Page 50 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

was not the result of the English climate, from which he ab-
sented himself for a considerable part of each year.
He had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel
Tracy Touchett, a native of Rutland, in the State of Vermont,
came to England as subordinate partner in a banking-house
where some ten years later he gained preponderant control.
Daniel Touchett saw before him a life-long residence in his
adopted country, of which, from the first, he took a simple,
sane and accommodating view. But, as he said to himself,
he had no intention of dis-americanizing, nor had he a de-
sire to teach his only son any such subtle art. It had been
for himself so very soluble a problem to live in England as-
similated yet unconverted that it seemed to him equally
simple his lawful heir should after his death carry on the
grey old bank in the white American light. He was at pains
to intensify this light, however, by sending the boy home
for his education. Ralph spent several terms at an Amer-
ican school and took a degree at an American university,
after which, as he struck his father on his return as even
redundantly native, he was placed for some three years in
residence at Oxford. Oxford swallowed up Harvard, and
Ralph became at last English enough. His outward confor-
mity to the manners that surrounded him was none the less
the mask of a mind that greatly enjoyed its independence,
on which nothing long imposed itself, and which, naturally
inclined to adventure and irony, indulged in a boundless
liberty of appreciation. He began with being a young man of
promise; at Oxford he distinguished himself, to his father’s
ineffable satisfaction, and the people about him said it was

50 The Portrait of a Lady