[For the William Dean Howells Society at the 2007 American Literature Association Conference. Also, it may help to know that Elsa Nettels was moderating the panel.]
As the Coreys adjust to the knowledge that their son loves Penelope Lapham, Bromfield asks, “what have I done nothing for, all my life, and lived as a gentleman should, upon the earnings of somebody else, in the possession of every polite taste and feeling that adorns leisure, if I’m to come to this at last?” (268). The “this” to which Bromfield Corey has at last descended, of course, is the marriage of his aristocratic family to the nouveau riche Laphams. And Corey’s lament here offers important grounds of distinction between the Coreys and the Laphams: whereas all his life, he has “done nothing,” Silas has worked hard—has done something. Indeed, this distinction isn’t unimportant in the values of the characters. When Corey pays a visit to Colonel Lapham’s office, Lapham by way of praising Tom tells his father: “His going through college won’t hurt him,—he’ll soon slough all that off,—and his bringing up won’t; don’t be anxious about it. I noticed in the army that some of the fellows that had the most go-ahead were fellows that hadn’t ever had much more to do than girls before the war broke out. Your son will get along” (142). So clearly, the difference between the Coreys and the Laphams is predicated upon the distinction between doing nothing and doing something—or, since doing nothing, insofar as it can be thought of as in some sense affirmative, means manifesting leisure: the difference between just being and doing. Certainly, Old Corey’s occupation reinforces this distinction: since “he had plenty of money…It was absurd for him to paint portraits for pay, and ridiculous to paint them for nothing; so he did not paint them at all” (70). In other words, to the extent that Bromfield Corey has an occupation, he is a painter, but one who doesn’t paint.
