Portrait of A Novel (42 page)

28—“
reeling & moaning
”: To William James, 30 October 1869.

28—“
somehow too much
”: To Henry James, Sr., 19 March 1870.

29—“
more strange
” . . . “
painfully?
”: To Mary James, 26 March 1870.

29—“
reach & quality
” . . . “
dead
”: To William James, 29 March 1870.

29—“
the death of
”: Edgar Allen Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846).

CHAPTER 3: A SUPERSTITIOUS VALUATION

31—“
the more I see
”: To Thomas Sergeant Perry, 18 July 1860.

31—“
is obliged to deal
”: N, 214.

31—“
we can deal
” . . . “
culture
”: To Thomas Sergeant Perry, 20 September 1867.

32—“
Wendell
” . . . “
moonshiny
”: To Charles Eliot Norton, 4 Febuary 1872.

33—“
neatness and coquetry
”: To William James, 22 September 1872.

34—“
rattling big
”: To Elizabeth Boott, 27 January 1875.

35—“
there is no shadow
”: Nathaniel Hawthorne,
The Marble Faun
(1860), preface.

35—“
texture of American life
” . . . “
one may say
”: LC1, 351–52.

35—
critic Robert Weisbuch
: My argument in this chapter is indebted to Robert Weisbuch’s
Atlantic Double-Cross: American Literature and British Influence in the Age of Emerson
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). See also his “Dickens, Melville, and a Tale of Two Countries” in the
Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel
, ed. Deirdre David (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

36—“
It takes a great deal
”: LC1, 320.

36—“
that we very soon
”: LC1, 327.

36—
One classic account
: See “Novel and Romance” in Richard Chase,
The American Novel and Its Tradition
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957).

36—“
asked but little
”: LC1, 341.

36—“
do New York
”: To Edith Wharton, 17 August 1902.

37—“
not from the sweet
”: In M. A. De Wolfe Howe,
Memories of a Hostess: A Chronicle of Eminent Friendships Drawn Chiefly from the Diaries of Mrs. James T. Fields
(Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922), p. 120.

38—“
the appearance, the manner
”: To his parents, 16 November 1873.

38—“
could do more work
”: WJL4, 452.

38—“
set of desultory
”: WJL4, 458.

38—“
as a matter
”: WJL1, 230.

40—“
before him, soliciting
”: PNY, 5.

40—“
youth of genius
”: To Grace Norton, 26 September 1870.

40—“
in every day at dusk
”:
The Correspondence of Henry James and Henry Adams
, ed. George Monteiro (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 4.

40—“
unutterably filthy
”: To Theodore Child, 17 February 1880.

41—“
a fraud
” . . . “
people
”:
The Letters of Henry Adams
, ed. J. C. Levenson et al., vol. 2 (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), 392–93.

41—“
not at all crazy
”: To Elizabeth Boott, 22 February 1880, unpublished.

41—“
conspiracy to undervalue them
”: LC1, 435.

42—“
gentlemen’s society
”: CS2, 246.

42—“
high time Harry James
”: Monteiro,
Correspondence of Henry James and Henry Adams,
5.

42—“
big
”: To Henry James, Sr., 30 March 1880.

42—“
the portrait of the character
”: To William Dean Howells, 2 February 1877.

42—“
to which the American
”: To Mary James, 4 May 1877, unpublished.

44—“
open window
”: To Henry James, 30 March 1880.

CHAPTER 4: ALONG THE THAMES

45—“
far-away-from-London
”: To Mary James, 10 January 1881.

46—“
infusion
”
. . .
“
as it were
”: To Grace Norton, 28 December 1880.

46—“
going to do
”
. . .
“
her own
”: P, 254–55.

46—“
stood there
”
. . .
“
her destiny
”: PNY, 9.

47—“
gruel and silence
”: A, 525.

47—“
a view
”: To J. B. Pinker, 14 June 1906.

47—“
a good deal bruised
”: P, 194. See also the entry for Hardwick in Nikolaus Pevsner and Jennifer Sherwood,
The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

48—“
no more beautiful
”:
Country Life
, 21 July 1906.

49—
Family tradition
. See the family entry in Burke’s
Peerage and Baronetage
; but note too that the biographies of Grahame himself do not confirm this identification.

50—“
shut out
”: P, 228.

50—“
an uninteresting
”: P, 229.

50—“
conscious observation
”: P, 231.

50—“
looked in at
”: P, 254.

50—“
to pass through
”: P, 251.

51—“
young, happy
”: P, 238.

51—“
in the thick, mild air
”: P, 245.

51—“
always want
” . . . “
choose
”: P, 259.

52—“
Whoso
” . . . “
always may
”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (1841).

52—“
proof that a woman
”: P, 243.

53—“
I like to be treated
”: P, 288.

53—“
cultivated
”: Quoted in Alan Trachtenberg,
The Incorporation of America
(New York: Hill & Wang, 1982), 153. Parkman’s article, “The Failure of Universal Suffrage,” originally appeared in the
North American Review
(July–August 1878).

54—“
alienated
”: P, 278.

54—“
than one gives up
”: P, 282.

54—“
well-ordered privacy
”: P, 245.

PART TWO: THE MARRIAGE PLOT
CHAPTER 5: HER EMPTY CHAIR

57—“
I have just heard
”: To John W. Cross, 14 May 1880.

58—“
which your wife
”: Ibid.

58—“
aghast at
”: WJL1, 183

59—“
I knew he
” . . . “
the wall
”: To Henry James, Sr., 14 May 1880, unpublished.

60—“
Aren’t you sorry?
”: To Grace Norton, 19 August 1880, unpublished.

60—“
empty chair
”: To Alice James, 30 January 1881.

60—“
thoroughly ill
”: Quoted in Gordon S. Haight,
George Eliot: A Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 544.

60—“
a Reticence
”: Quoted in John Rignall, ed.,
The Oxford Reader’s Companion to George Eliot
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 26.

61—“
Johnnie had
”: Gordon S. Haight, ed.,
The George Eliot Letters
, 9 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954–78), vol. 7 (1878–80), 285.

61—“
I had my turn
”: To William James, 1 May 1878.

61—“
to attend service
”: In Haight,
George Eliot:
A Biography
, 454.

62—“
underlying world
”: To Henry James, Sr., 10 May 1869.

62—“
take them
. . . visitor
”: A, 583–84.

63—“
we of the
. . . comparison
”: A, 573–74.

63—“‘
Middlemarch
. . . whole
”: LC1, 958.

63—“
two suns
”: LC1, 962.

64—“
without loss
. . . monsters
”: LC2, 1107–8.

64—“
deep-breathing economy
”: Ibid.

64—“
sets a limit
”: LC1, 965.

65—“
marriages and rescue
”
. . .
“
happy art
”: LC1, 1004.

65—“
aesthetic teaching
”: The statement comes in a letter to the Positivist thinker Frederic Harrison and can be most readily found in George Eliot,
Selected Essays, Poems, and Other Writings
, ed. A. S. Byatt and Nicholas Warren (London: Penguin, 1990), p 248.

65—“
commissioned herself
”: LC1, 965.

66—“
special case
”: LC1, 1003.

66—“
generalizing instinct
”: LC1, 965.

66—“
have less
”: To Grace Norton, 5 March 1873.

66—“
In these frail
”: PNY, 10.

66—“
mind and millinery
”: In George Eliot,
Selected Essays, Poems, and Other Writings
,
140.

66—“
scientific criticism
”: P, 242.

CHAPTER 6: PROPOSALS

68—“
husbands, wives
”: LC1, 48.

69—“
Millions of
”: PNY, 9.

69—“
all-in-all
”: PNY, 11.

69—“
We women
”: George Eliot,
Daniel Deronda
(1876), ch. 13.

69—“
flood and field
”: PNY, 15.

69—“
the centre
”: PNY, 11.

70—“
must not fall
”: P, 201.

70—
Isabel’s resistance to the plot
: My argument in this chapter is indebted to Millicent Bell’s indispensable account of
The Portrait of a Lady
in her
Meaning in Henry James
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

70—“
a woman ought
”
. . .
“
completely
”: P, 243–44.

70—“
It’s just like
”: P, 205.

71—“
a most formidable
. . . fear
”: P, 272–73.

71—“
cold and dry
”: PNY, 65.

71—
an alternate line of criticism
: See esp. Nina Baym’s “Revision and Thematic Change in
The Portrait of a Lady
,” which locates the character in her historical moment. (
Modern Fiction Studies
22.2, Summer 1976; repr., in 2nd Norton Critical Edition of the novel, ed. Robert D. Bamberg [New York: W. W. Norton, 1995].)

72—“
May I not
”: P, 293.

73—“
such a thumper
”: P, 300.

73—“
some people
”: P, 304.

73—“
it cost her
”: Ibid.

73—“
I’m afraid
”: P, 301.

73—“
personage
”: P, 295.

73—“
what one liked
”: P, 296.

74—“
Imagine one’s belonging
”: P, 248.

74—“
old-fashioned distinction
”
. . .
“
certain way
”: LC1, 54–55.

75—“
psychological reasons
”: LC1, 60.

75—“
few things
”: LC1, 61.

75—“
she could do better
”: P, 296.