The Golden Bowl - Henry James [290]
4. (p. ref) things consular, Napoleonic. Napoleon was created a Consul in 1799, and became Emperor of France in 1804.
5. (p. ref) temples, obelisks, arches. The first French Empire liked to reproduce the artefacts of ancient Egypt and Rome in order to authenticate its own Imperial image.
6. (p. ref) intaglios. Gemstones with an incised design, often of Imperial origin.
7. (p. ref) ricordo. Souvenir.
8. (p. ref) their foreign tongue. Charlotte and the Prince have been talking Italian. We are told in the first chapter that Amerigo finds English convenient ‘for the greatest number of relations’ and that when it came to French ‘there were discriminations, doubtless of the invidious kind, for which that language was the most apt’. Perhaps his present use of Italian seems appropriate to him in a third-rate situation.
9. (p. ref) cara mia. My dear.
10. (p. ref) per bacco! For goodness’ sake!
11. (p. ref) disgraziatamente, signora principessa. Unfortunately, Princess.
12. (p. ref) Che! Not at all! (Later in the novel it emerges that he is Jewish.)
13. (p. ref) Cos’è? What is it?
14. (p. ref) signori miei. Sir and madam.
15. (p. ref) per Dio! For heaven’s sake!
BOOK SECOND
Chapter 1
1. (p. ref) the impersonal whiteness. This could be a veiled reminiscence of the voyage of Gordon Pym (see p. ref).
2. (p. ref) receipt. Recipe.
3. (p. ref) hill of difficulty. The hill encountered by travellers in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
4. (p. ref) brown holland. An unbleached linen fabric used for covering up furniture.
5. (p. ref) piazza. Square.
6. (p. ref) Keats’s sonnet. This is ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, of which the last lines are:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Chapter 2
1. (p. ref) Principino. Little prince.
2. (p. ref) pâte tendre. A play on the literal meaning of the words (tender paste) and their specialized meaning as a material for eighteenth-century porcelain.
3. (p. ref) Julius II and Leo X. These sixteenth-century papal patrons did in fact treat Michael Angelo very shabbily. Julius in particular, although admittedly allowing the painter a free hand with his decoration of the Sistine Chapel, persistently ignored his requests for payment.
4. (p. ref) the faith. i.e. the Roman Catholic faith.
Chapter 3
1. (p. ref) multiplied lettering. i.e. Roman numerals.
2. (p. ref) chinoiseries. Chinese ornaments and furniture. Here, however, it refers to the odd visitors that the Ververs have ‘collected’.
3. (p. ref) Palazzo Nero. A play on the literal meaning (black palace) and the associations of the name of the Roman Emperor Nero.
4. (p. ref) Vesuvius. The eruption of this volcano in A.D. 79 buried the ancient Roman towns of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae under cinders and mud.
Chapter 4
1. (p. ref) Vatican . . . Capitoline. Notable museums in Rome.
Chapter 5
1. (p. ref) Borgias. This Italian Renaissance family had a reputation for poisoning their enemies – and each other.
2. (p. ref) par exemple. For instance.
3. (p. ref) petites entrées. Informal visits. The expression originated in the court etiquette of the absolutist French monarch Louis XIV.
Chapter 6
1. (p. ref) befrogged. A frog is a military coat-fastening which, in addition to a covered button and a loop, involves elaborate ribbon or braid decoration on the garment itself.
2. (p. ref) Croatian, Dalmatian, Carpathian. Exotic bands were much in favour at the time; even so, such a collection seems unlikely in a single hotel – but James probably couldn’t resist the alliteration and rhyme.
3. (p. ref) meuble. Piece of furniture.
4. (p. ref) Damascene. Inlaid with gold or silver designs.
Chapter 7
1. (p. ref) porte-cochère. Main entrance.
2. (p. ref) breakfast. As we were told at the beginning of the chapter that this was a ‘noontide meal’, we take it that Adam Verver is using the word with the connotations of d