The Golden Bowl - Henry James [303]
3. (p. ref) She had come to the sill. People leaning out of windows seem to herald turning-points in the novel. See, for example, p. ref in Vol. II, where Amerigo and Charlotte are leaning over the balcony in Portland Place.
4. (p. ref) Vengo! I’m coming!
5. (p. ref) forestieri. Foreigners.
6. (p. ref) Bradshaw. The railway guide.
7. (p. ref) Blood. People of indeterminate origin (for example the antique dealer, who denies being either English or Italian, but will not say what he is, and Fanny Assingham, who is described on p. ref as looking like a daughter of the South, or still more of the East’) are apparently people to beware of.
Chapter 10
1. (p. ref) Sphinx. This creature of Greek mythology was a winged monster with a woman’s head and a lion’s body, a close guarder of secrets, and given to devouring the unwary. The expression is also used more generally to denote an enigmatic and mysterious person.
2. (p. ref) Si bien. So much so.
Chapter 11
1. (p. ref) tout bêtement. Quite simply.
2. (p. ref) ‘painting’ Applying make-up.
VOLUME TWO
BOOK FOURTH
Chapter 1
1. (p. ref) par exemple. Really.
Chapter 5
1. (p. ref) Longfellow. The quotation is from A Psalm of Life.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
2. (p. ref) Santissima Vergine! Holy Mother of God!
Chapter 7
1. (p. ref) ‘mash’. Infatuation.
2. (p. ref) Cela s’est vu. Such things have been known to happen.
3. (p. ref) blasés. Indifferent.
4. (p. ref) Voilà. That’s it.
BOOK FIFTH
Chapter 1
1. (p. ref) pax Britannica. The (alleged) peace imposed under British Imperial rule. Henry James shows his awareness of the irony of the phrase by stressing the armour and weaponry of this allegorical figure.
2. (p. ref) revanche. Revenge.
3. (p. ref) les grands seigneurs. The nobility.
Chapter 2
1. (p. ref) flambeaux. Candlesticks.
2. (p. ref) the scapegoat. Maggie is thinking of Holman Hunt’s rather lurid painting with this title.
3. (p. ref) lustres of Venice. Venetian glass chandeliers.
Chapter 3
1. (p. ref) ‘slope’. Make off, go away.
2. (p. ref) nippers. Pince-nez: a pair of spectacles without side-pieces, which clip on to the nose.
Chapter 4
1. (p. ref) Baedeker. A travel guide by the author of that name.
2. (p. ref) sotto voce. Quietly.
3. (p. ref) she did cicerone. She acted as a guide.
4. (p. ref) vieux Saxe. A type of antique porcelain from Saxony.
Chapter 5
1. (p. ref) canicular. An adjective applied to the ‘dog-days’, the hottest of the year.
2. (p. ref) Io, in Greek mythology, was a mortal maiden loved by Zeus, king of the gods. In order to lie with her, he took the form of a cloud. Nevertheless, his wife Hera became suspicious. Zeus tried to protect Io by changing her into a heifer, so Hera sent a gadfly to torment the animal, and in trying to escape from it Io fled across the known world, swimming the seas which barred her way. We may feel, particularly by the end of the novel, that Io has more in common with Charlotte than with Maggie.
3. (p. ref) Ariadne, also in Greek mythology, was the daughter of the king of Crete, but betrayed her father in order to help her lover Theseus, to whom she gave a ball of thread that would help him find his way through the labyrinth of her father’s palace. (See the reference to ‘tortuous corridors’ in connection with Adam Verver, on page 129 (Volume I).) Ariadne was later abandoned by Theseus in favour of her sister, Phaedra. The latter also came to grief, as a result of falling in love with her stepson, Hippolytus, Theseus’s son by a former marriage. The parallels are not perfect, but they are close enough.
BOOK SIXTH
Chapter 1
1. (p. ref) Mahomet. An allusion to the proverbial saying: ‘If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, then Mahomet will come to the mountain.’
2. (p. ref) Samson. The mighty Samson, in the Bible, destroys his enemies the Philistines by pulling down their temple on both them and himself.
3. (p. ref) émigré. An emigrant, particularly one fleeing