This chapter considers the relations between tourism and literature under the
specific perspective of the semantics of love plots. On the one hand, I will
try to reconstruct the literary form this takes in James's Confidence,
on the other I attempt an hypothetical application of the result to the phenomenon
of the honeymoon. It will be interesting to see in how far love and travel share
some of their semantic qualities - especially in the cultural mould of individualism.
Henry James's Confidence
has not had much attention by critics and scholars. An explanation may be that
James didn't select Confidence for his New York Edition. Edel calls it
Henry James's ``worst novel, or at any rate a piece of fiction that might be
considererd a regression to the days of Watch and Ward.'' However, Edel also notes that from Confidence on James began to write
novels about heroines instead of about heroes. -- Although James didn't
favor this novel later, he seems to have been convinced by its qualities at
the time of its publication.
Incidentally or not, the first entry in the Notebooks is a sketch of
what later became Confidence. The novel basically follows the outline
set in the notebook: the incidental meeting of the protagonist and his later
love object in the first chapter, the protagonist's conflicting loyalties between
friendship to his collage mate and love to the object common to their desires,
the final surmounting of these moral difficulties. The ending, however, in the
novel is an overwhelmingly happy one, in contrast to the melodramatic sketch,
where jealousy incites a murderous rage and the object of desire converts from
the blood bath of passion to a religious life. The ending of the novel has been
criticized by the editors of the Notebooks as too miraculously and execessively
happy.
The novel falls into three disjunct pieces which are separated on the level
of story by the simple passing of relatively long periods of time and by their
assignment to specific places. The first piece is contained in the first chapter,
which seems to be something of a prologue to the whole story. Here the protagonist,
Bernard Longueville, is introduced and the initial situation is established
by means of his meeting an unknown compatriot and her mother in Siena. The second
part takes place after a lapse of two months in Baden-Baden. Here the protagonist
meets all the other characters and enters the main conflict between the loyalty
to his long-time friend Gordon Wright and the sympathy towards the object of
his friend's love, Angela Vivian, who is the same person he met at Siena. This
entanglement is temporarily solved by the final dispersion of all parties and
a lapse of time. The third part reunites all parties back in couples, i. e. Gordon
marries first and Bernard and Angela finally recognize their love for each other
after having met each other again on a beach in Normandy. The final obstacle
to their Parisian marriage, Gordon's still vivid attachment to Angela and his
own unhappy marriage, is overcome by female cunning.
The first chapter does not only introduce the male principal character, the
protagonist or ``hero'', but also two other persons, women, to make of Siena a
special ``scene''. A scene which is to be remembered throughout the novel, and
the denials and evasions which characterize its surfacing in the middle part
of the novel makes it the signifier of a special truth and the presence of a
wrong. It is the foil against which the behavior of the characters can be read
as an obstacle. It holds a subterranean tension throughout the story's partings
and wanderings which is to be redeemed at the end of the novel. The love plot
is instantiated in a ``scene'' in the second part of this first chapter. What
are the ingredients, then, to the fertilizer that promises success to the planting
of the germ of love? A close reading of this chapter will hopefully answer this
question.
Bernard Longueville is not characterized by his social standing but rather by
his capabilities of perceiving and acting in the world. He has an urbanity which
makes him an agreeable partner in conversation. The narrator, however, insists
on the even greater value of his inner life. If we look at the semantics of
the characterization closely it is a romantic individuality that asks the reader
to identify him- or herself with.
We start at the beginning.
It was in the early days of April; Bernard Longueville had been spending the
winter in Rome. He had travelled northward with the consciousness of several
social duties that appealed to him from the further side of the Alps, but he
was under the charm of the Italian spring, and he made a pretext for lingering.
(1041)
The first two sentences of the novel introduce a conflict between the appeal
of social duties and the charm of the Italian spring. This prefigures the course
of the novel where the moral, contractual demands of friendship will stand against
the overwhelming individual and ``natural'' facts of love. Later the narrator
explicitly states of the protagonist ``that he had a nature which seemed at several
points to contradict itself ...'' (1042). But this is a view which is not necessarily
shared by the narrator. The text goes on:
He had spent five days at Siena, where he had intended to spend but two, and
still it was impossible to continue his journey. He was a young man of a contemplative
and speculative turn, and this was his first visit to Italy, so that if he dallied
by the way he should not be harshly judged. (1041)
The appeal to the reader to judge not ``harshly'' mounts a double position towards
the protagonist: those who are taking sides with him, i. e. the reader and the
narrator, and those who possibly don't, which are the ``others'' in the novel,
those who are the social context of the protagonist. Here we already are prepared
for the other non-conforming traits of the protagonist and also the benefits
we are to appreciate. Only when his friend Gordon Wright is introduced in the
novel Bernard's standing is mentioned (they both don't have a regular occupation
but are heirs, Gordon being the scientific humanist, Bernard the aesthete).
Here he is rather characterized by his capabilities, as the next sentence in
the novel shows:
He had a fancy for sketching, and it was on his conscience to take a few pictorial
notes. (1041)
His conscience doesn't contain social duties only, but with them balances duties
concerning his own individual capabilities of expression. This is being elaborated
a bit more extensively in the next paragraph of the chapter. Before that, however,
we are confronted with something completely different. The text goes on with:
There were two old inns at Siena, both of them very shabby and very dirty. The
one at which Longueville had taken up his abode was entered by a dark, pestiferous
arch-way, surmounted by a sign which at a distance might have been read by the
travellers as the Dantean injunction to renounce all hope. The other was not
far off, and the day after his arrival, as he passed it, he saw two ladies going
in who evidently belonged to the large fraternity of Anglo-Saxon tourists, and
one of whom was young and carried herself very well. Longueville had his share--or
more than his share--of gallantry, and this incident awakened a regret. If
he had gone to the other inn he might have had charming company: at his own
establishment there was no one but an æsthetic German who smoked bad tobacco
in the dining-room. (1041)
Here Longueville is characterized as versed in the idiom of gallantry, on occasion
of the introduction of possible objects of such a mode of address. Such is already
established a part of the ``scene'' or situation which finally will lead to a
love story. We are told of the gaze of the protagonist clinging itself to two
ladies, one of whom is remarkable, marked off as young and ``carrying herself
well''. Supported by the pair of inns which suggests coupling in general (of
course, not vulgarly). However, the narrator gives a hint that it is not necessarily
a love plot that has to result from such a pairing, it might as well be just
another occasion for gallantry. This is at once a less serious and more general
relation to the other sex that love. It is a matter of ``charming company''. But
isn't gallantry a prerequisite for love? We'll get to this question later.
The text continues to back up the characterization:
He remarked to himself that this was always his luck, and the remark was characteristic
of the man; it was charged with the feeling of the moment, but it was not absolutely
just; it was the result of an acute impression made by the particular occasion;
but it failed in appreciation of a providence which had sprinkled Longueville's
career with happy accidents - accidents, especially, in which his characteristic
gallantry was not allowed to rust for want of exercise. (1041)
Here the attentive reader might already ask why Bernard's feeling of the moment
is determined by his missing out on the right hotel. He nonetheless seems to
be able to do without gallantry, and if it's not about gallantry, it still is
well:
He lounged, however, contentedly enough through these bright, still days of
a Tuscan April, drawing much entertainment from the high picturesqueness of
the things about him.
Obviously, he can do without gallantry, it doesn't seem of too essential an
importance. The possible suspicion that there is nothing at all of essential
importance to Longueville - after his activity is described as ``lounging'' -
is countered in the rest of the paragraph, where the serious side of Bernard
Longueville is elaborated. His serious side is connected to Siena as a place
of historical attraction.
Siena, a few years since, was a flawless gift of the Middle Ages to the modern
imagination. No other Italian city could have been more interesting to an observer
fond of reconstructing obsolete manners. This was a taste of Bernard Longueville's,
who had a relish for serious literature, and at one time had made several lively
excursions into mediæval history. His friends thought him very clever, and at
the same time had an easy feeling about him which was a tribute to his freedom
from pedantry. He was clever indeed, and an excellent companion; but the real
measure of his brilliancy was in the success with which he entertained himself.
He was much addicted to conversing with his own wit, and he greatly enjoyed
his own society. Clever as he often was in talking with his friends, I am not
sure that his best things, as the phrase is, were not for his own ears. And
this was not on account of any cynical contempt for the understanding of his
fellow-creatures: it was simply because what I have called his own society was
more of a stimulus than that of most other people. And yet he was not for this
reason fond of solitude; he was, on the contrary, a very sociable animal. It
must be admitted at the outset that he had a nature which seemed at several
points to contradict itself, as will probably be perceived in the course of
this narration.
The serious side of Longueville is characterized by his interest for ``serious
literature'' and mediaeval history, also the qualification that his cleverness
in this respect is not pedantic; but more so by his habit of using his imagination,
or, probably the same fact in different terms, ``conversing with his own wit''.
The narrator is anxious to exclude the possible negative sides of self-sufficient
individuality, i. e. pedantry, misanthropy, and fondness for solitude, by motivating
it through the concept of ``stimulation''. Stimulation is what the romantically
conceived individual receives from the world, it is the source of experience. The narrator's apologetic admittance that the protagonist's character seems
a little contradictory is to be taken rather ironically, it might be supposed
to imply an answer to the criticism of those who don't agree with the cultural
hierarchy latent in the narrator's ``I am not sure that his best things were
not for his own ears.'' One might suspect that it is not only that the proper
audience is missing for this kind of conversation but also that it carries meanings
which cannot be expressed directly. This ``inner side'' of Bernard Longueville is not only reflected in his mental
capabilities but also through the exercise of his sensitivities, as we see in
his sketching habits and his capability of appreciating picturesqueness. That
the inner, individual as well as the outer, conventional side of Bernard are
``natural'' makes him a synthesis of the romantic hero and the urbane gentleman.
Note that Siena is a ``gift ... to the modern imagination.'' Siena is apt for a
particular kind of tourism which, as the text exemplifies, depends on a special
relationship of text to reality. The phrase ``reconstructing obsolete manners''
is a little vague as to the form and medium of the expression - supposedly
it is what Bernard converses about with himself. But this acitivity is nonetheless
linked to the reading of serious literature and history - I would rather say,
dependent on it. Also, the application of the knowledge gathered about the place
in literature is a decidedly individual act of imagining - highlighted by the
fact that Bernard is expressing it all to himself. Moreover, if viewed as an
authenticating activity (the referent of literature is visited and thus literature
authenticated) it is also the individual who authenticates by experience in
reality his experience in the imagination stimulated by the text, and thus authenticates
himself as individual - by posing his own imagination against the textual imaginary.
The common ground for this is, of course, the place.
The logic of inner and outer, essential and non-essential is well established
on the level of the individual by the distinction of the perceived cleverness
and the almost Thoreauian self-contentedness of real intellectual stimulus.
But there is an analogy between being clever on the level of conversation and
being gallant on the level intersexual relations. Both bear the danger of being
taken as superficial and of slipping into the conventional. If we look for an
equivalent to the inner-outer opposition of individuality and manners on the
level of intersexual relations we probably come up with the contrast of mere
gallantry to love. The text soon gives some hints in this direction. After characterizing
the deeper side of Bernard it describes him entertaining himself on the serious
level:
He entertained himself greatly with his reflections and meditations upon Sienese
architecture and early Tuscan art, upon Italian street-life and the geological
idiosyncrasies of the Apennines. If he had only gone to the other inn, that
nice-looking girl whom he had seen passing under the dusky portal with her face
turned away from him might have broken bread with him at this intellectual banquet.
Then came a day, however, when it seemed for a moment that if she were disposed
she might gather up the crumbs of the feast. (1042)
Since we now know what status the self-stimulated reflections and meditations
have the longing for a companion to share them is significant. Although gallant
entertainment had been introduced as the chief mode of possible intercourse
with the ladies there might be another mode still possible. It is purely suggestive
on the part of the narrator to insinuate that the person in question is not
just nice but also capable of appreciating the food at this ``intellectual banquet''.
The expectations that are raised in the last sentence, then, are freighted with
the connotations of the ``inner side'' of individuality. We are prepared for the
scene of the meeting.
Before that happens, the narrator goes on to describe in more detail what Bernard
does, that is, takes a look at that day. We can only guess that Longueville's
decision to leave Siena has something to do with his missed opportunity, but
in face of the promise we have received, he can't leave so easily. Before that
he has to do something for his portfolio, the narrator hastens to tell.
On the last morning of his visit, as he stood staring about him in the crowded
piazza, and feeling that, in spite of its picturesqueness, this was an awkward
place for setting up an easel, he bethought himself, by contrast, of a quiet
corner in another part of the town, which he had chanced upon in one of his
first walks - an angle of a lonely terrace that abutted upon the city-wall,
where three or four superannuated objects seemed to slumber in the sunshine
- the open door of an empty church, with a faded fresco exposed to the air
in the arch above it, and an ancient beggar-woman sitting beside it on a three-legged
stool. (1043)
The relation of the romantic tourist individual towards his object, the ``scene'',
is one in which crowdedness is a disturbing factor. The quiet corner, instead,
allows for a communion between artist and motif. It is just this communal atmosphere
which characterizes the description of Bernard's painting efforts in ``unbroken
stillness'', in which ``he worked for some time smoothly and rapidly, with an
agreeable sense of the absence of obstacles.'' (1043f) The second interruption
(the first is the bell ringing for noon) to his solitude is - as he realizes
on second glance -``that nice girl whom he had seen going into the other inn
with her mother'' (1044). After having exchanged a short look with Bernard she
goes into the center of the view he is just sketching and has her own communion
with the landscape.
The young lady, however, at present preferred the view that Longueville was
painting; he became aware that she had placed herself in the very centre of
his foreground. His first feeling was that she would spoil it; his second was
that she would improve it. (1044)
We notice here that both of them do prefer the same piece of view, and considering
the status the view has as individual choice on the basis of individual sensitivity
of an individual picturesque little nook, the reader might diagnose a case of
kindred souls. After some hesitation Longueville takes the risk and includes
her in her sketch. Before he is done,
[S]he turned away, facing Longueville again, and slowly came back, as if
to re-enter the church. To do so she had to pass near him, and as she approached
he instinctively got up, holding his drawing in one hand. She looked at him
again, with that expression that he had mentally characterized as ``bold,'' a
few minutes before - with dark, intelligent eyes. Her hair was dark and dense;
she was a strikingly handsome girl.
The description of the American girl follows the expectation, that is, the convention
of describing the female beauty innocently by eyes and hair, except for the
characterization of her expression as ``bold'', which is neither immediately
visual nor entirely inappropriate.
He in turn boldly asks her to continue posing for him, to which she after some
provocative dialogue agrees. The session is finished by the appearance of her
mother, who appreciates the drawing. Her daughter, however, answers to Longueville's
thanks with the questioning of his right to begin in the first place. The dialogue
continues with her in the position of attack and him in the position of unsuccessfully
trying to produce a last word of harmony. Although they argue quite seriously
they also play with the roles as roles. This inclusion of the meta-level of
dialogue into the dialogue is characteristic of most of their dialogues later
in the novel. - Although the daughter protests, Longueville finally offers
the picture to the mother, who accepts. They part without telling each other
their name.
The first chapter covers most of the semantic field on which the narrative expands.
It establishes the suspense characteristic of love story which keeps the reader
interested and is able to anchor ambivalences during the course of the novel
which refer to their solution at the end of the novel.
The distinguishing characteristics of the protagonist as individual get more
into relief when he is compared to his friend Gordon Wright in the second chapter.
There are two levels to be distinguished: the level of social placement and
the level of individual sensibility.
Although both of them had ``come into property sufficient to make violent exertion
superfluous'' (1053), Gordon is the more utilitarian of them. He uses his money
to support scientific experiments in chemistry. In the letter asking Bernard
to join him in Baden-Baden he uses the word ``assistant'' for the help he expects
the latter to give in his love affair. The basis for their friendship is, on
Bernard's part, an appreciation of the fine quality of ``simple, candid, manly,
affectionate nature of his comrade'', while Bernard is characterized as appreciable
because ``he pleased superficially, as well as fundamentally.'' He is ``very good-looking,''
has ``a number of talents'' of which ``he had made something'' (1054).
He was almost always spoken of as ``accomplished;'' people asked why he did n't
do something. This question was never satisfactorily answered, the feeling being
that Longueville did more than many people in causing it to be asked. Moreover,
there was one thing he did constantly - he enjoyed himself. This is manifestly
not a career, and it has been said at the outset that he was not attached to
any of the recognized professions. But without going into details, he was a
charming fellow - clever, urbane, free-handed, and with that fortunate quality
in his appearance which is known as distinction.
These are not attributions of Gordon to Bernard, but are rather the narrator's
explanations to the reader. The protagonist is not only special because he has
this role but also because he has certain attributes which reflect back on the
reader and his situation and so encourage identificiation. He is somewhat unlocatable
in the realm of everyday professional life, and with respect to his talents
and capabilities he is a regular literary ``hero'', if not a superman. The rather
apologetic sparing of the details by the narrator hints to the function of Bernard
as protagonist: the special nature of the identification asked for in this romantic
love story requires the protagonist to be as universally equipped as possible
and a distinct identity different from the reader might interfere. He is at
once a projection screen and a perceptive agent for the reader momentarily located
outside the everyday world and in the fictional world of the narrative.
It is not only his social marginality but also his superior sensitivities that
distinguish Bernard from the rest. Although he can strike a friendship on the
basis of mutual sympathy with his friend Gordon, the latter is by no means his
equal. Gordon is characterized as having a ``want of imagination'' and a ``firmly-treading,
rather than a winged intellect'' (1052) in Chapter 2; Bernard reflects that Gordon's
mind ``has no atmosphere; his intellectual process goes on in the void. There
are no currents and eddies to affect it, no high winds nor hot suns, no changes
of season and temperature. His premises are neatly arranged, and his conclusions
are perfectly calculable.'' (1053)
Bernard is, like the reader, basically alone in this world, because he sees
more than he can tell. On the one hand, he is described as enjoying himself
by that, which is exactly what the reader does. On the other hand we already
encountered in chapter 1 a lack of companionship at his ``intellectual banquet''
in Siena. Since this lack is general, built into the semantics of the attributions,
we might wonder why specifically the nice girl in the other hotel should be
able to mend it - specifically since she is in no way known either to the protagonist
or the reader. The special status of the first chapter allows precisely this
subterrean linkage of a general lack to a particular object - by placement,
so to speak. Also, in the excess of meaning which makes this linkage possible,
the place itself has to play a role. It delivers the ``atmosphere'', it is the
object of the distinguishing, particular, individual perceptive capabilities
of the protagonist, the expression of which needs sharing. As much as this desire
has to remain unfulfilled in the first chapter, it nonetheless gets a promise
of redemption in the scene at the end of chapter 1, where the ``nice girl'' prefers
just the view the protagonist is painting. They obviously share sensibilities
which are coded as individual, unique, natural, not dependent on convention,
tradition, culture. This impression is confirmed later in the novel.
Conversational gallantry or gallant conversation is one more semantic field
distinguishing the two sides of the protagonist. He is naturally able to please
in conversation but also keeps a lot to himself. The distinction is further
expanded in the novel in two ways. On the one hand the meaning of gallantry
is put into perspective by the assignation of two characters to the attribute
of the superficially gallant. Those characters serve as a foil for the figures
of identification in the novel. Dialogues, morover, exemplify these attributions.
On the other hand, conversation is exactly what is becoming problematic in the
distinction of Bernard and Gordon with respect to the latter's object of love.
As a contrast figure to Angela Vivian, the ``nice girl'' Bernard met in Siena,
James sets up Blanche Evers, a superficial flirt. She figures already in the
notebooks as an unnamed and unindividualized opposite to Angela. In the story she has been trusted to Mrs. Vivian's supervision by her mother
and it seems because of her that they are in Baden-Baden. She is being attended
by an Englishman named Captain Lovelock, who has expensive habits, no money
and is considered by the group as a ``mere trifler''. The two are shown as keeping
on an interminable inconsequential dialogue, he insting on admiring her while
she humorously rejects his advances.
The dialogue between Blanche Evers and Bernard Longueville taking place just
after the discovery of his friend Gordon in the Baden-Baden Kursaal is basically
a monologue by Blanche. It exemplifies what we could call a pervasive other-directedness
of conduct which James's narrator describes thus:
... and while he listened Bernard, according to his wont, made his reflections.
He said to himself that there were two kinds of pretty girls - the acutely
conscious and the finely unconscious. Mrs. Vivian's protégée was a member
of the former category; she belonged to the genus coquette. We all have our
conception of the indispensable, and the indispensable, to this young lady,
was a spectator; almost any male biped would serve the purpose. To her spectator
she addressed, for the moment, the whole volume of her being - addressed it
in her glances, her attitudes, her exclamations, in a hundred little experiments
of tone and gesture and position. And these rustling artifices were so innocent
and obvious that the directness of her desire to be well with her observer became
in itself a grace; it led Bernard afterward to say to himself that the natural
vocation and métier of little girls for whom existence was but a shimmering
surface, was to prattle and ruffle their plumage; their view of life and its
duties was as simple and superficial as that of an Oriental bayadere.
(1061f)
In literary exemplification the visual and auditory aspects of this performance
get largely lost, what remains are long paragraphs of hardly coherent speech.
This serves, of course, to underline the difference from the more interesting
dialogues Angela and Bernard enact. For Bernard, talking to Blanche Evers is
hardly engaging. As the quote above demonstrates, he is able to entertain whole
trains of thought privately in the process.
The dialogues between Angela and Bernard, in contrast, are comparatively difficult
to follow. It is serious talk. Their first interview starts with Bernard unsuccessfully
trying to make Angela acknowledge their meeting in Siena, which she has been
declining to do at their introduction to each other by Gordon. When they discuss
the qualities of admiration Angela's remark that some admiration is impertinent
refers implicitly to the Siena scene - the narrator does not comment, instead
gives Bernard's reply. When they discuss the merits of Gordon's incapability
of producing remarks as ingenious as just this reply of Bernard's they drift
into a philosophical argument about virtue and charm. Angelas observations implicitly
reflect on Gordon's inability to please and his virtuous behavior being boring.
``Implicitly'', again, means that this is left to the interpretation of the reader,
who cannot be sure of the reference at a first reading. The dialogue is a discussion
of the term ``virtue'' in its own right, and this makes the interruption of it
(by Mrs. Vivian who wants Angela's attention for Gordon) effective not only
on the level of representation, but also on the performative level of the reader's
response.
The second dialogue between Angela and Bernard ends in a similar fashion. Twice,
actually, because after the first interruption Angela protests against the interruption
by her mother, after which the whole party changes place. Then Angela and Bernard
retreat into yet another room and just on the verge of an answer to Bernard's
inquiries about Siena they are interrupted again by the arrival of the rest
of the party headed by Gordon. Before the first interruption they talked about
the topic of this section, about gallantry's pro's and con's. Angela's position
is as critical towards gallantry as her dialogical behaviour exemplifies. On
being accused by Bernard to be ``not an easy person to say appreciative things
to'' (1077) and the ensuing effectiveness of his praising her modesty she expresses
the view that pleasant talk doesn't help anybody but rather serves the vanity
of men who ``wish to appear agreeable and get credit for cleverness and tendresse,
no matter how silly it would be for another person to believe them'' (1078).
On Bernards question if women like to appear disagreeable, she answers in the
positive, provided there is a purpose, or necessity. She counters Bernard objection
that these are sure odious necessities with the remark that women, other than
man, face them instead of shirking them. Bernard's gallant logic leads him to
reply that women are necessities, too, but who are not odious, which in turn
meets her protest.
``I object to being called a necessity,'' said Angela Vivian. ``It diminishes one's
merit.''
``Ah, but it enhances the charm of life!''
``For men, doubtless!''
``The charm of life is very great,'' Bernard went on, looking up at the dusky
hills and the summer stars, seen through a sort of mist of music and talk, and
of powdery light projected from the softly lurid windows of the gaming-rooms.
``The charm of life is extreme. I am unacquainted with odious necessities. I
object to nothing!''
Angela Vivian looked about her as he had done - looked perhaps a moment longer
at the summer stars; and if she had not already proved herself a young lady
of a contradictory turn, it might have been supposed she was just then tacitly
admitting the charm of life to be considerable.
It is significant here that Angela is constantly on her guard considering the
effects of gallantry. She draws out the implications of compliments and assesses
their merits accordingly. The following turn after this break in their dialogue
has them agree that Blanche Evers is too weak to be disagreeable and thus reinforces
the impression that Angela and Bernard in contradistinction belong to the same
class of individuals. Their mutual attraction is not of the superficially pleasing
kind but on the level of - shall we say experience? It is a certain resistance
to the conventional meanings in words that make the dialogues somewhat edgy
and interesting. It is on a level beyond words that they understand each other
and yet words are the medium they use proficiently.
The alliance, which is nowhere explicitly stated neither in its factuality nor
in its nature, is further made clear for the reader in chapter 8 where Gordon
is said to reclaim his rights of the lover and described as bestowing a ``sober
but by no means inexpressive gallantry'' (1083) upon Angela, who seems to Bernard
``profoundly impartial'' in the way she accepts it. A little further on Gordon
lets the cat out of the bag and tells Bernard that Angela had rejected his proposal
but is still willing to bear his presence and that he hopes she will change
her mind. The reader could have sensed some of the problematic differences in
values when in the first interview between Bernard and Gordon the latter described
the favorites of mother and daughter in a roundabout fashion as ``They are very
fond of books, fond of music, and art, and all that.'' (1070) Although Gordon
admits that he does not feel at his ease with Angela because he doesn't understand
her, he still counts on Bernard's support to make his bid successful.
Here the story divides into two levels, thanks to the semantics of the established
attributions. On the one hand the reader has a hunch as to who fits together
in this game of couples. Angela's rejection of Gordon leaves no doubt that if
there is a question of coupling it is certainly Bernard and Angela that belong
together. Also, a little later the reader gets glimpses of another possible
pairing, which are so well hidden as to result in a pleasant recognition of
something already suspectable when Gordon and Blanche marry later on in the
novel: in chapter 9 Blanche uncharacteristically ``murmurs'' (1092) her appreciation
of Gordon's qualities, and in chapter 10 Gordon expresses his concern for Blanche
and her ``being extremely bored'' (1099) by the attendances of the Captain. This
all while above this level of possible pairings the story goes on with the complications
Bernard's role as Gordon's assistant in his love-making entails. It is not only
the loyalty to Gordon as a friend that is an obstacle in the way of a coming
together of Angela and Bernard but also the fact that Bernard is not sure about
Angela's intentions. He finds out that her mother seems to be bent upon making
the match between Angela and Gordon and that that seems to be the reason for
the avoidance of the Siena topic. When Gordon has to leave Baden-Baden for some
time he urges Bernard to stay, take his role as caretaker of the women and further
investigate on Angela, so that on his return Bernard can give some final advice
if he should try another proposal for marriage.
When Bernard after a few days visits the Vivians in their apartment to tell
them of his responsibility Angela senses that she is being made an object. She
refuses to follow her mother and put faith in Bernard.
``Ah, mamma's confidence is wonderful!'' Angela exclaimed. ``There was never anything
like mamma's confidence. I am very different; I have no confidence. And then
I don't like being deposited, like a parcel, or being watched, like a curious
animal. I am too fond of my liberty.'' (1107)
After he denies her accusations of examining her he feels a little ashamed of
his critical attitude. ``He did everything he could think of to put her off her
guard and persuade her that for the moment he had ceased to be an observer.''
(1113). Since as a representative of Gordon he should avoid any flirtatious
contact with Angela, but any contact - even, or especially a row - might be
interpreted as such, he is in a dilemma only his immediate leaving would solve.
But he doesn't, because he is vainly proud of his success in putting Angela
off her guard. It is his technique of gallant conversation that he attributes
his succes to.
He believed, at all events, that he was successful now, and that the virtue
of his conversation itself had persuaded this keen and brilliant girl that he
was thinking of anything in the world but herself. He flattered himself that
the civil indifference of his manner, the abstract character of the topics he
selected, the irrelevancy of his allusions and the laxity of his attention,
all contributed to this result. (1114)
His success is so great (``now at least she was off her guard with a vengeance!''
(1116)) that he has to constantly remind himself that Angela is not for him,
and in Gordon's place as he is now he has to judge her behavior negatively as
that of an ``extremely clever coquette''. The most seductive occasions being their
common experience of the attractions of Baden,
when, in the evening, she strolled away with him to parts of the grounds of
the Conversation-house, where the music sank to sweeter softness and the murmur
of the tree-tops of the Black Forest, stirred by the warm night-air, became
almost audible; or when, in the long afternoons, they wandered in the woods
apart from the others - from Mrs. Vivian and the amiable object of her more
avowed solicitude, the object of the sportive adoration of the irrepressible,
the ever-present Lovelock. They were constantly having parties in the woods
at this time - driving over the hills to points of interest which Bernard had
looked out in the guide-book. (1116)
When he finally has to deliver his unfavorable verdict to Gordon (``a heavy thunder-storm
had broken over the place an hour before'' (1122)) he is in a regular guilt trap.
According to this he reconstructs the events of which he doesn't have more evidence
than the sudden leaving of all the parties concerned. He thinks he has deprived
Angela of an opportunity to secure her future because, as he thinks, his verdict
has made Gordon not try to propose again.
This guilt, although ``it was far from awaiting him regularly on his pillow'',
visits Bernard at intervals on his journey around the world, which is on the
whole not as enjoyable as he thought it would be. The reader here suspects that
it is not only the guilt toward Angela that is responsible. It is that same
lack which we had a glimpse of in Siena. The fact that Bernard hears from Gordon's
marriage to Blanche Evers keeps the thread of the semantic of love alive. Bernard
visits the newly married but leaves for California after the New York press
misinterpretes the flirtatious Blanche's and his relation. California is boring,
and he returns to New York where he solves his problem of unrest by following
an impulse to return to Europe.
Chapter 19 witnesses the return of Bernard to Europe and his meeting Angela
again on a small beach in Normandy. It is here that he is officially falling
in love and the subterranean thread of the narrative surfaces. Step for step
the unaccountabilities and hunches are put into explanation. At the end the
explanatory backward movement has reached the beginning, the meeting in Siena,
and the whole novel finishes in happy transparence and a double honeymoon.
While the connotations of Siena as a romantic place with a medieval history
and picturesque views were specifically suited to the invocation of a love story,
the beach in Normandy uses a different register to support the depth of recognition
of a strong feeling. A bodily synesthesia of smell, sound, and look, and the
symbolism of the sea work hand in hand.
On his arrival in Europe Bernard's decision to leave Le Havre is motivated by
the impressions his nostrils convey, a ``malodorous Norman sea-port''. Once he
is on his way on the coast, the olfactory mode changes to a lyrical visual.
Once he had begun to rumble through this charming landscape, he was in much
better humor with his situation; the air was freshened by a breeze from the
sea; the blooming country, without walls or fences, lay open to the traveller's
eye; the grain-fields and copses were shimmering in the summer wind; the pink-faced
cottages peeped through the ripening orchard-boughs, and the gray towers of
the old churches were silvered by the morning-light of France. (1157f)
The epitome of picturesqueness is the little ``watering-place'' he reaches after
a few hours.
It had a quaint and primitive aspect and a natural picturesqueness which commended
it to Bernard's taste. There was evidently a great deal of nature about it,
and at this moment, nature, embodied in the clear, gay sunshine, in the blue
and quiet sea, in the daisied grass of the high-shouldered downs, had an air
of inviting the intelligent observer to postpone his difficulties. Blanquais-les-Galets,
as Bernard learned the name of this unfashionable resort to be, was twenty miles
from a railway, and the place wore an expression of unaffected rusticity. (1158)
Sun, sea, and grass are the exact opposite of the view he had in his inn at
Le Havre, which was a ``blank wall ... painted a dirty yellow and much discolored
by the weather, ... which struck him in some degree as a symbol of his own present
moral prospect.'' (1157) As so often in Henry James's novels, the protagonist
tries to get away from some problem which concerns his relations to others and
finds a place to be alone. In this case it is the change needed to make the
protagonist forget his own aimlessness. The sun, sea, and grass represent natural
primary colors; they stand in a relation to the blank wall like the Platonic
light of day to the shadows in the cave. The village inhabitants' natural idleness
in spending the day on the beach touches a paradisiacal note. Bernard ``took
a bath with the rest. The ocean was, after all, very large, and when one took
one's plunge one seemed to have it quite to one's self.'' (1158) The exercise
results in a feeling of happiness, and in a bodily relaxation which turns into
sleep. The narrator makes a point to describe the drifting off in detail.
There were sounds in the air above his head - sounds of the crunching and rattling
of the loose, smooth stones as his neighbors moved about on them; of high-pitched
French voices exchanging colloquial cries; of the plash of the bathers in the
distant water, and the short, soft breaking of the waves. But these things came
to his ears more vaguely and remotely, and at last they faded away. (1159)
In this state of almost back-to-the-womb happiness he has a ``charming dream.''
Dreams are vague things, and this one had the defects of its species; but it
was somehow concerned with the image of a young lady whom Bernard had formerly
known, and who had beautiful eyes, into which - in the dream - he found himself
looking. (1159)
In these circumstances the dream is obviously a key. It is of no big surprise
for the attuned reader that on his waking up he finds the beach world around
him the same, except for the presence of a young lady reading a book in a portable
chair. Unbelievably but true, it is Angela Vivian. When she discovers him unbelievingly
staring at her, not knowing why he doesn't leave because of his bad conscience
toward her, she gets up and walks away, a sign of her surprise as Bernard learns
when he finally dares to follow her. He discovers that she obviously doesn't
bear a grudge against him, and he follows her to the little house she and her
mother have rented. In the evening they meet at the local Casino for a half
hour. When he walks down to the beach after that in the darkness it happens.
Bernard stood there some time; there was nothing but the sound and the sharp,
fresh smell. Suddenly he put his hand to his heart; it was beating very fast.
An immense conviction had come over him - abruptly, then and there - and for
a moment he held his breath. It was like a word spoken in the darkness - he
held his breath to listen. He was in love with Angela Vivian, and his love was
a throbbing passion! He sat down on the stones where he stood - it filled him
with a kind of awe. (1171)
For the second time the ocean is the midwife of existential recognitions. There
is a third to come. Now, Bernard's second thought is of his love as a forbidden
fruit, because ``friendship and honor were at stake; they stood at his left hand,
as his new-born passion stood already at his right'' (1172), and his third is
that ``he had been in love with Angela Vivian any time these three years.'' (1173)
Here the protagonist's knowledge makes official what the reader had already
divined. Since Angela doesn't know about it he thinks backing out by just leaving
and seeing Angela never again would solve the dilemma. After one day of lonely
walks on the beach (no surprises happen there), when he wants to say good-bye
to the Vivians the next day he finds them gone already. The maid is still there
and gives him the address of their banker. The self-conscious play of the narrator
(or rather, the author?) upon the conventions of plotting obstacles into the
course of love gets hilarious:
``Very good - I will find him out,'' said our hero, turning away.
The discriminating reader who has been so good as to interest himself in this
little narrative will perhaps at this point exclaim with a pardonable consciousness
of shrewdness: ``Of course he went the next day to the Rue de Provence!'' Of course,
yes; only as it happens Bernard did nothing of the kind. He did one of the most
singular things he ever did in his life - a thing that puzzled him even at
the time, and with regard to which he often afterward wondered whence he had
drawn the ability for so remarkable a feat - he simply spent a fortnight at
Blanquais-les-Galets. It was a very quiet fortnight; he spoke to no one, he
formed no relations, he was company to himself. (1177)
Bernard obviously tries to be consequential this time. Then he has the third
revelation at the seafront.
The circumstances were the same; he had wandered down to the beach alone, very
late, and he stood looking at the duskily-tumbling sea. Suddenly the same voice
that had spoken before murmured another phrase in the darkness, and it rang
upon his ear for the rest of the night. It startled him, as I have said, at
first; then, the next morning, it led him to take his departure for Paris. (1178)
The narrator refuses to give us the content of the recognition explicitly, but
his hints are enough to conclude that Bernard discovered that Angela is in love
with him, too.
The theory that Angela hated him had evaporated in her presence, and another
of a very different sort had sprung into being. It fitted a great many of the
facts, it explained a great many contradictions, anomalies, mysteries, and it
accounted for Miss Vivian's insisting upon her mother's leaving Blanquais at
a few hours' notice, even better than the theory of her resentment could have
done. (1178)
The sea is a prominent player in this part of the drama. The level of symbolism,
denoting the unconscious, the womb, the eternal, supports the existential quality
of the recognition of being in love. But it also serves, metonymically through
the sounds and the situation, as a fountain of ``voices''. The hard knots of the
moral dilemma are softened and eroded by the constant movement of the waves.
While Siena is the stage for realizing a cultural imagination the Normannic
sea functions as the catalyst to break down cultural resistance to nature.
The process of dissolution is continued in the novel in the form of a step-by-step
explanation of the ambiguities having confused the protagonist and the reader
alike during the Baden-Baden period. Bernard has to realize that Angela has
seen far more than he did at the time. ``Men are so stupid; it 's only women
that have real discernment,'' as Angela has it (1238). Even the last obstacle,
Gordon's reviving affection for Angela and his ensuing claim on her - analyzed
by the Vivian duo as a result of marital problems between him and Blanche -
is solved thanks to the cleverness of Angela and her mother.
This part of the chapter wants to follow the implications of the analysis of
Confidence. The guiding principles for this chapter are the further elucidation
of the relationship between the love plot and the semantic of tourism. As I
have tried to show, the interesting points about the story are the relations
of attributes of individuality to the characters, and the role these play in
the development of a love plot. Moreover, the use of tourist places in the character
attribution and the narrative deployment of the love story is dependent on the
semantics of individuality. What we have to face in this rather typical love
story is a constellation of love, individuality and place. Interestingly enough,
in this novel ``imagination'' also plays a distinguishing part, so we have a fourth
element in the game we can call ``literature'', or ``fiction''.
I will try to elaborate the relations of the elements of this constellation
with summary reference to the novel analyzed above. In the process I hope to
shed some more light on the issues in the novel itself.
With respect to the semantics of love I will have to place it historically.
This makes sense not just because the notion of gallantry, for instance, is
hardly familiar to us today and it seems not to have been really en vogue when
James published his novel, the events of which he dates back to 25 years earlier
(James, 1880, p. 1056). Also because, as Luhmann (Luhmann (1994)) and de Rougemont (de Rougemont (1983)) show in their respective
ways, the meaning of love has changed and was not always thought of as ending
in marriage. I will try to find out in how far it is romantic love that we encounter
in the novel. This will be linked to the question of how individuality is embedded
in the concept of love and what kind of interface to other semantic fields (as
literature/art or tourism) it allows for. I will also try to assess the impact
of the inherent narrativity in love, a fact which both de Rougemont and Luhmann
stress.
The hypothesis concerning the relation of love and tourism is that both are
in an intimate relation, so to speak, to literature on the one hand and individuality
on the other. They share the pattern of expectation 
fulfilment, and what are
to love the necessary obstacles is to traveling/tourism the distance to be traveled.
Before and after we are supposedly in a different world. But it is also necessary
to find out what the relation exactly is between traveling to a different place
and love: just the analogy won't do. In narrative this might indicate a reinforcing
factor, in the practice of tourism there might be reverberations on the level
of expectations.
The touristic semantics of the two main chief places should allow for some further
understanding of the role they play in the narrative.
Siena is a typical place for romantic tourism as John Urry outlines it (Urry (1990)).
There are indications in the passages at the beginning that Urry's economic
formulation of the romantic tourist gaze as ``positional good'' seem relevant
here. It denotes the gaze as inherent individualistic, that is, the effectiveness
of the scene is dependent on the absence of other tourists.
A different, less visual mode, is dominant in the beach scene in Chapter 19
of Confidence. We could suspect the underlying form of tourism is an
early form of ``Nature tourism'' with Rousseauean undertones. It has, however, a long history in the fashion of bathing places, to which
the little ``Casino'' in the novel testifies. The semantics has however changed:
the romantic experience of nature, or of the natural habitat of a forgotten
people, has replaced the social life of mundane high society (Corbin, 1994, see). The sea has
a metonymical relation to tappings of the protagonist into his subconscious
feelings; it is used to invoke the almost proverbial ``oceanic feeling.''
Some of the atmosphere of bathing fashion is resurrected in Baden-Baden, which
in its name conspicuously doubles the reference. The links of scene to novel
are traceable through the uses, misuses and non-uses of gallantry, to which
the occasional romantic excursion serves as a welcome support. The place itself
has less direct effect in the narrative economy of the story, because its semantics
doesn't support the individual communion with the genius loci - whose interruption
is the effective device used in the other two scenes. In a more associative
mode it is, however, conducive to the thickening of the love plot (vide quotes
on p. 
or on p. ).
References
- Corbin, A. (1994).
- The Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World 1750-1840.
Polity Press, Oxford; Cambridge.
French edition 1988; translated by Jocelyn Phelps.
- de Rougemont, D. (1983).
- Love in the Western World.
Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
First published in 1940.
- Edel, L. (1962).
- The Conquest of London (1870-1881), volume 2 of The Life of Henry James.
Lippincott, Philadelphia; New York.
- Enzensberger, H.-M. (1964).
- Eine Theorie des Tourismus.
In Einzelheiten I: Bewußtseins-Industrie, pages 179-205. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main.
Written 1958.
- Graburn, N. H. H. (1977).
- Tourism: The sacred journey.
In Smith, V., editor, Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, pages 17-32. Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
- James, Jr., H. (1880).
- Confidence.
In Stafford, W. T., editor, Novels 1871-1880, number 13 in The Library of America, pages 1039-1252. Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y.
1983.
- James, Jr., H. (1940).
- The Notebooks of Henry James.
Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y.; London.
ed. by F[rancis] O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock.
- Luhmann, N. (1994).
- Liebe als Passion. Zur Codierung von Intimität.
Number 1124 in suhrkamp taschenbuch wissenschaft. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main.
1. Auflage 1982.
- Urry, J. (1990).
- The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies.
Sage, London.
This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator Version 96.1-h (September 30, 1996) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, Nikos Drakos, Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.
The command line arguments were:
latex2html -t Confidence snap-shot -split 0 -up_url http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/ ule/diss/ -address Ulrich Brinkmann 1998 Colloquium_snapshot.980127.tex.
The translation was initiated by Ulrich Brinkmann on Tue Jan 27 10:00:45 CET 1998
- ...Confidence
-
Published in James (1880).
- ...Ward.''
-
Edel (Edel, 1962, p. 385) goes on to say that ``its plot is like an old eigtheenth century comedy ...''.
He also puts it into the biographical context of Henry James's family life which
had just seen the marriage of his brother William: ``In some strange way this
novel goes through a series of comings together and fallings out, and its personal
statement appears to contain strong elements of rejection, jealousy and need
for self-consolation.'' (loc.cit.)
- ...publication.
-
citation, letter to someone (probably in Edel)
- ...happy.
-
``The men virtually fade out of the book before a demonstration of the power
of pure women. ... At last he comes back to Paris ... free to marry Angela as placidly
as the hero of any sentimental tale in the magazines of James' day.'' Matthiesen,
Murdoch (James, 1940, inp. 7)
- ...
-
Quotes which just give the page numer in parentheses are from Confidence
(James (1880))
- ...experience.
-
William James's psychology has a similar base.
- ...directly.
-
This is the same problematics as Derrida's writing as endless substitution but
still in a romantic form.
- ...culture.
-
Of course the appreciation of scenery is a cultural code, and it is used to
distinguish on class of people from another. It is nonetheless naturalized as
an individual sensibility once obtained - presumably because it is linked
to a mode of expression coded as individual (lyrical mode).
- ...Angela.
-
``The figure of the bride to be studied-an opposition to Bianca'' [Bianca
becoming Angela in the novel]. (James, 1940, p. 5)
- ...tourists.
-
This is also the tourism which is criticized in Enzensberger (1964).
- ...undertones.
-
``Nature tourism'' is Graburn's expression (Graburn, 1977, p. 26).
Ulrich