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\title{The Beldonald Holbein, by Henry James}
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\maketitle
\chapter*{Prefatory Materials}
\markboth{The Beldonald Holbein, by Henry James}{Prefatory Materials}
\begin{quotation}
\textit{This is a modified etext created by \textbf{GutenMark} software, version Jul 14 2002.~ Any comments below about the preparation of the text refer to the \emph{original} etext file, and do not directly refer to this modified version of the text.~ In particular, no individuals named below bear any responsibility for changes to the text.}
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This etext was transcribed by David Price, email


ccx074@coventry.ac.uk; proofing by Andy and his wife.~


The edition used was the 1922 Macmillan and Co. one.









THE BELDONALD HOLBEIN





by Henry James






\chapter*{CHAPTER I}\markboth{The Beldonald Holbein, by Henry James}{CHAPTER I}






Mrs. Munden had not yet been to my studio on so good a pretext as when she
first intimated that it would be quite open to me--\-should I only care, as
she called it, to throw the handkerchief--\-to paint her beautiful sister-in-law.~  I needn't go here more than is essential into the question of Mrs.
Munden, who would really, by the way, be a story in herself.~  She has a
manner of her own of putting things, and some of those she has put to me--!~
Her implication was that Lady Beldonald hadn't only seen and admired
certain examples of my work, but had literally been prepossessed in favour
of the painter's ``personality.''~  Had I been struck with this sketch I might
easily have imagined her ladyship was throwing me the handkerchief.~  ``She
hasn't done,'' my visitor said, ``what she ought.''





``Do you mean she has done what she oughtn't?''





``Nothing horrid--\-ah dear no.''~  And something in Mrs. Munden's tone, with
the way she appeared to muse a moment, even suggested to me that what she
``oughtn't'' was perhaps what Lady Beldonald had too much neglected.~  ``She
hasn't got on.''





``What's the matter with her?''





``Well, to begin with, she's American.''





``But I thought that was the way of ways to get on.''





``It's one of them.~  But it's one of the ways of being awfully out of it
too.~  There are so many!''





``So many Americans?''~ I asked.





``Yes, plenty of \textit{them},'' Mrs. Munden sighed.~  ``So many ways, I mean, of being
one.''





``But if your sister-in-law's way is to be beautiful--?''





``Oh there are different ways of that too.''





``And she hasn't taken the right way?''





``Well,'' my friend returned as if it were rather difficult to express, ``she
hasn't done with it--\-''





``I see,'' I laughed; ``what she oughtn't!''





Mrs. Munden in a manner corrected me, but it \textit{was} difficult to express.~  ``My
brother at all events was certainly selfish.~  Till he died she was almost
never in London; they wintered, year after year, for what he supposed to be
his health--\-which it didn't help, since he was so much too soon to meet his
end--\-in the south of France and in the dullest holes he could pick out, and
when they came back to England he always kept her in the country.~  I must
say for her that she always behaved beautifully.~  Since his death she has
been more in London, but on a stupidly unsuccessful footing.~  I don't think
she quite understands.~  She hasn't what I should call a life.~  It may be of
course that she doesn't want one.~  That's just what I can't exactly find
out.~  I can't make out how much she knows.''





``I can easily make out,'' I returned with hilarity, ``how much \textit{you} do!''





``Well, you're very horrid.~  Perhaps she's too old.''





``Too old for what?''~ I persisted.





``For anything.~  Of course she's no longer even a little young; only
preserved--\-oh but preserved, like bottled fruit, in syrup!~  I want to help
her if only because she gets on my nerves, and I really think the way of it
would be just the right thing of yours at the Academy and on the line.''





``But suppose,'' I threw out, ``she should give on my nerves?''





``Oh she will.~  But isn't that all in the day's work, and don't great
beauties always--?''





``\textit{You} don't,'' I interrupted; but I at any rate saw Lady Beldonald later on--\-
the day came when her kinswoman brought her, and then I saw how her life
must have its centre in her own idea of her appearance.~  Nothing else about
her mattered--\-one knew her all when one knew that.~  She's indeed in one
particular, I think, sole of her kind--\-a person whom vanity has had the odd
effect of keeping positively safe and sound.~  This passion is supposed
surely, for the most part, to be a principle of perversion and of injury,
leading astray those who listen to it and landing them sooner or later in
this or that complication; but it has landed her ladyship nowhere whatever--it has kept her from the first moment of full consciousness, one feels,
exactly in the same place.~  It has protected her from every danger, has
made her absolutely proper and prim.~  If she's ``preserved,'' as Mrs. Munden
originally described her to me, it's her vanity that has beautifully done
it--\-putting her years ago in a plate-glass case and closing up the
receptacle against every breath of air.~  How shouldn't she be preserved
when you might smash your knuckles on this transparency before you could
crack it?~  And she is--\-oh amazingly!~  Preservation is scarce the word for
the rare condition of her surface.~  She looks \textit{naturally} new, as if she took
out every night her large lovely varnished eyes and put them in water.~  The
thing was to paint her, I perceived, in the glass case--\-a most tempting
attaching feat; render to the full the shining interposing plate and the
general show-window effect.





It was agreed, though it wasn't quite arranged, that she should sit to me.~
If it wasn't quite arranged this was because, as I was made to understand
from an early stage, the conditions from our start must be such as should
exclude all elements of disturbance, such, in a word, as she herself should
judge absolutely favourable.~  And it seemed that these conditions were
easily imperilled.~  Suddenly, for instance, at a moment when I was
expecting her to meet an appointment--\-the first--\-that I had proposed, I
received a hurried visit from Mrs. Munden, who came on her behalf to let me
know that the season happened just not to be propitious and that our friend
couldn't be quite sure, to the hour, when it would again become so.~  She
felt nothing would make it so but a total absence of worry.





``Oh a `total absence,''' I said, ``is a large order!~  We live in a worrying
world.''





``Yes; and she feels exactly that--\-more than you'd think.~  It's in fact just
why she mustn't have, as she has now, a particular distress on at the very
moment.~  She wants of course to look her best, and such things tell on her
appearance.''





I shook my head.~  ``Nothing tells on her appearance.~  Nothing reaches it in
any way; nothing gets \textit{at} it.~  However, I can understand her anxiety.~  But
what's her particular distress?''





``Why the illness of Miss Dadd.''





``And who in the world's Miss Dadd?''





``Her most intimate friend and constant companion--\-the lady who was with us
here that first day.''





``Oh the little round black woman who gurgled with admiration?''





``None other.~  But she was taken ill last week, and it may very well be that
she'll gurgle no more.~  She was very bad yesterday and is no better to-day,
and Nina's much upset.~  If anything happens to Miss Dadd she'll have to get
another, and, though she has had two or three before, that won't be so
easy.''





``Two or three Miss Dadds? is it possible?~  And still wanting another!''~  I
recalled the poor lady completely now.~  ``No; I shouldn't indeed think it
would be easy to get another.~  But why is a succession of them necessary to
Lady Beldonald's existence?''





``Can't you guess?''~  Mrs. Munden looked deep, yet impatient.~  ``They help.''





``Help what?~  Help whom?''





``Why every one.~  You and me for instance.~  To do what?~  Why to think Nina
beautiful.~  She has them for that purpose; they serve as foils, as accents
serve on syllables, as terms of comparison.~  They make her `stand out.'~
It's an effect of contrast that must be familiar to you artists; it's what
a woman does when she puts a band of black velvet under a pearl ornament
that may, require, as she thinks, a little showing off.''





I wondered.~  ``Do you mean she always has them black?''





``Dear no; I've seen them blue, green, yellow.~  They may be what they like,
so long as they're always one other thing.''





``Hideous?''





Mrs. Munden made a mouth for it.~  ``Hideous is too much to say; she doesn't
really require them as bad as that.~  But consistently, cheerfully, loyally
plain.~  It's really a most happy relation.~  She loves them for it.''





``And for what do they love \textit{her}?''





``Why just for the amiability that they produce in her.~  Then also for their
`home.'~  It's a career for them.''





``I see.~  But if that's the case,'' I asked, ``why are they so difficult to
find?''





``Oh they must be safe; it's all in that:~  her being able to depend on them
to keep to the terms of the bargain and never have moments of rising--\-as
even the ugliest woman will now and then (say when she's in love)--\-superior
to themselves.''





I turned it over.~  ``Then if they can't inspire passions the poor things
mayn't even at least feel them?''





``She distinctly deprecates it.~  That's why such a man as you may be after
all a complication.''





I continued to brood.~  ``You're very sure Miss Dadd's ailment isn't an
affection that, being smothered, has struck in?''~  My joke, however, wasn't
well timed, for I afterwards learned that the unfortunate lady's state had
been, even while I spoke, such as to forbid all hope.~  The worst symptoms
had appeared; she was destined not to recover; and a week later I heard
from Mrs. Munden that she would in fact ``gurgle'' no more.





\chapter*{CHAPTER II}\markboth{The Beldonald Holbein, by Henry James}{CHAPTER II}






All this had been for Lady Beldonald an agitation so great that access to
her apartment was denied for a time even to her sister-in-law.~  It was much
more out of the question of course that she should unveil her face to a
person of my special business with it; so that the question of the portrait
was by common consent left to depend on that of the installation of a
successor to her late companion.~  Such a successor, I gathered from Mrs.
Munden, widowed childless and lonely, as well as inapt for the minor
offices, she had absolutely to have; a more or less humble alter ago to
deal with the servants, keep the accounts, make the tea and watch the
window-blinds.~  Nothing seemed more natural than that she should marry
again, and obviously that might come; yet the predecessors of Miss Dadd had
been contemporaneous with a first husband, so that others formed in her
image might be contemporaneous with a second.~  I was much occupied in those
months at any rate, and these questions and their ramifications losing
themselves for a while to my view, I was only brought back to them by Mrs.
Munden's arrival one day with the news that we were all right again--\-her
sister-in-law was once more ``suited.''~  A certain Mrs. Brash, an American
relative whom she hadn't seen for years, but with whom she had continued to
communicate, was to come out to her immediately; and this person, it
appeared, could be quite trusted to meet the conditions.~  She was ugly--\-
ugly enough, without abuse of it, and was unlimitedly good.~  The position
offered her by Lady Beldonald was moreover exactly what she needed; widowed
also, after many troubles and reverses, with her fortune of the smallest,
and her various children either buried or placed about, she had never had
time or means to visit England, and would really be grateful in her
declining years for the new experience and the pleasant light work involved
in her cousin's hospitality.~  They had been much together early in life and
Lady Beldonald was immensely fond of her--\-would in fact have tried to get
hold of her before hadn't Mrs. Brash been always in bondage to family
duties, to the variety of her tribulations.~  I daresay I laughed at my
friend's use of the term ``position"--\-the position, one might call it, of a
candlestick or a sign-post, and I daresay I must have asked if the special
service the poor lady was to render had been made clear to her.~  Mrs.
Munden left me in any case with the rather droll image of her faring forth
across the sea quite consciously and resignedly to perform it.





The point of the communication had however been that my sitter was again
looking up and would doubtless, on the arrival and due initiation of Mrs.
Brash, be in form really to wait on me.~  The situation must further, to my
knowledge, have developed happily, for I arranged with Mrs. Munden that our
friend, now all ready to begin, but wanting first just to see the things I
had most recently done, should come once more, as a final preliminary, to
my studio.~  A good foreign friend of mine, a French painter, Paul Outreau,
was at the moment in London, and I had proposed, as he was much interested
in types, to get together for his amusement a small afternoon party.~  Every
one came, my big room was full, there was music and a modest spread; and
I've not forgotten the light of admiration in Outreau's expressive face as
at the end of half an hour he came up to me in his enthusiasm.~  ``\textit{Bonte}
\textit{divine}, \textit{mon} cher--\-\textit{que} \textit{cette} \textit{vieille} \textit{est} \textit{donc} \textit{belle}!''





I had tried to collect all the beauty I could, and also all the youth, so
that for a moment I was at a loss.~  I had talked to many people and
provided for the music, and there were figures in the crowd that were still
lost to me.~  ``What old woman do you mean?''





``I don't know her name--\-she was over by the door a moment ago.~  I asked
somebody and was told, I think, that she's American.''





I looked about and saw one of my guests attach a pair of fine eyes to
Outreau very much as if she knew he must be talking of her.~  ``Oh Lady
Beldonald!~  Yes, she's handsome; but the great point about her is that she
has been `put up' to keep, and that she wouldn't be flattered if she knew
you spoke of her as old.~  A box of sardines is `old' only after it has been
opened, Lady Beldonald never has yet been--\-but I'm going to do it.''~  I
joked, but I was somewhat disappointed.~  It was a type that, with his
unerring sense for the banal, I shouldn't have expected Outreau to pick
out.





``You're going to paint her?~  But, my dear man, she is painted--\-and as
neither you nor I can do it.~  \textit{Ou} \textit{est}-\textit{elle} \textit{donc}?~  He had lost her, and I saw
I had made a mistake.~  She's the greatest of all the great Holbeins.''





I was relieved.~  ``Ah then not Lady Beldonald!~  But do I possess a Holbein
of \textit{any} price unawares?''





``There she is--\-there she is!~  Dear, dear, dear, what a head!''~  And I saw
whom he meant--\-and what:~  a small old lady in a black dress and a black
bonnet, both relieved with a little white, who had evidently just changed,
her place to reach a corner from which more of the room and of the scene
was presented to her.~  She appeared unnoticed and unknown, and I
immediately recognised that some other guest must have brought her and, for
want of opportunity, had as yet to call my attention to her.~  But two
things, simultaneously with this and with each other, struck me with force;
one of them the truth of Outreau's description of her, the other the fact
that the person bringing her could only have been Lady Beldonald.~  She \textit{was}
a Holbein--\-of the first water; yet she was also Mrs. Brash, the imported
``foil,'' the indispensable accent,'' the successor to the dreary Miss Dadd!~
By the time I had put these things together--\-Outreau's ``American'' having
helped me--\-I was in just such full possession of her face as I had found
myself, on the other first occasion, of that of her patroness.~  Only with
so different a consequence.~  I couldn't look at her enough, and I stared
and stared till I became aware she might have fancied me challenging her as
a person unpresented.~  ``All the same,'' Outreau went on, equally held,
``\textit{c'est} \textit{une} \textit{tete} a \textit{faire}.~  If I were only staying long enough for a crack at
her!~  But I tell you what and he seized my arm--\-"bring her over!''





``Over?''





``To Paris.~  She'd have a \textit{succ\`{e}s} \textit{fou}.''





``Ah thanks, my dear fellow,'' I was now quite in a position to say; ``she's
the handsomest thing in London, and"--\-for what I might do with her was
already before me with intensity--\-"I propose to keep her to myself.''~  It
was before me with intensity, in the light of Mrs. Brash's distant
perfection of a little white old face, in which every wrinkle was the touch
of a master; but something else, I suddenly felt, was not less so, for Lady
Beldonald, in the other quarter, and though she couldn't have made out the
subject of our notice, continued to fix us, and her eyes had the challenge
of those of the woman of consequence who has missed something.~  A moment
later I was close to her, apologising first for not having been more on the
spot at her arrival, but saying in the next breath uncontrollably:~  ``Why my
dear lady, it's a Holbein!''





``A Holbein?~  What?''





``Why the wonderful sharp old face so extraordinarily, consummately drawn--\-
in the frame of black velvet.~  That of Mrs. Brash, I mean--\-isn't it her
name?--\-your companion.''





This was the beginning of a most odd matter--\-the essence of my anecdote;
and I think the very first note of the oddity must have sounded for me in
the tone in which her ladyship spoke after giving me a silent look.~  It
seemed to come to me out of a distance immeasurably removed from Holbein.~
``Mrs. Brash isn't my `companion' in the sense you appear to mean.~  She's my
rather near relation and a very dear old friend.~  I love her--\-and you must
know her.''





``Know her?~  Rather!~  Why to see her is to want on the spot to `go' for her.~
She also must sit for me,''





``\textit{She}?~  Louisa Brash?''~  If Lady Beldonald had the theory that her beauty
directly showed it when things weren't well with her, this impression,
which the fixed sweetness of her serenity had hitherto struck me by no
means as justifying, gave me now my first glimpse of its grounds.~  It was
as if I had never before seen her face invaded by anything I should have
called an expression.~  This expression moreover was of the faintest--\-was
like the effect produced on a surface by an agitation both deep within and
as yet much confused.~  ``Have you told her so?'' she then quickly asked, as
if to soften the sound of her surprise.





``Dear no, I've but just noticed her--\-Outreau, a moment ago put me on her.~
But we're both so taken, and he also wants--\-''





``To \textit{paint} her?''~ Lady Beldonald uncontrollably murmured.





``Don't be afraid we shall fight for her,'' I returned with a laugh for this
tone.~  Mrs. Brash was still where I could see her without appearing to
stare, and she mightn't have seen I was looking at her, though her
protectress, I'm afraid, could scarce have failed of that certainty.~  ``We
must each take our turn, and at any rate she's a wonderful thing, so that
if you'll let her go to Paris Outreau promises her there--\-''





``\textit{There}?'' my companion gasped.





``A career bigger still than among us, as he considers we haven't half their
eye.~  He guarantees her a \textit{succ\`{e}s} \textit{fou}.''





She couldn't get over it.~  ``Louisa Brash?~  In Paris?''





``They do see,'' I went on, ``more than we and they live extraordinarily,
don't you know, in that.~  But she'll do something here too.''





``And what will she do?''





If frankly now I couldn't help giving Mrs. Brash a longer look, so after it
I could as little resist sounding my \textit{converser}.~  ``You'll see.~  Only give
her time.''





She said nothing during the moment in which she met my eyes; but then:~
``Time, it seems to me, is exactly what you and your friend want.~  If you
haven't talked with her--\-''





``We haven't seen her?~  Oh we see bang off--\-with a click like a steel
spring.~  It's our trade, it's our life, and we should be donkeys if we made
mistakes.~  That's the way I saw you yourself, my lady, if I may say so;
that's the way, with a long pin straight through your body, I've got you.~
And just so I've got \textit{her}!''





All this, for reasons, had brought my guest to her feet; but her eyes had
while we talked never once followed the direction of mine.~  ``You call her a
Holbein?''





``Outreau did, and I of course immediately recognised it.~  Don't you?~  She
brings the old boy to life!~  It's just as I should call you a Titian.~  You
bring \textit{Him} to life.''





She couldn't be said to relax, because she couldn't be said to have
hardened; but something at any rate on this took place in her--\-something
indeed quite disconnected from what I would have called her.~  ``Don't you
understand that she has always been supposed--?''~  It had the ring of
impatience; nevertheless it stopped short on a scruple.





I knew what it was, however, well enough to say it for her if she
preferred.~  ``To be nothing whatever to look at?~  To be unfortunately plain--or even if you like repulsively ugly?~  Oh yes, I understand it perfectly,
just as I understand--\-I have to as a part of my trade--\-many other forms of
stupidity.~  It's nothing new to one that ninety-nine people out of a
hundred have no eyes, no sense, no taste.~  There are whole communities
impenetrably sealed.~  I don't say your friend's a person to make the men
turn round in Regent Street.~  But it adds to the joy of the few who do see
that they have it so much to themselves.~  Where in the world can she have
lived?~  You must tell me all about that--\-or rather, if she'll be so good,
\textit{she} must.''





``You mean then to speak to her--?''





I wondered as she pulled up again.~  ``Of her beauty?''





``Her beauty!'' cried Lady Beldonald so loud that two or three persons looked
round.





``Ah with every precaution of respect  I declared in a much lower tone.~  But
her back was by this time turned to me, and in the movement, as it were,
one of the strangest little dramas I've ever known was well launched.





\chapter*{CHAPTER III}\markboth{The Beldonald Holbein, by Henry James}{CHAPTER III}






It was a drama of small smothered intensely private things, and I knew of
but one other person in the secret; yet that person and I found it
exquisitely susceptible of notation, followed it with an interest the
mutual communication of which did much for our enjoyment, and were present
with emotion at its touching catastrophe.~  The small case--\-for so small a
case--\-had made a great stride even before my little party separated, and in
fact within the next ten minutes.





In that space of time two things had happened one of which was that I made
the acquaintance of Mrs. Brash; and the other that Mrs. Munden reached me,
cleaving the crowd, with one of her usual pieces of news.~  What she had to
impart was that, on her having just before asked Nina if the conditions of
our sitting had been arranged with me, Nina had replied, with something
like perversity, that she didn't propose to arrange them, that the whole
affair was ``off'' again and that she preferred not to be further beset for
the present.~  The question for Mrs. Munden was naturally what had happened
and whether I understood.~  Oh I understood perfectly, and what I at first
most understood was that even when I had brought in the name of Mrs. Brash
intelligence wasn't yet in Mrs. Munden.~  She was quite as surprised as Lady
Beldonald had been on hearing of the esteem in which I held Mrs. Brash's
appearance.~  She was stupefied at learning that I had just in my ardour
proposed to its proprietress to sit to me.~  Only she came round promptly--\-
which Lady Beldonald really never did.~  Mrs. Munden was in fact wonderful;
for when I had given her quickly ``Why she's a Holbein, you know,
absolutely,'' she took it up, after a first fine vacancy, with an immediate
abysmal ``Oh \textit{is} she?'' that, as a piece of social gymnastics, did her the
greatest honour; and she was in fact the first in London to spread the
tidings.~  For a face--\-about it was magnificent.~  But she was also the
first, I must add, to see what would really happen--\-though this she put
before me only a week or two later.~  It will kill her, my dear--\-that's what
it will do





She meant neither more nor less than that it would kill Lady Beldonald if I
were to paint Mrs. Brash; for at this lurid light had we arrived in so
short a space of time.~  It was for me to decide whether my aesthetic need
of giving life to my idea was such as to justify me in destroying it in a
woman after all in most eyes so beautiful.~  The situation was indeed
sufficiently queer; for it remained to be seen what I should positively
gain by giving up Mrs. Brash.~  I appeared to have 'in any case lost Lady
Beldonald, now too ``upset"--\-it was always Mrs. Munden's word about her and,
as I inferred, her own about herself--\-to meet me again on our previous
footing.~  The only thing, I of course soon saw, was to temporise to drop
the whole question for the present and yet so far as possible keep each of
the pair in view.~  I may as well say at once that this plan and this
process gave their principal interest to the next several months.~  Mrs.
Brash had turned up, if I remember, early in the new year, and her little
wonderful career was in our particular circle one of the features of the
following season.~  It was at all events for myself the most attaching; it's
not my fault if I am so put together as often to find more life in
situations obscure and subject to interpretation than in the gross rattle
of the foreground.~  And there were all sorts of things, things touching,
amusing, mystifying--\-and above all such an instance as I had never yet met--in this funny little fortune of the useful American cousin.~  Mrs. Munden
was promptly at one with me as to the rarity and, to a near and human view,
the beauty and interest of the position.~  We had neither of us ever before
seen that degree and that special sort of personal success come to a woman
for the first time so late in life.~  I found it an example of poetic, of
absolutely retributive justice; so that my desire grew great to work it, as
we say, on those lines.~  I had seen it all from the original moment at my
studio; the poor lady had never known an hour's appreciation--\-which
moreover, in perfect good faith, she had never missed.~  The very first
thing I did after inducing so unintentionally the resentful retreat of her
protectress had been to go straight over to her and say almost without
preliminaries that I should hold myself immeasurably obliged for a few
patient sittings.~  What I thus came face to face with was, on the instant,
her whole unenlightened past and the full, if foreshortened, revelation of
what among us all was now unfailingly in store for her.~  To turn the handle
and start that tune came to me on the spot as a temptation.~  Here was a
poor lady who had waited for the approach of old age to find out what she
was worth.~  Here was a benighted being to whom it was to be disclosed in
her fifty-seventh year--\-I was to make that out--\-that she had something that
might pass for a face.~  She looked much more than her age, and was fairly
frightened--\-as if I had been trying on her some possibly heartless London
trick--\-when she had taken in my appeal.~  That showed me in what an air she
had lived and--\-as I should have been tempted to put it had I spoken out--\-
among what children of darkness.~  Later on I did them more justice; saw
more that her wonderful points must have been points largely the fruit of
time, and even that possibly she might never in all her life have looked so
well as at this particular moment.~  It might have been that if her hour had
struck I just happened to be present at the striking.~  What had occurred,
all the same, was at the worst a notable comedy.





The famous ``irony of fate'' takes many forms, but I had never yet seen it
take quite this one.~  She had been ``had over'' on an understanding, and she
wasn't playing fair.~  She had broken the law of her ugliness and had turned
beautiful on the hands of her employer.~  More interesting even perhaps than
a view of the conscious triumph that this might prepare for her, and of
which, had I doubted of my own judgement, I could still take Outreau's fine
start as the full guarantee--\-more interesting was the question of the
process by which such a history could get itself enacted.~  The curious
thing was that all the while the reasons of her having passed for plain--\-
the reasons for Lady Beldonald's fond calculation, which they quite
justified--\-were written large in her face, so large that it was easy to
understand them as the only ones she herself had ever read.~  What was it
then that actually made the old stale sentence mean something so
different?--\-into what new combinations, what extraordinary language,
unknown but understood at a glance, had time and life translated it?~  The
only thing to be said was that time and life were artists who beat us all,
working with recipes and secrets we could never find out.~  I really ought
to have, like a lecturer or a showman, a chart or a blackboard to present
properly the relation, in the wonderful old tender battered blanched face,
between the original elements and the exquisite final it style.''~  I could
do it with chalks, but I can scarcely do it with words.~  However, the thing
was, for any artist who respected himself, to \textit{feel} it--\-which I abundantly
did; and then not to conceal from \textit{her} I felt it--\-which I neglected as
little.~  But she was really, to do her complete justice, the last to
understand; and I'm not sure that, to the end--\-for there was an end--\-she
quite made it all out or knew where she was.~  When you've been brought up
for fifty years on black it must be hard to adjust your organism at a day's
notice to gold-colour.~  Her whole nature had been pitched in the key of her
supposed plainness.~  She had known how to be ugly--\-it was the only thing
she had learnt save, if possible, how not to mind it.~  Being beautiful took
in any case a new set of muscles.~  It was on the prior conviction,
literally, that she had developed her admirable dress, instinctively
felicitous, always either black or white and a matter of rather severe
squareness and studied line.~  She was magnificently neat; everything she
showed had a way of looking both old and fresh; and there was on every
occasion the same picture in her draped head--\-draped in low-falling black--\-
and the fine white plaits (of a painter's white, somehow) disposed on her
chest.~  What had happened was that these arrangements, determined by
certain considerations, lent themselves in effect much better to certain
others.~  Adopted in mere shy silence they had really only deepened her
accent.~  It was singular, moreover, that, so constituted, there was nothing
in her aspect of the ascetic or the nun.~  She was a good hard sixteenth-century figure, not withered with innocence, bleached rather by life in the
open.~  She was in short just what we had made of her, a Holbein for a great
Museum; and our position, Mrs. Munden's and mine, rapidly became that of
persons having such a treasure to dispose of.~  The world--\-I speak of course
mainly of the art-world--\-flocked to see it.





\chapter*{CHAPTER IV}\markboth{The Beldonald Holbein, by Henry James}{CHAPTER IV}






``But has she any idea herself, poor thing?'' was the way I had put it to
Mrs. Munden on our next meeting after the incident at my studio; with the
effect, however, only of leaving my friend at first to take me as alluding
to Mrs. Brash's possible prevision of the chatter she might create.~  I had
my own sense of that--\-this provision had been nil; the question was of her
consciousness of the office for which Lady Beldonald had counted on her and
for which we were so promptly proceeding to spoil her altogether.





``Oh I think she arrived with a goodish notion,'' Mrs. Munden had replied
when I had explained; ``for she's clever too, you know, as well as good-looking, and I don't see how, if she ever really \textit{knew} Nina, she could have
supposed for a moment that she wasn't wanted for whatever she might have
left to give up.~  Hasn't she moreover always been made to feel that she's
ugly enough for anything?''~  It was even at this point already wonderful how
my friend had mastered the case and what lights, alike for its past and its
future, she was prepared to throw on it.~  ``If she has seen herself as ugly
enough for anything she has seen herself--\-and that was the only way--\-as
ugly enough for Nina; and she has had her own manner of showing that she
understands without making Nina commit herself to anything vulgar.~  Women
are never without ways for doing such things--\-both for communicating and
receiving knowledge--\-that I can't explain to you, and that you wouldn't
understand if I could, since you must be a woman even to do that.~  I
daresay they've expressed it all to each other simply in the language of
kisses.~  But doesn't it at any rate make something rather beautiful of the
relation between them as affected by our discovery--?''





I had a laugh for her plural possessive.~  ``The point is of course that if
there was a conscious bargain, and our action on Mrs. Brash is to deprive
her of the sense of keeping her side of it, various things may happen that
won't be good either for her or for ourselves.~  She may conscientiously
throw up the position.''





``Yes,'' my companion mused--\-"for she is conscientious.~  Or Nina, without
waiting for that, may cast her forth.''





I faced it all.~  ``Then we should have to keep her.''





``As a regular model?''~ Mrs. Munden was ready for anything.~  ``Oh that would
be lovely!''





But I further worked it out.~  ``The difficulty is that she's not a model,
hang it--\-that she's too good for one, that she's the very thing herself.~
When Outreau and I have each had our go, that will be all; there'll be
nothing left for any one else.~  Therefore it behoves us quite to understand
that our attitude's a responsibility.~  If we can't do for her positively
more than Nina does--\-''





``We must let her alone?''~  My companion continued to muse.~  ``I see!''





``Yet don't,'' I returned, ``see too much.~  We \textit{can} do more.''





``Than Nina?''~  She was again on the spot.~  ``It wouldn't after all be
difficult.~  We only want the directly opposite thing--\-and which is the only
one the poor dear can give.~  Unless indeed,'' she suggested, ``we simply
retract--\-we back out.''





I turned it over.~  ``It's too late for that.~  Whether Mrs. Brash's peace is
gone I can't say.~  But Nina's is.''





``Yes, and there's no way to bring it back that won't sacrifice her friend.~
We can't turn round and say Mrs. Brash is ugly, can we?~  But fancy Nina's
not having \textit{seen}!''~ Mrs. Munden exclaimed.





``She doesn't see now,'' I answered.~  ``She can't, I'm certain, make out what
we mean.~  The woman, for \textit{her} still, is just what she always was.~  But she
has nevertheless had her stroke, and her blindness, while she wavers and
gropes in the dark, only adds to her discomfort.~  Her blow was to see the
attention of the world deviate.''





``All the same I don't think, you know,'' my interlocutress said, ``that Nina
will have made her a scene or that, whatever we do, she'll ever make her
one.~  That isn't the way it will happen, for she's exactly as conscientious
as Mrs. Brash.''





``Then what is the way?''~ I asked.





``It will just happen in silence.''





``And what will `it,' as you call it, be?''





``Isn't that what we want really to see?''





``Well,'' I replied after a turn or two about, ``whether we want it or not
it's exactly what we \textit{shall} see; which is a reason the more for fancying,
between the pair there--\-in the quiet exquisite house, and full of
superiorities and suppressions as they both are--\-the extraordinary
situation.~  If I said just now that it's too late to do anything but assent
it's because I've taken the full measure of what happened at my studio.~  It
took but a few moments--\-but she tasted of the tree.''





My companion wondered.~  ``Nina?''





``Mrs. Brash.''~  And to have to put it so ministered, while I took yet
another turn, to a sort of agitation.~  Our attitude was a responsibility.





But I had suggested something else to my friend, who appeared for a moment
detached.~  ``Should you say she'll hate her worse if she \textit{doesn't} see?''





``Lady Beldonald?~  Doesn't see what we see, you mean, than if she does?~  Ah
I give \textit{that} up!''~ I laughed.~  ``But what I can tell you is why I hold that,
as I said just now, we can do most.~  We can do this:~  we can give to a
harmless and sensitive creature hitherto practically disinherited--\-and give
with an unexpectedness that will immensely add to its price--\-the pure joy
of a deep draught of the very pride of life, of an acclaimed personal
triumph in our superior sophisticated world.''





Mrs. Munden had a glow of response for my sudden eloquence.~  Oh it will be
beautiful!





\chapter*{CHAPTER V}\markboth{The Beldonald Holbein, by Henry James}{CHAPTER V}






Well, that's what, on the whole and in spite of everything, it really was.~
It has dropped into my memory a rich little gallery of pictures, a regular
panorama of those occasions that were to minister to the view from which I
had so for a moment extracted a lyric inspiration.~  I see Mrs. Brash on
each of these occasions practically enthroned and surrounded and more or
less mobbed; see the hurrying and the nudging and the pressing and the
staring; see the people ``making up'' and introduced, and catch the word when
they have had their turn; hear it above all, the great one--\-"Ah yes, the
famous Holbein!"--\-passed about with that perfection of promptitude that
makes the motions of the London mind so happy a mixture of those of the
parrot and the sheep.~  Nothing would be easier of course than to tell the
whole little tale with an eye only for that silly side of it.~  Great was
the silliness, but great also as to this case of poor Mrs. Brash, I will
say for it, the good nature.~  Of course, furthermore, it took in particular
``our set,'' with its positive child-terror of the banal, to be either so
foolish or so wise; though indeed I've never quite known where our set
begins and ends, and have had to content myself on this score with the
indication once given me by a lady next whom I was placed at dinner:~  ``Oh
it's bounded on the north by Ibsen and on the south by Sargent!~  Mrs. Brash
never sat to me; she absolutely declined; and when she declared that it was
quite enough for her that I had with that fine precipitation invited her, I
quite took this as she meant it; before we had gone very far our
understanding, hers and mine, was complete.~  Her attitude was as happy as
her success was prodigious.~  The sacrifice of the portrait was a sacrifice
to the true inwardness of Lady Beldonald, and did much, for the time, I
divined, toward muffling their domestic tension.~  All it was thus in her
power to say--\-and I heard of a few cases of her having said it--\-was that
she was sure I would have painted her beautifully if she hadn't prevented
me.~  She couldn't even tell the truth, which was that I certainly would
have done so if Lady Beldonald hadn't; and she never could mention the
subject at all before that personage.~  I can only describe the affair,
naturally, from the outside, and heaven forbid indeed that I should try too
closely to, reconstruct the possible strange intercourse of these good
friends at home.





My anecdote, however, would lose half the point it may have to show were I
to omit all mention of the consummate turn her ladyship appeared gradually
to have found herself able to give her deportment.~  She had made it
impossible I should myself bring up our old, our original question, but
there was real distinction in her manner of now accepting certain other
possibilities.~  Let me do her that justice; her effort at magnanimity must
have been immense.~  There couldn't fail of course to be ways in which poor
Mrs. Brash paid for it.~  How much she had to pay we were in fact soon
enough to see; and it's my intimate conviction that, as a climax, her life
at last was the price.~  But while she lived at least--\-and it was with an
intensity, for those wondrous weeks, of which she had never dreamed--\-Lady
Beldonald herself faced the music.~  This is what I mean by the
possibilities, by the sharp actualities indeed, that she accepted.~  She
took our friend out, she showed her at home, never attempted to hide or to
betray her, played her no trick whatever so long as the ordeal lasted.~  She
drank deep, on her side too, of the cup--\-the cup that for her own lips
could only be bitterness.~  There was, I think, scarce a special success of
her companion's at which she wasn't personally present.~  Mrs. Munden's
theory of the silence in which all this would be muffled for them was none
the less, and in abundance, confirmed by our observations.~  The whole thing
was to be the death of one or the other of them, but they never spoke of it
at tea.~  I remember even that Nina went so far as to say to me once,
looking me full in the eyes, quite sublimely, ``I've made out what you mean--she \textit{is} a picture.''~  The beauty of this moreover was that, as I'm
persuaded, she hadn't really made it out at all--\-the words were the mere
hypocrisy of her reflective endeavour for virtue.~  She couldn't possibly
have made it out; her friend was as much as ever ``dreadfully plain'' to her;
she must have wondered to the last what on earth possessed us.~  Wouldn't it
in fact have been after all just this failure of vision, this supreme
stupidity in short, that kept the catastrophe so long at bay?~  There was a
certain sense of greatness for her in seeing so many of us so absurdly
mistaken; and I recall that on various occasions, and in particular when
she uttered the words just quoted, this high serenity, as a sign of the
relief of her soreness, if not of the effort of her conscience, did
something quite visible to my eyes, and also quite unprecedented, for the
beauty of her face.~  She got a real lift from it--\-such a momentary
discernible sublimity that I recollect coming out on the spot with a queer
crude amused ``Do you know I believe I could paint you \textit{now}?''





She was a fool not to have closed with me then and there; for what has
happened since has altered everything--\-what was to happen a little later
was so much more than I could swallow.~  This was the disappearance of the
famous Holbein from one day to the other--\-producing a consternation among
us all as great as if the Venus of Milo had suddenly vanished from the
Louvre.~  ``She has simply shipped her straight back"--\-the explanation was
given in that form by Mrs. Munden, who added that any cord pulled tight
enough would end at last by snapping.~  At the snap, in any case, we
mightily jumped, for the masterpiece we had for three or four months been
living with had made us feel its presence as a luminous lesson and a daily
need.~  We recognised more than ever that it had been, for high finish, the
gem of our collection--\-we found what a blank it left on the wall.~  Lady
Beldonald might fill up the blank, but we couldn't.~  That she did soon fill
it up--\-and, heaven help us, \textit{how} was put before me after an interval of no
great length, but during which I hadn't seen her.~  'I dined on the
Christmas of last year at Mrs. Munden's, and Nina, with a ``scratch lot,'' as
our hostess said, was there, so that, the preliminary wait being longish,
she could approach me very sweetly.~  ``I'll come to you tomorrow if you
like,'' she said; and the effect of it, after a first stare at her, was to
make me look all round.~  I took in, by these two motions, two things; one
of which was that, though now again so satisfied herself of her high state,
she could give me nothing comparable to what I should have got had she
taken me up at the moment of my meeting her on her distinguished
concession; the other that she was ``suited'' afresh and that Mrs. Brash's
successor was fully installed.~  Mrs. Brash's successor, was at the other
side of the room, and I became conscious that Mrs. Munden was waiting to
see my eyes seek her.~  I guessed the meaning of the wait; what was one,
this time, to say?~  Oh first and foremost assuredly that it was immensely
droll, for this time at least there was no mistake.~  The lady I looked
upon, and as to whom my friend, again quite at sea, appealed to me for a
formula, was as little a Holbein, or a specimen of any other school, as she
was, like Lady Beldonald herself, a Titian.~  The formula was easy to give,
for the amusement was that her prettiness--\-yes, literally, prodigiously,
her prettiness--\-was distinct.~  Lady Beldonald had been magnificent--\-had
been almost intelligent.~  Miss What's-her-name continues pretty, continues
even young, and doesn't matter a straw!~  She matters so ideally little that
Lady Beldonald is practically safer, I judge, than she has ever been.~
There hasn't been a symptom of chatter about this person, and I believe her
protectress is much surprised that we're not more struck.





It was at any rate strictly impossible to me to make an appointment for the
day as to which I have just recorded Nina's proposal; and the turn of
events since then has not quickened my eagerness.~  Mrs. Munden remained in
correspondence with Mrs. Brash--\-to the extent, that is, of three letters,
each of which she showed me.~  They so told to our imagination her terrible
little story that we were quite prepared--\-or thought we were--\-for her going
out like a snuffed candle.~  She resisted, on her return to her original
conditions, less than a year; the taste of the tree, as I had called it,
had been fatal to her; what she had contentedly enough lived without before
for half a century she couldn't now live without for a day.~  I know nothing
of her original conditions--\-some minor American city--\-save that for her to
have gone back to them was clearly to have stepped out of her frame.~  We
performed, Mrs. Munden and I, a small funeral service for her by talking it
all over and making it all out.~  It wasn't--\-the minor American city--\-a
market for Holbeins, and what had occurred was that the poor old picture,
banished from its museum and refreshed by the rise of no new movement to
hang it, was capable of the miracle of a silent revolution; of itself
turning, in its dire dishonour, its face to the wall.~  So it stood, without
the intervention of the ghost of a critic, till they happened to pull it
round again and find it mere dead paint.~  Well, it had had, if that's
anything, its season of fame, its name on a thousand tongues and printed in
capitals in the catalogue.~  We hadn't been at fault.~  I haven't, all the
same, the least note of her--\-not a scratch.~  And I did her so in intention!~
Mrs. Munden continues to remind me, however, that this is not the sort of
rendering with which, on the other side, after all, Lady Beldonald proposes
to content herself.~  She has come back to the question of her own portrait.~
Let me settle it then at last.~  Since she \textit{will} have the real thing--\-well,
hang it, she shall!







\end{document}
