Restoring Madame Merle

I’ve brought Madame Merle back to Rome. She happened to meet Osmond at a dinner party but has not yet encountered Isabel. They saw each other in a hotel lobby but were distant enough to avoid communication.

Madame Merle is now Mrs. Gerald Halpern; I thought a new start in life would be good for this slightly cracked vessel. Her husband is a wealthy manufacturer from Illinois who fell for Madame Merle when he heard her play a Schubert piano sonata at a party of swells in New York. Madame Merle was once again earning her keep by singing for her supper or in this case playing with her exquisite white hands. Mr. Halpern had never much chance to hear classical music in his busy, industrial, Midwestern life and was smitten. He is not cultivated though he leans toward its seductive quality, an attribute James gives many of his American characters. Mr. Halpern courts Madame Merle, she allows it, they marry within a month and immediately set sail for Europe and a life of high culture as only Madame Merle can ascribe to. He knows nothing of her past except that she is a widow and as he is a widower, about the same age, mid-forties, so there they are, now in Rome for the season. She plans to revel in her renewed glory and more power to her. Mrs. Halpern has no plans to grovel before society as she may have before nor to worry much about the Osmonds.

That is until she sees Pansy in a hotel lobby with Isabel and feels the pangs of motherhood--she is impressed with the woman her daughter has become though she will not break her deal with Osmond or do anything to tarnish her reputation but she is going to enter the picture when Osmond tries to marry Pansy into a shabby noble family to a gambling prince without a shred of character. I will have her be the one to break it to Osmond and twist his arm in favor of the one Pansy does truly love: Isabel’s nephew, a medical student at Oxford. Unless, of course, none of this works out. Anything can happen with a first draft. I’ve already got too many disparate things going on.

I’m being pretty nice to the woman who has caused our Isabel much heartache but I always like a comeback and in the end aren't we always responsible for our own destiny? Isabel herself believes in the old Emersonian cudgel of self-reliance. And if I remember correctly, she did say something about not escaping one’s unhappiness, one’s fate when turning down Lord Warburton’s proposal of marriage. I have some nice things in store for her. Mr. James sincerely did eschew happily-ever-after but I may have trouble with that. Isabel, as her cousin Ralph said, was not made for suffering. I'm not partial to it either. I'm even having trouble wishing Osmond an unhappy fate. I'll have to get tougher before this thing is over.

If you would like to hear how seductive Schubert's piano sonatas can be, here are links to a very fine live recording by Alfred Brendel and a highly rated collection by Mitsuko Uchida.