By Henry James

Like Isabel, Henry James is bestowed with great felicity. (I had to look that one up)

I have The Harvard Classics on Kindle because it was free. I’m not sure why I picked out “Portrait of a Lady” (from volume 71 I think) but I dare say I have found it devilishly rewarding heretofore and after a chapter or two I find myself in the amenable, but very rare, state where I am apt to type out things like “devilishly rewarding heretofore”. It is a rare and strange temperament for me: I feel like I should slap myself in the balls for writing those words (I grew up in New Jersey in the 90s, Kevin Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob era, when slapping a dear friend’s testicles for doing or saying something that expressed emotion – or for no reason at all – and proceeding to laugh gleefully while they keeled over in pain was not just a favorite pastime of my cohorts but a widespread phenomenon)

Here are a couple quotes from my pre-get-out-of-bed chapter this morning:

“Isabel’s written in a foreign tongue. I can’t make her out.”

“I’m sure all we’ve got to do,” said Mrs. Ludlow, “is to give her a chance.” “A chance for what?” “A chance to develop.” “Oh Moses!” Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. “I hope she isn’t going to develop any more!”

It appeared to Isabel that the unpleasant had been even too absent from her knowledge, for she had gathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was often a source of interest and even of instruction.

“he had been deplorably convivial”

Her father had a large way of looking at life, of which his restlessness and even his occasional incoherency of conduct had been only a proof. He wished his daughters, even as children, to see as much of the world as possible;

Another vocab word:

“but his physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded according to the charm you found in blue eyes of remarkable fixedness”