Torquay, September 22nd, 1895
Make, later on, a statement of idea for treatment of Gualdo’s charming little subject of The child.
May 7th, 1898 [34 De Vere Gardens?]
[on this date is a list of ideas to remember to work on, including: ]
8. Gualdo’s story of the child
retournée
– the acquisition, construction (by portrait, etc. ???) of an
ANCESTOR, instead of
l’Enfant.
The setting up of some one who must have lived:
un vrai mort.
Imagine old couple, liking young man: ‘You must have married our
daughter.’
‘Your daughter?’
‘The one we lost. You were her fiancé or her
mari.’
Imagine situation for young man (as regards some living girl) who has more
or less accepted it. He succumbs to suggestion. He has sworn fidelity to a
memory. He ends by believing it. He lives with the parents. They leave him
their money. I see him later. He is a widower. He dies, to rejoin
his wife. He leaves their fortune to the girl he doesn’t marry.
35 pages.
Lamb House, September 11th, 1900
[...] Let me say first, by the way, that I learned last month from P.B. what makes the little ‘Gualdo’ notion of ‘The child’ really, it seems to me, quite disponible to me on my own lines. They know nothing of his ever having written or published such a tale – they only meant in mentioning the thing to me at Torquay, that he had mentioned it to them. That he ever treated it, or what he made if he did, they wholly ignore – and it is moreover a question for me of a mere point de départ: that a young childless couple comes to a painter and ask him to paint them a little girl (or a child quelconque) whom they can have as their own – since they so want one and can’t come by it otherwise. My subject is what I get out of that. Several pretty little things, it seems to me. Me voilà donc libre. Bon!
part of an etext edition of
Maud-Evelyn
on
the Ladder : a Henry James website