Indian Summer

Dean Howells William

Description

Sharing similarities with the fiction of his friend Henry James, a number of William Dean Howells' novels focus on culture clashes between Americans and Europeans. In the novel Indian Summer, a disgruntled journalist gives up the business and tries to recapture the magic of his youthful sojourn in Italy.

Sujets

• Romance

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776676118
• Langue: English

Extrait

INDIAN SUMMER
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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
 
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Indian Summer First published in 1886 Epub ISBN 978-1-77667-611-8 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77667-612-5 © 2015 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV
Chapter I
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Midway of the Ponte Vecchio at Florence, where three arches break thelines of the little jewellers' booths glittering on either hand, andopen an approach to the parapet, Colville lounged against the corner ofa shop and stared out upon the river. It was the late afternoon of a dayin January, which had begun bright and warm, but had suffered a changeof mood as its hours passed, and now, from a sky dimmed with flying greyclouds, was threatening rain. There must already have been rain in themountains, for the yellow torrent that seethed and swirled around thepiers of the bridge was swelling momently on the wall of the Lung' Arno,and rolling a threatening flood toward the Cascine, where it lost itselfunder the ranks of the poplars that seemed to file across its course,and let their delicate tops melt into the pallor of the low horizon.
The city, with the sweep of the Lung' Arno on either hand, and its domesand towers hung in the dull air, and the country with its white villasand black cypresses breaking the grey stretches of the olive orchards onits hill-sides, had alike been growing more and more insufferable; andColville was finding a sort of vindictive satisfaction in the power toignore the surrounding frippery of landscape and architecture. Heisolated himself so perfectly from it, as he brooded upon the river,that, for any sensible difference, he might have been standing on theMain Street Bridge at Des Vaches, Indiana, looking down at the tawnysweep of the Wabash. He had no love for that stream, nor for theambitious town on its banks, but ever since he woke that morning he hadfelt a growing conviction that he had been a great ass to leave them. Hehad, in fact, taken the prodigious risk of breaking his life sharp offfrom the course in which it had been set for many years, and ofattempting to renew it in a direction from which it had long beendiverted. Such an act could be precipitated only by a strong impulse ofconscience or a profound disgust, and with Colville it sprang fromdisgust. He had experienced a bitter disappointment in the city to whoseprosperity he had given the energies of his best years, and in whosefavour he imagined that he had triumphantly established himself.
He had certainly made the Des Vaches Democrat-Republican a very goodpaper; its ability was recognised throughout the State, and in DesVaches people of all parties were proud of it. They liked every morningto see what Colville said; they believed that in his way he was thesmartest man in the State, and they were fond of claiming that there wasno such writer on any of the Indianapolis papers. They forgave somepolitical heresies to the talent they admired; they permitted him thewhim of free trade, they laughed tolerantly when he came out in favourof civil service reform, and no one had much fault to find when the Democrat-Republican bolted the nomination of a certain politician ofits party for Congress. But when Colville permitted his own name to beused by the opposing party, the people arose in their might and defeatedhim by a tremendous majority. That was what the regular nominee said. Itwas a withering rebuke to treason, in the opinion of this gentleman; itwas a good joke, anyway, with the Democratic managers who had takenColville up, being all in the Republican family; whichever it was, itwas a mortification for Colville which his pride could not brook. Hestood disgraced before the community not only as a theorist andunpractical doctrinaire, but as a dangerous man; and what was worse, hecould not wholly acquit himself of a measure of bad faith; hisconscience troubled him even more than his pride. Money was found, and aprinter bought up with it to start a paper in opposition to the Democrat-Republican . Then Colville contemptuously offered to sell outto the Republican committee in charge of the new enterprise, and theyaccepted his terms.
In private life he found much of the old kindness returning to him; andhis successful opponent took the first opportunity of heaping coals offire on his head in the public street, when he appeared to the outer eyeto be shaking hands with Colville. During the months that he remained toclose up his affairs after the sale of his paper, the Post-Democrat-Republican (the newspaper had agglutinated the titles oftwo of its predecessors, after the fashion of American journals) wasfulsome in its complimentary allusions to him. It politely invented thefiction that he was going to Europe for his health, impaired by hisjournalistic labours, and adventurously promised its readers that theymight hope to hear from him from time to time in its columns. In someof its allusions to him Colville detected the point of a fine irony, ofwhich he had himself introduced the practice in the Democrat-Republican ;and he experienced, with a sense of personal impoverishment, thecurious fact that a journalist of strong characteristics leavesthe tradition of himself in such degree with the journal he hascreated that he seems to bring very little away. He was obligedto confess in his own heart that the paper was as good as ever.The assistants, who had trained themselves to write like him, seemed tobe writing quite as well, and his honesty would not permit him toreceive the consolation offered him by the friends who told him thatthere was a great falling off in the Post-Democrat-Republican . Exceptthat it was rather more Stalwart in its Republicanism, and had turnedquite round on the question of the tariff, it was very much what it hadalways been. It kept the old decency of tone which he had given it, andit maintained the literary character which he was proud of. The newmanagement must have divined that its popularity, with the women atleast, was largely due to its careful selections of verse and fiction,its literary news, and its full and piquant criticisms, with their longextracts from new books. It was some time since he had personally lookedafter this department, and the young fellow in charge of it under himhad remained with the paper. Its continued excellence, which he couldnot have denied if he had wished, seemed to leave him drained andfeeble, and it was partly from the sense of this that he declined theovertures, well backed up with money, to establish an independent paperin Des Vaches. He felt that there was not fight enough in him for thework, even if he had not taken that strong disgust for public life whichincluded the place and its people. He wanted to get away, to get faraway, and with the abrupt and total change in his humour he reverted toa period in his life when journalism and politics and the ambition ofCongress were things undreamed of.
At that period he was a very young architect, with an inclination towardthe literary side of his profession, which made it seem profitable tolinger, with his Ruskin in his hand, among the masterpieces of ItalianGothic, when perhaps he might have been better employed in designingred-roofed many-verandaed, consciously mullioned seaside cottages on theNew England coast. He wrote a magazine paper on the zoology of theLombardic pillars in Verona, very Ruskinian, very scornful of modernmotive. He visited every part of the peninsula, but he gave the greaterpart of his time to North Italy, and in Venice he met the young girlwhom he followed to Florence. His love did not prosper; when she wentaway she left him in possession of that treasure to a man of histemperament, a broken heart. From that time his vague dreams began tolift, and to let him live in the clear light of common day; but he wasstill lingering at Florence, ignorant of the good which had befallenhim, and cowering within himself under the sting of wounded vanity, whenhe received a letter from his elder brother suggesting that he shouldcome and see how he liked the architecture of Des Vaches. His brotherhad been seven years at Des Vaches, where he had lands, and a lead-mine,and a scheme for a railroad, and had lately added a daily newspaper tohis other enterprises. He had, in fact, added two newspapers; for havingunexpectedly and almost involuntarily become the owner of the Des Vaches Republican , the fancy of building up a great local journal seized him,and he bought the Wabash Valley Democrat , uniting them under the nameof the Democrat-Republican . But he had trouble almost from the firstwith his editors, and he naturally thought of the brother with a turnfor writing who had been running to waste for the last year or two inEurope. His real purpose was to work Colville into the management of hispaper when he invited him to come out and look at the architecture ofDes Vaches.
Colville went, because he was at that moment in the humour to goanywhere, and because his money was running low, and he must begin worksomehow. He was still romantic enough to like the notion of the place alittle, because it bore the name given to it by the old French voyageurs from a herd of buffalo cows whic