But my point here is above all that Gray exactlydoesn'tput the question of what is becoming of his funds under Horty's care of them to the test by any cultivation of that courage for large drafts and big hauls, that nerve for believing in the fairy-tale of his sudden fact of possession, which was briefly and in a manner amusingly possible to him at the first go off of his situation. He forbears, abstains, stands off, and finds himself, or in particular is found by others, to the extent of their observing, wondering and presently challenging him, to be living, to be drawing on his supposed income, with what might pass for the most extraordinarily timorous and limited imagination. Helikesthis arrest, enjoys it and feels a sort of wondrous refreshing decency, at any rate above all a refreshing interest and curiosity about it, or, rather, for it; but what his position involves is his explaining it to others, his making up his mind, his having to, for a line to take about it, without his thereby giving Horton away. He isn't to give Horton away the least scrap from this point on; but at the same time he is to have to deal with the world, with society, with the entourage consisting for him, in its most pressing form, of, say, three representative persons—he has to deal with this challenge, as I have called it, in some way that will sort of meet itwithoutgivings-away. These three persons are in especial Rosanna and the two Bradhams; and it is before me definitely, I think, that I want to express, and in the very vividest way, his sense of his situation here, of what it means, and of whathemeans,init, through what takes place for him about it with Rosanna and with the Bradhams. It is by what he "says" to the Bradhams and to Rosanna (in the way, that is largely, ofnotsaying) that I seem to see my values here as best got, and the presentation of their different states most vivified and dramatised. These are scenes, and the function of them to serve up for us exactly, and ever so lucidly, what I desire them to represent. If the greatest interest of them, of sorts, belongs to them in so far as they are "with" Rosanna, there are yet particular values that belong to the relation with Davey, and the three relations, at any rate, work the thing for me. They are perfectly different, on this lively ground, though the "point" involved is the same in each; and the having each of them to do it with should enable me to do it beautifully; I mean to squeezeallthe dramatic sense from it. The great beauty is of course for the aspects with Rosanna, between whom and him everything passes—and there is so much basis already in what has been between them—without his "explaining", as I have called it, anything. Even without explanations—or all the more by reason of their very absence—there is so much of it all; of the question and the dramatic illumination. With Gussie Bradham—thataspect I needn't linger or insist on, here, so much as a scrap. I have that, see it all, it'sthere.But with Davey I want something very good, that is in other words very functional; and I think I even wonder if I don't want to see Davey as attempting to borrow money of him. This—if I do see it—will take much putting on the right basis; and it seems to kind of glimmer upon me richly what the right basis is. My idea has been from the first that the Bradham money is all Gussie's; I have seen Davey, by the very type and aspect, by all his detached irony and humour and indiscretion and general value as the unmonied young man who has married the heiress, as Horton would have been had he been able to marry Rosanna. But no interfering analogy need trouble me here; Horton's not having done that, and the essential difference between the men, eases off any such question. Only don't I seem to want it that Gussie's fortune, besides not having been even remotely comparable to Rosanna's, is, though with a fair outward face, a dilapidated and undermined quantity, much ravaged by Gussie's violent strain upon it, and representing thus, through her general enormous habit and attitude, an association and connection with the money world, but all the more characteristically so, for Gray as he begins to see, that almost everything but the pitch of Gussie's wants and arrangements and ideals has been chucked, as it were, out of its windows and doors. Don't I really see the Bradhams thus aspredatory?Predatory on the very rich, that is; with Gussie's insistence that Gray shallbeand shall proceed as quite one of thevery, oh the very, very, exactly in order that shemayso prey? Yes and so it is that Gray learns—so it is that a part of Davey's abysses of New York financial history, is his own, their own, but his in particular, abyss of inconvenience, abyss of inability to keep it up combined with all the social impossibility of not doing so. I somehow want such values of the supporting and functional and illustrative sort in Davey that I really think I kind of want him to be the person,theperson, to whom Gray gives—as a kind of recognition of the remarkable part, the precious part, don't I feel it as being? that Davey plays for him. He likes so the illuminating Davey, whom I'm quite sure I want to show in no malignant or vicious light, but just as a regular rag or sponge of saturation in the surrounding medium. He is beyond, he is outside of, all moral judgments, all scandalised states; he is amused at what he himself does, at his general and particular effect and effects on Gray, who is his luxury of a relation, as it were, and whom I somehow seem to want to show him feel as the only person in the whole medium appreciating his genius; in other words his detached play of mind and the deep "American humour" of it. Don't I seem to want him even as asking for something rather big?—a kind of a lump of a sum which Gray, always with amusement, answers that he will have to see about. Gray's seeing about anything of this sort means, all notedly, absolutelyall, as I think I have it, asking Horton whether he can, whether he may, whether Horton will give it to him, whether in short the thing will suit Horton; even without any disposition of the sum, any account of what he wants to do, indicated or reported or confessed to Horton? Don't I see something like this?—that Gray, having put it to Horton, has precisely determined, for his vision, on Horton's part, just that first important plea of "Really you can't, you know, at this rate"—even after Gray has been for some time so "ascetic"—"It won't be convenient for you just now; and I must ask you really, you know, to take my word for it that you'd much better not distract from what I am in the act of doing for you such a sum"—by which I mean, for I am probably using here not the terms Hortonwoulduse—"much better not make such a call (call is the word) when I am exactly doing for you etc." What I seem to see is that Davey does have money from him, but has it only on a scale that falls short, considerably, of his appeal or proposal or whatever; in other words that Gray accommodates him to the third, or some other fraction, of the whole extent; and that this involves for him practically the need of his saying that Horton won't let him have more. I want that, I see it as a value; I see Davey's aspect on it as a value, I see what is determined thus between them as a value; and I seem to see most thiscoveringby Gray of Horton in answer to the insinuations, not indignant but amused, in answer to the humorously fantastic picture, on Davey's lips, of the rate at which Horton is cleaning him out or whatever, this taking of the line of so doing and of piling up plausibilities of defence, excuse etc., so far as poor Gray can be plausible in these difficult "technical" connections, as the vivid image, the vividest, I am most concerned to give of what I show him as doing. The covering of Horton, the covering of Horton—this is much more than not giving him away; this active and positive protection of him seems to me really what my subject logically asks. Well then if that is it, is what it most of all, for the dramatic value, asks, how can this be consistently less than Gray's act of going all the way indeed? I don't know why—as it has been hovering before me—I don't want the complete vivid sense of it to take the form of an awful, a horrible or hideous, crisis on Horton's part which, under the stress of it, he "suddenly" discloses to Gray, throwing himself upon him in the most fevered, the most desperate appeal for relief. What then constitutes the nature of the crisis, whatthencan, or constitute the urgency of the relief, unless the fact of his having something altogether dreadful to confess; so dreadful that it can only involve the very essence of his reputation, honour and decency, his safety in short before the law? He has been guilty of some huge irregularity, say—but which yet is a different thing from whatever irregularities he has been guilty of in respect to Gray himself; and which up to now, at the worst, have left a certain substantial part of Gray's funds intact. Say that, say that; turn it over, that is, to see if it's really wanted. I think of it as wanted because I feel the need of the effect of someacutedetermination play up as I consider all this—and yet also see objections; which probably will multiply as I look a little closer. I throw this off, at all events, for the moment, as I go, to be looked at straighter, to return to presently—after I've got away from it a bit, I mean from this special aspect a little, in order to come back to it fresher; picking up meanwhile two or three different matters.
The whole question of what my young man has been positively interested in, been all the while more or less definitely occupied with, I have found myself leaving, or at any rate have left, in abeyance, by reason of a certain sense of its comparative unimportance. That is I have felt my instinct to make him definitely and frankly as complete a case as possible of the sort of thing that will make him an anomaly and an outsider alike in the New York world of business, the N. Y. world of ferocious acquisition, and the world there of enormities of expenditure and extravagance, so that the real suppression for him of anything that shall count in the American air as a money-making, or even as a wage-earning, or as a pecuniarily picking-up character, strikes me as wanted for my emphasis of his entire difference of sensibility and of association. I have always wanted to do an out and out non-producer, in the ordinary sense of non-accumulator of material gain, from the moment one should be able to give him a positively interested aspect on another side or in another sense, or even definitely agenerallyresponsive intelligence. I see my figure then in this case as an absolutely frank example of the tradition and superstition, the habit and rule so inveterate there, frankly and serenely deviated from—these things meaning there essentially some mode of sharp reaching out for money over a counter or sucking it up through a thousand contorted channels. Yet I want something as different as possible, no less different, I mean, from the people who are "idle" there than from the people who are what is called active; in short, as I say, an out and out case, and of course an avowedly, an exceptionally fine and special one, which antecedents and past history up to then may more or less vividly help to account for. A very special case indeed is of course our Young Man—without his being which my donnée wouldn't come off at all; his being so is just of the very core of the subject. It's a question therefore of the way to make himmostspecial—but I so distinctly see this that I need scarce here waste words——! There are three or four definite facts and considerations, however; conditions to be seen clear. I want to steer clear of the tiresome "artistic" associations hanging about the usual type of young Anglo-Saxon "brought up abroad"; though only indeed so far as theyaretiresome. My idea involves absolutely Gray's taking his stand, a bit ruefully at first, but quite boldly when he more and more sees what the opposite of it over there is so much an implication of, on the acknowledgment that, no, absolutely, he hasn't anything at all to show in the way of work achieved—withsuchwork as he has seen achieved, whether apologetically or pretentiously, as he has lived about; and yet has up to now not had at all the sense of a vacuous consciousness or a so-called wasted life. This however by reason of course of certain things, certain ideas, possibilities, inclinations and dispositions, that he has cared about and felt, in his way, the fermentation of. Of course the trouble with him is a sort of excess of "culture", so far as the form taken by his existence up to then has represented the growth of that article. Again, however, I see that I really am in complete possession of him, and that no plotting of it as to any but one or two material particulars need here detain me. He isn't, N.B., big, personally, by which I mean physically; I see that I want him rather below than above the middling stature, and light and nervous and restless; extremely restless above all in presence of swarming new and more or less aggressive, in fact quite assaulting phenomena. Of course he has hadsomemeans—that he and his stepfather were able to live in a quiet "European" way and on an income of an extreme New York deplorability, is of course of the basis of what has been before; with which he must have come in for whatever his late companion has had to leave. So with what there was from his mother, very modest, and what there is from this other source, not less so, hecan, he could, go back to Europe on a sufficient basis: this fact to be kept in mind both as mitigating the prodigy of his climax in N.Y., and yet at the same time as making whatever there is of "appeal" to him over there conceivable enough. Note that the statement he makes, when we first know him, to his dying uncle, the completeness of the picture of detachment then and there drawn for him, and which, precisely, by such an extraordinary and interesting turn, is what most "refreshes" and works upon Mr. Betterman—note, I say, that I absolutely require the utterness of his difference tobea sort of virtual determinant in this relation. He puts it so to Rosanna, tells her how extraordinarily he feels that this is what ithasbeen. Heaven forbid he should "paint"—but there glimmers before me the sense of the connection in which I can see him as more or less covertly and waitingly, fastidiously and often too sceptically, conscious of possibilities of "writing". Quite frankly accept for him the complication or whatever of his fastidiousness, yet of his recognition withal of what makes for sterility; but again and again I have all this, I have it. His "culture", his initiations of intelligence and experience, his possibilities of imagination, if one will, to say nothing of other things, make for me a sort of figure of a floating island on which he drifts and bumps and coasts about, wanting to get alongside as much as possible, yet always with the gap of water, the little islandfact, to be somehow bridged over. All of which makes him, I of course desperately recognise, another of the "intelligent", another exposed and assaulted, active and passive "mind" engaged in an adventure and interesting initselfby so being; but I rejoice in that aspect of my material as dramatically and determinantlygeneral.It isn'tcentrallya drama of fools or vulgarians; it's only circumferentially and surroundedly so—these being enormously implied and with the effect of their hovering and pressing upon the whole business from without, but seen and felt by us only with that rich indirectness. So far so good; but I come back for a moment to an issue left standing yesterday—and beyond which, for that matter, two or three other points raise their heads. Why did it appear to come up for me again—I having had it present to me before and then rather waved it away—that one might see Horton in thekindof crisis that I glanced at as throwing him upon Gray with what I called violence? Is it because I feel "something more" is wanted for the process by which my Young Man works off the distaste, his distaste, for the ugliness of his inheritance—something more than his justgenerallyplaying into Horton's hands? I am in presence there of a beautiful difficulty, beautiful to solve, yet which one must be to the last point crystal-clear about; and this difficulty is certainly added to if Gray sees Horton as "dishonest" in relation to others over and above his being "queer" in the condoned way I have so to picture for his relation to Gray. Here are complexities not quite easily unravelled, yet manageable by getting sufficiently close to them; complexities, I mean, of the question of whether——? Horton is abysmal, yes—but with the mixture in it that Gray sees. Ergo I want the mixture, and if I adopt what I threw off speculatively yesterday I strike myself as letting the mixture more or less go and having the non-mixture, that is the "bad" in him, preponderate. It has been my idea that this "bad" figures in a degree to Gray as after a fashion his own creation, the creation, that is, of the enormous and fantastic opportunity and temptation he has held out—even though these wouldn't have operated in the least, or couldn't, without predispositions in Horton's very genius. If Gray saw him as a mere vulgar practiser of what he does practise, the interest would by that fact exceedingly drop; there would be no interest indeed, and the beauty of my "psychological" picture wouldn't come off, would have no foot to stand on. The beauty is in the complexity of the question—which, stated in the simplest terms possible, reduces itself to Horton's practically saying to Gray, or seeing himself as saying to Gray should it come to the absolute touch: "Youmind, in your extraordinary way, how this money was accumulated and hanky-pankied, you suffer, and cultivate a suffering, from the perpetrated wrong of which you feel it the embodied evidence, and with which the possession of it is thereby poisoned for you. But I don't mind one little scrap—and there is a great deal more to be said than you seem so much as able to understand, or so much as able to want to, about the whole question of how money comes to those who knowhowto make it. Here you are then, if it's so disagreeable to you—and what can one really say, with the chances you give me to say it, but that if you are so burdened and afflicted, there are ways of relieving you which, upon my honour, I should perfectly undertake to work—given the facilities that you so morbidly, so fantastically, so all but incredibly save for the testimony of my senses, permit me to enjoy."That, yes; but that is very different from the wider range of application of the aptitudes concerned. The confession, and the delinquency preceding it, that played a bit up for me yesterday—what do they do but make Horton just as vulgar as Idon'twant him, and, as I immediately recognise, Gray wouldn't in the least be able to stomach seeing him under any continuance of relations. I have it, I have it, and it comes as an answer towhyIworried?Because of felt want of a way of providing for some Big Haul, really big; which my situation absolutely requires. There must be at a given moment a big haul in order to produce the big sacrifice; the latter being of the absolute essence. I say I have it when I ask myself why the Big Haul shouldn't simply consist of the consequence of a confession made by Horton to Gray, yes; but made not about what he has lost, whether dishonestly or not, for somebody else, but what he has lost for Gray. Solutions here bristle, positively, for the case seems to clear up from the moment I make Horton put his matter as a mere disastrous loss, of unwisdom, of having been "done" by others and not as a thing involving his own obliquity. What I want is that hepleads the loss—whether loss to Gray, loss to another party, or loss to both, is a detail. I incline to think loss to Gray sufficient—loss that Gray accepts, which is different from his meeting the disaster inflicted on another by Horton. What I want a bit is all contained in Gray's question, afterwards determined, not absolutely present at the moment, of whether this fact has not been a feigned or simulated one, not a genuine gulf of accident, but an appeal for relinquishment practised on Gray by the latter's liability to believe that the cause is genuine. I clutch the idea of this determinant of rightness of suspicion being one with the circumstance that Cissy in a sort ofthereuponmanner "takes up" with Horton, instead of not doing so, as figures to Gray as discernible if Horton were merely minus. Is it cleared up for Gray that the cause is not genuine?—does he get, or does he seek, any definite light on this? Does he tell any one, that is does he tell Rosanna of the incident (though I want the thing of proportions bigger than those of a mere incident)—does he put it to her, in short does he take her into his confidence about it? I think I see that he does to this extent, that she is the only person to whom he speaks, but that he then speaks with a kind of transparent and, as it were, (as it is in her sight) "sublime" dissimulation. Yes, I think that's the way I want it—that he tells her what has happened, tells it to her as having happened, as a statement of what he has done or means to do—perhaps his mind isn't even yet made up to it; whereby I seem to get a very interesting passage of drama and another very fine "Joint." He doesn't, no, decidedly, communicate anything to Davey Bradham—his instinct has been against that—and I feel herewith how much I want this D.B. relation for him to have all its possibility of irony, "comedy", humorous colour, so to speak. I want awfully to do D.B. to the full and give him all his value. However, it's of the situation here with Rosanna that the question is, and I seem to feel that still further clear up for me. There has been the passage, the big circumstance, with Horton—as to which, as to the sense of which and of what it involves for him, don't I after all see him as taking time? after all see him as a bit staggered quand même, and, as it were,askingfor time, though without any betrayal of "suspicion", any expression tantamount to "What a queer story!" Yes, yes, it seems to come to me that I want thedetermination of suspicionnot to come at once; I want it to hang back and wait for a big "crystallisation," a falling together of many things, which now takes place, as it were, in Rosanna's presence and under her extraordinary tacit action, in that atmosphere of their relation which has already given me, orwillhave given, not to speak presumptuously, so much. It kind of comes over me even that I don't wantanyarticulation tohimselfof the "integrity" question in respect to Horton to have taken place at all—till it very momentously takes place all at once in the air, as I say, and on the ground, and in the course, of this present scene. Immensely interesting to have made Everything precedent to have consisted but in preparation for this momentousness, so that the whole effect has been gathered there ready to break. At the same time, if I make it break not in the right way, unless I so rightly condition its breaking, I do what I was moved just above to bar, the giving away of Horton to Rosanna in the sense that fixing his behaviour upon him, or inviting or allowing her to fix it, is a thing I see my finer alternative to. The great thing, the great find, I really think, for the moment, is this fact of his having gone to her in a sort of still preserved uncertainty of light that amounts virtually to darkness, and then after a time with her coming away with the uncertainty dispelled and the remarkable light instead taking its place. That gives me my very form and climax—in respect to the "way" that has most perplexed me, and gathers my action up to the fulness so proposed and desired; to the point after which I want to make it workable that there shall be but two Books left. In other words the ideal will be that this whole passage, using the word in the largest sense, with all the accompanying aspects, shall constitute Book 8, "Act" 8, as I call it, of my drama, with the dénouement occupying the space to the end—for the foregoing is of course not in the least the dénouement, but only prepares it, just as what is thus involved is the occupancy of Book 7 by the history with Horton. Of course I can but reflect that to bring this splendid economy off it must have been practised uptoVII with the most intense and immense art: the scheme I have already sketched for I and II leaving me therewith but III, IV, V, and VI to arrive at the completeness of preparation for VII, which carries in its bosom the completeness of preparation for VIII—this last, by a like grand law, carrying initspocket the completeness of preparation for IX and X. But why not? Who's afraid? and what has the very essence of my design been but the most magnificent packed and calculated closeness? Keep this closeness up to the notch while admirablyanimatingit, and I do what I should simply be sickened to death not to! Of course it means the absolute exclusivelyeconomicexistence and situation of every sentence and every letter; but again what is that but the most desirable of beauties initself?The chapters of history with Rosanna leave me then to show, speaking simply, its effect with regard to (I assume I put first) Gray and Horton, to Gray and Cissy, to Cissy and Horton, to Gray and Mrs. Bradham on the one hand and to Gray and Davey on the other and finally and supremely to Gray and Rosanna herself. It is of course definitely on that note the thing closes—but wait a little before I come to it. Let me state as "plainly" as may be what "happens" as the next step in my drama, the next Joint in the action after the climax of the "scene" with Rosanna. Obviously the first thing is a passage with Horton, the passageafter, which shall be a pendant to the passage before. But don't I want some episode to interpose here on the momentous ground of the Girl? These sequences to be absolutely planned and fitted together, of course, up to their last point of relation; to work such complexity into such compass can only be a difficulty of the most inspiring—the prize being, naturally, to achieve the luciditywiththe complexity. What then is the lucidity for us about my heroine, and exactly what is it that I want and don't want to show? I want something to take place here between Gray and her thatcrownshis vision and his action in respect to Horton. As I of course want every point and comma to be "functional", so there's nothing I want that more for than for this aspect of my crisis—which does, yes, decidedly, present itself before Gray has again seen Horton. I seem even to want this aspect, as I call it, to be the decisive thing in respect to his "decision". I want something to have still depended for him on the question of how she is, what she does, what she makes him see, however little intending it, of her sensibility to the crisis, as it were—knowing as I do what I mean by this. But what does come up for me, and has to be faced, is all the appearance that all this later development that I have sketched and am sketching, rather directly involves a deviation from thathelp by alternationswhich I originally counted on, and which I began by drawing upon in the first three or four Books. What becomes after the first three or four then of that variation—if I make my march between IV and VIII inclusive all a matter of what appears to Gray? Perhaps on closer view I can for the "finer amusement" escape that frustration—though it would take some doing; and the fact remains that I don't really want, and can't, any other exhibition than Gray's ownexceptin the case of Horton and the Young Woman. I should likemorevariation than just that will yield me withal—so at least it strikes me; but if I press a bit a possibility perhaps will rise. Two things strike me: one of these being that instead of making Book 9 Gray's "act" I may make it in a manner Cissy's own; save that a terrific little question here comes up as involved in the very essence of my cherished symmetry and "unity". The absolute prime compositional idea ruling me is thus the unity of each Act, and I get unity with the Girl for IX only if I keep ittoher and whoever else. To her and Horton, yes, to her and Gray (Gray first) yes; only how then comes in the "passage" of Gray and Horton without her, and which I don't want to push over to X. It would be an "æsthetic" ravishment to make Book 10 balance with Book 1 as Rosanna's affair; which I glimmeringly see as interestingly possible if I can wind up somehow as I want to do between Gray and Horton. In connection with which, however, something again glimmers—the possibility of making Book 9 quand même Cissy and Horton and Gray; twisting out, that is, some admirable way of her being participant in, "present at", what here happens between them as to their own affair. I say these things after all with the sense, so founded on past experience, that, in closer quarters and the intimacy of composition, pre-noted arrangements, proportions and relations, do most uncommonly insist on making themselves different by shifts and variations, always improving, which impose themselves as one goes and keep the door open always to somethingmoreright andmorerelated. It is subject to that constant possibility, all the while, that one does pre-note and tentatively sketch; a fact so constantly before one as to make too idle any waste of words on it. At the same time I do absolutely and utterly want to stick, even to the very depth, to thegeneraldistribution here imagined as I have groped on; and I am at least now taking a certain rightness and conclusiveness of parts and items for granted until the intimate tussle, as I say, happens, if it does happen, to dislocate or modify them. Such an assumption for instance I find myself quite loving to make in presence of the vision quite colouring up for me yesterday of Book 9 as given to Gray and Horton and Cissy Together, as I may rudely express it, and Book 10, to repeat, given, with a splendid richness and comprehensiveness, to Rosanna, as I hope to have shown Book I as so given. Variety, variety—I want to go in for that for all the possibilities of my case may be worth; and I see, I feel, how a sort of fond fancy of it is met by the distribution, the little cluster of determinations, or, so to speak, for the pleasure of putting it, determinatenesses, so noted. It gives me the central mass of the thing for my hero's own embrace and makes beginning and end sort of confront each other over it.
Is it vain to do anything but say, that is but feel, that this situation of the Three in Book 9 absolutely demands the intimate grip for clearing itself up, working itself out? Yes, perfectly vain, I reflect, as at all precluding the high urgency and decency of my seeing in advance just how and where I plant my feet and direct my steps. Express absolutely, to this end, the conclusive sense, the clear firm function, of Book 9—out of which the rest bristles. I want it, as for that matter I want each Book, with the last longing and fullest intention, to be what it is "amusing" and regaling to think of as "complete in itself"; otherwise a thoroughly expressed Occasion, or as I have kept calling it Aspect, such as one can go at, thanks to the flow of the current in it, in the firmest possible little narrative way. The form of the Occasion is the form that I somehow see as here veryparticularlypresenting itself and contributing its aid to that impression of the Three Together which I try to focus. Where, exactly, and exactly how, are they thus vividly and workably together?—what is the most "amusing" way of making them so? It is fundamental for me to note that my action represents and embraces the sequences of a Year, not going beyond this and not falling short of it. I can't get my Unity, can't keep it, on the basis of more than a year, and can't get my complexity, don't want to, in anything a bit less. I see a Year right, in fine, and it brings me round therefore to the early summer from the time of my original Exposition. With which it comes to me of course that one of the things accruing to Gray under his Uncle's Will is the house at Newport, which belonged to the old man, and which I have no desire to go into any reason whatever for his heir's having got rid of. There is the house at Newport—as to which it comes over me that I kind of see him in it once or twice during the progress of the autumn's, the winter's, the spring's events. Isn't it also a part of my affair that I see the Bradhams with a Newport place, and am more or less encouraged herewith to make out the Scene of Book 9, the embracing Occasion, of the three, as a "staying" of them, in the natural way, the inevitable, the illustrative, under some roof that places them vividly in relation to each other. OfcourseMrs. Bradham has her great characteristic house away from N.Y., where anything and everything may characteristically find their background—the whole case being compatible with that lively shakiness of fortune that I have glanced at; only I want to keep the whole thing, so far as my poor little "documented" state permits, on the lines of absolutely current New York practice, as I further reflect I probably don't want to move Gray an inch out of N.Y. "during the winter", this probably a quite unnecessarily bad economy. Having what I have of New York isn't the question of using it, and it only, as entirely adequate from Book 4 to 8 inclusive? To keep everything as like these actualities of N.Y. as possible, for the sake of my "atmosphere", I must be wary and wise; in the sense for instance that said actualities don't at all comprise people's being at Newportearlyin the summer. How then, however, came the Bradhams to be there at the time noted in my Book 1? I reflect happily apropos of this that my there positing the early summer (in Book 1) is a stroke that I needn't at all now take account of; it having been but an accident of my small vague plan as it glimmered to me from the very first go-off. No, definitely, the time-scheme must a bit move on, and give help there—by to the place-scheme; if I want Gray to arrive en plein Newport, as I do for immediate control of the assault of his impressions, it must be a matter of August rather than of June; and nothing is simpler than to shift. Let me indeed so far modify as to conceive that 15 or 16 months will be as workable as a Year—practically they will count as the period both short enough and long enough; and will bring me for Nine and Ten round to the Newport or whatever of August, and to the whatever else of some moment of beauty and harmony in the American autumn. Let me wind up on a kind of strong October or perhaps even better still—yes, better still—latish November, in other words admirable Indian Summer, note. That brings me round and makes the circle whole. Well then I don't seem to want a repetition of Newport—as if it were, poor old dear, the only place known to me in the country!—for the images that this last suggestion causes more or less to swarm. By the blessing of heaven I am possessed, sufficiently to say so, of Lenox, and Lenox for the autumn is much more characteristic too. What do I seem to see then?—as I don't at all want, or imagine myself wanting at the scratch, to make a local jump between Nine and Ten. These things come—I see them coming now. Of course it's perfectly conceivable, and entirely characteristic, that Mrs. Bradham should have a place at Lenox as well as at Newport; if it's necessary to posit her for the previous summer in her own house at the latter place. It's perfectly in order that she may have taken one there for the summer—and that having let the Lenox place at that time may figure as a sort of note of the crack in her financial aspect that is part, tocallit part, of my concern. All of which are considerations entirely meetable at the short range—save that I do really seem to kind of want Book 10 at Lenox and to want Nine there by the same stroke. I should like to stick Rosanna at the beautiful Dublin, if it weren't for the grotesque anomaly of the name; and after all what need serve my purpose better than what I already have? It's provided for in Book I that she and her father had only taken the house at Newport for a couple of months or whatever; so that is all to the good. Oh yes, all that New England mountain-land that I thus get by radiation, and thus welcome the idea of for values surging after a fashion upon Gray, appeals to one to "do" a bit, even in a measure beyond one's hope of space to do it. Well before me surely too the fact that my whole action does, can only, take place in the air of the last actuality; which supports so, and plays into, its sense and its portée. Therefore it's a question of all the intensest modernity of every American description; cars and telephones and facilities and machineries and resources of certain sorts not to be exaggerated; which I can't not take account of. Assume then, in fine, the Bradhams this second autumn at Lenox, assume Gussie blazing away as if at the very sincerest and validest top of her push; assume Rosanna as naturally there in the "summer home" which has been her and her father's only possessional alternative to N.Y. I violate verisimilitude in not brushing them all, all of the N.Y. "social magnates", off to Paris as soon as Lent sets in, by their prescribed oscillation; but who knows but what it will be convenient quite exactly to shift Gussie across for the time, as nothing then would be more in the line of truth than to have her bustle expensively back for her Lenox proceedings of the autumn. These things, however, are trifles. All I have wanted to thresh out a bit has been the "placing" of Nine and Ten; and for this I have more than enough provided.
What it seems to come to then is the "positing" of Cissy at Lenox with the Bradhams at the time the circumstances of Book Eight have occurred; it's coming to me with which that I seem exactly to want them to occur in the empty town, the New York of a more or less torrid mid-August—this I feel so "possessed of"; to which Gray has "come back" (say from Newport where he has been for a bit alone in his own house there, to think, as it were, with concentration); come back precisely for the passage with Horton. So at any rate for the moment I seem to seethat; my actual point being, however, that Cissy is posited at Lenox, that the Book "opens" with her, and that it is in the sense I mean "her" Book. She is there waiting as it were on what Horton does, so far as I allow her intelligence of this; and it is there that Gray finds her on his going on to Lenox whether under constraint (by what has gone before) of a visit to the Bradhams, a stay of some days with them, or under the interest of a conceivable stay with Rosanna; a sort of thing that I represent, or at any rate "posit", as perfectly in the line of Rosanna's present freedom and attributes. Would I rather have him with Rosanna and "going over" to the Bradhams? would I rather have him with the Bradhams and going over to Rosanna?—or would I rather have him at neither place and staying by himself at an hotel, which seems to leave me the right margin? There has been no staying up to this point for him with either party, and I have as free a hand as could be. With which there glimmer upon me advantages—oh yes—in placing him in his own independence; especially for Book 10: in short it seems to come. Don't I see Cissy as having obtained from Gussie Bradham that Horton shall be invited—which fact in itself I here provisionally throw off as giving me perhaps a sort of starting value.
[3]From this point the names of the characters, most of which were still uncertain, are given in accordance with Henry James' final choice; though it may be noted that he was to the end dissatisfied with the name of Cissy Foy and meant to choose another.
[3]From this point the names of the characters, most of which were still uncertain, are given in accordance with Henry James' final choice; though it may be noted that he was to the end dissatisfied with the name of Cissy Foy and meant to choose another.