Billy married: a house, a husband who composes, relatives who visit and stay, and the discovery that being adored is not the same as being consulted. Porter gave the language the word Pollyanna in 1913 and is remembered for the wrong book; this one is sharper than its reputation, and the quiet argument about whether a wife is permitted her own work runs under every comic scene. Fifty-nine plates of Boston interiors, parlors and portraits by Mary Cassatt and Childe Hassam, 1875 to 1928, hang beside a comedy of marriage that plays out in just such rooms.
