Great Short Novels of Henry James by Henry James

Author:Henry James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2014-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

VI

LADY BARB, after this, didn’t decline to see her New York acquaintances on Sunday afternoons, though she refused for the present to enter into a project of her husband’s, who thought it would be pleasant she should entertain his friends on the evening of that day. Like all good Americans, Doctor Lemon devoted much consideration to the great question of how, in his native land, society was to be brought into being. It seemed to him it would help on the good cause, for which so many Americans are ready to lay down their lives, if his wife should, as he jocularly called it, open a saloon. He believed, or tried to believe, the salon now possible in New York on condition of its being reserved entirely for adults; and in having taken a wife out of a country in which social traditions were rich and ancient he had done something toward qualifying his own house—so splendidly qualified in all strictly material respects—to be the scene of such an effort. A charming woman accustomed only to the best on each side, as Lady Beauchemin said, what mightn’t she achieve by being at home—always to adults only—in an easy early inspiring comprehensive way and on the evening of the seven when worldly engagements were least numerous? He laid this philosophy before Lady Barb in pursuance of a theory that if she disliked New York on a short acquaintance she couldn’t fail to like it on a long. Jackson believed in the New York mind—not so much indeed in its literary artistic philosophic or political achievements as in its general quickness and nascent adaptability. He clung to this belief, for it was an indispensable neat block in the structure he was attempting to rear. The New York mind would throw its glamour over Lady Barb if she would only give it a chance; for it was thoroughly bright responsive and sympathetic. If she would only set up by the turn of her hand a blest snug social centre, a temple of interesting talk in which this charming organ might expand and where she might inhale its fragrance in the most convenient and luxurious way, without, as it were, getting up from her chair; if she would only just try this graceful good-natured experiment—which would make every one like her so much too—he was sure all the wrinkles in the gilded scroll of his fate would be smoothed out. But Lady Barb didn’t rise at all to his conception and hadn’t the least curiosity about the New York mind. She thought it would be extremely disagreeable to have a lot of people tumbling in on Sunday evening without being invited; and altogether her husband’s sketch of the Anglo-American saloon seemed to her to suggest crude familiarity, high vociferation—she had already made a remark to him about “screeching women”—and random extravagant laughter. She didn’t tell him—for this somehow it wasn’t in her power to express, and, strangely enough, he never completely guessed it—that she was singularly deficient in any natural or indeed acquired understanding of what a saloon might be.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.