The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1

by Henry James

  CHAPTER VI

  Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination wasremarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mindthan most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a largerperception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that wastinged with the unfamiliar. It is true that among her contemporariesshe passed for a young woman of extraordinary profundity; for theseexcellent people never withheld their admiration from a reach ofintellect of which they themselves were not conscious, and spoke ofIsabel as a prodigy of learning, a creature reported to have read theclassic authors--in translations. Her paternal aunt, Mrs. Varian, oncespread the rumour that Isabel was writing a book--Mrs. Varian having areverence for books, and averred that the girl would distinguish herselfin print. Mrs. Varian thought highly of literature, for which sheentertained that esteem that is connected with a sense of privation.Her own large house, remarkable for its assortment of mosaic tables anddecorated ceilings, was unfurnished with a library, and in the way ofprinted volumes contained nothing but half a dozen novels in paper ona shelf in the apartment of one of the Miss Varians. Practically, Mrs.Varian's acquaintance with literature was confined to The New YorkInterviewer; as she very justly said, after you had read the Intervieweryou had lost all faith in culture. Her tendency, with this, was ratherto keep the Interviewer out of the way of her daughters; she wasdetermined to bring them up properly, and they read nothing at all. Herimpression with regard to Isabel's labours was quite illusory; the girlhad never attempted to write a book and had no desire for the laurelsof authorship. She had no talent for expression and too little of theconsciousness of genius; she only had a general idea that people wereright when they treated her as if she were rather superior. Whether orno she were superior, people were right in admiring her if they thoughther so; for it seemed to her often that her mind moved more quicklythan theirs, and this encouraged an impatience that might easily beconfounded with superiority. It may be affirmed without delay thatIsabel was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she oftensurveyed with complacency the field of her own nature; she was in thehabit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right;she treated herself to occasions of homage. Meanwhile her errors anddelusions were frequently such as a biographer interested in preservingthe dignity of his subject must shrink from specifying. Her thoughtswere a tangle of vague outlines which had never been corrected by thejudgement of people speaking with authority. In matters of opinionshe had had her own way, and it had led her into a thousand ridiculouszigzags. At moments she discovered she was grotesquely wrong, and thenshe treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this sheheld her head higher than ever again; for it was of no use, she had anunquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had a theory that itwas only under this provision life was worth living; that one shouldbe one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organisation (shecouldn't help knowing her organisation was fine), should move in a realmof light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefullychronic. It was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of one's selfas to cultivate doubt of one's best friend: one should try to be one'sown best friend and to give one's self, in this manner, distinguishedcompany. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which renderedher a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spenthalf her time in thinking of beauty and bravery and magnanimity; she hada fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, offree expansion, of irresistible action: she held it must be detestableto be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should neverdo anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them,her mere errors of feeling (the discovery always made her tremble as ifshe had escaped from a trap which might have caught her and smotheredher) that the chance of inflicting a sensible injury upon anotherperson, presented only as a contingency, caused her at moments to holdher breath. That always struck her as the worst thing that could happento her. On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty aboutthe things that were wrong. She had no love of their look, but whenshe fixed them hard she recognised them. It was wrong to be mean, to bejealous, to be false, to be cruel; she had seen very little of the evilof the world, but she had seen women who lied and who tried to hurteach other. Seeing such things had quickened her high spirit; it seemedindecent not to scorn them. Of course the danger of a high spirit wasthe danger of inconsistency--the danger of keeping up the flag after theplace has surrendered; a sort of behaviour so crooked as to be almosta dishonour to the flag. But Isabel, who knew little of the sorts ofartillery to which young women are exposed, flattered herself that suchcontradictions would never be noted in her own conduct. Her life shouldalways be in harmony with the most pleasing impression she shouldproduce; she would be what she appeared, and she would appear what shewas. Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she might find herselfsome day in a difficult position, so that she should have the pleasureof being as heroic as the occasion demanded. Altogether, with her meagreknowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once innocent anddogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulgent, her mixture ofcuriosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desireto look very well and to be if possible even better, her determinationto see, to try, to know, her combination of the delicate, desultory,flame-like spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: shewould be an easy victim of scientific criticism if she were not intendedto awaken on the reader's part an impulse more tender and more purelyexpectant.

  It was one of her theories that Isabel Archer was very fortunate inbeing independent, and that she ought to make some very enlightened useof that state. She never called it the state of solitude, much less ofsingleness; she thought such descriptions weak, and, besides, her sisterLily constantly urged her to come and abide. She had a friend whoseacquaintance she had made shortly before her father's death, who offeredso high an example of useful activity that Isabel always thought of heras a model. Henrietta Stackpole had the advantage of an admired ability;she was thoroughly launched in journalism, and her letters to theInterviewer, from Washington, Newport, the White Mountains and otherplaces, were universally quoted. Isabel pronounced them with confidence"ephemeral," but she esteemed the courage, energy and good-humour of thewriter, who, without parents and without property, had adopted threeof the children of an infirm and widowed sister and was paying theirschool-bills out of the proceeds of her literary labour. Henrietta wasin the van of progress and had clear-cut views on most subjects; hercherished desire had long been to come to Europe and write a series ofletters to the Interviewer from the radical point of view--an enterprisethe less difficult as she knew perfectly in advance what her opinionswould be and to how many objections most European institutions layopen. When she heard that Isabel was coming she wished to start at once;thinking, naturally, that it would be delightful the two should traveltogether. She had been obliged, however, to postpone this enterprise.She thought Isabel a glorious creature, and had spoken of her covertlyin some of her letters, though she never mentioned the fact to herfriend, who would not have taken pleasure in it and was not a regularstudent of the Interviewer. Henrietta, for Isabel, was chiefly a proofthat a woman might suffice to herself and be happy. Her resources wereof the obvious kind; but even if one had not the journalistic talent anda genius for guessing, as Henrietta said, what the public was going towant, one was not therefore to conclude that one had no vocation,no beneficent aptitude of any sort, and resign one's self to beingfrivolous and hollow. Isabel was stoutly determined not to be hollow. Ifone should wait with the right patience one would find some happy workto one's hand. Of course, among her theories, this young lady was notwithout a collection of views on the subject of marriage. The first onthe list was a conviction of the vulgarity of thinking too much of it.From lapsing into eagerness on this point she earnestly prayed she mightbe delivered; she held that a woman ought to be able to live to herself,in the absence of exceptional flimsiness, and that it
was perfectlypossible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarse-mindedperson of another sex. The girl's prayer was very sufficiently answered;something pure and proud that there was in her--something cold and dryan unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might have calledit--had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjecture on thearticle of possible husbands. Few of the men she saw seemed worth aruinous expenditure, and it made her smile to think that one of themshould present himself as an incentive to hope and a reward of patience.Deep in her soul--it was the deepest thing there--lay a belief that ifa certain light should dawn she could give herself completely; butthis image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive. Isabel'sthoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long; after alittle it ended in alarms. It often seemed to her that she thought toomuch about herself; you could have made her colour, any day in theyear, by calling her a rank egoist. She was always planning out herdevelopment, desiring her perfection, observing her progress. Her naturehad, in her conceit, a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion ofperfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers and lengthening vistas,which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercisein the open air, and that a visit to the recesses of one's spirit washarmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses. But she wasoften reminded that there were other gardens in the world than those ofher remarkable soul, and that there were moreover a great many placeswhich were not gardens at all--only dusky pestiferous tracts, plantedthick with ugliness and misery. In the current of that repaid curiosityon which she had lately been floating, which had conveyed her to thisbeautiful old England and might carry her much further still, she oftenchecked herself with the thought of the thousands of people who wereless happy than herself--a thought which for the moment made her fine,full consciousness appear a kind of immodesty. What should one do withthe misery of the world in a scheme of the agreeable for one's self? Itmust be confessed that this question never held her long. She was tooyoung, too impatient to live, too unacquainted with pain. She alwaysreturned to her theory that a young woman whom after all every onethought clever should begin by getting a general impression of life.This impression was necessary to prevent mistakes, and after it shouldbe secured she might make the unfortunate condition of others a subjectof special attention.

  England was a revelation to her, and she found herself as diverted as achild at a pantomime. In her infantine excursions to Europe she hadseen only the Continent, and seen it from the nursery window; Paris, notLondon, was her father's Mecca, and into many of his interests there hischildren had naturally not entered. The images of that time moreover hadgrown faint and remote, and the old-world quality in everything thatshe now saw had all the charm of strangeness. Her uncle's house seemed apicture made real; no refinement of the agreeable was lost uponIsabel; the rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a world andgratified a need. The large, low rooms, with brown ceilings and duskycorners, the deep embrasures and curious casements, the quiet light ondark, polished panels, the deep greenness outside, that seemed alwayspeeping in, the sense of well-ordered privacy in the centre of a"property"--a place where sounds were felicitously accidental, wherethe tread was muffed by the earth itself and in the thick mild air allfriction dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk--thesethings were much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste played aconsiderable part in her emotions. She formed a fast friendship with heruncle, and often sat by his chair when he had had it moved out to thelawn. He passed hours in the open air, sitting with folded hands likea placid, homely household god, a god of service, who had done his workand received his wages and was trying to grow used to weeks and monthsmade up only of off-days. Isabel amused him more than she suspected--theeffect she produced upon people was often different from what shesupposed--and he frequently gave himself the pleasure of making herchatter. It was by this term that he qualified her conversation, whichhad much of the "point" observable in that of the young ladies of hercountry, to whom the ear of the world is more directly presented than totheir sisters in other lands. Like the mass of American girls Isabel hadbeen encouraged to express herself; her remarks had been attendedto; she had been expected to have emotions and opinions. Many of heropinions had doubtless but a slender value, many of her emotions passedaway in the utterance; but they had left a trace in giving her the habitof seeming at least to feel and think, and in imparting moreover toher words when she was really moved that prompt vividness which so manypeople had regarded as a sign of superiority. Mr. Touchett used to thinkthat she reminded him of his wife when his wife was in her teens. It wasbecause she was fresh and natural and quick to understand, to speak--somany characteristics of her niece--that he had fallen in love with Mrs.Touchett. He never expressed this analogy to the girl herself, however;for if Mrs. Touchett had once been like Isabel, Isabel was not at alllike Mrs. Touchett. The old man was full of kindness for her; it was along time, as he said, since they had had any young life in the house;and our rustling, quickly-moving, clear-voiced heroine was as agreeableto his sense as the sound of flowing water. He wanted to do somethingfor her and wished she would ask it of him. She would ask nothing butquestions; it is true that of these she asked a quantity. Her uncle hada great fund of answers, though her pressure sometimes came in formsthat puzzled him. She questioned him immensely about England, about theBritish constitution, the English character, the state of politics,the manners and customs of the royal family, the peculiarities of thearistocracy, the way of living and thinking of his neighbours; and inbegging to be enlightened on these points she usually enquired whetherthey corresponded with the descriptions in the books. The old man alwayslooked at her a little with his fine dry smile while he smoothed downthe shawl spread across his legs.

  "The books?" he once said; "well, I don't know much about the books. Youmust ask Ralph about that. I've always ascertained for myself--got myinformation in the natural form. I never asked many questions even;I just kept quiet and took notice. Of course I've had very goodopportunities--better than what a young lady would naturally have. I'mof an inquisitive disposition, though you mightn't think it if you wereto watch me: however much you might watch me I should be watching youmore. I've been watching these people for upwards of thirty-five years,and I don't hesitate to say that I've acquired considerable information.It's a very fine country on the whole--finer perhaps than what we giveit credit for on the other side. Several improvements I should like tosee introduced; but the necessity of them doesn't seem to be generallyfelt as yet. When the necessity of a thing is generally felt theyusually manage to accomplish it; but they seem to feel prettycomfortable about waiting till then. I certainly feel more at home amongthem than I expected to when I first came over; I suppose it's becauseI've had a considerable degree of success. When you're successful younaturally feel more at home."

  "Do you suppose that if I'm successful I shall feel at home?" Isabelasked.

  "I should think it very probable, and you certainly will be successful.They like American young ladies very much over here; they show thema great deal of kindness. But you mustn't feel too much at home, youknow."

  "Oh, I'm by no means sure it will satisfy me," Isabel judiciallyemphasised. "I like the place very much, but I'm not sure I shall likethe people."

  "The people are very good people; especially if you like them."

  "I've no doubt they're good," Isabel rejoined; "but are they pleasantin society? They won't rob me nor beat me; but will they make themselvesagreeable to me? That's what I like people to do. I don't hesitate tosay so, because I always appreciate it. I don't believe they're verynice to girls; they're not nice to them in the novels."

  "I don't know about the novels," said Mr. Touchett. "I believe thenovels have a great deal but I don't suppose they're very accurate.We once had a lady who wrote novels staying here; she was a friendof Ralph's and he asked her down. She was very positive, quite up toeverything; but she was not the sort of person you could depend onfor evidence. Too free a
fancy--I suppose that was it. She afterwardspublished a work of fiction in which she was understood to have givena representation--something in the nature of a caricature, as you mightsay--of my unworthy self. I didn't read it, but Ralph just handed methe book with the principal passages marked. It was understood to bea description of my conversation American peculiarities, nasal twang,Yankee notions, stars and stripes. Well, it was not at all accurate;she couldn't have listened very attentively. I had no objection to hergiving a report of my conversation, if she liked but I didn't like theidea that she hadn't taken the trouble to listen to it. Of course I talklike an American--I can't talk like a Hottentot. However I talk, I'vemade them understand me pretty well over here. But I don't talk like theold gentleman in that lady's novel. He wasn't an American; we wouldn'thave him over there at any price. I just mention that fact to show youthat they're not always accurate. Of course, as I've no daughters,and as Mrs. Touchett resides in Florence, I haven't had much chanceto notice about the young ladies. It sometimes appears as if the youngwomen in the lower class were not very well treated; but I guess theirposition is better in the upper and even to some extent in the middle."

  "Gracious," Isabel exclaimed; "how many classes have they? About fifty,I suppose."

  "Well, I don't know that I ever counted them. I never took much noticeof the classes. That's the advantage of being an American here; youdon't belong to any class."

  "I hope so," said Isabel. "Imagine one's belonging to an English class!"

  "Well, I guess some of them are pretty comfortable--especially towardsthe top. But for me there are only two classes: the people I trust andthe people I don't. Of those two, my dear Isabel, you belong to thefirst."

  "I'm much obliged to you," said the girl quickly. Her way of takingcompliments seemed sometimes rather dry; she got rid of them as rapidlyas possible. But as regards this she was sometimes misjudged; she wasthought insensible to them, whereas in fact she was simply unwilling toshow how infinitely they pleased her. To show that was to show too much."I'm sure the English are very conventional," she added.

  "They've got everything pretty well fixed," Mr. Touchett admitted. "It'sall settled beforehand--they don't leave it to the last moment."

  "I don't like to have everything settled beforehand," said the girl. "Ilike more unexpectedness."

  Her uncle seemed amused at her distinctness of preference. "Well, it'ssettled beforehand that you'll have great success," he rejoined. "Isuppose you'll like that."

  "I shall not have success if they're too stupidly conventional. I'm notin the least stupidly conventional. I'm just the contrary. That's whatthey won't like."

  "No, no, you're all wrong," said the old man. "You can't tell whatthey'll like. They're very inconsistent; that's their principalinterest."

  "Ah well," said Isabel, standing before her uncle with her handsclasped about the belt of her black dress and looking up and down thelawn--"that will suit me perfectly!"