Henry James

“ Peter returned.
Biddy smiled at him. "I come every day. Anch'io son pittore! I encourage Nick awfully."
"It's a pity I'm not a martyr—she'd bravely perish with me," Nick said.
"You are—you're a martyr—when people say such odious things!" the girl cried. "They do say them. I've heard many more than I've repeated to you."
"It's you yourself then, indignant and loyal, who are the martyr," observed Peter, who wanted greatly to be kind to her.
"Oh I don't care!"—but she threw herself, flushed and charming, into a straight appeal to him. ”

“ Rooth's twaddle and muddle, her hypocrisy, her idiotic scruples—something she felt all need to belabour, to trample on. Miriam took it all as a bath, a baptism, with shuddering joy and gleeful splashes; staring, wondering, sometimes blushing and failing to follow, but not shrinking nor wounded; laughing, when convicted, at her own expense and feeling evidently that this at last was the high cold air of art, an initiation, a discipline that nothing could undo. Sherringham said he would see her home—he wanted to talk to her and she must walk away with him. ”

“ Miriam asked as she arranged her hat before the glass.
"Well, no one so good as you."
"That's a prospect!" the girl laughed—"for all the good you've got out of me!"
"You're no judge of that quantity," said Nick, "and even I can't measure it just yet. Have I been rather a bore and a brute? I can easily believe it; I haven't talked to you—I haven't amused you as I might. The truth is that taking people's likenesses is a very absorbing, inhuman occupation. You can't do much to them besides."
"Yes, it's a cruel honour to pay them." ”

“ Some of the objects exhibited by the distinguished artist, her early portraits, in lithograph or miniature, represented the costume and embodied the manner of a period so remote that Nick Dormer, as he glanced at them, felt a quickened curiosity to look at the woman who reconciled being alive to-day with having been alive so long ago. Peter Sherringham already knew how she managed this miracle, but every visit he paid her added to his amused, charmed sense that it was a miracle and that his extraordinary old friend had seen things he should never, never see. ”

“ Lady Agnes amplified as Nick's glance appeared for a moment to question her "we."
"Never, never!" Nick uttered these words perhaps a little mechanically, but the next minute he added as if suddenly moved to think what he could say that would give his mother most pleasure: "Of course his name has worked for me. Gone as he is he's still a living force." He felt a good deal of a hypocrite, but one didn't win such a seat every day in the year. Probably indeed he should never win another.
"He hears you, he watches you, he rejoices in you," Lady Agnes opined. ”

“ Don't you think art's necessary to the happiness, to the greatness of a people? Don't you think it's manly and honourable? Do you think a passion for it's a thing to be ashamed of? Don't you think the artist—the conscientious, the serious one—is as distinguished a member of society as any one else?"
Peter and Nick looked at each other and laughed at the way she had got up her subject, and Nick asked their kinsman if she didn't express it all in perfection. "I delight in general in artists, but I delight still more in their defenders," Peter made reply, perhaps a little meagrely, to Biddy. ”

“ Peter questioned with a vagueness that was pardonably exaggerated. "Do you mean your success?"
"I mean what you've so often been eloquent about," she returned with an indulgent shrug—"the way we simply stir people's souls. Ah there's where life can help us," she broke out with a change of tone, "there's where human relations and affections can help us; love and faith and joy and suffering and experience—I don't know what to call 'em! They suggest things, they light them up and sanctify them, as you may say; they make them appear worth doing." ”

“ Nick was always struck with the rare simplicity—it came out in his countenance—of one who had lived so long and seen so much of affairs that draw forth the passions and perversities of men. It often made [255] him say to himself that Mr. Carteret must have had many odd parts to have been able to achieve with his means so many things requiring cleverness. It was as if experience, though coming to him in abundance, had dealt with him so clean-handedly as to leave no stain, and had moreover never provoked him to any general reflexion. ”

“ Miss Rover was a little actress who played at Miriam's theatre, combining with an unusual aptitude for delicate comedy a less exceptional absence of rigour in private life. She was pretty and quick and brave, and had a fineness that Miriam professed herself already in a position to estimate as rare. She had no control of her inclinations, yet sometimes they were wholly laudable, like the devotion she had formed for her beautiful colleague, whom she admired not only as an ornament of the profession but as a being altogether of a more fortunate essence. ”

“ Peter concurred. "That makes her touching to me—it adds to the many good reasons for which one may want to help her. She's tackling a big job, and tackling it by herself; throwing herself upon the world in good faith and dealing with it as she can; meeting alone, in her youth, her beauty, her generosity, all the embarrassments of notoriety and all the difficulties of a profession of which, if one half's what's called brilliant the other's frankly odious."
"She has great courage, but you speak of her as solitary with such a lot of us all round her?" Nash candidly inquired. ”

“ How could the career—his career—speak to a nature that had glimpses as vivid as they were crude of such a different range and for which success meant quite another sauce to the dish? Would the brilliancy of marrying Peter Sherringham be such a [276] bribe to relinquishment? How could he think so without pretensions of the sort he pretended exactly not to flaunt?—how could he put himself forward as so high a prize? Relinquishment of the opportunity to exercise a rare talent was not, in the nature of things, an easy effort to a young lady who was herself presumptuous as well as ambitious. ”

“ Where there was such a complexity of revolt it would have been difficult to pick out particular wrongs; but Nick could see that, to his mother's imagination, he was most a fool for not having kept his relations with the actress, whatever they were, better from Julia's knowledge. He remained indeed freshly surprised at the ardour with which she had rested her hopes on Julia. Julia was certainly a combination—she was accomplished, she was a sort of leading woman and she was rich; but after all—putting aside what she might be to a man in love with her—she was not the keystone of the universe. ”

“ It was a friendly establishment and an unfashionable quarter, far away from the caravan-series; there were the usual little tables and chairs on the quay, the muslin curtains behind the glazed front, the general sense of sawdust and of drippings of watery beer. The place was subdued to stillness, but not extinguished, by the lateness of the hour; no vehicles passed, only now and then a light Parisian foot. Beyond the parapet they could hear the flow of the Seine. Nick Dormer said it made him think of the old Paris, of the great Revolution, of Madame Roland, quoi! ”

“ Everything's dreary but what you can do for us. Everything's odious, down to living in a hole with one's girls who don't marry. Grace is impossible—I don't know what's the matter with her; no one will look at her, and she's so conceited with it—sometimes I feel as if I could beat her! And Biddy will never marry, and we're three dismal women in a filthy house, and what are three dismal women, more or less, in London?"
So with an unexpected rage of self-exposure she poured out her disappointments and troubles, tore away the veil from her sadness and soreness. ”

“ She wanted to do comedy now—to do the comedy of London life. She was delighted to find that seeing more of the world suggested things to her; they came straight from the fact, from nature, if you could call it nature; she was thus convinced more than ever that the artist ought to live so as to get on with his business, gathering ideas and lights from experience—ought to welcome any experience that would give him lights. But work of course was experience, and everything in one's life that was good was work. ”

“ Nick asked for further amusement.
"That's always the charge against a personal manner: if you've any at all people think you've too much. Perhaps, perhaps—who can say? The lurking unexpressed is infinite, and affectation must have begun, long ago, with the first act of reflective expression—the substitution of the few placed articulate words for the cry or the thump or the hug. Of course one isn't perfect; but that's the delightful thing about art, that there's always more to learn and more to do; it grows bigger the more one uses it and meets more questions the more they come up. ”

“ To do the most when there would be the least to be got by it was to be most in the spirit of high production. One thing at any rate was certain, Nick reflected: nothing on earth would induce him to change back again—not even if this twilight of the soul should last for the rest of his days. He hardened himself in his posture with a good conscience which, had they had a glimpse of it, would have made him still more diverting to those who already thought him so; and now, by a happy chance, Miriam suddenly supplied the bridge correcting the gap in his continuity. ”

“ Sherringham, who was not a diplomatist for nothing, who had his reasons for steering straight and wished neither to deprive the British public of a rising star nor to exchange his actual situation for that of a yoked impresario, blessed the beneficence, the salubrity, the pure exorcism of art. At the same time, rather inconsistently and feeling that he had a completer vision than before of that oddest of animals the artist who happens to have been born a woman, he felt warned against a serious connexion—he made a great point of the "serious"—with so slippery and ticklish a creature. ”

“ That was one's penalty with persons whose main gift was for talk, however inspiring; talk engendered a sense of sameness much sooner than action. The things a man did were necessarily more different from each other than the things he said, even if he went in for surprising you. Nick felt Nash could never surprise him any more save by mere plain perpetration.
He talked of his host's future, talked of Miriam Rooth and of Peter Sherringham, whom he had seen at that young woman's and whom he described as in a predicament delightful to behold. ”

“ Upon his honour, as he said, she was as clever and "specious" a woman—this was his odd expression—as he had ever seen in his life. The merit of her behaviour on that occasion, as Nick knew, was that she had not been specious at her lover's expense: she had breathed no doubt of his public purpose and had had the strange grace to say that in truth she was older than he, so that it was only fair to give his affections time to mature. ”

“ Peter returned.
"My dear fellow, I do. What sort of a dunce do you take me for? I didn't miss a vibration of my voice, a fold of my robe."
"Well, I didn't see you troubling about it," Peter handsomely insisted.
"No one ever will. Do you think I'd ever show it?"
"Ars celare artem," Basil Dashwood jocosely dropped.
"You must first have the art to hide," said Sherringham, wondering a little why Miriam didn't introduce her young friend to him. She was, however, both then and later perfectly neglectful of such cares, never thinking, never minding how other people got on together. ”

“ Don't answer for her, don't attempt that," said Peter. "You can do much better."
"Do you think you can?" smiled Mrs. Rooth.
"I don't want to; I only want to let it alone. She's an artist; you must give her her head," the young man pursued. "You must always give an artist his head."
"But I've known great ladies who were artists. In English society there's always a field."
"Don't talk to me of English society! Thank goodness, in the first place, I don't live in it. Do you want her to give up her genius?" ”

“ It greeted Nick Dormer and Gabriel Nash with a kindness the long centuries had done nothing to dim. The lamplight of the old city washed its foundations, but the towers and buttresses, the arches, the galleries, the statues, the vast rose-window, the large full composition, seemed to grow clearer while they climbed higher, as if they had a conscious benevolent answer for the upward gaze of men. ”

“ The fading afternoon was exquisitely pure; the place was empty; he heard nothing but the cries of several children, which sounded sweet, who were playing on the flatness of the very old tombs. He knew this would inevitably be one of the topics at dinner, the restoration of the abbey; it would give rise to a considerable deal of orderly debate. Lord Bottomley, oddly enough, would probably oppose the expensive project, but on grounds that would be characteristic of him even if the attitude were not. Nick's nerves always knew on this spot what it was to be soothed ”

“ This place is an immense stimulus to me; it refreshes me, excites me—it's such an exhibition of artistic life. It's full of ideas, full of refinements; it gives one such an impression of artistic experience. They try everything, they feel everything. While you were looking at the murders, apparently, I observed an immense deal of curious and interesting work. There are too many of them, poor devils; so many who must make their way, who must attract attention. Some of them can only taper fort, stand on their heads, turn somersaults or commit deeds of violence, to make people notice them. ”

“ I'm not afraid of putting all life into mine, and without unduly squeezing it. I'm not afraid of putting in honour and courage and charity—without spoiling them: on the contrary I shall only do them good. People may not read you at sight, may not like you, but there's a chance they'll come round; and the only way to court the chance is to keep it up—always to keep it up. That's what I do, my dear man—if you don't think I've perseverance. If some one's touched here and there, if you give a little impression of truth and charm, that's your reward ”

“ Madame Carré added.
"My mother will be happier chez nous" said Miriam, throwing her arms straight up and giving them a noble tragic movement.
"You won't be in the least in the right path till your mother's in despair."
"Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London," Sherringham patiently laughed.
"Dear Mrs. Rooth—she's great fun," Mr. Dashwood as imperturbably dropped.
Miriam transferred the dark weight of her gaze to him as if she were practising. "You won't upset her, at any rate." Then she stood with her beautiful and fatal mask before her hostess. "I want to do the modern too. ”

“ She carried his imagination off into infinite spaces, whereas she carried Dashwood's only into the box-office and the revival of plays that were barbarously bad. The worst was its being so open to him to see that a sharp young man really in the business might know better than he. Another vessel of superior knowledge—he talked, that is, as if he knew better than any one—was Gabriel Nash, who lacked no leisure for hatefully haunting Balaklava Place, or in other words appeared to enjoy the same command of his time as Peter Sherringham. ”

“ At the same time there was something richly rare in such a relation between the subject and the artist, and Nick was disposed to go on till he should have to stop for pity or for shame. He caught eventually a glimmer of the truth underlying the strangeness, guessed that what upset his friend was simply the reversal, in such a combination, of his usual terms of intercourse. He was so accustomed to living upon irony and the interpretation of things that it was new to him to be himself interpreted and—as a gentleman who sits for his portrait is always liable to be—interpreted all ironically. ”

“ She's very noble."
"Yes, that's the pity of it," said Nash. "She's a big more or less directed force, and I quite admit that she'll do for a while a lot of good. She'll have brightened up the world for a great many people—have brought the ideal nearer to them and held it fast for an hour with its feet on earth and its great wings trembling. That's always something, for blest is he who has dropped even the smallest coin into the little iron box that contains the precious savings of mankind. Miriam will doubtless have dropped a big gold-piece. ”

“ Nick demanded with a slight accent of surprise.
Mr. Nash indulged his wonder. "My dear Dormer, do you remember the old complaint I used to make of you? You had formulas that were like walking in one's hat. One may see something in a case and one may not."
"Upon my word," said Nick, "I don't know any one who was fonder of a generalisation than you. You turned them off as the man at the street-corner distributes hand-bills." ”

“ Lady Agnes was the proprietor of innumerable articles of furniture, relics and survivals of her former greatness, and moved about the world with a train of heterogeneous baggage; so that her quiet overflow into the spaciousness of Broadwood had had all the luxury of a final subsidence. What Nick had to propose to her now was a dreadful combination, a relapse into the conditions she most hated—seaside lodgings, bald storehouses in the Marylebone Road, little London rooms crammed with objects that caught the dirt and made them stuffy. ”

“ Nash demanded. "Don't forget that the insufferable side of her life will be just the side she'll thrive on. You can't eat your cake and have it, and you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs. You can't at once sit by the fire and parade about the world, and you can't take all chances without having some adventures. You can't be a great actress without the luxury of nerves. Without a plentiful supply—or without the right ones—you'll only be second fiddle. ”

“ What he wanted was something that was not in that thick prospect. What was the meaning of this sudden, offensive importunity of "art," this senseless, mocking catch, like some irritating chorus of conspirators in a bad opera, in which her voice was so incongruously conjoined with Nick's and in which Biddy's sweet little pipe had not scrupled still more bewilderingly to mingle? Art might yield to damnation: what commission after all had he ever given it to better him or bother him? ”

“ Would you say such things if you didn't know the depths of my good nature?"
"Your good nature all comes back to that," said Sherringham. "It's an abyss of ruin—for others. You've no respect. I'm speaking of the artistic character—in the direction and in the plentitude in which you have it. It's unscrupulous, nervous, capricious, wanton."
"I don't know about respect. One can be good," Miriam mused and reasoned.
"It doesn't matter so long as one's powerful," he returned. "We can't have everything, and surely we ought to understand that we must pay for things. ”

“ Sherringham cried. "Your own sophistry's infinitely worse than mine. I should like to see you without it for the fiftieth part of a second. What I ask you to give up is the dusty boards of the play-house and the flaring footlights, but not the very essence of your being. Your 'gift,' your genius, is yourself, and it's because it's yourself that I yearn for you. ”

“ Nash went on, "to feel it and understand it, to accept it, adopt it, embrace it—that's conduct, that's life."
"And suppose one's a brute or an ass, where's the efficacy?"
"In one's very want of intelligence. In such cases one's out of it—the question doesn't exist; one simply becomes a part of the duty of others. The brute, the ass," Nick's visitor developed, "neither feels nor understands, nor accepts nor adopts. Those fine processes in themselves classify us. They educate, they exalt, they preserve; so that to profit by them we must be as perceptive as we can. ”