DOI article:
Milman, Lena: A few notes upon Mr. James
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27806#0082
7 8 A Few Notes upon Mr. james
familiarity. She took children too hard both for good and evil,
and had an oppressive air of expecting subtle things of them, so
that going to see her was a good deal like being taken to church
and made to sit in a front pew.”
But Mrs. Penniman was as romantic as she was inaccurate (“ it
must be delightful,” she said, “to think of those who love us
among the ruins of the Pantheon ”), and it needed but the
attentions of an heiress-hunting young man to convert the poor
little heroine of the story, weak at every point save her affections,
unattractive, ungifted, into a heroine of romance in her aunt’s eyes,
the father’s opposition only making the situation more dramatic,
and—“ Mrs. Penniman’s real hope was that the girl would make
a secret marriage, at which she should officiate as brideswoman or
duenna. She had a vision of this ceremony being performed in
some subterranean chapel—subterranean chapels in New York
were not frequent, but Mrs. Penniman’s imagination was not
chilled by trifles—and of the guilty couple—she liked to think of
poor Catherine and her suitor as the guilty couple—being shuffled
away in a fast whirling vehicle to some obscure lodging in the
suburbs, where she would pay them (in a thick veil) clandestine
visits, where they would endure a period of romantic privation,
and where ultimately, after she should have been their earthly
providence, their intercessor, their advocate, and their medium of
communication with the world, they should be reconciled to her
brother in an artistic tableau, in which she herself should be, some-
how, the central figure.”
But apart from the context, deprived of the contrast afforded
her by the matter-of-fact sincerity of her niece, the dry perspicuity
of her brother, Aunt Penniman’s figure cannot be made to stand
as firmly as in the novel. Indeed, humour is so volatile a thing,
the perception of it requires so delicate a sensibility, that the mood
cannot
familiarity. She took children too hard both for good and evil,
and had an oppressive air of expecting subtle things of them, so
that going to see her was a good deal like being taken to church
and made to sit in a front pew.”
But Mrs. Penniman was as romantic as she was inaccurate (“ it
must be delightful,” she said, “to think of those who love us
among the ruins of the Pantheon ”), and it needed but the
attentions of an heiress-hunting young man to convert the poor
little heroine of the story, weak at every point save her affections,
unattractive, ungifted, into a heroine of romance in her aunt’s eyes,
the father’s opposition only making the situation more dramatic,
and—“ Mrs. Penniman’s real hope was that the girl would make
a secret marriage, at which she should officiate as brideswoman or
duenna. She had a vision of this ceremony being performed in
some subterranean chapel—subterranean chapels in New York
were not frequent, but Mrs. Penniman’s imagination was not
chilled by trifles—and of the guilty couple—she liked to think of
poor Catherine and her suitor as the guilty couple—being shuffled
away in a fast whirling vehicle to some obscure lodging in the
suburbs, where she would pay them (in a thick veil) clandestine
visits, where they would endure a period of romantic privation,
and where ultimately, after she should have been their earthly
providence, their intercessor, their advocate, and their medium of
communication with the world, they should be reconciled to her
brother in an artistic tableau, in which she herself should be, some-
how, the central figure.”
But apart from the context, deprived of the contrast afforded
her by the matter-of-fact sincerity of her niece, the dry perspicuity
of her brother, Aunt Penniman’s figure cannot be made to stand
as firmly as in the novel. Indeed, humour is so volatile a thing,
the perception of it requires so delicate a sensibility, that the mood
cannot