The Osmonds in Six Sentences

I occasionally visit a site called sixsentence.blogspot.com where stories are written and posted in six sentences. Lately, when I'm wandering aimlessly with my sequel to "The Portrait of a Lady" I spin something in six sentences that may or may not end up in the sequel. I do it to get my mind working without getting involved in the logistics of the story. Below I've given you the six-sentence wonder I posted yesterday. It also works for my own short story blog, velburkowski.blogspot.com, a site where I am attempting to write one hundred short stories. All in all, I'm getting a lot of mileage out of these six sentences as they are now posted on three sites. I received one comment saying it was written in a style of days-gone-by. That's a good compliment: It's what I'm striving for with this sequel to TPOAL.

ISABEL'S SHADOW
Isabel Osmond was having difficulty swallowing her meager repast of fruit, tea, bread and honey after having come from her husband’s study an hour previous where they quarreled about a sum for an old master painting he wished to purchase that she felt they could not afford at this time.

While sitting in a small courtyard adjacent to the dining room in a desultory mood, Mrs. Osmond was delivered a telegram - by mistake - a missive intended for Mr. Osmond from a woman who identified herself as Mrs. Halpern. The message sent to Mrs. Osmond’s husband, Gilbert Osmond, suggested a time and a place for a meeting with an implication that it was of some urgency though not anything dire in nature.

Isabel at first confused as to the identity of the woman had her maid summoned and instructed her to dispatch the telegram to her husband’s butler, Higgins, not thinking much of the incident, assuming it was in relation to his lately manic acquisitiveness for paintings of the Renaissance period and that immediately preceding it. He was in negotiations with several owners of such paintings and was in a flurry of communication and travel a propos potential sales.

Mrs. Osmond drank her tea, nibbled at an orange slice but left the bread untouched and was about to leave the courtyard before the sun became intense when her mind clicked into operating mode: she remembered where she had heard the name Halpern - it was her husband’s former mistress Madame Merle, recently remarried, once again plotting with Osmond, their intrigues a thing a great flowering - of which Isabel could only speculate on while the blood raced to her head precipitously, aware that once again she would have to contend with her husband’s secretive past when what she had hoped for was a future free of its menacing shadow.

Artistic License

The thing I like about Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond is that they are watercolorists--artistes, if you will. I like painters in general so it’s probable that I'm going to cut both of these shady characters some slack in my sequel to “The Portrait of a Lady,” my opinion being, they can’t be all bad.

Here’s a conversation between the former lovers in Osmond’s modest villa in Florence with the charming views and the “perfect rooms.” Madame Merle is paying a call to tell him of her find; a Miss Archer who will meet all of his requirements, mentioned in the previous post, and that she plans to bring her to see his “museum.” She has piqued his interest but he diverts her for a moment to digest the information.

…he pointed out the easel supporting the little water-colour drawing. ‘Have you seen what’s there--my last?” Madame Merle drew near and considered. ‘Is it the Venetian Alps--one of your last year’s sketches?’
‘Yes--but how you guess everything!’
She looked a moment longer, then turned away. ‘You know I don’t care for your drawings.’
‘I know it, yet I’m always surprised at it. They’re really so much better than most people’s.’
‘That may very well be. But as the only thing you do--well, it’s so little. I should have liked you to do so many other things: those were my ambitions.’
‘Yes, you have told me many times--things that were impossible.’
‘Things that were impossible,’ said Madame Merle. And then in quite a different tone: ‘In itself your little picture’s very good.'

What has this conversation to do with anything? Nothing really. I like her criticism to make her own point, then alternately, to compliment. Madame Merle has a way of speaking in dichotomies--not to be taken literally. This is apparent throughout James’s novel. Osmond uses similar methods to obfuscate. Poor Isabel, young, unworldly, is no challenge for these two spin-meisters. They lead her down a path.

I include a sketch of Rome by one of my favorite artists, Claude Lorrain for no reason other than the Osmonds now live in Rome where my sequel is taking place and that I’m in an artistic frame of mind and want to gussy up the post a bit. Since Osmond and his little water-colour sketch are a only a fiction, I have looked elsewhere for visual interest.

"View of the Church of St.Trinita dei Monti, Rome," c.1632, 
Claude Lorrain

Who Is Madame Merle, Really?

Madame Merle figures largely in “The Portrait of a Lady” but James never wrote from her point of view; what we know of her is through dialogue with the other characters or what they said about her. We were never inside the conscious of Madame Merle so it is easy to write her off as a shady character with sordid motives who did our heroine Isabel quite a disservice but once again, James did not go in for such black and white depictions. He was an artist first and foremost, never caving to popular taste with easy characterization.

Ralph Touchett had his reservations about her--he suspected she was not quite as presented. He sensed a driving unfulfilled ambition. In Chapter XXV he says,“…she pushes the search for perfection too far--that her merits are in themselves overstrained. She’s too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything. She’s too complete, in a word, I confess to you that she acts on my nerves…” When Isabel asks him if he knew anything that was not to the honour of her friend he replied, “Nothing whatever. Don’t you see that’s just what I mean? On the character of every one else you may find some little black speck…but on Madame Merle’s nothing, nothing, nothing!”

We do not know until Isabel knows that she was once Gilbert Osmond’s mistress, that the two made a pact to look out for each other after the affaire d’amour ended. We then learn along with Isabel that Pansy is the daughter not of Osmond and his first wife, but of Osmond and Madame Merle. It’s too bad Ralph could not find that little black speck before his cousin married. He may have been able to dissuade her with something more than a hint that Osmond was somehow “small.”

Madame Merle set Isabel up. She convinced Osmond to “make an effort” in regard to Miss Archer; Osmond, who had long ago given up on effort said he would only do so if certain contingencies were met: “Is she beautiful, clever, rich, splendid, universally intelligent and unprecedented virtuous? It’s only on those conditions that I care to make her acquaintance. You know I asked you some time ago never to speak to me of a creature who shouldn’t correspond to that description. I know plenty of dingy people; I don’t want to know any more.” To which Madame Merle replies, “Miss Archer isn’t dingy; she’s as bright as the morning. She corresponds to your description; it’s for that I wish you to know her. She fills all of your requirements.” To be fair to Gilbert Osmond he did connote she might be meant for something better. Madame Merle said that didn’t matter, only what use she could make of her and Osmond replied, “I’m sorry for Miss Archer!” It shows he had a sense of self-deprecation, that he may not be the rank egotist he is later depicted as.

Who is Madame Merle in private? What are her thoughts? She’s a compelling composite of the highly cultivated, sophisticated, ambiguous European. James has her heading to American, a pariah of sorts, to stay a good long time. As I said in an earlier post, I decided to bring her back to Europe with a rich husband in tow. I wanted to do something nice for her. She’s tarnished goods but I feel sorry for her. She's also a plein air painter, something I dabble in myself. I need her in my sequel; I need all the dark horses available to get this thing trotting at a good clip.

Henrietta To The Rescue

I reread chapter ten of “The Portrait of a Lady” in which Henrietta Stackpole, a journalist and great friend of Isabel’s has followed her to England and arrives at Gardencourt where she immediately confronts Ralph Touchett with all her prejudices and exactitudes and sets to work on him. She accuses him of having abandoned his country, America, of having no work to do and refusing to marry and I assume produce children, all in her opinion, the price everyone must pay to be a part of the great future. Patriotism. Contribution. Establishment. The fact that the poor man is gravely ill holds no sway with her. She tells Isabel she does not believe in sickness, has never been sick and that one should work in spite of it. She’s quite a pistol.

She comes to England with the desire to meet the nobility, not to fawn over them but to write about the inner lives of the establishment. She wants to get to the heart of a thing, she says. When she finally meets Lord Warburton and his sister, neighbors and friends of the Touchetts, she cuts them no slack. While she rebukes Ralph for indolence, she has less respect for inherited wealth, the ownership of a vast estate, including its people and having a high position without working for it. She demands to know what the sister is about, chastises the poor girl for having nothing to say for herself and lets Lord Warburton know that he is most certainly remiss--she is not at all sure how deep it goes but that she intends to find out. That Lord Warburton is considered a radical reformer, she bypasses. He implies he can agree with her in principle but the system is deeply entrenched and reform will be long in the future. Henrietta is not impressed.

Ralph, once he finally understands Miss Stackpole finds delight in teasing her mercilessly. The banter between Ralph and Henrietta Stackpole is James in a lighter mood and these two characters remind us of how Isabel arrived in Europe in high spirits with a great deal of humorous jesting amongst her friends. Toward the end of the novel Isabel is so cowered by her husband she cannot even receive Henrietta or her cousin in her own home and in fact wishes them to leave Rome altogether. She is nervous and embarrassed to have them see what has become of her.

I wasn’t sure how much Henrietta would figure in the sequel to TPOAL but she is one of the more likable characters in James’s novel so I have given her a place. In truth, I can’t resist her. She’s a modern American career woman so I can get a feel for her. In fact I have a better feel for her than for Isabel who still eludes me. And Henrietta’s just the one to stick it to Osmond. Needless to say they can’t stand one another. He has no sense of humor to deal with her as Ralph and Lord Warburton had. He finds her unbearable and when he finds anyone not to his favor, they are banished from his kingdom. We’ll have to change that.