Thanks to Henry James--on whom be peace--I am a man without a trade.
One by one he used to appropriate my most precious models until I came
to await each new book with a curiosity which no disinterested reader
could imagine. A surprising number of his so-called creations--how
little did he create them only he and I could tell!--I knew long before
knowing him. Roderick Hudson, for instance, I met at a villa in the
Euganean Hills, and regarded as my peculiar prey, in days before the
precipice. And, indeed, he has not gone over it yet; but it is only a
question of time. The Princess Casamassima, too, is an old friend of
mine who oscillates between Paris and Constantinople. She is shortly
to be married, I hear, and that is a turn unkinder than any Mr. James
has done me. Then there is Osmond. Often as I have seen him, though, he
would probably tell you that he dared say but didn’t really recollect.
They will never admit that they are fathomable, those people. As for
Madame Merle, I believe I have met her once only. Christopher Newman,
however, and the Baroness Münster, and Gordon Wright, and poor little
Maisie--But I might go on indefinitely, picking out persons of my
acquaintance whom Mr. James in some unaccountable way discovered first.
Still, in spite of this purely accidental disadvantage under which I
suffer, it must be said that the printed fortunes of these friends of
mine afford me, in many cases, a pleasure superior to that of actual
intercourse. I have to confess, too, that Mr. James has not seldom
lent me the key to mysteries of character which would have remained
inscrutable but for his elucidation. It has even happened, furthermore,
that an introduction from him has been so complete that when later I
came to meet the person in real life it was like being at a play which
one has seen before. I knew in advance exactly what to expect.
A cognate case was my encounter with Henrietta Stackpole, the spirited
journalist in “The Portrait of a Lady.” As I did not recognise her
at first sight, it is quite possible that the reader may fail to do
so. Indeed, some to whom I tell the story roundly declare they do not
believe a word of it. I can only insist that it happened years and
years ago, at a far less sophisticated period of our history; that the
name on the card was unmistakable; and that Henrietta was a caprice,
if you will, but a perfectly credible one, of a rapid and uneven
civilisation.
My second introduction to her came about in this wise. I was staying
at the time in Venice--a city in which it has been my good fortune to
spend much of my life and in which I would count it perfect happiness
to spend the whole. A prevalence of rainy _scirocco_ had for two or
three days diminished the enchantments of the summer lagoon. It was
therefore natural, on the morning in question, that I should have
gone unconsciously to that place which is always aglow when the world
is grey, which is always warm when the wind is cold, which is always
cool when the sun is hot--the miraculous church of St. Mark’s. There I
established myself at the base of my favourite pier and proceeded to
the familiar enjoyment of sensations which this is not the place to
describe.
Presently there crossed my line of vision a lady. This was not in
itself a phenomenon so extraordinary. St. Mark’s, like other churches,
usually contains more women than men; in the course of a year I doubt
not that more Americans enter it than Italians; and of American
travellers, young women--to use the phrase in its most generous
sense--vastly outnumber persons of other descriptions. Indeed, it is
a tradition implanted in the European mind only more ineradicably by
the doughboys of 1918 that ours is a land of Amazons, whence the few
indispensable males are seldom allowed to escape. There crossed my line
of vision, then, a damsel of my own nationality. A certain peculiarity
attached to her from the fact that she carried no Baedeker. Nor did she
appear to have ties with any person or group of persons provided with a
copy of that useful work. What particularly attracted my attention to
her, however, was a large silver ornament which she bore on a _revers_
of her tailor-made costume. It represented--so far as I could make
out--a human head and bust, supported in heraldic and highly decorative
manner by fluttering streamers and extended wings. In those distant
days there was no cavalry of the clouds, to suggest a winged admirer
in the Air Service. So, knowing that my countrywomen are insatiable
collectors of the curious and the antique, I wondered if this young
lady had picked up in the _Spadaria_ some quaint bit of chasing and had
adopted this means of transporting it to her hotel.
As if to satisfy my curiosity, the young person obligingly proceeded
to seat herself near me on the bench at the foot of the pier. I was
thus enabled to devote, at closer range, a covert examination to her
treasure. The human representation I accordingly discovered to be
that of Col. William Jennings Bryan, as set forth by a legend on the
fluttering streamers, which contained further expressions with regard
to free silver and crosses of gold. I could not easily decipher them
without appearing to transcend the bounds of delicacy.
The completeness of my disillusionment, and the fact that a young and
measurably attractive woman should prefer ornaments of free silver to
crosses of gold--for which latter I have an especial fancy--led me to
consider my companion with more attention than it might perhaps be
decorous for a stranger to betray. Her attire was that of a well-to-do
person, and she might have passed for one of good taste but for the
ornament to which I have referred. That she was of alert mind was
evident from the incisive way in which she looked about and then used
her pencil upon a small pad, as one making a sketch. I must confess
that I had some curiosity to see how St. Mark’s would look to a virgin
of political mind, and I was so rude as to let my eye rest for a moment
upon her paper. To my surprise I discovered that she was not sketching
at all--or that, if she did so, it was with words, and in some dialect
to me perfectly unintelligible. The characters with which she rapidly
covered her pad resembled those of the Arabic more nearly than anything
else with which I was acquainted, unless they had about them something
of Scandinavian runes. Altogether I was completely mystified. For
whatever traits may distinguish the American girl upon her travels,
linguistic facility is not one of them.
As we sat thus in uncommunicative companionship, there approached us
that familiar genius of St. Mark’s, the blue and ancient sacristan who
rattles the collection box. Me he knew of old as a wanton gentleman
much given to passing half hours in the golden church at the side of
young and otherwise unprotected ladies. At least I am sure he can
have attributed to me no motive other than that which was likely to
bring so many whispering couples of his own nationality. Accordingly
he approached us with a smile of recognition and held out toward the
person at my side one of those cards with which he is so inexhaustibly
provided, representing the Nicopeian Madonna. The admirer of Colonel
Bryan looked dubiously upon this offering. Finally, however, she
was won over by the old man’s irresistible smile and accepted the
papistical emblem. No sooner had she done so than the sacristan, as is
his wont, produced the collection box, which from force of habit he had
kept behind him. At this the young woman tried to hand back the card.
But the old man was occupied in passing the box to me, as in such cases
was also his wont. And from force of habit I dropped in a coin. At
which the cheerful ancient bent his efforts in other directions.
The girl turned instantly to me, opening at the same time the
business-like black leather chatelaine which hung at her side.
“How much was it?” she inquired.
“My dear young lady,” I said, “it was nothing at all. I beg of you to
put away your purse. Those cards are distributed free. I merely put
something in because the old man and I are friends.”
She looked at me a moment with some intensity, and then snapped her
bag. It occurred to me that her mind would sound like that--when she
made it up, as we say.
“How do you and the old man happen to be friends?” she demanded rather
abruptly. “Do you live here?”
“Yes,” I answered, expressing the will for the deed.
“You speak English very well,” she commented, regarding me much as if
I had been a Bearded Lady, or a glove worn by Gustavus Adolphus.
“Thank you!” I exclaimed. “That is a great compliment, for I was born
in Vermont.”
I suspected that my interlocutress did not altogether appreciate this
point. She continued to regard me with such fixedness that I had an
immediate intuition of what she was about to say. She would require of
me to inform her why I lived abroad when I was privileged to dwell in
a country so far superior to every other, and however ingenious might
be my pretence she would put me in the wrong. My intuition, however, as
too frequently is the case, was mistaken. The young lady opened once
more her chatelaine bag, drew forth the receptacle from which she had
endeavoured to reimburse my expenditure in her behalf, and produced a
neatly printed card which she handed to me. Upon this I read the legend:
_Miss Henrietta C. Stackpole_
THE OMAHA REVIEWER
I stared at this name in speechless amazement. I had supposed Henrietta
long married to Bantling, and by this time the mother of an infinite
progeny. And Omaha! But, as I have intimated, much has happened since
1881. And before I could frame some manner of remark, my companion
again addressed me:
“I wish you would give me some information.”
“I shall be only too delighted, my dear Miss Stackpole!” I assured her
effusively. “I have heard so much about you. This is my name”; and I
offered her my card in return.
“Where have you heard about me?” she demanded in surprise.
“Why, from Mr. James,” I replied.
“Mis-ter James?” she repeated in deep mystification. “I don’t remember
any Mr. James. Oh, do you mean Mr. Reuben James, of Topeka?”
“No, Mr. Henry James, of London,” I told her.
“I don’t know any Mr. Henry James,” she declared decisively. “He must
have seen my letters in the _Reviewer_.”
“Oh, of course!” I uttered, with considerable confusion. “I beg your
pardon. I thought----You see----What information can I give you?”
“Well, would you mind telling me if this is really Venus?” she asked
confidentially, sketching a circle in the ambient air.
I regarded my companion with no little uncertainty. What finesses might
lurk behind so intriguing a question?
“Ve----?” But even as I began to repeat the name, it flashed into my
thick head that so had a gentleman from California once denominated
to me some egregious Venice of his native State; and my eyes opened
very wide. “Why, yes,” I replied, hesitating. “That is, if ‘Romeo and
Juliet’ is Shakespeare. I rather like the water, myself.”
While she neither agreed with nor challenged this remark, I observed
that it produced a visible satisfaction in her. And she went on:
“I want to find out all about it. There’s simply no end of things I
want to ask--for my letters, you know. I write for a syndicate as well
as for the _Reviewer_, and you’re the first person I’ve met that I can
really talk to. I hardly know where to begin. What is this big building
next door, for one thing? It’s awfully queer looking.”
“It is rather queer,” I admitted. “The Patriarchate, I suppose you
mean? In the _Piazzetta dei Leoncini_?”
“I don’t know any names, but I mean the checker-board one, with piazzas
all around and a picket fence along the top.”
“Oh!” I ejaculated, staring at her very hard. “That is the Doges’
Palace.”
“What palace? These I-talian names are too much for me.”
“Call it the Ducal Palace, then,” I answered, experiencing a profound
sensation. The young lady thereupon applied herself anew to her
pad; and it dawned upon me that her strange alphabet might be that
of stenography. “I should think that you would find a Baedeker
convenient,” I added, discovering that the intensity of my gaze had
drawn Miss Stackpole’s eye.
“Oh, I guess I’m bright enough to get around by myself, thank you!” she
rejoined with some irony. “I’ve travelled enough. This isn’t the first
time I’ve been to Europe, either--though it’s the first I’ve been to
Italy.”
“Oh, indeed! How I envy you! Think of coming to Italy for the first
time!”
There was something of voracity in the eagerness with which I turned
upon her. This was really too good to be true. It was incomparable.
When had anybody ever come to Italy before without knowing exactly what
was expected of them? To my astonishment, however, and no small dismay,
the eyes of Henrietta suddenly began to swim.
“You wouldn’t envy me,” she said with a catch in her voice, “if you
knew how disappointed I was, and what I’ve been through.”
She turned away a moment, as if to look at the great swinging lamp
in the form of a branching cross; but I knew she was brushing her
hand across her eyes. An unaccountable contrition swept over me. I
responded, as sympathetically as I knew how:
“I beg your pardon, Miss Stackpole! I’m so sorry. I am sure you must
have been unfortunate.”
“I have been!” she exclaimed, turning to me again. “I----” She stopped
short a moment. Then--“You probably think I’m queer, telling you all
these things; but you’re the first American I’ve seen for ’most a week.”
“The pleasure is mine, I assure you!” I declared. “It is even longer
since I have seen one.” I failed to add what she might have found
complimentary, that seeing Americans was not what I came to Venice
for, and that I usually took pains to avoid them.
“Well,” she exclaimed, “it just does me good to talk to you.”
“Have you been here long?” I delicately suggested.
“Well, it seems as if it had been forever, but I guess it’s only about
two days.” Miss Stackpole herself was evidently more mysterious than
her little pad. In spite of my sympathy for an unfortunate lady I felt
again an extreme curiosity to hear the story of an original one. Before
I had quite made up my mind, however, as to how I might serve God and
Mammon with equal zeal, Miss Stackpole’s overburdened heart solved
the difficulty. “I’ve been in London all summer,” she volunteered,
“reporting the coronation. But I got all het up, and so I broke off
and went to Switzerland. I lost big money by it, too. I can afford it,
though, and I got a lot better.”
“I hope you are feeling quite right now,” I interposed.
“So far as my digestion goes, yes, thank you!” she returned. “Well, I
was just about ready to go back, when I heard some people in the hotel
one night talking about Venice--if that’s the way they pronounce it
here. They’d left the day before, they said, and they _were_ going on,
saying how grand it all was. And the more I listened to them the more
it seemed as if I must come down here. Somehow I had no idea it was
that near. I’ve always wanted to see the place ever since I read about
it in geography at school. There was a picture of it, and underneath
it said: ‘Venice, a city of northern Italy, situated upon 117 small
islands in the Adriatic Sea.’ I thought that was just wonderful--a
hundred and seventeen small islands! And I made up my mind then that
whenever I got the chance I’d come here. So I started right off the
next day. I knew all about the I-talians, though, and I just made up my
mind I’d get ahead of them. I wasn’t going to land in their country at
night, and get robbed or stabbed or something. There was a real nice
German in the car, and I found out from him which was the last station
in Switzerland and I got out there.”
“Oh, my poor lady!” I cried. “You don’t mean to say that you spent the
night at Chiasso instead of going on to Milan?”
“That’s exactly what I did, if that’s the way you pronounce it; but I
don’t believe Italy itself could have been any worse. The hotel was
just the limit, and they charged me more than Claridge does--in London,
you know. However, I managed to get on to Milan the next day. And I
like to have been there yet.”
“What was the matter?” I inquired.
“Why, when we had to change cars I couldn’t make anybody understand a
thing, and they were all so black and horrid and murderous-looking that
I ’most wished I’d never tried to come. I was afraid they hadn’t put
me in the right car, either; and I hadn’t much idea how far it was, and
at every station I’d start up and look for the name because I couldn’t
understand a word the conductor said. But as long as I didn’t see those
hundred and seventeen small islands I felt pretty sure I was right to
stay in the car. Once I almost got out, when we came to some water
with mountains all around--as blue as blue! But there didn’t seem to
be any islands, and we went on and on, and it grew dark, and by and by
it began to rain and I didn’t know what I should do--everything looked
so watery and islandy outside. Then the train stopped and a man opened
the door, and when I asked him if ’twas Venus he just took my grip and
dumped it out. I was that mad I would have put it right back in. When
I got out, though, I saw we were at the end of the line--wherever that
might be. So, as it was pretty late to start off anywheres else, I
thought I might as well try my luck and find out afterwards whether it
was Ve--Venice or not. But I don’t believe I ever would, for sure, if I
hadn’t met you.”
“_Beata Vergine!_” I murmured. “Can these things be?” Then aloud: “Why,
you seem to have got on very well, Miss Stackpole, for one who didn’t
know the language.”
“Well, I always did manage to find my way around pretty well,” she
admitted. “But I never had a time like this before. The getting here
was bad enough, but after I got here it was worse. I followed the
people out of the station and I looked all around for a hotel ’bus.
That’s what I always do--get into the slickest one I see, and then I
land at a good hotel. But I couldn’t find a single one. There were just
those queer boats. A good many people seemed to be getting into them,
too; but I didn’t like to, everything was so dark and the men looked
so horrid. I didn’t know where to tell them to go, either. Then I saw
some more people making for a little steamer, and I almost thought I’d
try that. But I hadn’t any idea where it might take me, and I thought
it was safer to stick to dry land. A whole lot of the dreadfullest men
kept saying things to me, though, and tried to grab my grip, and I just
about wished I was dead. But I set my teeth and held on hard and said
over some things in good United States, and then I began hunting for a
decent-looking hotel near by. It seemed as if I was sure to strike some
big street if I just walked on perfectly straight. That’s what I always
do when I get lost. But I couldn’t go straight, to begin with. I just
kept going round and round in the worst little alleys that landed me
up against a stone wall or at the edge of the water or in some creepy
place where it was as much as my life was worth to take another step. I
got so tired and scared I could have laid right down in the street and
cried.
“I’d made up my mind that I’d find a hotel, though, and I did. I
finally went up to a man that looked something like a policeman, and
I showed him my bag, and said ‘Hotel’ real loud, several times. He
understood anyway, for he called a man with a brass check on his arm,
and said something, and waved me along quite polite. I was pretty
scared, because I didn’t know but what the man would take me off into
one of those creepy places and cut my throat. Nobody would ever find
out. I was too done up to mind, though. I just followed along, and by
and by we came to a cute little street that wasn’t much bigger than
the others; but it was real bright, with stores, and lots of people
walking, and so we came at last to a hotel. It wasn’t a bit like the
kind of hotels I go to. I knew this was Italy, though, and you couldn’t
expect much, and I was that tired I would have slept on an ash heap.”
“I wonder what hotel it was,” I said.
“It’s just near here,” replied my companion. “I’ve got the name on a
card, so I can show it to people if I get lost.”
She resorted once more to her chatelaine bag and produced a card on
which I read the _réclame_ of a very grubby little inn occasionally
patronised by travellers anxious to practice an extreme economy. The
sole recommendation of the place is its antiquity. There is not a
window in it, I believe, or, if such conveniences exist, their prospect
is of the narrowest and dingiest _calli_.
“They told me it was the oldest and best in town,” said Miss Stackpole.
“One of them knows a little English.”
“Well, it is conveniently located,” I assured her. “I hope they have
treated you right.”
“No!” Her voice died, and this time her eyes flooded so quickly that
I saw a splash before she could turn. “You must think me a goose for
going on like this,” she said, raising her handkerchief. “But it does
seem good to find someone who isn’t trying to do me out of my bottom
dollar.” And presently: “How can you live here, among such people?”
The Venetians are with me a very tender point. I have so long been a
victim both of their wiles and of their charm! But in the end it is the
charm that I remember.
“My poor Miss Stackpole,” I replied, “you have been unfortunate. If
some of them are pretty bad, so are some people everywhere. And they
improve on acquaintance. Still, of course, it is the place that catches
one. Don’t you delight in it, now that you’ve seen it?”
Henrietta cast her eyes doubtfully about.
“This church is pretty fine, though they do let it run down the worst
way. Just look at the floor! And the square out there--it’s queer, but
it’s nice; especially looking off toward the water. But it isn’t a bit
what I thought. Those hundred and seventeen small islands now--I sort
of saw them lying around in the sea, with palms and temples and things.
Don’t you know? I never expected these horrid slimy little canals,
and backyard alleys instead of streets, and such awful shiftless
tumble-down houses.”