"cryptic" telegrams in henry james's portrait of a lady.

after our discussion on the encoding and decoding of messages yesterday, i couldn't resist posting this passage from henry james's portrait of a lady:

'I see - very kind of her,' said Lord Warburton. 'Is the young lady interesting?'

'We hardly know more about her than you; my mother has not gone into details. She chiefly communicates with us by means of telegrams, and her telegrams are rather inscrutable. They say women don't know how to write them, but my mother has thoroughly mastered the art of condensation. "Tired America, hot weather awful, return England with niece, first steamer decent cabin." That's the sort of message we get from her - that was the last that came. But there had been another before, which I think contained the first mention of the niece. "Changed hotel, very bad, impudent clerk, address here. Taken sister's girl, died last year, go to Europe, two sisters, quite independent." Over that my father and I have scarcely stopped puzzling; it seems to admit of so many interpretations.'

'There's on thing very clear in it,' said the old man; 'she has given the hotel-clerk a dressing.'

'I'm not even sure of that, since he has driven her from the field. We thought at first that the sister mentioned might be the sister of the clerk; but the subsequent mention of a niece seems to prove that the allusion is to one of my aunts. Then there was a question as to whose the two other sisters were; they are probably two of my late aunt's daughters. But who's "quite independent," and in what sense is the term used? - that point's not yet settled. Does the expression apply more particularly to the young lady my mother has adopted, or does it characterise her sisters equally? - and is it used in a moral or in a financial sense? Does it mean that they've been left well off, or that they wish to be under no obligations? or does it simply mean that they're fond of their own way?'

'Whatever else it means, it's pretty sure to mean that,' Mr Touchett remarked.

[a couple of chapters later, the sender of the "inscrutable" telegrams, Mrs Touchett, arrives back in England, and her son asks her]:

'What you meant then, in your telegram, was that her character's independent.'

'I never know what I mean in my telegrams - especially those I send from America. Clearness is too expensive.'

[perhaps it isn't only the receivers of messages who are at fault when it comes to mis/interpretations? and what is there to be said for mis/communication between sexes?]