The Golden Bowl - Henry James [292]
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 from a revolution.
Chapter 2
1. (p. ref) Figaro. The French daily newspaper.
Chapter 3
1. (p. ref) petits fours. Small cakes.
2. (p. ref) Le compte y est. They’re all there.
3. (p. ref) good things. A flawed object like the Golden Bowl would have been out of place in this setting.
* The New York edition (Charles Scribner and Co., 1909).