Shenandoah National Park revisited at last – Reminiscence of a winter hike – An adventure on the trails – Shopping for wine – News from my cousin – Plowing through Henry James – Milly Theale and Linnet Ridgeway – Derek Chauvin – Brazil – Evening statistics
I have been taking things fairly easily for the past several days. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a hike with more than 3000 feet elevation gain. Today I got out of my rut and went to Shenandoah National Park to scout the hike that I am to lead on Tuesday. Going to SNP was rather like seeing a long-lost friend again. I haven’t been there for at least three months. It has been closed for the past six weeks, of course, and even before that the Wanderbirds and Capital Hiking Clubs had suspended their hiking schedules. The route I did today started at Little Hogback Overlook, where I took the Appalachian Trail to Elkwallow, backtracked to the Piney Ridge Trail, followed the Piney Ridge Trail and the Fork Mountain Trail to the Hull School Trail, used the Hull School Trail to ascend to the Keyser Fire Road, took the fire road to Little Devils Stairs, went up the “stairs” (as the very rocky river gorge is called) to the higher junction with the fire road, and took the fire road and the AT to return to Little Hogback: about 15 miles in all, and perhaps about 3700 feet of elevation gain.
I have hiked in this particular area of the park so often that it is difficult to recollect all of the memories associated with it all at once, but there is one hike that I especially remember. It was a hike with the Northern Virginia Hiking Club and it took place in winter, just after a fresh snowfall. Part of the hike involved going over the Piney Ridge Trail, where the snow was about an inch or so deep – enough to smooth away the irregularities on the trail’s surface without being deep enough to impede progress. No one had walked there since the snow had fallen and as a result it was unsullied, brilliantly white. It was one of those days we frequently get in this area just after a snowfall completes and the precipitation moves away: deep azure sky, with air like crystal, and the little bits of ice that form in the snow displaying opaline glints as the snow reflects the sunlight. It was optimal weather for that time of year: dry, clear, no wind, temperature in the mid-20s, sunlight untrammeled by clouds.
Not that today’s weather was anything to complain about. It was a little cool and damp when I began (I started the hike before 8:00 AM) but it soon became clear and the temperature rose. Even though the Blue Ridge Mountains are not very high, the difference in temperature between the area where I hiked and the lower elevations was at least 10 degrees. It never went beyond the low 70s where I was hiking, and it was sunny as well. Part of the Piney Ridge Trail was covered with pine needles, which is the best surface to hike on. The hike was not without its share of adventure. At one point in the Hull School Trail I had to cross Thornton River. It was flowing very swift and deep, and I had not thought to bring water-shoes with me. (I will remedy this omission on Tuesday.) The only alternative to fording the stream without water-shoes was to use a blowdown that had fallen across the stream. My boots had picked up a great deal of moisture by the time I had reached the river and the tree trunk was moist as well, so I could not rely on my boots having sufficient traction. I sat down on the trunk and shimmied across instead. It was not easy; the trunk proved to be quite slippery and it contained little branches which, although they had been trimmed to some extent, had to be scrambled over or around. Once I got past that obstacle and went to the Little Devils Stairs Trail, I had to navigate several stream crossings as well, but these were relatively easy for those who didn’t mind getting their feet wet.
On the way back I went to the wine store, since I was down to my last bottle in stock. The store was not at all crowded. When I went to the cashier only one customer was ahead of me and a second cashier beckoned me to come to her aisle instead. I picked up twelve bottles in all, enough for at least two months.
I also heard from my cousin, who has looked over this diary now that it has become a blog and is available online. He had a correction to make: he said that his illness never reached the point that he was contemplating hospitalization, as I had mistakenly thought earlier. That was certainly good to hear. He now sounds thoroughly well again. He does tell me, however, that even though his case was officially a “mild” case, the experience was quite alarming at times – which was no surprise to me, for the case had been the same with my friends PF from Capital Hiking and BL from Vigorous Hikers. We were in agreement that we are in no particular hurry as far as the re-opening schedules are concerned. If the country has managed to contain the virus to some extent we have no desire to see this work undone.
After the hike and the shopping excursion afterwards I felt entitled to some less strenuous activity, and so I settled down with The Wings of the Dove. But perhaps the exertions of the hike and the pleasurable consciousness of having been active did not put in me in a favorable state of mind for this sort of entertainment. At any rate my re-reading of the novel was somewhat disappointing. I think Virginia Woolf got it right when she said, “There is a great flourishing of silk handkerchiefs and Milly disappears behind them.” At any rate, despite James’ elaborate efforts to gain my sympathy for her and to convince me of her rare refinement, I do not like Milly Theale.
I can’t help remarking that the abominable princess myth, which has been a curse for American women for ages, is not, as some might believe, an invention of Walt Disney but has flourished long before his day and of course ever since. James was evidently a subscriber to it, even though in his more lucid moments he can show some awareness of the harm it causes. Maggie Verver and Madame de Vionnet seem to be posing on pedestals from the moment they enter the story, but they are shrinking violets in this respect in comparison with Milly. Whenever the attention centers on her, we’re expected to see her in a kind of luminous haze, as a personification of a sort of divine excellence. But if one strips her of the mountains of praise-laden paragraphs bestowed upon her by her author and concentrates on what she actually does, the picture becomes much less attractive.
I know, I know – she’s in a difficult situation. She is quite alone. She has lost all of her close relatives as the result of illness, including her third cousins on her mother’s side and even the family’s business acquaintances. (OK, I’m exaggerating a little here.) The immense wealth she has inherited isolates her to an even greater degree. And it’s the first thing that people notice about her. “She couldn’t dress it away, nor walk it away, nor read it away, nor think it away; she could neither smile it away in any dreamy absence nor blow it away with any softened sigh. She couldn’t have lost it if she had tried – that was what it was to be really rich.” James has been accused of being unduly obscure at times, but that is certainly blunt enough.
And of course she is ill. Her illness is generally assumed to be tuberculosis, although James is never very clear on that point. In general his later fiction is dogged by a lack of specificity which, though his admirers choose to present it as a mark of his unique intelligence, I find a crippling handicap. Even if one doesn’t expect a chillingly clinical description like the description of Johann Buddenbrooks’ typhoid fever by Thomas Mann, one does ask for more than a few vague hints of disability and for one or two more symptoms than Milly’s anemia. It does seem possible, however, that she has heart trouble as well. We first see her on the Brünig, one of the least demanding passes through the Swiss Alps. I know people in their 80s who could traverse it with ease. She attempts to go over a certain ascent, and her reaction alarms Susan Stringham. She appears to be sitting perfectly motionless, perilously close to the edge of a cliff and for a moment Mrs. Stringham imagines that Milly is contemplating suicide. Why does this particular fear take hold of her? It is hinted that Mrs. Stringham’s alarm has been triggered by Milly’s physical reaction to the exertion of going up a cliff. A little later we get confirmation that Milly’s health is not good: she has been seeing a doctor and she is not altogether confident that he has told her everything she needs to know. Later still, of course, she consults Sir Luke Strett in order to find out what exactly is wrong with her (he doesn’t tell her very much).
And finally, she is the object of a conspiracy. Her English friend Kate Croy – almost the only friend of her own age that Milly has ever had – is secretly engaged to Merton Densher, a journalist. Densher has a nodding acquaintance with Milly, having met her during a trip to the U.S. to write a series of articles about American life. When Kate discovers that Milly is suffering a mortal illness and also that Milly finds Densher attractive, she conceives the idea of concealing her own engagement, arranging for Densher to marry Milly and thereby become Milly’s sole heir after she dies. Unsurprisingly, given Milly’s frail state of health, the shock of the discovery of this plot by her best friend and by the man she imagines to be her own admirer proves to be fatal.
So if she is such a pathetic victim, why do I find fault with her? Chiefly because she falls much too readily into the princess role thrust upon her by Susan Stringham (who explicitly describes her in such terms), taking up residence in a Venetian palace, setting up a quasi-court there, receiving homage from her visitors as if it were her due, and in general acting on the assumption that, as a great lady, she has a right to waste people’s time. Densher, for instance, is dumbfounded when Susan Stringham, evidently acting on Milly’s orders (or at any rate Milly’s hints) tells him “What we hope . . . is that you’ll be faithful to us—that you’ve not come for just a mere foolish few days.” He is sent almost into stuttering incoherence by the realization that neither Milly nor her faithful lieutenant can conceive the possibility that he might have work to do elsewhere and that it is financially out of the question for him to linger in Venice on a perpetual holiday to dance attendance on them:
“The way smooth ladies, travelling for their pleasure and housed in Veronese pictures, talked to plain embarrassed working-men, engaged in an unprecedented sacrifice of time and of the opportunity for modest acquisition! The things they took for granted and the general misery of explaining!”
Although he might have been prepared for this earlier on, upon his first meeting with Milly after returning to England, when he explains to her that his holiday is over and that he has to resume his usual employment. Milly’s reaction is: “I’m sorry you had to take it . . . at such a different time than ours. If you could but have worked while we’ve been working –“
Huh? What did I miss? Did Milly complete her master’s thesis while I was taking a bathroom break? But, no . . . on flipping back through the pages I find that Milly has done nothing except attend several parties. That is her definition of work.
It is curious to go through Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile after perusing The Wings of the Dove. The resemblance between the plotlines of the two novels is marked, and must have been consciously established; indeed, Death on the Nile might be defined as a retelling of The Wings of the Dove. Since, however, Death on the Nile is an Agatha Christie novel, the two conspirators take, shall we say, a somewhat more pro-active approach in their maneuvers to acquire the heiress’s money. The odd thing is that, although Christie is much more explicit about the arrogance of her princess figure, Linnet Ridgeway is in every way a more sympathetic character than Milly. She is basically well-meaning; her intentions towards others are benevolent most of the time. If she stoops to stealing her best friend’s fiancé, she pays heavily for it afterwards; and we are made to feel that the penalty exacted from her is excessive. Towards the end, also, Christie shows us that Linnet, dubbed by the newspapers as the girl who has everything, is in reality the girl who has nothing – nothing that matters, that is: no parents, no siblings, no genuine friends, and as the events show, no real husband either. In the final paragraphs one observer says of Linnet that “it didn’t seem fair, her having everything,” and his friend replies, “Well, it doesn’t seem to have done her much good, poor lass.” Christie may be the lesser writer, but there is more pathos in that brief exchange than in all of the silk handkerchiefs James insists on flourishing.
Well, well – I seem to have gone far astray from the virus and its effects. However, one is not obliged to think about COVID-19 all of the time, even in a journal. Perhaps even Donald Trump has moments when he can divert his thoughts to other subjects. Actually, there is no need for that “perhaps” in the preceding sentence, is there? Surely he begrudges every second that is taken away from his ecstatic adoration of himself.
Whatever else may be in store for Derek Chauvin, the man who choked the life out of George Floyd, he has already lost a wife through his ferocity. Kellie Chauvin lost no time in filing for divorce, while she publicly issued a statement of condolences and bereavement for Floyd’s family. In such a situation it seems likely that, in addition to any sympathy for the victim she might have, sheer prudence would dictate such a move. Anyone who discovers that he or she has been married to a murderer is bound to think, “Will the next victim be me?”
Cases are going up precipitously in both Brazil and Russia. They have left Spain, Italy, and the U.K. far behind. The death toll of Brazil, in absolute numbers, lags behind only that of the U.S., the U.K., and Italy. Brazil, of course, has more than three times the population of either the U.K. or Italy, so that the ratio of deaths to total population is considerably lower. But at the rate Brazil is going, it will not be long before it surpasses either nation in this respect. Solange Vieira, who leads the Superintendence of Private Insurance, linked to Brazil’s finance ministry and who helped reform the country’s pensions, observed that “It’s good that deaths are concentrated among the old. That will improve our economic performance as it will reduce our pension deficit.” Which is a comfort, at any rate.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM — # of cases worldwide: 6,150,262; # of deaths worldwide: 370,500; # of cases U.S.: 1,816,601; # of deaths U.S.: 105,551.