. The fond appeal of the observer concerned is all to aspects and appearances—above all to the interesting face of things as it mainly used to be.
H. J.
VENICE
It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything to it. Venice has been painted and described many thousands of times, and of all the cities of the world is the easiest to visit without going there. Open the first book and you will find a rhapsody about it; step into the first picture-dealer’s and you will find three or four high-coloured “views” of it. There is notoriously nothing more to be said on the subject. Every one has been there, and every one has brought back a collection of photographs. There is as little mystery about the Grand Canal as about our local thoroughfare, and the name of St. Mark is as familiar as the postman’s ring. It is not forbidden, however, to speak of familiar things, and I hold that for the true Venice- lover Venice is always in order. There is nothing new to be said about her certainly, but the old is better than any novelty. It would be a sad day indeed when there should be something new to say. I write these lines with the full consciousness of having no information whatever to offer. I do not pretend to enlighten the reader; I pretend only to give a fillip to his memory; and I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
I
Mr. Ruskin has given it up, that is very true; but only after extracting half a lifetime of pleasure and an immeasurable quantity of fame from it. We all may do the same, after it has served our turn, which it probably will not cease to do for many a year to come. Meantime it is Mr. Ruskin who beyond anyone helps us to enjoy. He has indeed lately produced several aids to depression in the shape of certain little humorous—ill-humorous— pamphlets (the series of St. Mark’s Rest) which embody his latest reflections on the subject of our city and describe the latest atrocities perpetrated there. These latter are numerous and deeply to be deplored; but to admit that they have spoiled Venice would be to admit that Venice may be spoiled—an admission pregnant, as it seems to us, with disloyalty. Fortunately one reacts against the Ruskinian contagion, and one hour of the lagoon is worth a hundred pages of demoralised prose. This queer late-coming prose of Mr. Ruskin (including the revised and condensed issue of the Stones of Venice, only one little volume of which has been published, or perhaps ever will be) is all to be read, though much of it appears addressed to children of tender age. It is pitched in the nursery-key, and might be supposed to emanate from an angry governess. It is, however, all suggestive, and much of it is delightfully just. There is an inconceivable want of form in it, though the author has spent his life in laying down the principles of form and scolding people for departing from them; but it throbs and flashes with the love of his subject—a love disconcerted and abjured, but which has still much of the force of inspiration. Among the many strange things that have befallen Venice, she has had the good fortune to become the object of a passion to a man of splendid genius, who has made her his own and in doing so has made her the world’s. There is no better reading at Venice therefore, as I say, than Ruskin, for every true Venice-lover can separate the wheat from the chaff. The narrow theological spirit, the moralism à tout propos, the queer provincialities and pruderies, are mere wild weeds in a mountain of flowers. One may doubtless be very happy in Venice without reading at all—without criticising or analysing or thinking a strenuous thought. It is a city in which, I suspect, there is very little strenuous thinking, and yet it is a city in which there must be almost as much happiness as misery. The misery of Venice stands there for all the world to see; it is part of the spectacle—a thoroughgoing devotee of local colour might consistently say it is part of the pleasure. The Venetian people have little to call their own—little more than the bare privilege of leading their lives in the most beautiful of towns. Their habitations are decayed; their taxes heavy; their pockets light; their opportunities few. One receives an impression, however, that life presents itself to them with attractions not accounted for in this meagre train of advantages, and that they are on better terms with it than many people who have made a better bargain. They lie in the sunshine; they dabble in the sea; they wear bright rags; they fall into attitudes and harmonies; they assist at an eternal conversazione. It is not easy to say that one would have them other than they are, and it certainly would make an immense difference should they be better fed. The number of persons in Venice who evidently never have enough to eat is painfully large; but it would be more painful if we did not equally perceive that the rich Venetian temperament may bloom upon a dog’s allowance. Nature has been kind to it, and sunshine and leisure and conversation and beautiful views form the greater part of its sustenance. It takes a great deal to make a successful American, but to make a happy Venetian takes only a handful of quick sensibility. The Italian people have at once the good and the evil fortune to be conscious of few wants; so that if the civilisation of a society is measured by the number of its needs, as seems to be the common opinion to-day, it is to be feared that the children of the lagoon would make but a poor figure in a set of comparative tables. Not their misery, doubtless, but the way they elude their misery, is what pleases the sentimental tourist, who is gratified by the sight of a beautiful race that lives by the aid of its imagination. The way to enjoy Venice is to follow the example of these people and make the most of simple pleasures. Almost all the pleasures of the place are simple; this may be maintained even under the imputation of ingenious paradox. There is no simpler pleasure than looking at a fine Titian, unless it be looking at a fine Tintoret or strolling into St. Mark’s,—abominable the way one falls into the habit,—and resting one’s light-wearied eyes upon the windowless gloom; or than floating in a gondola or than hanging over a balcony or than taking one’s coffee at Florian’s. It is of such superficial pastimes that a Venetian day is composed, and the pleasure of the matter is in the emotions to which they minister. These are fortunately of the finest— otherwise Venice would be insufferably dull. Reading Ruskin is good; reading the old records is perhaps better; but the best thing of all is simply staying on. The only way to care for Venice as she deserves it is to give her a chance to touch you often—to linger and remain and return.
II
The danger is that you will not linger enough—a danger of which the author of these lines had known something. It is possible to dislike Venice, and to entertain the sentiment in a responsible and intelligent manner. There are travellers who think the place odious, and those who are not of this opinion often find themselves wishing that the others were only more numerous. The sentimental tourist’s sole quarrel with his Venice is that he has too many competitors there. He likes to be alone; to be original; to have (to himself, at least) the air of making discoveries. The Venice of to-day is a vast museum where the little wicket that admits you is perpetually turning and creaking, and you march through the institution with a herd of fellow-gazers. There is nothing left to discover or describe, and originality of attitude is c
ompletely impossible. This is often very annoying; you can only turn your back on your impertinent playfellow and curse his want of delicacy. But this is not the fault of Venice; it is the fault of the rest of the world. The fault of Venice is that, though she is easy to admire, she is not so easy to live with as you count living in other places. After you have stayed a week and the bloom of novelty has rubbed off you wonder if you can accommodate yourself to the peculiar conditions. Your old habits become impracticable and you find yourself obliged to form new ones of an undesirable and unprofitable character. You are tired of your gondola (or you think you are) and you have seen all the principal pictures and heard the names of the palaces announced a dozen times by your gondolier, who brings them out almost as impressively as if he were an English butler bawling titles into a drawing-room. You have walked several hundred times round the Piazza and bought several bushels of photographs. You have visited the antiquity mongers whose horrible sign-boards dishonour some of the grandest vistas in the Grand Canal; you have tried the opera and found it very bad; you have bathed at the Lido and found the water flat. You have begun to have a shipboard-feeling—to regard the Piazza as an enormous saloon and the Riva degli Schiavoni as a promenade-deck. You are obstructed and encaged; your desire for space is unsatisfied; you miss your usual exercise. You try to take a walk and you fail, and meantime, as I say, you have come to regard your gondola as a sort of magnified baby’s cradle. You have no desire to be rocked to sleep, though you are sufficiently kept awake by the irritation produced, as you gaze across the shallow lagoon, by the attitude of the perpetual gondolier, with his turned-out toes, his protruded chin, his absurdly unscientific stroke. The canals have a horrible smell, and the everlasting Piazza, where you have looked repeatedly at every article in every shop-window and found them all rubbish, where the young Venetians who sell bead bracelets and “panoramas” are perpetually thrusting their wares at you, where the same tightly-buttoned officers are for ever sucking the same black weeds, at the same empty tables, in front of the same cafés—the Piazza, as I say, has resolved itself into a magnificent tread-mill. This is the state of mind of those shallow inquirers who find Venice all very well for a week; and if in such a state of mind you take your departure you act with fatal rashness. The loss is your own, moreover; it is not—with all deference to your personal attractions—that of your companions who remain behind; for though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors. The conditions are peculiar, but your intolerance of them evaporates before it has had time to become a prejudice. When you have called for the bill to go, pay it and remain, and you will find on the morrow that you are deeply attached to Venice. It is by living there from day to day that you feel the fulness of her charm; that you invite her exquisite influence to sink into your spirit. The creature varies like a nervous woman, whom you know only when you know all the aspects of her beauty. She has high spirits or low, she is pale or red, grey or pink, cold or warm, fresh or wan, according to the weather or the hour. She is always interesting and almost always sad; but she has a thousand occasional graces and is always liable to happy accidents. You become extraordinarily fond of these things; you count upon them; they make part of your life. Tenderly fond you become; there is something indefinable in those depths of personal acquaintance that gradually establish themselves. The place seems to personify itself, to become human and sentient and conscious of your affection. You desire to embrace it, to caress it, to possess it; and finally a soft sense of possession grows up and your visit becomes a perpetual love-affair. It is very true that if you go, as the author of these lines on a certain occasion went, about the middle of March, a certain amount of disappointment is possible. He had paid no visit for several years, and in the interval the beautiful and helpless city had suffered an increase of injury. The barbarians are in full possession and you tremble for what they may do. You are reminded from the moment of your arrival that Venice scarcely exists any more as a city at all; that she exists only as a battered peep- show and bazaar. There was a horde of savage Germans encamped in the Piazza, and they filled the Ducal Palace and the Academy with their uproar. The English and Americans came a little later. They came in good time, with a great many French, who were discreet enough to make very long repasts at the Caffè Quadri, during which they were out of the way. The months of April and May of the year 1881 were not, as a general thing, a favourable season for visiting the Ducal Palace and the Academy. The
