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CHAPTER I
I had taken Mrs. Prest into my confidence; in truth without
her I should have made but little advance, for the fruitful
idea in the whole business dropped from her friendly lips.
It was she who invented the short cut, who severed the Gordian knot.
It is not supposed to be the nature of women to rise as a general thing
to the largest and most liberal view--I mean of a practical scheme;
but it has struck me that they sometimes throw off a bold conception--
such as a man would not have risen to--with singular serenity.
"Simply ask them to take you in on the footing of a lodger"--
I don't think that unaided I should have risen to that.
I was beating about the bush, trying to be ingenious, wondering by
what combination of arts I might become an acquaintance, when she
offered this happy suggestion that the way to become an acquaintance
was first to become an inmate. Her actual knowledge of the Misses
Bordereau was scarcely larger than mine, and indeed I had brought
with me from England some definite facts which were new to her.
Their name had been mixed up ages before with one of the greatest
names of the century, and they lived now in Venice in obscurity,
on very small means, unvisited, unapproachable, in a dilapidated
old palace on an out-of-the-way canal: this was the substance
of my friend's impression of them. She herself had been established
in Venice for fifteen years and had done a great deal of good there;
but the circle of her benevolence did not include the two shy,
mysterious and, as it was somehow supposed, scarcely respectable Americans
(they were believed to have lost in their long exile all national quality,
besides having had, as their name implied, some French strain
in their origin), who asked no favors and desired no attention.
In the early years of her residence she had made an attempt
to see them, but this had been successful only as regards
the little one, as Mrs. Prest called the niece; though in reality
as I afterward learned she was considerably the bigger of the two.
She had heard Miss Bordereau was ill and had a suspicion that she
was in want; and she had gone to the house to offer assistance,
so that if there were suffering (and American suffering), she
should at least not have it on her conscience. The "little one"
received her in the great cold, tarnished Venetian sala, the central
hall of the house, paved with marble and roofed with dim crossbeams,
and did not even ask her to sit down. This was not encouraging for me,
who wished to sit so fast, and I remarked as much to Mrs. Prest.
She however replied with profundity, "Ah, but there's all the difference:
I went to confer a favor and you will go to ask one. If they
are proud you will be on the right side." And she offered to show
me their house to begin with--to row me thither in her gondola.
I let her know that I had already been to look at it half a dozen times;
but I accepted her invitation, for it charmed me to hover about the place.
I had made my way to it the day after my arrival in Venice (it had been
described to me in advance by the friend in England to whom I owed
definite information as to their possession of the papers), and I
had besieged it with my eyes while I considered my plan of campaign.
Jeffrey Aspern had never been in it that I knew of; but some note
of his voice seemed to abide there by a roundabout implication,
a faint reverberation.
Mrs. Prest knew nothing about the papers, but she was interested
in my curiosity, as she was always interested in the joys and
sorrows of her friends. As we went, however, in her gondola,
gliding there under the sociable hood with the bright Venetian
picture framed on either side by the movable window, I could
see that she was amused by my infatuation, the way my interest
in the papers had become a fixed idea. "One would think you
expected to find in them the answer to the riddle of the universe,"
she said; and I denied the impeachment only by replying that if I
had to choose between that precious solution and a bundle of
Jeffrey Aspern's letters I knew indeed which would appear to me
the greater boon. She pretended to make light of his genius,
and I took no pains to defend him. One doesn't defend one's god:
one's god is in himself a defense. Besides, today, after his long
comparative obscuration, he hangs high in the heaven of our literature,
for all the world to see; he is a part of the light by which we walk.
The most I said was that he was no doubt not a woman's poet:
to which she rejoined aptly enough that he had been at least
Miss Bordereau's. The strange thing had been for me to discover
in England that she was still alive: it was as if I had been told
Mrs. Siddons was, or Queen Caroline, or the famous Lady Hamilton,
for it seemed to me that she belonged to a generation as extinct.
"Why, she must be tremendously old--at least a hundred," I had said;
but on coming to consider dates I saw that it was not strictly
necessary that she should have exceeded by very much the common span.
Nonetheless she was very far advanced in life, and her relations with
Jeffrey Aspern had occurred in her early womanhood. "That is her excuse,"
said Mrs. Prest, half-sententiously and yet also somewhat as if she
were ashamed of making a speech so little in the real tone of Venice.
As if a woman needed an excuse for having loved the divine poet!
He had been not only one of the most brilliant minds of his day
(and in those years, when the century was young, there were,
as everyone knows, many), but one of the most genial men and one
of the handsomest.
The niece, according to Mrs. Prest, was not so old, and she
risked the conjecture that she was only a grandniece.
This was possible; I had nothing but my share in the very limited
knowledge of my English fellow worshipper John Cumnor, who had
never seen the couple. The world, as I say, had recognized
Jeffrey Aspern, but Cumnor and I had recognized him most.
The multitude, today, flocked to his temple, but of that
temple he and I regarded ourselves as the ministers.
We held, justly, as I think, that we had done more for his memory
than anyone else, and we had done it by opening lights into his life.
He had nothing to fear from us because he had nothing to fear
from the truth, which alone at such a distance of time we
could be interested in establishing. His early death had been
the only dark spot in his life, unless the papers in Miss
Bordereau's hands should perversely bring out others.
There had been an impression about 1825 that he had "treated
her badly," just as there had been an impression that he had
"served," as the London populace says, several other ladies
in the same way. Each of these cases Cumnor and I had been
able to investigate, and we had never failed to acquit him
conscientiously of shabby behavior. I judged him perhaps
more indulgently than my friend; certainly, at any rate,
it appeared to me that no man could have walked straighter
in the given circumstances. These were almost always awkward.
Half the women of his time, to speak liberally, had flung
themselves at his head, and out of this pernicious fashion
many complications, some of them grave, had not failed to arise.
He was not a woman's poet, as I had said to Mrs. Prest,
in the modern phase of his reputation; but the situation had been
different when the man's own voice was mingled with his song.
That voice, by every testimony, was one of the sweetest ever heard.
"Orpheus and the Maenads!" was the exclamation that rose to my
lips when I first turned over his correspondence. Almost all
the Maenads were unreasonable, and many of them insupportable;
it struck me in short that he was kinder, more considerate than,
in his place (if I could imagine myself in such a place!)
I should have been.
It was certainly strange beyond all strangeness, and I shall not
take up space with attempting to explain it, that whereas in all
these other lines of research we had to deal with phantoms and dust,
the mere echoes of echoes, the one living source of information
that had lingered on into our time had been unheeded by us.
Every one of Aspern's contemporaries had, according to
our belief, passed away; we had not been able to look into
a single pair of eyes into which his had looked or to feel
a transmitted contact in any aged hand that his had touched.
Most dead of all did poor Miss Bordereau appear, and yet she
alone had survived. We exhausted in the course of months
our wonder that we had not found her out sooner, and the
substance of our explanation was that she had kept so quiet.
The poor lady on the whole had had reason for doing so.
But it was a revelation to us that it was possible to keep
so quiet as that in the latter half of the nineteenth century--
the age of newspapers and telegrams and photographs and interviewers.
And she had taken no great trouble about it either:
she had not hidden herself away in an undiscoverable hole;
she had boldly settled down in a city of exhibition.
The only secret of her safety that we could perceive was that
Venice contained so many curiosities that were greater than she.
And then accident had somehow favored her, as was shown
for example in the fact that Mrs. Prest had never happened
to mention her to me, though I had spent three weeks
in Venice--under her nose, as it were--five years before.
Mrs. Prest had not mentioned this much to anyone;
she appeared almost to have forgotten she was there.
Of course she had not the responsibilities of an editor.
It was no explanation of the old woman's having eluded us to say
that she lived abroad, for our researches had again and again
taken us (not only by correspondence but by personal inquiry)
to France, to Germany, to Italy, in which countries, not counting
his important stay in England, so many of the too few years
of Aspern's career were spent. We were glad to think at least
that in all our publishings (some people consider I believe
that we have overdone them), we had only touched in passing
and in the most discreet manner on Miss Bordereau's connection.
Oddly enough, even if we had had the material (and we often
wondered what had become of it), it would have been the most
difficult episode to handle.
The gondola stopped, the old palace was there; it was a house of the class
which in Venice carries even in extreme dilapidation the dignified name.
"How charming! It's gray and pink!" my companion exclaimed;
and that is the most comprehensive description of it.
It was not particularly old, only two or three centuries;
and it had an air not so much of decay as of quiet discouragement,
as if it had rather missed its career. But its wide front,
with a stone balcony from end to end of the piano nobile or most
important floor, was architectural enough, with the aid of various
pilasters and arches; and the stucco with which in the intervals
it had long ago been endued was rosy in the April afternoon.
It overlooked a clean, melancholy, unfrequented canal,
which had a narrow riva or convenient footway on either side.
"I don't know why--there are no brick gables," said Mrs. Prest,
"but this corner has seemed to me before more Dutch than Italian,
more like Amsterdam than like Venice. It's perversely clean,
for reasons of its own; and though you can pass on foot scarcely anyone
ever thinks of doing so. It has the air of a Protestant Sunday.
Perhaps the people are afraid of the Misses Bordereau.
I daresay they have the reputation of witches."
I forget what answer I made to this--I was given up to two
other reflections. The first of these was that if the old lady
lived in such a big, imposing house she could not be in any
sort of misery and therefore would not be tempted by a chance
to let a couple of rooms. I expressed this idea to Mrs. Prest,
who gave me a very logical reply. "If she didn't live in a big
house how could it be a question of her having rooms to spare?
If she were not amply lodged herself you would lack ground
to approach her. Besides, a big house here, and especially
in this quartier perdu, proves nothing at all:
it is perfectly compatible with a state of penury.
Dilapidated old palazzi, if you will go out of the way for them,
are to be had for five shillings a year. And as for the people
who live in them--no, until you have explored Venice socially as much
as I have you can form no idea of their domestic desolation.
They live on nothing, for they have nothing to live on."
The other idea that had come into my head was connected
with a high blank wall which appeared to confine an expanse
of ground on one side of the house. Blank I call it,
but it was figured over with the patches that please a painter,
repaired breaches, crumblings of plaster, extrusions of brick
that had turned pink with time; and a few thin trees, with the poles
of certain rickety trellises, were visible over the top.
The place was a garden, and apparently it belonged to the house.
It suddenly occurred to me that if it did belong to the house
I had my pretext.
I sat looking out on all this with Mrs. Prest (it was covered with the golden
glow of Venice) from the shade of our felze, and she asked me if I
would go in then, while she waited for me, or come back another time.
At first I could not decide--it was doubtless very weak of me.
I wanted still to think I MIGHT get a footing, and I was afraid
to meet failure, for it would leave me, as I remarked to my companion,
without another arrow for my bow. "Why not another?" she inquired
as I sat there hesitating and thinking it over; and she wished to know
why even now and before taking the trouble of becoming an inmate
(which might be wretchedly uncomfortable after all, even if it succeeded),
I had not the resource of simply offering them a sum of money down.
In that way I might obtain the documents without bad nights.
"Dearest lady," I exclaimed, "excuse the impatience of my tone when I
suggest that you must have forgotten the very fact (surely I communicated
it to you) which pushed me to throw myself upon your ingenuity.
The old woman won't have the documents spoken of; they are personal,
delicate, intimate, and she hasn't modern notions, God bless her!
If I should sound that note first I should certainly spoil the game.
I can arrive at the papers only by putting her off her guard,
and I can put her off her guard only by ingratiating
diplomatic practices. Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance.
I am sorry for it, but for Jeffrey Aspern's sake I would do worse still.
First I must take tea with her; then tackle the main job."
And I told over what had happened to John Cumnor when he wrote to her.
No notice whatever had been taken of his first letter, and the second
had been answered very sharply, in six lines, by the niece.
"Miss Bordereau requested her to say that she could not imagine what
he meant by troubling them. They had none of Mr. Aspern's papers,
and if they had should never think of showing them to anyone
on any account whatever. She didn't know what he was talking
about and begged he would let her alone." I certainly did not want
to be met that way.
"Well," said Mrs. Prest after a moment, provokingly, "perhaps after all they
haven't any of his things. If they deny it flat how are you sure?"
"John Cumnor is sure, and it would take me long to tell
you how his conviction, or his very strong presumption--
strong enough to stand against the old lady's not unnatural fib--
has built itself up. Besides, he makes much of the internal
evidence of the niece's letter."
"The internal evidence?"
"Her calling him 'Mr. Aspern.'"
"I don't see what that proves."
"It proves familiarity, and familiarity implies the possession
of mementoes, or relics. I can't tell you how that 'Mr.' touches me--
how it bridges over the gulf of time and brings our hero near
to me--nor what an edge it gives to my desire to see Juliana.
You don't say, 'Mr.' Shakespeare."
"Would I, any more, if I had a box full of his letters?"
"Yes, if he had been your lover and someone wanted them!"
And I added that John Cumnor was so convinced, and so all the more
convinced by Miss Bordereau's tone, that he would have come
himself to Venice on the business were it not that for him there
was the obstacle that it would be difficult to disprove his
identity with the person who had written to them, which the old
ladies would be sure to suspect in spite of dissimulation
and a change of name. If they were to ask him point-blank
if he were not their correspondent it would be too awkward
for him to lie; whereas I was fortunately not tied in that way.
I was a fresh hand and could say no without lying.
"But you will have to change your name," said Mrs. Prest.
"Juliana lives out of the world as much as it is possible to live,
but none the less she has probably heard of Mr. Aspern's editors;
she perhaps possesses what you have published."
"I have thought of that," I returned; and I drew out of my pocketbook
a visiting card, neatly engraved with a name that was not my own.
"You are very extravagant; you might have written it,"
said my companion.
"This looks more genuine."
"Certainly, you are prepared to go far! But it will be awkward
about your letters; they won't come to you in that mask."
"My banker will take them in, and I will go every day to fetch them.
It will give me a little walk."
"Shall you only depend upon that?" asked Mrs. Prest.
"Aren't you coming to see me?"
"Oh, you will have left Venice, for the hot months, long before
there are any results. I am prepared to roast all summer--
as well as hereafter, perhaps you'll say! Meanwhile, John Cumnor
will bombard me with letters addressed, in my feigned name,
to the care of the padrona."
"She will recognize his hand," my companion suggested.
"On the envelope he can disguise it."
"Well, you're a precious pair! Doesn't it occur to you that even if you
are able to say you are not Mr. Cumnor in person they may still suspect
you of being his emissary?"
"Certainly, and I see only one way to parry that."
"And what may that be?"
I hesitated a moment. "To make love to the niece."
"Ah," cried Mrs. Prest, "wait till you see her!"
Content of CHAPTER I [Henry James' novel: The Aspern Papers]
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