Review - "The Portrait of a Lady," Henry James

 Apologies for two essays in two days, but we have to leave for Rye this afternoon and will be gone for two days.

 

Indicative of how little things change, there is an exchange in this novel, which will be familiar to many today. It is when old Daniel Touchett speaks to Isabel about the “radicals of the upper class:” Their “progressive ideas are about their greatest luxury. They make them feel moral and yet don’t damager their positions.” Plus c’est la même chose.

 

Regardless, I believe you will enjoy this book, among the best I have read.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Portrait of a Lady, 1908, Henry James (1843-1916)

February 16, 2025

 

“I’m very fond of my liberty.”

                                                                                                                                Isabel speaking

                                                                                                                                The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

 

I like to read but am no expert on literature. Nevertheless, in my opinion, this novel ranks with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The title is interesting, as we learn about Isabel Archer, because a person is more than an artist’s rendition. In the last few pages, Isabel slips from the frame we had thought enclosed her. Writing the “Introduction” to the Oxford Word’s Classic edition, Professor Roger Luckhurst concludes: “From this busted frame Isabel evades final determination, and James leads us toward the era of the modern novel.”  

 

The story opens at Gardencourt, an early Tudor mansion on the Thames, about 40 miles west of London, home to the American expatriate Daniel Touchett, his wife Lydia and their sickly son Ralph. Lydia Touchett had visited her sisters in Albany, New York and returns with her niece, Isabel Archer, who is in her early 20s. She displays “a great deal of confidence,” is “slim and charming, and “unexpectedly pretty.” She is a breath of fresh air in an English society locked in a class struggle. It is significant that her first marriage proposal in England comes from Lord Warburton whose home Lockleigh, with its 50,000 acres, is adjacent to Gardencourt. She rejects him on the basis that she wants to be free, to see more of life, just as she had earlier rejected Casper Goodwood, an old flame from the U.S., a suitor who reappears in the story.

 

The scene shifts to Florence and then Rome, where most of the story takes place. In Florence, she meets the impoverished, deceptive American ex-patriate Gilbert Osmond – an older man, with a beautiful 15-year-old daughter, Pansy, who has been schooled by Catholic nuns – and the duplicitous Madame Merle who serves as nemesis to Isabel. At first the two women are thrown together, and the naïve Isabel opens up to her. “Sometimes she [Isabel] took alarm at her candour: it was as if she had given to a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of jewels.” Once Madame Merle convinces Osmond he should marry the heiress Isabel, she goes to work on Isabel. Isabel marries Osmond, but as time progresses, she is unhappy and realizes Madame Merle does not have her interests: “She carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished steel, and she used them with a skill which struck Isabel as more and more that of a veteran.”

 

Roughly five years pass from Isabel’s arrival in England until her return alone to Gardencourt to see her dying cousin. It is Ralph who advises Isabel: “Take things more easily…Don’t question your conscience so much…Spread your wings; rise above the ground. It’s never wrong to do that.” She had spread her wings in Florence, then found herself in an uncomfortable nest. She knows she does not belong in her marriage nest and senses wisdom in her dying cousin’s words.

 

James does not tell the reader how Isabel’s search ends, what the finished portrait looks like. But then, do any of us know how our stories will end? We suspect Isabel is wiser, and we also know she is both loyal and fond of liberty. Will she return to her husband in Florence, go back to the U.S. and marry Casper, or will she continue to travel, to investigate, to learn more about herself? We don’t know. It is an unfinished portrait.

"Mt. Belvedere - 80 Years On"

 

This coming Wednesday will mark 80 years since the Ski Troops, the 10^th Mountain Division, first saw action in Italy. My father was part of the assault on Mt. Belvedere in Italy’s Apennines.

 

Attached are three photos: the first a sketch of Mt. Belvedere that was drawn by Captain George F. Earle; it appeared in his History of the 87^th Mountain Infantry, Italy 1945, published 20 October, 1945. The second and third are of a scene on top of Belvedere at the end of the first day and a caption for the photo. The last two items appear in an April 1946 album put together by 2^nd Lt. Richard A. Rocker, also of the 87^th, titled Vires Montesque Vincimus translated as “We Conquer Powers and Mountains,” the insignia for the 87^th Regiment – my father’s regiment – of the 10^thMountain Division. 

 

……………………………………………………………………………….

 

The passage of time can be deceptive. It is hard to imagine, at least for me, that the 80 years between now and the end World War II are equal to the 80 years from the end of the Civil War to the end of World War II.

 

Enjoy the long weekend, but don’t forget those who served.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Mt. Belvedere – 80 Years On”

February 15, 2025

 

“It is the duty of every generation to remember the sacrifices

of those who came before, so that their legacy may live on.”

                                                                                                                                Herman Wouk (1915-1919)

                                                                                                                                War and Remembrance, 1978

 

With the 80^th anniversary marking the end of World War II fast approaching, the number of combatants still alive is shrinking. The Bureau of Veteran Affairs estimated last year that, out of over 16 million Americans who served in the War, approximately 66,000 men and women are still with us, with an estimated 55 dying each day. As well, we are rapidly losing even those with memories of the War.

 

So it is fitting to mark battles in which members of our families participated. By early January 1945, the ultimate outcome of the War was obvious, yet an estimated 49,000 American GIs were yet to die in combat. Okinawa, Iwo Jima and the Battle of Berlin were yet to be fought. Among the lesser well-known battles was one that took place in Italy, where an estimated 100,000 German troops under General Albert Kesselring were embedded along what was called the Gothic Line, a roughly 200-mile defensive line running along the Apennines from Spezia on the Ligurian Sea to Pesaro and Ravenna on the Adriatic. Following the fall of Rome in early June 1944, Germans retreated north to this mountainous defensive position that protected the farm-rich Po Valley and the cities of Bologna and Verona. The key was Mount Belvedere, the highest peak, which overlooked Highway 65, the main road between Florence and Bologna.   

 

In March 1944 my father, then thirty-three, married and father of three (with a fourth on the way), was drafted. After basic training at Fort McClellan in Alabama, he transferred to the 10^th Mountain Division – the “Ski Troops,” who had trained in Colorado, but were then stationed at Camp Swift, about 40 miles east of Austin. In December, the 10^th was sent to Fort Patrick Henry in Virginia, prior to being shipped to Italy later that month. A full complement of 14,000 men, under Major General George P. Hays, were sent to rout Kesselring’s troops from their mountainous redoubts. In Mountain Troopers, Curtis Casewit quoted General Hayes: “Mt. Belvedere must be captured before we can advance.”

 

In November 1944, elements of the British 8^th Army and the U.S. 5^th Army had attacked Germans entrenched on Belvedere. German counter-attacks caused them to retreat. Three months later, on February 19^th, the 10^th Mountain Division (now part of the 5^thArmy) made its ascent, beginning at 0030 hours. The night before the 1^st Battalion of the 86^th Regiment captured Riva Ridge, which overlooked slopes on Belvedere. Along with others, C Company (my father’s unit) of the 87^th Regiment were ordered to move silently forward, with Division artillery supporting the attack. They walked single-file, ten feet apart. “The way up,” Peter Shelton wrote in Climb to Conquer, “was long and folded, riddled with streams and ditches, with sharp ravines and bombed-out wagon roads.” They had to avoid mined fields and went past “ghostly remains of U.S. tanks,” abandoned on that earlier attempt. Because of walking past German sentries, the GIs, with fixed bayonets, carried grenades but no live ammunition – at least until daylight. Unfortunately, several soldiers were killed by mines. By 0430 Company C had attained its objective atop Belvedere, but with three of its men killed. Hays was again quoted by Curtis Casewit: “Mt. Belvedere and the occupied ground will be held at all costs.”

 

My father, a Harvard-educated artist, was not insensitive to the horrors of battle and the casualties around him when he wrote my mother on February 28 – the first time in almost two weeks that he had had a chance. He did not want to worry her more than she already was: “I’m behind the lines again after spending another week on the front. This time it wasn’t quite so comfortable, with foxholes and shells landing round about and that sort of thing. But the weather was nice and it wasn’t really too bad…I was in the attack on Mt. Belvedere, which is more like a hill than a mountain…There were crocuses in bloom on Mt. Belvedere and the view was beautiful, both day and night, a strange setting for a battle.”[1]

 

German counter-attacks continued for five days; among those killed was a young member of my father’s platoon, 18-year-old Juan Barrientos. He was killed by a shell fragment, a fragment that nicked my father’s cheek. They would have nine more weeks of combat before the war in Italy was over on May 2. Just under 1,000 ski troops would be killed, with almost 4,000 wounded – one of the heaviest casualty rates of any division based on time in action. Among those wounded was Senator Robert Dole, a replacement officer, on April 14 in Castel d’Aiano. My father, who became a runner for his company, was among the lucky ones. He was awarded the Bronze Star for “meritorious service.” His homecoming, at the Nashua, New Hampshire railroad station on V-J Day, remains vivid in my mind. Among the cheers, tears, joy, and honking of horns, I recall running across the parking lot to greet him. 

 

“Freedom is not free,” may sound trite; nevertheless, it is a truism. Over the almost two hundred and fifty years of our nation’s existence, millions of men and women have given up years of their lives in defense of their country, and many paid the ultimate sacrifice, that the rest of us may live in peace. In his book quoted above, Herman Wouk wrote: “The scars of war may fade, but they will always be a reminder of the price we paid for peace.”

 

2025 marks eighty years since the end of the greatest war the planet has ever seen. We should spend a few minutes thinking of those who sacrificed that we might enjoy that precious gift of freedom.

 

 

 

---

---

[1] Dear Mary: Letters Home from the 10^th Mountain Division, 2019, page 61, edited by Sydney M. Williams

"A Valentine's Day Message"

With Valentine’s Day appearing Friday, this essay is a little early, but love knows no calendar.

A beautiful wintery morning has arrived here in Connecticut. It reminds me of February days of yore.

 

The photo (“When Cupid’s Arrow Struck”) was taken on Friday March 9, 1962, the day Caroline agreed to be my Valentine for life. With her roommate and fiancé, Caroline and I were driving from Boston to New Hampshire for a weekend skiing at Wildcat Mountain. The photo was taken somewhere along New Hampshire’s coast.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“A Valentine’s Day Message”

February 9, 2025

 

“The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.”

                                                                                                Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

                                                                                                Interview, U.S. News & World Report, October 27, 1986

 

Love is a unique sensation. Your definition of the word may differ from mine. It is ubiquitous in that every child born is embraced with the instinctual, maternal love of its mother. Love allows a child to understand they are integral to their family. Love is all around us, yet also singular. When missing, its absence is felt. It can arrive quickly, as did my love for Caroline not long after we met (and which has persisted for sixty-three years), or it may germinate for several months, even years, before blossoming. And, sadly, it sometimes dies.

 

We mostly think of love in terms of the one we marry, the individual we have chosen to share our life. But love assumes different forms. Love for one’s parents and one’s children are not the same. The former rests on the appreciation for one’s conception, while the latter is based on the knowledge that one’s children are the creation of you and your spouse, and that all one’s descendants, carry one’s genes into the future, making life eternal. It is spiritual, as in love for God. It can be generic, as in love for one’s country or for one’s fellow man. Love for one’s pets is not the same as love for one’s spouse, but it is nonetheless real. Love demands involvement, as Elie Wiesel suggested. It may be blind, however, as when passion, compassion, or admiration are mistaken for love. In such cases, it may be unrequited, for love is not always equally shared. 

 

Two hundred years ago Noah Webster defined the word as an “affection of the mind,” feelings of “esteem and benevolence” “animal desires between the sexes.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word: characterized “by strong feelings of affection for another, arising out of kinship, companionship, admiration, or benevolence;” it is “an individual emotion.” It has been used, the dictionary says, “to refer to sexual attraction or erotic desire.”

 

Today, we use the word liberally. “love you,” we say or write to our children and grandchildren when departing, ending a phone call or completing a text message. We hug one another and say how much we love them. Is the word over-used? I think not, for expressions of love make us considerate and respectful. On my shaving mirror is a saying, attributed to the University of Notre Dame’s longest serving president, Father Theodore Hesburgh (1917-2015): “The most important thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.”

 

Like many of my generation, I was born into a family who loved me but who were not demonstrative of love, or, in fact, of most emotions. Saying “I love you,” and hugging were not common forms of expression. While I knew I was loved, the word ‘love’ was used only when signing letters. The last time I saw my father, in late November 1968 as he was dying of cancer, I told him I loved him, and I remember the awkwardness I felt when I said the words. Less than a year later – the evening before he died – I stopped to see my father-in-law in New York before heading back to Connecticut. I told him my wife loved him. I recall my words seemed forced, even as I knew Caroline loved him deeply.

 

As a college freshman in an introductory class in psychology, we were asked to define love. I demurred, unable to define a sensation I barely understood. Perhaps I was wrong for not attempting, as today I suspect the professor was not looking for a precise definition but to initiate a discussion.

 

A fun story: In the early 2000s, I was in Louisiana on a business trip. Two of us had been visiting a client in Baton Rouge, before driving to New Orleans to fly back to New York the next day. That evening we had dinner at Galatoire’s, a century-old restaurant on Bourbon Street. By chance, we were seated at a table next to Leon Galatoire and a lady friend. Mr. Galatoire had had a few drinks, and we started chatting and soon joined the two tables. My friend bought two copies of Leon Galatoire’s cookbook. Asked to sign them, Mr. Galatoire complied. My copy – today one of my treasures – shows three attempts to sign it, the last reading: “For Sydney, Love you so much! Bon appétit, Leon Galatoire.”

 

To love and to be loved are among the greatest sensations available to us as humans. As one of life’s eternal mysteries, it is too big a subject to be covered in this short essay. It has been written about by poets and portrayed by artists, far more articulate than I am. Nevertheless, I felt the urge to write something as we approach Valentine’s Day. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies,” is a quote attributed to Aristotle, signifying the deep connection felt between two people in love.  When Justice Stewart Potter was asked to describe his test for obscenity, he replied, “I know it when I see it.” Today my answer to my psychology professor would be, I know love when I feel it. And I have been fortunate in being loved, especially by my wife Caroline, and by my children and grandchildren, but also by a large extended family and by numerous friends.

 

In Henry James novel The Portrait of a Lady there is a scene in which the dying Ralph Touchett, speaks to his cousin Isabel Archer; he contrasts physical pain and love: “It’s (the pain) very deep, but…it passes; it’s passing now. But love remains.” It does, but to receive and experience it, we must be open to it and generous with it.

 

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!