Milly Theale's London

Milly Theale's London Chris Brown, University of South Carolina In his Preface to The Golden Bowl, Henry James scrutinizes A. L. Coburn's frontispiece photographs for the volumes of the New York Edition. He insists on the sufficiency of the fiction without the pictures, which are to serve as "mere optical symbols or echoes" (AJV 333). The closest textual reference James allows the photographs is to call them "at the most small pictures of our 'set' stage with the actors left out" (AN 333), or, as Charles Higgins has it, "frontispieces, not intratextual illustration, presenting the scenes of action rather than characters in action" (Higgins 667). Six of the seven London frontispieces are of settings (the exception being ' 'Some of the Spoils' ' for The Spoils ofPoynton), but, following James, critics have emphasized their significance as emblems rather than as locales ; ' 'The Doctor's Door,' ' frontispiece to volume one of The Wings of the Dove and the portal of Sir Luke's surgery, is unexceptional in this respect (Higgins 673, Bogardus 194). Yet it is exceptional in another: it is the only one of the London series to display a decipherable street number, number 143. This can hardly be fortuitous, particularly since James helped Coburn find the door to shoot (Bogardus 17-19), nor can it be symbolic, barring numerology. Rather, it calls attention to the city outside the frame, where the referent of the number must be sought; it asks us to seek the implications of the London places in the novel. These implications consist both of usages James devises and of outside knowledge he assumes. By so doing, he portrays a London of harsh dominion that casts sustained ridicule on the innocence of Milly Theale. The Wings of the Dove opens and closes in settings that the map of London fails to locate. Chirk Street existed neither in James's day nor in any other, but Lionel Croy interviews Kate there during Book First, chapter 1. This is not the sole instance of James inventing London streets, the majority of which are working class or bohemian and the names of which are sometimes meaningful. Banked in a word list in James's notebook entry for 7 May 1898 (CN 170), "Chirk" seems chosen mainly for its cacophony, appropriate to the tawdriness of the boarding house where Croy resides. As John Kimmey points out, the opening description of The Henry James Review 14 (1993): 215-222 © 1994 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 216 The Henry James Review Cray's parlor, with its armchair both slippery and sticky, characterizes the father (Kimmey 163). So, too, does the fictitiousness of the street, bearing the same relation to reality as Cray's fraying genteel persona and affording an ironic gloss on the futility of Kate's offer to live with him there. She has no better luck in the ending of this notably chiasmatic novel as she vainly struggles with Densher's apotheosis of Milly in the one episode set in Densher's London rooms. These are not fictitiously placed because they are not placed at all. It is true that when Kate encounters Densher on the underground at Sloan Square as she returns to Lancaster Gate, she is "sure the very next station was the young man's true goal" (WD I, 54); this would be South Kensington on the Inner Circle line. It is the hour of homecoming, but Densher keeps irregular hours (WD I, 47), and the reason for Kate's certainty is cryptic—perhaps she flatters herself that she will draw her young man so many stations past his. It is also true that on Christmas morning Densher journeys from the Brampton Oratory to his club and then to Marian's in Chelsea, presumably all on foot given the absence of hansoms (WD II, 353). The Oratory is near South Kensington, which adjoins Chelsea. Yet he does not appear at Marian's until 4:00 p.m., and, even assuming he lodges near his club, he has time to cover a long distance, even on foot: the author who walks Hyacinth Robinson of The Princess Casamassima from Camberwell to upper Mayfair in half an hour expects strenuous...