Here, for example, is how that subterranean encounter really goes: James informs us that Kate and Merton have been previously introduced at a party. We know there was a spark, but also that Densher is far from up to snuff as far as her family is concerned. Six months pass, and then it's only the "happy hazzard" of their meeting on the train that allows such a socially unequal pairing to evolve. A subway car is surely the very opposite of a drawing room, and the dichotomy precisely illustrates why the union of these two lovers is frowned upon by everyone who matters to Kate -- from her wealthy aunt to her mingy widowed sister to her ne'er-do-well father, all of whom hope she will make a more lucrative match that will somehow benefit them. In the Underground, James tells us that "they were not in the least meeting where they had left off, but ever so much further on," and makes his metaphorical reversal of the usual notion of social advancement delightfully literal: "these added links added still another between High Street and Notting Hill Gate," so that for every station they travel on the crowded train car, the frisson and their intimacy mount. The climax comes when they take an impromptu stroll to Lancaster gate and beyond, and Kate compares herself to "the housemaid giggling to the baker." It's a great moment, so long as you aren't vainly yearning to see Bonham-Carter's gorgeous features smushed in a kiss.

In contrast to Kate and Merton's plebeian and visceral commute, the rich orphan Milly Theale "solemnly rolls" around London in a "public chariot" -- not very sexy. And not very sexy she remains, until she is given a vague but ominous diagnosis by a prominent physician, who tells her that she ought to go out and live life. Without ever directly acknowledging that she is dying, James makes that fact clear, and it is Milly's splendid perversity that her impending death enlivens her. Suddenly, she too takes to London's streets, even its poor neighborhoods and park paths, and wanders amid the populace. "This was the real thing," she observes, as she ventures onto terrain where there are "stretches of shabby grass," "smutty sheep," "idle lads at games of ball," and "wanderers anxious and tired like herself." James's fin-de-sihcle Regent's Park seems remarkably similar to our own early 21st century Central Park, if you just swap the sheep out for dogs or possibly pigeons. All Milly needs is an iced coffee and a different hat, and I'd hardly notice her walking past me on the sidewalk.

Speaking of which, another of the succulent Jamesian details that sung out at me from the psychological narrative morass of "Wings" was the scene in which Milly guzzles iced coffee at a house party. No less than three times in one chapter is Milly's iced coffee made the focal point around which her interpretation of the situation revolves. And she doesn't just drink it, she "gratefully absorbs" it. For James, who only very rarely describes meals or food of any sort, this emphasis is striking. Like the mention of the Underground, it underscores the modernity of the tale -- notably coffee, not tea, and iced, not hot -- in dramatizing the need of the young American for bracing stimulants to clarify the otherwise obscure and murky social situation of a British house party. It also reminded me to go fix myself something cold and at least half-caffeinated (the compromise of choice, given my expectant state) to propel me toward the next modern moment.

Recent Stories