rom the sight of any
actual catastrophe, wouldn't have watched the ground nearly fail, in a
particular case, without a sense of gross indelicacy. I can scarcely
say how vivid I felt the drama so preparing might become--that of the
lapse of immemorial protection, that of the finally complete exposure of
the immemorially protected. It might take place rather more intensely
before the footlights of one's inner vision than on the trodden stage of
Cadogan Place or wherever, but it corresponded none the less to
realities all the while in course of enactment and which only wanted the
attentive enough spectator. Nothing should I evermore see comparable to
the large fond consensus of admiration enjoyed by my beatific
fellow-guest's imputed command of the very palette of the Venetian and
other masters--Titian's, Bonifazio's, Rubens's, where did the delightful
agreement on the subject stop? and never again should a noble lady be
lifted so still further aloft on the ecstatic breath of connoisseurship.

This last consciousness, confirming my impression of a climax that could
only decline, didn't break upon me all at once but spread itself through
a couple of subsequent occasions into which my remembrance of the
dinner at Mrs. Greville's was richly to play. The first of these was a
visit to an exhibition of Lady Waterford's paintings held, in Carlton
House Terrace, under the roof of a friend of the artist, and, as it
enriched the hour also to be able to feel, a friend, one of the most
generously gracious, of my own; during which the reflection that "they"
had indeed had their innings, and were still splendidly using for the
purpose the very fag-end of the waning time, mixed itself for me with
all the "wonderful colour" framed and arrayed, that blazed from the
walls of the kindly great room, lent for the advantage of a charity, and
lost itself in the general chorus of immense comparison and tender
consecration. Later on a few days spent at a house of the greatest
beauty and interest in Northumberland did wonders to round off my view;
the place, occupied for the time by genial tenants, belonged to the
family of Lady Waterford's husband and fairly bristled, it might be
said, with coloured designs from her brush....

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Middle Years, by Henry James

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