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diff --git a/38776.txt b/38776.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..373b9b6 --- /dev/null +++ b/38776.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14776 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Letters of Henry James (volume I), by Henry James + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Letters of Henry James (volume I) + +Author: Henry James + +Editor: Percy Lubbock + +Release Date: February 6, 2012 [EBook #38776] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF HENRY JAMES I/II *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made at The Internet +Archive) + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: _Henry James_ + +_From a Drawing by John S. Sargent R. A. 1886._] + + + + +THE LETTERS +OF +HENRY JAMES + +SELECTED AND EDITED BY +PERCY LUBBOCK + +VOLUME I + +NEW YORK +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +1920 + +COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + + + + CONTENTS + + + PAGE + INTRODUCTION xiii + + NOTE xxxii + + I. FIRST EUROPEAN YEARS: 1869-1874 + + PREFACE 1 + + LETTERS: + To Miss Alice James 15 + To his Mother 19 + To his Mother 21 + To William James 24 + To William James 26 + To his Father 28 + To Charles Eliot Norton 30 + To his Parents 32 + To W. D. Howells 33 + To Miss Grace Norton 35 + To his Mother 38 + + II. PARIS AND LONDON: 1875-1881 + + PREFACE 41 + + LETTERS: + To his Father 45 + To W. D. Howells 47 + To William James 50 + To William James 52 + To Miss Grace Norton 54 + To Miss Grace Norton 56 + To William James 59 + To Miss Alice James 62 + To William James 65 + To his Mother 67 + To Miss Grace Norton 69 + To W. D. Howells 71 + To Charles Eliot Norton 74 + To his Mother 76 + To Mrs. Fanny Kemble 78 + + III. THE MIDDLE YEARS: 1882-1888 + + PREFACE 82 + + LETTERS: + + To Miss Henrietta Reubell 90 + To Charles Eliot Norton 91 + To Mrs. John L. Gardner 92 + To Miss Grace Norton 93 + To William James 97 + To George du Maurier 98 + To Miss Grace Norton 100 + To William James 102 + To W. D. Howells 103 + To John Addington Symonds 106 + To Alphonse Daudet 108 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 110 + To William James 111 + To Miss Grace Norton 113 + To William James 115 + To James Russell Lowell 118 + To William James 119 + To Charles Eliot Norton 122 + To Miss Grace Norton 126 + To Edmund Gosse 129 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 130 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 132 + To W. D. Howells 134 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 136 + To William James 139 + + IV. LATER LONDON YEARS: 1889-1897 + + PREFACE 144 + + LETTERS: + To Robert Louis Stevenson 152 + To William James 154 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 155 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 158 + To William James 161 + To W. D. Howells 163 + To Miss Alice James 166 + To William James 170 + To Edmund Gosse 172 + To Mrs. Hugh Bell 173 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 174 + To William James 179 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 181 + To Charles Eliot Norton 183 + To Edmund Gosse 185 + To Mrs. Mahlon Sands 186 + To Mrs. Humphry Ward 187 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 188 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 190 + To the Countess of Jersey 192 + To Charles Eliot Norton 193 + To W. D. Howells 197 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 199 + To Mrs. Edmund Gosse 201 + To Edmund Gosse 202 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 204 + To Robert Louis Stevenson 207 + To William James 210 + To Julian R. Sturgis 212 + To George du Maurier 212 + To William James 214 + To Edmund Gosse 217 + To Edmund Gosse 220 + To Edmund Gosse 221 + To Edmund Gosse 223 + To Sidney Colvin 224 + To Miss Henrietta Reubell 225 + To William James 227 + To George Henschel 229 + To W. D. Howells 230 + To William James 232 + To Sidney Colvin 236 + To Mrs. John L. Gardner 238 + To Arthur Christopher Benson 240 + To W. E. Norris 242 + To William James 244 + To Edmund Gosse 246 + To Jonathan Sturges 248 + To W. E. Norris 250 + To Arthur Christopher Benson 251 + To the Viscountess Wolseley 254 + To Miss Frances R. Morse 255 + To Mrs. George Hunter 258 + To Edward Warren 261 + To Arthur Christopher Benson 262 + To Mrs. William James 263 + To Miss Grace Norton 268 + + V. RYE: 1898-1908 + + PREFACE 272 + + LETTERS: + + To W. D. Howells 277 + To Arthur Christopher Benson 278 + To William James 280 + To Miss Muir Mackenzie 283 + To Gaillard T. Lapsley 285 + To Paul Bourget 286 + To W. D. Howells 291 + To Madame Paul Bourget 292 + To Miss Frances R. Morse 294 + To Dr. Louis Waldstein 296 + To H. G. Wells 298 + To F. W. H. Myers 300 + To Mrs. William James 301 + To Charles Eliot Norton 306 + To Henry James, junior 309 + To A. F. de Navarro 311 + To Edward Warren 315 + To William James 315 + To Howard Sturgis 317 + To Mrs. Humphry Ward 318 + To Mrs. Humphry Ward 320 + To Mrs. Humphry Ward 323 + To Mrs. A. F. de Navarro 328 + To Sidney Colvin 330 + To Edmund Gosse 332 + To Miss Henrietta Reubell 333 + To H. G. Wells 335 + To Charles Eliot Norton 337 + To Edmund Gosse 344 + To Mrs. Everard Cotes 346 + To A. F. de Navarro 348 + To W. D. Howells 349 + To W. D. Howells 354 + To W. E. Norris 361 + To A. F. de Navarro 364 + To W. E. Norris 366 + To A. F. de Navarro 368 + To the Viscountess Wolseley 369 + To William James 371 + To Miss Muir Mackenzie 373 + To W. D. Howells 375 + To Edmund Gosse 378 + To Miss Jessie Allen 379 + To Mrs. W. K. Clifford 381 + To Miss Muir Mackenzie 382 + To Edmund Gosse 385 + To H. G. Wells 388 + To Percy Lubbock 390 + To Gaillard T. Lapsley 391 + To Mrs. Cadwalader Jones 395 + To W. D. Howells 397 + To H. G. Wells 400 + To Mrs. Cadwalader Jones 401 + To H. G. Wells 404 + To Mrs. Frank Mathews 406 + To W. D. Howells 407 + To Madame Paul Bourget 410 + To Mrs. Waldo Story 411 + To W. D. Howells 413 + To William James 415 + To Miss Violet Hunt 424 + To W. E. Norris 425 + To Howard Sturgis 428 + To Henry Adams 431 + To Sir George O. Trevelyan 432 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +WHEN Henry James wrote the reminiscences of his youth he shewed +conclusively, what indeed could be doubtful to none who knew him, that +it would be impossible for anyone else to write his life. His life was +no mere succession of facts, such as could be compiled and recorded by +another hand; it was a densely knit cluster of emotions and memories, +each one steeped in lights and colours thrown out by the rest, the whole +making up a picture that no one but himself could dream of undertaking +to paint. Strictly speaking this may be true of every human being; but +in most lives experience is taken as it comes and left to rest in the +memory where it happens to fall. Henry James never took anything as it +came; the thing that happened to him was merely the point of departure +for a deliberate, and as time went on a more and more masterly, creative +energy, which could never leave a sight or sound of any kind until it +had been looked at and listened to with absorbed attention, pondered in +thought, linked with its associations, and which did not spend itself +until the remembrance had been crystallised in expression, so that it +could then be appropriated like a tangible object. To recall his habit +of talk is to become aware that he never ceased creating his life in +this way as it was lived; he was always engaged in the poetic fashioning +of experience, turning his share of impressions into rounded and +lasting images. From the beginning this had been his only method of +dealing with existence, and in later years it even meant a tax upon his +strength with which he had consciously to reckon. Not long before his +death he confessed that at last he found himself too much exhausted for +the 'wear and tear of discrimination'; and the phrase indicates the +strain upon him of the mere act of living. Looked at from without his +life was uneventful enough, the even career of a man of letters, +singularly fortunate in all his circumstances. Within, it was a cycle of +vivid and incessant adventure, known only to himself except in so far as +he himself put it into words. So much of it as he left unexpressed is +lost, therefore, like a novel that he might have written, but of which +there can now be no question, since its only possible writer is gone. + +Fortunately a great part of it survives in his letters, and it is of +these that his biography must be composed. The material is plentiful, +for he was at all times a copious letter-writer, overflowing into swift +and easy improvisation to his family and to the many friends with whom +he corresponded regularly. His letters have been widely preserved, and +several thousands of them have passed through my hands, ranging from his +twenty-fifth year until within a few days of his last illness. They give +as complete a portrait of him as we can now hope to possess. His was a +nature in which simplicity and complexity were very curiously +contrasted, and it would need all his own power of fusing innumerable +details into coherency to create a picture that would seem sufficient to +those who knew him. Yet even his letters, varied as they are, give full +expression to one side of his life only, the side that he shewed to the +world he lived in and loved. After all the prodigal display of mind that +is given in these volumes, the free outpouring of curiosity and +sympathy and power, a close reader must still be left with the sense +that something, the most essential and revealing strain, is little more +than suggested here and there. The daily drama of his work, with all the +comfort and joy it brought him, does not very often appear as more than +an undertone to the conversation of the letters. It was like a mystery +to which he was dedicated, but of which he shrank from speaking quite +openly. Much as he always delighted in sociable communion, citizen of +the world, child of urbanity as he was, all his friends must have felt +that at heart he lived in solitude and that few were ever admitted into +the inner shrine of his labour. There it was nevertheless that he lived +most intensely and most serenely. In outward matters he was constantly +haunted by anxiety and never looked forward with confidence; he was of +those to whom the future is always ominous, who dread the treachery of +apparent calm even more than actual ill weather. It was very different +in the presence of his work. There he never knew the least failure of +assurance; he threw his full weight on the belief that supported him and +it was never shaken. + +That belief was in the sanctity and sufficiency of the life of art. It +was a conviction that needed no reasoning, and he accepted it without +question. It was absolute for him that the work of the imagination was +the highest and most honourable calling conceivable, being indeed +nothing less than the actual creation of life out of the void. He did +not scruple to claim that except through art there is no life that can +be known or appraised. It is the artist who takes over the deed, so +called, from the doer, to give it back again in the form in which it can +be seen and measured for the first time; without the brain that is able +to close round the loose unappropriated fact and render all its +aspects, the fact itself does not exist for us. This was the standard +below which Henry James would never allow the conception of his office +to drop, and he had the reward of complete exemption from any chill of +misgiving. His life as a creator of art, alone with his work, was one of +unclouded happiness. It might be hampered and hindered by external +accidents, but none of them could touch the real core of his security, +which was his faith in his vocation and his knowledge of his genius. +These certainties remained with him always, and he would never trifle +with them in any mood. His impatience with argument on the whole +aesthetic claim was equally great, whether it was argument in defence of +the sanctuary or in profanation of it. Silence, seclusion, +concentration, he held to be the only fitting answer for an artist. He +disliked the idea that the service of art should be questioned and +debated in the open, still more to see it organised and paraded and +publicly celebrated, as though the world could do it any acceptable +honour. He had as little in common with those who would use the artistic +profession to persuade and proselytise as with those who would brandish +it defiantly in the face of the vulgar. + +Thus it is that he is seldom to be heard giving voice to the matters +which most deeply occupied him. He preferred to dwell with them apart +and to leave them behind when he emerged. Sometimes he would drop a word +that shewed what was passing beneath; sometimes, on a particular +challenge, or to one in whom he felt an understanding sympathy, he would +speak out with impressive authority. But generally he liked to enter +into other people's thought and to meet them on their own ground. There +his natural kindliness and his keen dramatic interest were both +satisfied at once. He enjoyed friendship, his letters shew how freely +and expansively; and with his steady and vigilant eye he watched the +play of character. He was insatiable for anything that others could give +him from their personal lives. Whatever he could seize in this way was +food for his own ruminating fancy; he welcomed any grain of reality, any +speck of significance round which his imagination could pile its rings. +It was very noticeable how promptly and eagerly he would reach out to +such things, as they floated by in talk; it was as though he feared to +leave them to inexpert hands and felt that other people could hardly be +trusted with their own experience. He remembered how much of his time he +had spent in exploring their consciousness when he spoke of himself as a +confirmed spectator, one who looked on from the brink instead of +plunging on his own account; but if this seemed a pale substitute for +direct contact he knew very well that it was a much richer and more +adventurous life, really, than it is given to most people to lead. There +is no life to the man who does not feel it, no adventure to the man who +cannot see the whole of it; the greatest share goes to the man who can +taste it most fully, however it reaches him. Henry James might sometimes +look back, as he certainly did, with a touch of ruefulness in reflecting +on all the experience he had only enjoyed at second hand; but he could +never doubt that what he had he possessed much more truly than any of +those from whom he had taken it. There was no hour in which he was not +alive with the whole of his sensibility; he could scarcely persuade +himself that he might have had time for more. And indeed at other +moments he would admit that he had lived in the way that was at any rate +the right way for him. Even his very twinges of regret were not wasted; +like everything else they helped to swell the sum of life, as they did +to such purpose for Strether, the 'poor sensitive gentleman' of _The +Ambassadors_, whose manner of living was very near his creator's. + +These letters, then, while they shew at every point the abundant life he +led in his surroundings, have to be read with the remembrance that the +central fact of all, the fact that gave everything else its meaning to +himself, is that of which least is told. The gap, moreover, cannot be +filled from other sources; he seems to have taken pains to leave nothing +behind him that should reveal this privacy. He put forth his finished +work to speak for itself and swept away all the traces of its origin. +There was a high pride in his complete lack of tenderness towards the +evidence of past labour--the notes, manuscripts, memoranda that a man of +letters usually accumulates and that shew him in the company of his +work. It is only to the stroke of chance which left two of his novels +unfinished that we owe the outspoken colloquies with himself, since +published, over the germination of those stories--a door of entry into +the presence of his imagination that would have been summarily closed if +he had lived to carry out his plan. And though in the prefaces to the +collected edition of his works we have what is perhaps the most +comprehensive statement ever made of the life of art, a _biographia +literaria_ without parallel for fulness and elaboration, he was there +dealing with his books in retrospect, as a critic from without, +analysing and reconstructing his own creations; or if he went further +than this, and touched on the actual circumstances of their production, +it was because these had for him the charm of an old romance, remote +enough to be recalled without indiscretion. So it is that while in a +sense he was the most personal of writers--for he could not put three +words together without marking them as his own and giving them the very +ring of his voice--yet, compared with other such deliberate craftsmen as +Stevenson or Gustave Flaubert, he baffles and evades curiosity about the +private affairs of his work. If curiosity were merely futile it would be +fitting to suppress the chance relic I shall offer in a moment--for it +so happens that a single glimpse of unique clarity is open to us, +revealing him as no one saw him in his life. But the attempt to picture +the mind of an artist is only an intrusion if it is carried into trivial +and inessential things; it can never be pushed too far, as Henry James +would have been the first to maintain, into a real sharing of his +aesthetic life. + +The relic in question consists of certain pencilled pages, found among +his papers, in which he speaks with only himself for listener. They +belong to the same order as the notes for the unfinished novels, but +they are even more informal and confidential. Nothing else of the kind +seems to have survived; the schemes and motives that must have swarmed +in his brain, far too numerously for notation, have all vanished but +this one. At Rye, some years before the end, he began one night to feel +his way towards a novel which he had in mind--a subject afterwards +abandoned in the form projected at first. The rough notes in which he +casts about to clear the ground are mostly filled with the mere details +of his plan--the division of the action, the characters required, a +tentative scenario. These I pass over in order to quote some passages +where he suddenly breaks away, leaves his imaginary scene, and +surrenders to the awe and wonder of finding himself again, where he has +so often stood before, on the threshold and brink of creation. It is as +though for once, at an hour of midnight silence and solitude, he opened +the innermost chamber of his mind and stood face to face with his +genius. There is no moment of all his days in which it is now possible +to approach him more closely. Such a moment represented to himself the +pith of life--the first tremor of inspiration, in which he might be +almost afraid to stir or breathe, for fear of breaking the spell, if it +were not that he goes to meet it with a peculiar confidence. + + I take this up again after an interruption--I in fact throw myself + upon it under the _secousse_ of its being brought home to me even + more than I expected that my urgent material reasons for getting + settled at productive work again are of the very most imperative. + Je m'entends--I have had a discomfiture (through a stupid + misapprehension of my own indeed;) and I must now take up projected + tasks--this long time _entrevus_ and brooded over, with the firmest + possible hand. I needn't expatiate on this--on the sharp + consciousness of this hour of the dimly-dawning New Year, I mean; I + simply make an appeal to all the powers and forces and divinities + to whom I've ever been loyal and who haven't failed me yet--after + all: never, never yet! Infinitely interesting--and yet somehow with + a beautiful sharp poignancy in it that makes it strange and rather + exquisitely formidable, as with an unspeakable deep agitation, the + whole artistic question that comes up for me in the train of this + idea ... of the _donnee_ for a situation that I began here the + other day to fumble out. I mean I come back, I come back yet again + and again, to my only seeing it in the dramatic way--as I can only + see everything and anything now; the way that filled my mind and + floated and uplifted me when a fortnight ago I gave my few + indications to X. Momentary side-winds--things of no real + authority--break in every now and then to put their inferior little + questions to me; but I come back, I come back, as I say, I all + throbbingly and yearningly and passionately, oh mon bon, come back + to this way that is clearly the only one in which I can do anything + now, and that will open out to me more and more, and that has + overwhelming reasons pleading all beautifully in its breast. What + really happens is that the closer I get to the problem of the + application of it in any particular case, the more I get _into_ + that application, so that the more doubts and torments fall away + from me, the more I know where I am, the more everything spreads + and shines and draws me on and I'm justified of my logic and my + passion.... Causons, causons, mon bon--oh celestial, soothing, + sanctifying process, with all the high sane forces of the sacred + time fighting, through it, on my side! Let me fumble it gently and + patiently out--with fever and fidget laid to rest--as in all the + old enchanted months! It only looms, it only shines and shimmers, + _too_ beautiful and too interesting; it only hangs there too rich + and too full and with too much to give and to pay; it only presents + itself too admirably and too vividly, too straight and square and + vivid, as a little organic and effective Action.... + + Thus just these first little wavings of the oh so tremulously + passionate little old wand (now!) make for me, I feel, a sort of + promise of richness and beauty and variety; a sort of portent of + the happy presence of the elements. The good days of last August + and even my broken September and my better October come back to me + with their gage of divine possibilities, and I welcome these to my + arms, I press them with unutterable tenderness. I seem to emerge + from these recent bad days--the fruit of blind accident--and the + prospect clears and flushes, and my poor blest old Genius pats me + so admirably and lovingly on the back that I turn, I screw round, + and bend my lips to passionately, in my gratitude, kiss its hands. + +To the exaltation of this wonderful unbosoming he had been brought by +fifty years of devout and untiring service. Where so little is heard of +it all, the amount of patience and energy that he had consecrated to it +might easily be mistaken. His immense industry all through his crowded +London years passes almost unnoticed, so little it seems to conflict +with this life in the world, his share in which, with the close +friendships he formed and the innumerable relations he cultivated, could +have been no fuller if he had had nothing to do but to amuse himself +with the spectacle. In one way, however, it is possible to divine how +heavily the weight of his work pressed on him. The change that divides +the general tone and accent of his younger and middle age from that of +his later years is too striking to be overlooked. The impression is +unmistakeable that for a long while, indeed until he was almost an old +man, he felt the constant need of husbanding and economising his +resources; so that except to those who knew him intimately he was apt to +seem a little cold and cautious, hesitating to commit himself freely or +to allow promiscuous claims. Later on all this was very different. There +were certain habits of reserve, perhaps, that he never threw off; all +his friends remember, for example, how carefully he distinguished the +different angles of his affection, so to call them--adjusting his +various relations as though in fear lest they should cross each other +and form an embarrassing complexity. Yet any scruples or precautions of +this sort that still hung about him only enhanced the large and genial +authority of his presence. There seemed to have come a time when after +long preparation and cogitation he was able to relax and to enjoy the +fruit of his labour. Not indeed that his labour was over; it never was +that, while strength lasted; but he gave the effect of feeling himself +to be at length completely the master of his situation, at ease and at +home in his world. The new note is very perceptible in the letters, +which broaden out with opulent vigour as time goes on, reaching their +best comparatively late. + +That at last he felt at home was doubtless indeed the literal truth, and +it was enough to account for this ample liberation of spirit. His +decision to settle in Europe, the great step of his life, was +inevitable, though it was not taken without long reflection; but it was +none the less a decision for which he had to pay heavily, as he was +himself very well aware. If he regarded his own part as that of an +onlooker, the sense in which he understood observation was to the +highest degree exacting. He watched indeed, but he watched with every +faculty, and he intended that every thread of intelligence he could +throw out to seize the truth of the old historic world should be as +strong as instruction, study, general indoctrination could make it. It +would be useless for him to live where the human drama most attracted +him unless he could grasp it with an assured hand; and he could never do +this if he was to remain a stranger and a sojourner, merely feeding on +the picturesque surface of appearances. To justify his expatriation he +must work his own life completely into the texture of his new +surroundings, and the story of his middle years is to be read as the +most patient and laborious of attempts to do so. Its extraordinary +success need hardly be insisted on; its failure, necessary and +foredoomed, from certain points of view, is perhaps not less obvious. +But the great fact of interest is the sight of him taking up the task +with eyes, it is needless to say, fully open to all its demands, and +never resting until he could be certain of having achieved all that was +possible. So long as he was in the thick of it, the task occupied the +whole of his attention. He took it with full seriousness; there never +was a scholar more immersed in research than was Henry James in the +study of his chosen world. There were times indeed when he might be +thought to take it even more seriously than the case required. The world +is not used to such deference from a rare critical talent, and it +certainly has much less respect for its own standards than Henry James +had, or seemed to have. His respect was of course very freely mingled +with irony, and yet it would be rash to say that his irony +preponderated. He probably felt that this, in his condition, was a +luxury which he could only afford within limits. He could never forget +that he had somehow to make up to himself for arriving as an alien from +a totally different social climate; for his own satisfaction he had to +wake and toil while others slept, keeping his ever-ready and rebellious +criticism for an occasional hour of relief. + +The world with which he thus sought to identify himself was a small +affair, by most of our measurements. It was a circle of sensibilities +that it might be easy to dismiss as hypertrophied and over-civilised, +too deeply smothered in the veils of artificial life to repay so much +patient attention. Yet the little world of urbane leisure satisfied him +because he found a livelier interest, always, in the results and effects +and implications of things than in the groundwork itself; so that the +field of study he desired was that in which initial forces had travelled +furthest from their prime, passing step by step from their origin to the +level where, diffused and transformed, they were still just discernible +to acute perception. It is not through any shy timidity that so often in +his books he requires us to infer the presence of naked emotion from the +faintest stirrings of an all but unruffled surface; it is because these +monitory signals, transmitted from so far, tell a story that would be +weakened by a directer method. The tiny movement that is the last +expression of an act or a fact carries within it the history of all it +has passed through on the way--a treasure of interest that the act, the +fact in itself, had not possessed. And so in the social scene, wherever +its crude beginnings have been left furthest behind, wherever its forms +have been most rubbed and toned by the hands of succeeding generations, +there he found, not an obliteration of sharp character, but a positive +enhancement of it, with the whole of its past crowded into its bosom. +The kind of life, therefore, that might have been thought too trifling +to bear the weight of his grave and powerful scrutiny was exactly the +life that he pursued for its expressive value. He clung to civilisation, +he was faithful throughout to a few yards of town-pavement, not because +he was scared by the rough freedom of the wild, but rather because he +was impatient of its insipidity. He is very often to be heard crying out +against the tyrannous claims of his world, when they interfere with his +work, his leisure, his health; but at the moment of greatest revulsion +he never suggests that the claims may be fraudulent after all, or that +this small corner of modernity is not the best and most fruitful that +the age has to shew. + +It must be a matter of pride to an English reader that this corner +happened to be found among ourselves. Henry James came to London, +however, more by a process of exhaustion than by deliberate choice, and +plenty of chastening considerations for a Londoner will appear in his +letters. If he elected to live among thick English wits rather than in +any nimbler atmosphere, it was at first largely because English ways and +manners lay more open to an explorer than the closer, compacter +societies of the mainland. Gradually, as we know well, his affection was +kindled into devoted loyalty. It remained true, none the less, that with +much that is common ground among educated people of our time and place +he was never really in touch. One has only to think of the part played, +in the England he frequented, by school and college, by country-homes, +by church and politics and professions, to understand how much of the +ordinary consciousness was closed to him. Yet it is impossible to say +that these limitations were imposed on him only because he was a +stranger among strangers; they belonged to the conditions of his being +from much further back. They were implied in his queer unanchored youth, +in which he and his greatly gifted family had been able to grow in the +free exercise of their talents without any of the foundations of settled +life. Henry James's genius opened and flourished in the void. His ripe +wisdom and culture seemed to have been able to dispense entirely with +the mere training that most people require before they can feel secure +in their critical outlook and sense of proportion. There could be no +better proof of the fact that imagination, if only there is enough of +it, will do the work of all the other faculties unaided. Whatever were +the gaps in his knowledge--knowledge of life generally, and of the life +of the mind in particular--his imagination covered them all. And so it +was that without ever acquiring a thousand things that go to the making +of a full experience and a sound taste, he yet enjoyed and possessed +everything that it was in them to give. + +His taste, indeed, his judgment of quality, seems to have been bestowed +upon him in its essentials like a gift of nature. From the very first he +was sure of his taste and could account for it. His earliest writing +shews, if anything, too large a portion of tact and composure; a critic +might have said that such a perfect control of his means was not the +most hopeful sign in a young author. Henry James reversed the usual +procedure of a beginner, keeping warily to matter well within his power +of management--and this is observable too in his early letters--until he +was ready to deal with matter more robust. In his instinct for +perfection he never went wrong--never floundered into raw enthusiasms, +never lost his way, never had painfully to recover himself; he travelled +steadily forward with no need of guidance, enriching himself with new +impressions and wasting none of them. He accepted nothing that did not +minister in some way to the use of his gifts; whatever struck him as +impossible to assimilate to these he passed by without a glance. He +could not be tempted by any interest unrelated to the central line of +his work. He had enough even so, he felt, to occupy a dozen lives, and +he grudged every moment that did not leave its deposit of stuff +appropriate to his purpose. The play of his thought was so ample and +ardent that it disguised his resolute concentration; he responded so +lavishly and to so much that he seemed ready to take up and transform +and adorn whatever was offered him. But this in truth was far from the +fact, and by shifting the recollection one may see the impatient gesture +with which he would sweep aside the distraction that made no appeal to +him. It was natural that he should care nothing for any abstract +speculation or inquiry; he was an artist throughout, desiring only the +refracted light of human imperfection, never the purity of colourless +reason. More surprising was his refusal, for it was almost that, of the +appeal of music--and not wordless music only, but even the song and +melody of poetry. It cannot be by accident that poetry scarcely appears +at all in such a picture of a literary life as is given by his letters. +The purely lyrical ear seems to have been strangely sealed in him--he +often declared as much himself. And poetry in general, though he could +be deeply stirred by it, he inclined to put away from him, perhaps for +the very reason that it meant too forcible a deflection from the right +line of his energy. All this careful gathering up of his powers, in any +case, this determined deafness to irrelevant voices, gave a commanding +warrant to the critical panoply of his later life. His certainty and +consistency, his principle, his intellectual integrity--by all these the +pitch of his opinions, wherever he delivered them, reached a height that +was unforgettably impressive. + +I have tried to touch, so far as possible, on the different strains in +Henry James's artistic experience; but to many who read these letters it +will be another aspect altogether that his name first recalls. They will +remember how much of his life was lived in his relations with his +countless friends, and how generously he poured out his best for them. +But if, as I have suggested, much of his mind appears fitfully and +obscurely in his letters, this side is fully irradiated from first to +last. Never, surely, has any circle of friendship received so +magnificent a tribute of expressed affection and sympathy. It was +lavished from day to day, and all the resources of his art were drawn +upon to present it with due honour. As time goes on a kind of personal +splendour shines through the correspondence, which only becomes more +natural, more direct a communication of himself, as it is uttered with +increasing mastery. The familiar form of the letter was changed under +his hand into what may really be called a new province of art, a +revelation of possibilities hitherto unexplored. Perfect in expression +as they are, these letters are true extemporisations, thrown off always +at great speed, as though with a single sweep of the hand, for all their +richness of texture and roundness of phrase. At their most +characteristic they are like free flights of virtuosity, flung out with +enjoyment in the hours of a master's ease; and the abundance of his +creative vigour is shewn by the fact that there should always be so +much more of it to spare, even after the exhausting strain of his +regular work. But the greater wonder is that this liberal gesture never +became mechanical, never a fixed manner displayed for any and all alike, +without regard to the particular mind addressed. Not for a moment does +he forget to whom he is speaking; he writes in the thought of his +correspondent, always perceptibly turning to that relation, singled out +for the time from all the rest. Each received of his best, but some +peculiar, inalienable share in it. + +If anything can give to those who did not know him an impression of +Henry James's talk, it will be some of the finest of these later +letters. One difference indeed is immediately to be marked. His +pondering hesitation as he talked, his search over the whole field of +expression for the word that should do justice to the picture forming in +his mind--this gives place in the letters to a flow unchecked, one +sonorous phrase uncoiling itself after another without effort. Pen in +hand, or, as he finally preferred, dictating to his secretary, it was +apparently easier for him to seize upon the images he sought to detach, +one by one, from the clinging and populous background of his mind. In +conversation the effort seemed to be greater, and save in rare moments +of exceptional fervour--no one who heard him will forget how these +recurred more and more in the last year of his life, under the deep +excitement of the war--he liked to take his time in working out his +thought with due deliberation. But apart from this, the letters exactly +reflect the colour and contour of his talk--his grandiose courtesy, his +luxuriant phraseology, his relish for some extravagantly colloquial turn +embedded in a Ciceronian period, his humour at once so majestic and so +burly. Intercourse with him was not quite easy, perhaps; his style was +too hieratic, too richly adorned and arrayed for that. But it was +enough to surrender simply to the current of his thought; the listener +felt himself gathered up and cared for--felt that Henry James assumed +all the responsibility and would deal with the occasion in his own way. +That way was never to give a mere impersonal display of his own, but to +create and develop a reciprocal relation, to both sides of which he was +more than capable of doing the fullest justice. No words seem +satisfactory in describing the dominance he exerted over any scene in +which he figured--yet exerted by no over-riding or ignoring of the +presence of others, rather with the quickest, most apprehending +susceptibility to it. But better than by any description is this memory +imparted by the eloquent roll and ring of his letters. + +He grew old in the honour of a wide circle of friends of all ages, and +of a public which, if small, was deeply devoted. He stood so completely +outside the evolution of English literature that his position was +special and unrelated, but it was a position at last unanimously +acknowledged. Signs of the admiration and respect felt for him by all +who held the belief in the art of letters, even by those whose line of +development most diverged from his--these he unaffectedly enjoyed, and +many came to him. None the less he knew very well that in all he most +cared for, in what was to him the heart and essence of life, he was +solitary to the end. However much his work might be applauded, the +spirit of rapt and fervent faith in which it was conceived was a +hermitage, so he undoubtedly felt, that no one else had perceived or +divined. His story of the Figure in the Carpet was told of himself; no +one brought him what he could accept as true and final comprehension. He +could never therefore feel that he had reached a time when his work was +finished and behind him. Old age only meant an imagination more crowded +than ever, a denser throng of shapes straining to be released before it +was too late. He bitterly resented the hindrances of ill-health, during +some of his last years, as an interruption, a curtailment of the span of +his activity; there were so many and so far better books that he still +wished to write. His interest in life, growing rather than weakening, +clashed against the artificial restraints, as they seemed, of physical +age; whenever these were relaxed, it leaped forward to work again. The +challenge of the war with Germany roused him to a height of passion he +had never touched before in the outer world; and if the strain of it +exhausted his strength, as well it might, it gave him one last year of +the fullest and deepest experience, perhaps, that he had ever known. It +wore out his body, which was too tired and spent to live longer; but he +carried away the power of his spirit still in its prime. + + + + +NOTE + + +The best thanks of the editor are due to Henry James's family, and +particularly to his niece, Mrs. Bruce Porter, for much valuable help. +Mrs. Porter undertook the collecting and copying of all the letters +addressed to correspondents in America; and it is owing to her that the +completion of these volumes, inevitably hindered by the war, has not +been further delayed. + + + + +I + +FIRST EUROPEAN YEARS (1869-74) + + +THE letters in this section take up the story of Henry James's life at +the exact point to which he brought it in the second instalment of his +reminiscences, _Notes of a Son and Brother_. It will be remembered that +the third volume, _The Middle Years_, of which only a fragment was +written, opens with his arrival in England in February 1869; and the +first letter here printed is dated from London a few days later. But in +evoking his youth it was no part of Henry James's design to write a +consecutive tale, and the order of dates and events is constantly +obscured in the abundance of his memories. For convenience, therefore, a +brief summary may be given of the course of his early years. + + * * * * * + +Henry James was born on April 15, 1843, at 2 Washington Place, New York. +He was the second child of his parents, the elder by a year being his +brother William. The younger members of the family were Wilkinson +('Wilky'), Robertson ('Bob'), and Alice. Their father Henry James the +elder, was a man whose striking genius has never received full justice +except at the hands of his illustrious sons, though from them with +profound and affectionate admiration. He was the most brilliant of a +remarkable group of many brothers and sisters, whose portraits, or some +of them, are sketched in _A Small Boy and Others_. Originally of Irish +descent, the James family had been settled for a couple of generations +in the State of New York, and in particular at Albany. The founder of +the American branch had been a prosperous man of business, whose +successful career left him in a position to bequeath to his numerous +descendants a fortune large enough to enable them all to live in +complete independence of the commercial world. Henry James the elder has +been sometimes described as 'the Reverend,' but in fact he never +occupied any position but that of a detached philosopher, lecturer, man +of letters. To his brothers and their extensive progeny he was a trusted +and untiring moral support of a kind that many of them distinctly +needed; the bereavements of the family were many, their misfortunes +various, and his genial charity and good faith were an inexhaustible +resource. His wife was Mary Walsh. She too belonged to a substantial New +York family, of Scotch origin, several members of which are commemorated +in _A Small Boy_. Her sister Katharine was for many years an inmate of +the elder Henry's household, and to the end of her life the cherished +friend of his children. + +The second Henry James has left so full and vivid a portrait of his +father that it is unnecessary to dwell on the happy influences under +which the family passed their youth. The 'ideas' of the head of the +house, as his remote speculations were familiarly known at home, lay +outside the range of his second son; but in the preface to a collection +of papers, posthumously issued in 1884, they are sympathetically +expounded and appraised by William James, whose adventurous mind, +impatient of academic rules and forms, was more akin to his father's, +though it developed on quite other lines. It is natural to speak of the +father as a Swedenborgian, for the writings of Swedenborg had been the +chief source of his inspiration and supplied the tincture of his +thought. He did not, however, himself admit this description of his +point of view, which indeed was original and unconventional to the last +degree. It was directed towards an ideal, to use William James's words, +of 'the true relation between mankind and its Creator,' elaborated and +re-affirmed in book after book, and always in a style so peculiarly +vivacious and attractive that it is difficult to explain the +indifference with which they were received and which has allowed them to +fall completely forgotten. To the memory of his father's courageous +spirit, his serene simplicity and luminous humour, none of which ever +failed in the face of repeated disappointment, the younger Henry, years +later, devoted his beautiful tribute of art and piety. + +His recollections of childhood began, surprisingly enough, when he was +little more than a year old. In the summer of 1844 the parents carried +their two infants, William and Henry, for a visit to Europe, an +adventure not altogether lost upon the younger; for he actually retained +an impression of Paris, a glimpse of the Place Vendome, to be the +foundation of all his European experience. His earliest American +memories were of Albany; but the family were soon established in +Fourteenth Street, New York, which was their home for some ten years, a +settlement only broken by family visits and summer weeks by the sea. The +children's extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous education went +forward under various teachers, their father's erratic rule having +apparently but one principle, that they should stay nowhere long enough +to receive any formal imprint. To Henry at least their schooling meant +nothing whatever but the opportunity of conducting his own education in +his own way, and he made the utmost of the easy freedom they enjoyed. He +was able to stare and brood to his heart's content, and thus to feed his +imagination on the only pasturage it required. + +In 1855 the whole household migrated to Europe for a visit of three +years. This, the grand event of Henry's childhood, was really the +determination of his whole career; for he then absorbed, once for all, +what he afterwards called the 'European Virus'--the nostalgia for the +old world which made it impossible for him to rest in peace elsewhere. +All this time was one long draught of romance; though indeed as an +initiation into the ways of French and English life it could hardly have +been a more incoherent enterprise. True to his law, the head of the +household planted the young family in one place only to sweep them away +as soon as they might begin to form associations there. The summer of +1855 was spent at Geneva, then the classic spot for the acquisition of +the 'languages,' according to the point of view of New York. But Geneva +was abandoned before the end of the year, and the family settled in +London for the winter, at first in Berkeley Street, afterwards in St. +John's Wood. For any real contact with the place, this was a blank +interlude; the tuition of a young Scotchman, later one of R. L. +Stevenson's masters, seems to have been the solitary local tie provided +for the children. By the middle of 1856 they were in Paris, and here +they were able to use their opportunities a little more fully. Of these +one of the oddest was the educational 'Institution Fezandie,' which they +attended for a time. But there was more for them to learn at the Louvre +and the Luxembourg, and it was to this time that Henry James afterwards +ascribed his first conscious perception of what might be meant by the +life of art. In the course of the two following years they twice spent +some months at Boulogne-sur-mer, returning each time to Paris again. +During the second visit to Boulogne Henry was laid low by the very +serious attack of typhus that descends on the last page of _A Small +Boy_. + +In 1858 the family was rushed back to America for a year at Newport; but +they were once more at Geneva for the winter of 1859-60. Here Henry was +at first put to the strangest of all his strange educational courses, at +the severely mathematical and commercial 'Institution Rochette.' But +presently pleading for humaner studies, he was set free to attend +lectures at the Academy, where at sixteen, for the first time and after +so many arid experiences, he tasted instruction more or less adapted to +his parts. Needless to say it did not last long. In the following summer +the three elder boys were sent as private pupils to the houses of +certain professors at Bonn. By this time William's marked talent for +painting had decided his ambition; and it was quite in line with the +originality of the household that they should at once return to America, +leaving Paris behind them for good, in order that William might study +art. Henry alone of them, by his account, felt that their proceedings +needed a great deal of explanation. The new experiment, as short-lived +as all the rest, was entered upon with ardour, and the family was +re-established at Newport in the autumn of 1860. The distinguished +master, William Hunt, had his studio there; and for a time Henry himself +haunted it tentatively, while his brother was working with a zeal that +was soon spent. + +If we may trust his own report, Henry James had reached the age of +seventeen with a curiously vague understanding of his own talent. No +doubt it is possible to read the 'Notes' too literally; and indeed I +have the fortunate opportunity of giving a side-light upon this period +of his youth which proves as much. But if he was not quite the +indeterminate brooder he depicts, he was far from rivalling the unusual +precocity and decision of his brothers, and he was only now beginning to +take real stock of his gifts. He had been provided with almost none of +the sort of training by which he might have profited; and it is not to +be supposed that his always indulgent parent would have neglected the +taste of a literary son if it had shewn itself distinctly. He had been +left to discover his line of progress as best he might, and his advance +towards literature was slow and shy. Yet it would seem that by this time +he must have made up his mind more definitely than he suggests in +recalling the Newport years. The side-light I mentioned is thrown by +some interesting notes sent me by Mr. Thomas Sergeant Perry, who made +the acquaintance of the family at Newport and was to remain their +lifelong friend. His description shews that Henry James had now his own +ambitions, even if he preferred to nurse them unobtrusively. + + The first time I saw the James boys (writes Mr. Perry) was at the + end of June or early in July 1858, shortly after their arrival in + Newport for a year's stay. This year of their life is not recorded + by H. J. in his 'Notes of a Son and Brother,' or rather its + memories are crowded into the chronicle of the longer stay of the + family in America, beginning with 1860. Mr. Duncan Pell, who knew + Mr. James the father, told his son and me that we ought to call on + the boys; and we did, but they were out. A day or two later we + called again and found them in. We all went together to the Pells' + house and spent the evening in simple joys. + + I have often thought that the three brothers shewed that evening + some of their characteristic qualities. I remember walking with + Wilky hanging on my arm, talking to me as if he had found an old + friend after long absence. When we got to the house and the rest of + us were chattering, H. J. sat on the window-seat reading Leslie's + Life of Constable with a certain air of remoteness. William was + full of merriment and we were soon playing a simple and childish + game. In 'A Small Boy and Others' H. J. speaks of Wilky's + 'successful sociability, his instinct for intercourse, his genius + for making friends,' and these amiable traits shewed themselves + that evening as clearly as his other brother's jollity. Very soon + afterwards H. J. with his two younger brothers entered the school + where I was studying, that of the Rev. W. C. Leverett, who is + mentioned in the 'Notes.' I recall H. J. as an uninterested + scholar. Part of one day in a week was devoted to declaiming + eloquent pieces from 'Sargent's Standard Speaker,' and I have not + forgotten his amusement at seeing in the Manual of English + Literature that we were studying, in the half page devoted to Mrs. + Browning, that she had married R. Browning, 'himself no mean poet.' + This compact information gave him great delight, for we were + reading Browning. It was then too that he read for the first time + 'The Vicar of Wakefield' and with great pleasure. + + It was at that time that we began to take long walks together + almost every afternoon along the Cliffs, over the beaches to the + Paradise Rocks, to the Point, or inland, wherever it might be. A + thousand scrappy recollections of the strolls still remain, + fragments of talk, visions of the place. Thus it was near the Lily + Pond that we long discussed Fourier's plan for regenerating the + world. Harry had heard his father describe the great reformer's + proposal to establish universal happiness, and like a good son he + tried to carry the good news further. At another time, he fell + under the influence of Ruskin; he devoted himself to the + conscientious copying of a leaf and very faithfully drew a little + rock that jutted above the surface of the Lily Pond. These artistic + gropings, and those in Hunt's studio where he copied casts, were + not his main interest. His chief interest was literature. We read + the English magazines and reviews and the Revue des Deux Mondes + with rapture. We fished in various waters, and I well remember when + W. J. brought home a volume of Schopenhauer and showed us with + delight the ugly mug of the philosopher and read us amusing + specimens of his delightful pessimism. It was W. J. too who told us + about Renan one cool evening of February when the twilight lingers + till after six. H. J. in his books speaks without enthusiasm of + his school studies, but he and I read together at Mr. Leverett's + school a very fair amount of Latin literature. Like Shakespeare he + had less Greek. + + The departure of the James family to Geneva in October 1859 was a + grievous blow. They returned, however, with characteristic + suddenness the next September and came at once to Newport. During + their stay abroad H. J. and I had kept up a lively correspondence. + Most unfortunately all his letters, which I had faithfully + preserved, were destroyed during one of my absences in Europe, and + among them a poem, probably the only thing of the kind he ever + tried, a short narrative in the manner of Tennyson's 'Dora.' He had + entirely forgotten it, very naturally, when he said in his 'Notes': + 'The muse was of course the muse of prose fiction--never for the + briefest hour in my case the presumable, not to say the presuming, + the much-taking-for-granted muse of rhyme, with whom I had never + had, even in thought, the faintest flirtation.' + + After his return to America in 1860, the question what he should do + with his life became more urgent. Of course it was in literature + that he took the greatest interest. One task that he set himself + was translating Alfred de Musset's 'Lorenzaccio,' and into this + version he introduced some scenes of his own. Exactly what they + were I do not recall, though I read them with an even intenser + interest than I did the original text. He was continually writing + stories, mainly of a romantic kind. The heroes were for the most + part villains, but they were white lambs by the side of the + sophisticated heroines, who seemed to have read all Balzac in the + cradle and to be positively dripping with lurid crimes. He began + with these extravagant pictures of course in adoration of the great + master whom he always so warmly admired. + + H. J. seldom entrusted these early efforts to the criticism of his + family--they did not see all he wrote. They were too keen critics, + too sharp-witted, to be allowed to handle every essay of this + budding talent. Their judgments would have been too true, their + comments would have been too merciless; and hence, for sheer + self-preservation, he hid a good part of his work from them. Not + that they were cruel, far from it. Their frequent solitude in + foreign parts, where they had no familiar companions, had welded + them together in a way that would have been impossible in America, + where each would have had separate distractions of his own. Their + loneliness forced them to grow together most harmoniously, but + their long exercise in literary criticism would have made them + possibly merciless judges of H. J.'s crude beginnings. + + The following anecdote will shew what I mean. Mr. James the father + was getting out a somewhat abstruse book called 'Substance and + Shadow, or Morality and Religion in their Relation to Life.' W. J. + amused himself and all the family by designing a small cut to be + put on the title page, representing a man beating a dead horse. + This will illustrate the joyous chaff that filled the Jameses' + house. There was no limit to it. There were always books to tell + about and laugh over, or to admire, and there was an abundance of + good talk with no shadow of pedantry or priggishness. H. J.'s + spirits were never so high as those of the others. If they had + been, he still would have had but little chance in a conflict of + wits with them, on account of his slow speech, his halting choice + of words and phrases; but as a companion in our walks he was + delightful. He had plenty of humour, as his books shew, and above + all he had a most affectionate heart. No one ever had more certain + and more unobtrusive kindness than he. He had a certain air of + aloofness, but he was not indifferent to those who had no claim + upon him, and to his friends he was most tenderly devoted. Those + who knew him will not need to be assured of that. + +The Civil War, which presently broke upon the leisurely life of Newport, +went deep into the mind and character of Henry James; but his part in it +could only be that of an onlooker, for about this time an accidental +strain developed results that gave him many years of uncertain health. +He had to live much in the experience of his brothers, which he eagerly +did. The two youngest fought in the war, Wilky receiving a grave wound +of which he carried the mark for the rest of his life--he died in 1883. +Henry went to Harvard in 1862, where William, no longer a painter but a +man of science, had preceded him the year before. By the beginning of +1864 the rest of the family had settled in Boston, at Ashburton Place, +whence they finally moved out to Cambridge in 1866. This was the end of +their wanderings. For the remainder of his parents' lives Cambridge was +Henry's American home and, with the instalment there of his brother +William, the centre of all the family associations. But the long +connection with New England never superseded, for Henry at least, the +native tie with New York, and he was gratified when his name was at last +carried back there again, many years afterwards, by another generation. + +In Boston and Cambridge Henry James at length touched a purely literary +circle. The beginning of such fruitful friendships as those with +Professor C. E. Norton and Mr. W. D. Howells meant his open and +professed dedication to literature. The Harvard Law School left as +little direct impression on him as any of his other exposures to +ordinary teaching, but at last he had finished with these makeshifts. +His new friends helped him into his proper channel. Under their auspices +he made his way into publication and became a regular contributor of +criticism and fiction to several journals and reviews. There followed +some very uneventful and industrious years, disturbed to some extent by +ill-health but broken by no long absences from Cambridge. His constant +companion and literary confidant was Mr. Howells, who writes to me that +'people were very much struck with his work in the magazine'--the +_Atlantic Monthly_, of which this friend was at that time assistant +editor--'but mostly not pleased with it. It was a common thing to hear +them say, "Oh, yes, we like Mr. James very much, but we cannot bear his +stories".' Mr. Howells adds: 'I could scarcely exaggerate the intensity +of our literary association. It included not only what he was doing and +thinking himself in fiction, and criticism of whatever he was reading, +but what other people were trying to do in our American magazines.' +Beneath these activities we are to imagine the deep pre-occupation, +growing and growing, of the idea of a possible return to Europe. It is +not very clear why the satisfaction of his wish was delayed for as long +as it was. His doubtful health can hardly have amounted to a hindrance, +and the authority of his parents was far too light and sympathetic to +stand in his way. Yet it is only by the end of 1868, as I find from a +letter of that time, that a journey to Europe has 'ceased to look +positively and aggressively impossible.' Thereafter things move more +quickly, and three months later he arrives at the great moment, +memorable ever afterwards, of his landing at Liverpool. + + * * * * * + +From this point the letters speak for themselves, and only the +slenderest commentary is required. He went first to London, where the +hospitable Nortons had been installed on a visit for some while. These +good friends opened the way to many interesting impressions for him, but +he was only briefly in London at this time. For health's sake he spent +three weeks alone at Great Malvern, in some sort of hydropathic +establishment, among very British company. He writes of his great +delight in the beauty of the place, and how he is 'gluttonised on +British commonplace' indoors. After a tour which included Oxford and +Cambridge and several English cathedrals, he had a few weeks more of +London, and then passed on to Switzerland. He was at Geneva by the end +of May, from where he writes that he is 'very well--which has ceased to +be a wonder.' The Nortons joined him at Vevey. He left them in July for +a small Swiss tour before making the great adventure of crossing the +Alps for the first time. By Venice and Florence he reached Rome in +November. He gave himself up there to rapturous and solitary wanderings: +'I see no people, to speak of, or for that matter to speak to.' In +December he was at Naples for a fortnight, and then returned northwards +by Assisi, Perugia, Genoa, Avignon, to Paris. Italy had made the deep +and final impression on him for which he was so well prepared; +'already,' he writes, 'I feel my bows beneath her weight settle +comfortably into the water.... Out of Italy you don't know how vulgar a +world it is.' Presently he was in England and at Malvern again, +everywhere saturating himself in the sense of old history and romance, +to make the most of an opportunity which he did not then hope to +prolong. 'It behoves me,' he writes to Professor Norton, 'as a luckless +American, diabolically tempted of the shallow and the superficial, +really to catch the flavour of an old civilization (it hardly matters +which) and to strive to raise myself, for one brief moment at least, in +the attitude of observation.' At the end of April 1870 he sailed for +America. + +After a year of Europe his hunger for the old world was greater than +ever, but he had no present thought of settling there permanently. For +two years he resumed the quiet life of his American Cambridge, busily +engaged on a succession of sketches, reviews, and short stories of which +only one, 'A Passionate Pilgrim,' survives in the collected edition of +his works. 'I enjoy America,' he says in a letter of 1870, 'with a +poignancy that perpetually surprises me'; but 'the wish--the absolute +sense of need--to see Italy again' constantly increases. He spends 'a +quiet, low-toned sort of winter, reading somewhat, writing a little, and +"going out" occasionally.' He wrote his first piece of fiction that was +long enough to be called a novel--'Watch and Ward,' afterwards so +completely disowned and ignored by him that he always named as his +first novel Roderick Hudson, of four years later. But the memory of +Italy had fatally shaken his rest, and there began a long and anxious +struggle with his sense of duty to his native land. In his letters of +this time the attitude of the 'good American' remains resolute, however. +'It's a complex fate, being an American,' he writes, early in 1872, 'and +one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a +superstitious valuation of Europe.' It was still as a tourist and a +pilgrim only that he crossed the Atlantic again, with his sister and +aunt (Miss Katharine Walsh), in May 1872. + +He came with a definite commission to contribute a series of +'Transatlantic Sketches' to the American _Nation_, and the first +material was gathered in an English tour that ranged from Chester to +North Devon. Still with his sister and aunt he wandered for three months +in Switzerland, North Italy and Bavaria, settling upon Paris, now alone, +for the autumn. It was here that he began his intimacy with J. R. +Lowell, in afternoon walks with him between mornings of work and +evenings at the Theatre Francais. He declares that he saw no one else in +Paris--his mind was firmly set upon Italy. To Rome he went for the first +six months of 1873, where he was now at home enough among ancient +solitudes to have time and thought for social novelty. Thirty years +later, in his life of William Wetmore Story, he revived the American +world of what was still a barely modernised Rome, the world into which +he was plunged by acquaintance with the sculptor and his circle. Now and +thenceforward it was not so much the matter for sketches of travel that +he was collecting as it was the matter for the greater part of his +best-known fiction. The American in Europe was to be his own subject, +and he began to make it so. The summer months were mainly spent at +Homburg, which was also to leave its mark on several of his tales. His +elder brother joined him when he returned to Rome, but William +contracted a malaria, and they moved to Florence early in 1874. Here +Henry was soon left alone, in rooms on Piazza Sta. Maria Novella, for +some months of close and happy concentration on Roderick Hudson. The +novel had already been engaged by Mr. Howells for the _Atlantic +Monthly_, and its composition marks the definite end of Henry James's +literary apprenticeship. He had arrived at it by wary stages; of the +large amount of work behind him, though much of it was of slight value, +nothing had been wasted; every page of his writing had been in the +direct line towards the perfect literary manners of his matured skill. +But hitherto he had written experimentally and to occasion; he was now +an established novelist in his own right. + +He returned to America in the autumn of 1874, after some summer +wanderings that are shewn by the 'Transatlantic Sketches' to have taken +him through Holland and Belgium. But it happens that at this point there +is an almost empty gap of a year and more in his surviving +correspondence, and it is not possible to follow him closely. He +disappears with the still agitating question upon his hands--where was +he to live?--his American loyalty still fighting it out with his +European inclination. The steps are lost by which the doubt was +determined in the course of another year at home. It is only certain +that when he next came to Europe, twelve months later, it had been +quieted for ever. + + + + +_To Miss Alice James._ + + H. J.'s lodging in Half Moon St., and his landlord, Mr. Lazarus + Fox, are described, it will be remembered, in _The Middle Years._ + He had arrived in London from America a few days before the date of + the following letter to his sister. Professor Charles Norton, with + his wife and sisters, was living at this time in Kensington. + + +7 Half Moon St., W. +March 10th [1869]. + +Ma soeur cherie, + +I have half an hour before dinner-time: why shouldn't I begin a letter +for Saturday's steamer?... I really feel as if I had lived--I don't say +a lifetime--but a year in this murky metropolis. I actually believe that +this feeling is owing to the singular permanence of the impressions of +childhood, to which any present experience joins itself on, without a +broken link in the chain of sensation. Nevertheless, I may say that up +to this time I have been crushed under a sense of the mere magnitude of +London--its inconceivable immensity--in such a way as to paralyse my +mind for any appreciation of details. This is gradually subsiding; but +what does it leave behind it? An extraordinary intellectual depression, +as I may say, and an indefinable flatness of mind. The place sits on +you, broods on you, stamps on you with the feet of its myriad bipeds and +quadrupeds. In fine, it is anything but a cheerful or a charming city. +Yet it is a very splendid one. It gives you here at the west end, and in +the city proper, a vast impression of opulence and prosperity. But you +don't want a dissertation of commonplaces on London and you would like +me to touch on my own individual experience. Well, my dear, since last +week it has been sufficient, altho' by no means immense. On Saturday I +received a visit from Mr. Leslie Stephen (blessed man) who came +unsolicited with the utmost civility in the world and invited me to dine +with him the next day. This I did, in company with Miss Jane Norton. His +wife made me very welcome and they both appear to much better effect in +their own premises than they did in America. After dinner he conducted +us by the underground railway to see the beasts in the Regent's Park, to +which as a member of the Zoological Society he has admittance 'Sundays.' +... In the evening I dined with the invaluable Nortons and went with +Chas. and Madame, Miss S. and Miss Jane (via underground railway) to +hear Ruskin lecture at University College on Greek Myths. I enjoyed it +much in spite of fatigue; but as I am to meet him some day through the +Nortons, I shall reserve comments. On Wednesday evening I dined at the +N.'s (toujours Norton, you see) in company with Miss Dickens--Dickens's +only unmarried daughter--plain-faced, ladylike (in black silk and black +lace,) and the image of her father. I exchanged but ten words with her. +But yesterday, my dear old sister, was my crowning day--seeing as how I +spent the greater part of it in the house of Mr. Wm. Morris, Poet. Fitly +to tell the tale, I should need a fresh pen, paper and spirits. A few +hints must suffice. To begin with, I breakfasted, by way of a change, +with the Nortons, along with Mr. Sam Ward, who has just arrived, and Mr. +Aubrey de Vere, _tu sais_, the Catholic poet, a pleasant honest old man +and very much less high-flown than his name. He tells good stories in a +light natural way. After a space I came home and remained until 4-1/2 +p.m., when I had given rendez-vous to C.N. and ladies at Mr. Morris's +door, they going by appointment to see his shop and C. having written to +say he would bring me. Morris lives on the same premises as his shop, in +Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, an antiquated ex-fashionable region, +smelling strong of the last century, with a hoary effigy of Queen Anne +in the middle. Morris's poetry, you see, is only his sub-trade. To begin +with, he is a manufacturer of stained glass windows, tiles, +ecclesiastical and medieval tapestry, altar-cloths, and in fine +everything quaint, archaic, pre-Raphaelite--and I may add, exquisite. Of +course his business is small and may be carried on in his house: the +things he makes are so handsome, rich and expensive (besides being +articles of the very last luxury) that his _fabrique_ can't be on a very +large scale. But everything he has and does is superb and beautiful. But +more curious than anything is himself. He designs with his own head and +hands all the figures and patterns used in his glass and tapestry, and +furthermore works the latter, stitch by stitch, with his own +fingers--aided by those of his wife and little girls. Oh, ma chere, such +a wife! _Je n'en reviens pas_--she haunts me still. A figure cut out of +a missal--out of one of Rossetti's or Hunt's pictures--to say this gives +but a faint idea of her, because when such an image puts on flesh and +blood, it is an apparition of fearful and wonderful intensity. It's hard +to say whether she's a grand synthesis of all the pre-Raphaelite +pictures ever made--or they a 'keen analysis' of her--whether she's an +original or a copy. In either case she is a wonder. Imagine a tall lean +woman in a long dress of some dead purple stuff, guiltless of hoops (or +of anything else, I should say,) with a mass of crisp black hair heaped +into great wavy projections on each of her temples, a thin pale face, a +pair of strange sad, deep, dark Swinburnian eyes, with great thick black +oblique brows, joined in the middle and tucking themselves away under +her hair, a mouth like the 'Oriana' in our illustrated Tennyson, a long +neck, without any collar, and in lieu thereof some dozen strings of +outlandish beads--in fine complete. On the wall was a large nearly +full-length portrait of her by Rossetti, so strange and unreal that if +you hadn't seen her you'd pronounce it a distempered vision, but in fact +an extremely good likeness. After dinner (we stayed to dinner, Miss +Grace, Miss S. S. and I,) Morris read us one of his unpublished poems, +from the second series of his un-'Earthly Paradise,' and his wife, +having a bad toothache, lay on the sofa, with her handkerchief to her +face. There was something very quaint and remote from our actual life, +it seemed to me, in the whole scene: Morris reading in his flowing +antique numbers a legend of prodigies and terrors (the story of +Bellerophon, it was), around us all the picturesque bric-a-brac of the +apartment (every article of furniture literally a 'specimen' of +something or other,) and in the corner this dark silent medieval woman +with her medieval toothache. Morris himself is extremely pleasant and +quite different from his wife. He impressed me most agreeably. He is +short, burly, corpulent, very careless and unfinished in his dress, and +looks a little like B. G. Hosmer, if you can imagine B. G. infinitely +magnified and fortified. He has a very loud voice and a nervous restless +manner and a perfectly unaffected and business-like address. His talk +indeed is wonderfully to the point and remarkable for clear good sense. +He said no one thing that I remember, but I was struck with the very +good judgment shown in everything he uttered. He's an extraordinary +example, in short, of a delicate sensitive genius and taste, saved by a +perfectly healthy body and temper. All his designs are quite as good (or +rather nearly so) as his poetry: altogether it was a long rich sort of +visit, with a strong peculiar flavour of its own.... Ouf! what a +repulsively long letter! This sort of thing won't do. A few general +reflections, a burst of affection (say another sheet), and I must +close.... Farewell, dear girl, and dear incomparable all-- + +Your H. + + + + +_To his Mother._ + + +7 Half Moon St., W. +March 26, 1869. + +My dearest Mother, + +...This will have been my fifth weekly bundle since my arrival, and I +can't promise--or rather I forbear to threaten--that it shall be as +hugely copious as the others. But there's no telling where my pen may +take me. You see I am still in what my old landlord never speaks of but +as 'this great metropolis'; and I hope you will believe me when I add, +moreover, that I am in the best of health and spirits. During the last +week I have been knocking about in a quiet way and have deeply enjoyed +my little adventures. The last few days in particular have been +extremely pleasant. You have perhaps fancied that I have been rather +stingy-minded towards this wondrous England, and that I was [not] taking +things in quite the magnanimous intellectual manner that befits a youth +of my birth and breeding. The truth is that the face of things here +throws a sensitive American back on himself--back on his prejudices and +national passions, and benumbs for a while the faculty of appreciation +and the sense of justice. But with time, if he is worth a copper, the +characteristic beauty of the land dawns upon him (just as certain +vicious chilblains are now dawning upon my poor feet) and he feels that +he would fain plant his restless feet into the rich old soil and absorb +the burden of the misty air. If I were in anything like working order +now, I should be very sorry to leave England. I should like to settle +down for a year and expose my body to the English climate and my mind to +English institutions. But a truce to this cheap discursive stuff. I date +the moment from which my mind rose erect in impartial might to a little +sail I took on the Thames the other day in one of the little penny +steamers which shoot along its dirty bosom. It was a grey, raw English +day, and the banks of the river, as far as I went, hideous. Nevertheless +I enjoyed it. It was too cold to go up to Greenwich. (The weather, by +the way, since my arrival has been horribly damp and bleak, and no more +like spring than in a Boston January.) The next day I went with several +of the Nortons to dine at Ruskin's, out of town. This too was extremely +pleasant. Ruskin himself is a very simple matter. In face, in manner, in +talk, in mind, he is weakness pure and simple. I use the word, not +invidiously, but scientifically. He has the beauties of his defects; but +to see him only confirms the impression given by his writing, that he +has been scared back by the grim face of reality into the world of +unreason and illusion, and that he wanders there without a compass and a +guide--or any light save the fitful flashes of his beautiful genius. The +dinner was very nice and easy, owing in a great manner to Ruskin's two +charming young nieces who live with him--one a lovely young Irish girl +with a rich virginal brogue--a creature of a truly delightful British +maidenly simplicity--and the other a nice Scotch lass, who keeps house +for him. But I confess, cold-blooded villain that I am, that what I most +enjoyed was a portrait by Titian--an old doge, a work of transcendent +beauty and elegance, such as to give one a new sense of the meaning of +art.... But, dearest mammy, I must pull up. Pile in scraps of news. +Osculate my sister most passionately. Likewise my aunt. Be assured of my +sentiments and present them to my father and brother. + +Thy HENRY jr. + + + + +_To his Mother._ + + +Florence, Hotel de l'Europe. +October 13th, 1869. + +My darling Mammy, + +...For the past six weeks that I have been in Italy I've hardly until +within a day or two exchanged five minutes' talk with any one but the +servants in the hotels and the custodians in the churches. As far as +meeting people is concerned, I've not as yet had in Europe a very +brilliant record. Yesterday I met at the Uffizi Miss Anna Vernon of +Newport and her friend Mrs. Carter, with whom I had some discourse; and +on the same morning I fell in with a somewhat seedy and sickly American, +who seemed to be doing the gallery with an awful minuteness, and who +after some conversation proposed to come and see me. He called this +morning and has just left; but he seems a vague and feeble brother and I +anticipate no wondrous joy from his acquaintance. The 'hardly' in the +clause above is meant to admit two or three Englishmen with whom I have +been thrown for a few hours.... One especially, whom I met at Verona, +won my affections so rapidly that I was really sad at losing him. But he +has vanished, leaving only a delightful impression and not even a +name--a man of about 38, with a sort of quiet perfection of English +virtue about him, such as I have rarely found in another. Willy asked +me in one of his recent letters for an 'opinion' of the English, which I +haven't yet had time to give--tho' at times I have felt as if it were a +theme on which I could write from a full mind. In fact, however, I have +very little right to have any opinion on the matter. I've seen far too +few specimens and those too superficially. The only thing I'm certain +about is that I like them--like them heartily. W. asked if as +individuals they 'kill' the individual American. To this I would say +that the Englishmen I have met not only kill, but bury in unfathomable +depths, the Americans I have met. A set of people less framed to provoke +national self-complacency than the latter it would be hard to imagine. +There is but one word to use in regard to them--vulgar, vulgar, vulgar. +Their ignorance--their stingy, defiant, grudging attitude towards +everything European--their perpetual reference of all things to some +American standard or precedent which exists only in their own +unscrupulous wind-bags--and then our unhappy poverty of voice, of speech +and of physiognomy--these things glare at you hideously. On the other +hand, we seem a people of _character_, we seem to have energy, capacity +and intellectual stuff in ample measure. What I have pointed at as our +vices are the elements of the modern man with _culture_ quite left out. +It's the absolute and incredible lack of _culture_ that strikes you in +common travelling Americans. The pleasantness of the English, on the +other side, comes in a great measure from the fact of their each having +been dipped into the crucible, which gives them a sort of coating of +comely varnish and colour. They have been smoothed and polished by +mutual social attrition. They have manners and a language. We lack both, +but particularly the latter. I have seen very 'nasty' Britons, +certainly, but as a rule they are such as to cause your heart to warm to +them. The women are at once better and worse than the men. Occasionally +they are hard, flat, and greasy and dowdy to downright repulsiveness; +but frequently they have a modest, matronly charm which is the +perfection of womanishness and which makes Italian and Frenchwomen--and +to a certain extent even our own--seem like a species of feverish +highly-developed invalids. You see Englishmen, here in Italy, to a +particularly good advantage. In the midst of these false and beautiful +Italians they glow with the light of the great fact, that after all they +love a bath-tub and they hate a lie. + +_16th, Sunday._ I _have_ seen some nice Americans and I still love my +country. I have called upon Mrs. Huntington and her two daughters--late +of Cambridge--whom I met in Switzerland and who have an apartment here. +The daughters more than reconcile me to the shrill-voiced sirens of New +England's rock-bound coast. The youngest is delightfully beautiful and +sweet--and the elder delightfully sweet and plain--with a plainness _qui +vaut bien des beautes_.... + +Maman de mon ame, farewell. I have kept my letter three days, hoping for +news from home. I hope you are not paying me back for that silence of +six weeks ago. Blessings on your universal heads. + +Thy lone and loving exile, +H. J. jr. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +Hotel d'Angleterre, Rome. +Oct. 30th [1869]. + +My dearest Wm. + +...The afternoon after I had posted those two letters I took a walk out +of Florence to an enchanting old Chartreuse--an ancient monastery, +perched up on top of a hill and turreted with little cells like a feudal +castle. I attacked it and carried it by storm--i.e. obtained admission +and went over it. On coming out I swore to myself that while I had life +in my body I wouldn't leave a country where adventures of that +complexion are the common incidents of your daily constitutional: but +that I would hurl myself upon Rome and fight it out on this line at the +peril of my existence. Here I am then in the Eternal City. It was easy +to leave Florence; the cold had become intolerable and the rain +perpetual. I started last night, and at 10-1/2 o'clock and after a bleak +and fatiguing journey of 12 hours found myself here with the morning +light. There are several places on the route I should have been glad to +see; but the weather and my own condition made a direct journey +imperative. I rushed to this hotel (a very slow and obstructed rush it +was, I confess, thanks to the longueurs and lenteurs of the Papal +dispensation) and after a wash and a breakfast let myself loose on the +city. From midday to dusk I have been roaming the streets. Que vous en +dirai-je? At last--for the first time--I live! It beats everything: it +leaves the Rome of your fancy--your education--nowhere. It makes +Venice--Florence--Oxford--London--seem like little cities of pasteboard. +I went reeling and moaning thro' the streets, in a fever of enjoyment. +In the course of four or five hours I traversed almost the whole of +Rome and got a glimpse of everything--the Forum, the Coliseum +(stupendissimo!), the Pantheon, the Capitol, St. Peter's, the Column of +Trajan, the Castle of St. Angelo--all the Piazzas and ruins and +monuments. The effect is something indescribable. For the first time I +know what the picturesque is. In St. Peter's I stayed some time. It's +even beyond its reputation. It was filled with foreign +ecclesiastics--great armies encamped in prayer on the marble plains of +its pavement--an inexhaustible physiognomical study. To crown my day, on +my way home, I met his Holiness in person--driving in prodigious purple +state--sitting dim within the shadows of his coach with two uplifted +benedictory fingers--like some dusky Hindoo idol in the depths of its +shrine. Even if I should leave Rome tonight I should feel that I have +caught the keynote of its operation on the senses. I have looked along +the grassy vista of the Appian Way and seen the topmost stone-work of +the Coliseum sitting shrouded in the light of heaven, like the edge of +an Alpine chain. I've trod the Forum and I have scaled the Capitol. I've +seen the Tiber hurrying along, as swift and dirty as history! From the +high tribune of a great chapel of St. Peter's I have heard in the papal +choir a strange old man sing in a shrill unpleasant soprano. I've seen +troops of little tonsured neophytes clad in scarlet, marching and +countermarching and ducking and flopping, like poor little raw recruits +for the heavenly host. In fine I've seen Rome, and I shall go to bed a +wiser man than I last rose--yesterday morning.... + +A toi, +H. J. jr. + + + + +_To William James._ + + 'Minny Temple' is the beloved young cousin commemorated in the last + pages of _Notes of a Son and Brother_. The news of her death came + to H. J. at Malvern almost immediately after the following letter + was written. + + +Great Malvern. +March 8th, 1870. + +Beloved Bill, + +You ask me in your last letter so 'cordially' to write home every week, +if it's only a line that altho' I have very little to say on this windy +March afternoon, I can't resist the homeward tendency of my thoughts. I +wrote to Alice some eight days ago--raving largely about the beauty of +Malvern, in the absence of a better theme: so I haven't even that topic +to make talk of. But as I say, my thoughts are facing squarely homeward +and that is enough.... Now that I'm in England you'd rather have me talk +of the present than of pluperfect Italy. But life furnishes so few +incidents here that I cudgel my brains in vain. Plenty of gentle +emotions from the scenery, etc.; but only man is vile. Among my +fellow-patients here I find no intellectual companionship. Never from a +single Englishman of them all have I heard the first word of +appreciation and enjoyment of the things here that I find delightful. To +a certain extent this is natural: but not to the extent to which they +carry it. As for the women, I give 'em up in advance. I am tired of +their plainness and stiffness and tastelessness--their dowdy beads and +their lindsey woolsey trains. Nay, this is peevish and brutal. +Personally (with all their faults) they are well enough. I revolt from +their dreary deathly want of--what shall I call it?--Clover Hooper has +it--intellectual grace--Minny Temple has it--moral spontaneity. They +live wholly in the realm of the cut and dried. 'Have you ever been to +Florence?' 'Oh yes.' 'Isn't it a most peculiarly interesting city?' 'Oh +yes, I think it's so very nice.' 'Have you read _Romola_?' 'Oh yes.' 'I +suppose you admire it.' 'Oh yes, I think it so very clever.' The English +have such a mortal mistrust of anything like criticism or 'keen +analysis' (which they seem to regard as a kind of maudlin foreign +flummery) that I rarely remember to have heard on English lips any other +intellectual verdict (no matter under what provocation) than this broad +synthesis--'so immensely clever.' What exasperates you is not that they +can't say more, but that they wouldn't if they could. Ah, but they are a +great people for all that.... I re-echo with all my heart your +impatience for the moment of our meeting again. I should despair of ever +making you know how your conversation m'a manque or how, when regained, +I shall enjoy it. All I ask for is that I may spend the interval to the +best advantage--and you too. The more we shall have to say to each other +the better. Your last letter spoke of father and mother having 'shocking +colds'--I hope they have melted away. Among the things I have recently +read is father's _Marriage_ paper in the _Atlantic_--with great +enjoyment of its manner and approval of its matter. I see he is becoming +one of our prominent magazinists. He will send me the thing from _Old +and New_. A young Scotchman here gets the _Nation_ sent him by his +brother from N.Y. Whose are the three French papers on women? They are +'so very clever.' A propos--I retract all those brutalities about the +Englaenderinnen. They are the mellow mothers and daughters of a mighty +race. But I _must_ pull in. I have still lots of unsatisfied curiosity +and unexpressed affection, but they must stand over. Farewell. Salute my +parents and sister and believe me your brother of brothers, + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To his Father._ + + +Great Malvern +March 19th, '70. + +Dear Father, + +...The other afternoon I trudged over to Worcester--through a region so +thick-sown with good old English 'effects'--with elm-scattered meadows +and sheep-cropped commons and the ivy-smothered dwellings of small +gentility, and high-gabled, heavy-timbered, broken-plastered +farm-houses, and stiles leading to delicious meadow footpaths and +lodge-gates leading to far-off manors--with all things suggestive of the +opening chapters of half-remembered novels, devoured in infancy--that I +felt as if I were pressing all England to my soul. As I neared the good +old town I saw the great Cathedral tower, high and square, rise far into +the cloud-dappled blue. And as I came nearer still I stopped on the +bridge and viewed the great ecclesiastical pile cast downward into the +yellow Severn. And going further yet I entered the town and lounged +about the close and gazed my fill at that most soul-sustaining +sight--the waning afternoon, far aloft on the broad perpendicular field +of the Cathedral spire--tasted too, as deeply, of the peculiar stillness +and repose of the close--saw a ruddy English lad come out and lock the +door of the old foundation school which marries its heavy gothic walls +to the basement of the church, and carry the vast big key into one of +the still canonical houses--and stood wondering as to the effect on a +man's mind of having in one's boyhood haunted the Cathedral shade as a +King's scholar and yet kept ruddy with much cricket in misty meadows by +the Severn. This is a sample of the meditations suggested in my daily +walks. Envy me--if you can without hating! I wish I could describe them +all--Colwell Green especially, where, weather favouring, I expect to +drag myself this afternoon--where each square yard of ground lies +verdantly brimming with the deepest British picturesque, and half +begging, half deprecating a sketch. You should see how a certain +stile-broken footpath here winds through the meadows to a little grey +rook-haunted church. Another region fertile in walks is the great line +of hills. Half an hour's climb will bring you to the top of the +Beacon--the highest of the range--and here is a breezy world of bounding +turf with twenty counties at your feet--and when the mist is thick +something immensely English in the situation (as if you were wandering +on some mighty seaward cliffs or downs, haunted by vague traditions of +an early battle). You may wander for hours--delighting in the great +green landscape as it responds forever to the cloudy movements of +heaven--scaring the sheep--wishing horribly that your mother and sister +were--I can't say _mounted_--on a couple of little white-aproned +donkeys, climbing comfortably at your side. But at this rate I shall +tire you out with my walks as effectually as I sometimes tire myself.... +Kiss mother for her letter--and for that villainous cold. I enfold you +all in an immense embrace. + +Your faithful son, +H. + + + + +_To Charles Eliot Norton._ + + Professor Norton and his family were still at this time in Europe. + Arthur Sedgwick was Mrs. Norton's brother. + + +Cambridge, (Mass.) +Jan. 16, '71. + +My dear Charles, + +If I had needed any reminder and quickener of a very old-time intention +to take some morning and put into most indifferent words my frequent +thoughts of you, I should have found one very much to the purpose in a +letter from Grace, received some ten days ago. But really I needed no +deeper consciousness of my great desire to punch a hole in the massive +silence which has grown up between us.... + +Cambridge and Boston society still rejoices in that imposing fixedness +of outline which is ever so inspiring to contemplate. In Cambridge I see +Arthur Sedgwick and Howells; but little of any one else. Arthur seems +not perhaps an enthusiastic, but a well-occupied man, and talks much in +a wholesome way of meaning to go abroad. Howells edits, and observes and +produces--the latter in his own particular line with more and more +perfection. His recent sketches in the _Atlantic_, collected into a +volume, belong, I think, by the wondrous cunning of their manner, to +very good literature. He seems to have resolved himself, however, [into] +one who can write solely of what his fleshly eyes have seen; and for +this reason I wish he were "located" where they would rest upon richer +and fairer things than this immediate landscape. Looking about for +myself, I conclude that the face of nature and civilization in this our +country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it +will yield its secrets only to a really _grasping_ imagination. This I +think Howells lacks. (Of course _I_ don't!) To write well and worthily +of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a _master_. +But unfortunately one is less!... I myself have been scribbling some +little tales which in the course of time you will have a chance to read. +To write a series of good little tales I deem ample work for a +life-time. I dream that my life-time shall have done it. It's at least a +relief to have arranged one's life-time.... + +There is an immensity of stupid feeling and brutal writing prevalent +here about recent English conduct and attitude--innocuous to some +extent, I think, from its very stupidity; but I confess there are now, +to my mind, few things of more appealing interest than the various +problems with which England finds herself confronted: and this owing to +the fact that, on the whole, the country is so deeply--so +tragically--charged with a consciousness of her responsibilities, +dangers and duties. She presents in this respect a wondrous contrast to +ourselves. We, retarding our healthy progress by all the gross weight of +our maniac contempt of the refined idea: England striving vainly to +compel her lumbersome carcase by the straining wings of conscience and +desire. Of course I speak of the better spirits there and the worst +here.... We have over here the high natural light of chance and space +and prosperity; but at moments dark things seem to be almost more +blessed by the dimmer radiance shed by impassioned thought.... But I +must stay my gossiping hand.... + + + + +_To his Parents._ + + This next visit to Europe had begun in the spring of 1872. He had + reached Germany, in the company of his sister and aunt, by way of + England, Switzerland and Italy. + + +Heidelberg, +Sept. 15th, '72. + +Dear Father and Mother, + +I think I should manifest an energy more becoming a child of yours if I +were to sustain my nodding head at least enough longer to scrawl the +initial words of my usual letter: we are travellers in the midst of +travel. You heard from me last at Innsbruck--or rather, I think, at +Botzen, just before, a place beautiful by nature but most ugly by man; +and [we] came by an admirable five hours' run through the remnant of the +Tyrol to Munich, where we spent two rather busy days. It's a singular +place and one difficult to write of with a serious countenance. It has a +fine lot of old pictures, but otherwise it is a nightmare of pretentious +vacuity: a city of chalky stucco--a Florence and Athens in canvas and +planks. To have come [thither] from Venice is a sensation! We found +reality at last at Nueremburg, by which place, combined with this, it +seemed a vast pity not to proceed rather than by stupid Stuttgart. +Nueremburg is excellent--and comparisons are odious; but I would give a +thousand N.'s for one ray of Verona! We came on hither by a morning and +noon of railway, which has not in the least prevented a goodly afternoon +and evening at the Castle here. The castle (which I think you have all +seen in your own travels) is an incomparable ruin and holds its own +against any Italian memories. The light, the weather, the time, were +all, this evening, most propitious to our visit. This rapid week in +Germany has filled us with reflections and observations, tossed from +the railway windows on our course, and irrecoverable at this late hour. +To me this hasty and most partial glimpse of Germany has been most +satisfactory; it has cleared from my mind the last mists of uncertainty +and assured me that I can never hope to become an unworthiest adoptive +grandchild of the fatherland. It is well to listen to the voice of the +spirit, to cease hair-splitting and treat one's self to a good square +antipathy--when it is so very sympathetic! I may 'cultivate' mine away, +but it has given me a week's wholesome nourishment. + +_Strasbourg._ We have seen Strasbourg--a palpably conquered city--and +the Cathedral, which beats everything we have ever seen. Externally, it +amazed me, which somehow I hadn't expected it to do. Strasbourg is +gloomy, battered and painful; but apparently already much Germanized. We +take tomorrow the formidable journey to Paris.... + +Yours in hope and love, +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + Mr. Howells's novel, just published, was _A Chance Acquaintance_. + An allusion at the end of this letter recalls the great fire that + had recently devastated the business quarter of Boston. + + +Berne, June 22d [1873]. + +My veritably dear Howells, + +Your letter of May 12th came to me a week ago (after a journey to +Florence and back) and gave me exquisite pleasure. I found it in the +Montreux post-office and wandered further till I found the edge of an +open vineyard by the lake, and there I sat down with my legs hanging +over the azure flood and broke the seal. Thank you for everything; for +liking my writing and for being glad I like yours. Your letter made me +homesick, and when you told of the orchards by Fresh Pond I hung my head +for melancholy. What is the meaning of this destiny of desolate +exile--this dreary necessity of having month after month to do without +our friends for the sake of this arrogant old Europe which so little +befriends us? This is a hot Sunday afternoon: from my window I look out +across the rushing Aar at some beautiful undivided meadows backed by +black pine woods and blue mountains: but I would rather be taking up my +hat and stick and going to invite myself to tea with you. I left Italy a +couple of weeks since, and since then have been taking gloomy views of +things. I feel as if I had left my "genius" behind in Rome. But I +suppose I am well away from Rome just now; the Roman (and even the +Florentine) lotus had become, with the warm weather, an indigestible +diet. I heard from my mother a day or two since that your book is having +a sale--bless it! I haven't yet seen the last part and should like to +get the volume as a whole. Would it trouble you to have it sent by post +to Brown, Shipley & Co., London? Your fifth part I extremely relished; +it was admirably touched. I wished the talk in which the offer was made +had been given (instead of the mere resume), but I suppose you had good +and sufficient reasons for doing as you did. But your work is a success +and Kitty a creation. I have envied you greatly, as I read, the delight +of feeling her grow so real and complete, so true and charming. I think, +in bringing her through with such unerring felicity, your imagination +has _fait ses preuves_.... I should like to tell you a vast deal about +myself, and I believe you would like to hear it. But as far as vastness +goes I should have to invent it, and it's too hot for such work. I send +you another (and for the present last) travelling piece--about Perugia +etc. It goes with this, in another cover: a safe journey to it. I hope +you may squeeze it in this year. It has numbers (in pages) more than you +desire; but I think it is within bounds, as you will see there is an +elision of several. I have done in all these months since I've been +abroad less writing than I hoped. Rome, for direct working, was not +good--too many distractions and a languefying atmosphere. But for +"impressions" it was priceless, and I've got a lot duskily garnered away +somewhere under my waning (that's an _n_, not a _v_) _chevelure_ which +some day may make some figure. I shall make the coming year more +productive or retire from business altogether. Believe in me yet awhile +longer and I shall reward your faith by dribblings somewhat less +meagre.... I say nothing about the Fire. I can't trouble you with +ejaculations and inquiries which my letters from home will probably +already have answered. At this rate, apparently, the Lord loveth Boston +immeasurably. But what a grim old Jehovah it is!... + +My blessing, dear Howells, on all your affections, labours and desires. +Write me a word when you can (B. & S., London) and believe me always +faithfully yours, + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To Miss Grace Norton._ + + +Florence, Jan. 14th, '74. + +Dear Grace, + +...I have been jerked away from Rome, where I had been expecting to +spend this winter, just as I was warming to the feast, and Florence, +tho' very well in itself, doesn't go so far as it might as a substitute +for Rome. It's like having a great plum-pudding set down on the table +before you, and then seeing it whisked away and finding yourself served +with wholesome tapioca. My brother, after a month of great enjoyment and +prosperity at Rome, had a stroke of malaria (happily quite light) which +made it necessary for him to depart, and I am here charitably to keep +him company. I oughtn't to speak light words of Florence to you, who +know it so well, and with reason love it so well: and they are really +words from my pen's end simply and not from my heart. I have an +inextinguishable relish for Florence, and now that I have been back here +a fortnight this early love is beginning to shake off timidly the +ponderous shadow of Rome.... Just as I was leaving Rome came to me +Charles's letter of Dec. 5th, for which pray thank him warmly. I gather +from it that he is, in vulgar parlance, taking America rather hard, and +I suppose your feelings and Jane's on the matter resemble his own. But +it's not for me to blame him, for I take it hard enough even here in +Florence, and though I have a vague theory that there is a way of being +contented there, I am afraid that when I go back I shall need all my +ingenuity to put it into practice. What Charles says about our +civilization seems to me perfectly true, but practically I don't feel as +if the facts were so melancholy. The great fact for us all there is +that, relish Europe as we may, we belong much more to that than to this, +and stand in a much less factitious and artificial relation to it. I +feel forever how Europe keeps holding one at arm's length, and +condemning one to a meagre scraping of the surface. I have been nearly a +year in Italy and have hardly spoken to an Italian creature save +washerwomen and waiters. This, you'll say, is my own stupidity; but +granting this gladly, it proves that even a creature addicted as much to +sentimentalizing as I am over the whole _mise en scene_ of Italian life, +doesn't find an easy initiation into what lies behind it. Sometimes I am +overwhelmed with the pitifulness of this absurd want of reciprocity +between Italy itself and all my rhapsodies about it. There is certainly, +however, terribly little doubt that, practically, for those who have +been happy in Europe even Cambridge the Brilliant is not an easy place +to live in. When I saw you in London, plunged up to your necks in that +full, rich, abundant, various London life, I knew that a day of +reckoning was coming and I heaved a secret prophetic sigh. I can well +understand Charles's saying that the memory of these and kindred things +is a perpetual private [? pang]. But pity our poor bare country and +don't revile. England and Italy, with their countless helps to life and +pleasure, are the lands for happiness and self-oblivion. It would seem +that in our great unendowed, unfurnished, unentertained and +unentertaining continent, where we all sit sniffing, as it were, the +very earth of our foundations, we ought to have leisure to turn out +something handsome from the very heart of simple human nature. But after +I have been at home a couple of months I will tell you what I think. +Meanwhile I aspire to linger on here in Italy and make the most of +it--even in poor little overshadowed Florence and in a society limited +to waiters and washerwomen. In your letter of last summer you amiably +reproach me with not giving you personal tidings, and warn me in my +letters against mistaking you for the _Nation_. Heaven forbid! But I +have no _nouvelles intimes_ and in this solitary way of life I don't +ever feel especially like a person. I write more or less in the +mornings, walk about in the afternoons, and doze over a book in the +evenings. You can do as well as that in Cambridge.... + + + + +_To His Mother._ + + +Florence, +May 17th, 1874. + +Dearest Mother, + +...The days pass evenly and rapidly here in my comfortable little +dwelling on this lively (and also dusty) old Piazza Sta. Maria Novella. +(The centre of the square is not paved and the dust hovers over it in +clouds which compel one to live with closed windows. But I remove to my +bedroom, which is on a side-street and very cool and clean.) Nothing +particular happens to me and my time is passed between sleeping and +scribbling (both of which I do very well,) lunching and dining, walking, +and conversing with my small circle of acquaintance.... Tell Willy I +thank him greatly for setting before me so vividly the question of my +going home or staying. I feel equally with him the importance of the +decision. I have been meaning, as you know, for some time past to return +in the autumn, and I see as yet no sufficient reason for changing my +plan. I shall go with the full prevision that I shall not find life at +home _simpatico_, but rather painfully, and, as regards literary work, +obstructively the reverse, and not even with the expectation that time +will make it easier; but simply on sternly practical grounds; i.e. +because I can find more abundant literary occupation by being on the +premises and relieve you and father of your burdensome financial +interposition. But I shrink from Willy's apparent assumption that going +now is to pledge myself to stay forever. I feel as if my three years in +Europe (with much of them so maladif) were a very moderate allowance for +one who gets so much out of it as I do; and I don't think I could really +hold up my head if I didn't hope to eat a bigger slice of the pudding +(with a few more social plums in it, especially) at some future time. +If at the end of a period at home I don't feel an overwhelming desire to +come back, it will be so much gained; but I should prepare myself for +great deceptions if I didn't take the possibility of such desire into +account. One oughtn't, I suppose, to bother too much about the future, +but arrange as best one can with the present; and the present bids me go +home and try and get more things published. What makes the question +particularly difficult to decide is that though I should make more money +at home, American prices would devour it twice as fast; but even +allowing for this, I should keep ahead of my expenses better than here. +I know that when the time comes it will be unutterably hard to leave and +I shall be wondering whether, if I were to stay another year, I +shouldn't propitiate the Minotaur and return more resignedly. But to +this I shall answer that a year wouldn't be a tenth part enough and that +besides, as things stand, I should be perplexed where to spend it. +Florence, fond as I have grown of it, is worth far too little to me, +socially, for me to think complacently of another winter here. Here have +I been living (in these rooms) for five weeks--and not a creature, save +Gryzanowski, has crossed my threshold--counting out my little Italian, +who comes twice a week, and whom I have to _pay_ for his conversation! +If I knew any one in England I should be tempted to go there for a year, +for there I could work to advantage--i.e. get hold of new books to +review. But I can't face, as it is, a year of British solitude. What I +desire now more than anything else, and what would do me more good, is a +_regal_ of intelligent and suggestive society, especially male. But I +don't know how or where to find it. It exists, I suppose, in Paris and +London, but I can't get at it. I chiefly desire it because it would, I +am sure, increase my powers of work. These are going very well, however, +as it is, and I have for the present an absorbing task in my novel. +Consider then that if nothing extremely unexpected turns up, I shall +depart in the autumn. I have no present plans for the summer beyond +ending my month in my rooms--on the 11th of June. I hope, dearest mammy, +that you will be able to devise some agreeable plan for your own summer, +and will spend it in repose and comfort.... Has the trunk reached Quincy +St.? Pray guard jealously my few clothes--a summer suit and a coat, and +two white waistcoats that I would give much for here, now. But don't let +Father and Willy wear them out, as they will serve me still. Farewell, +sweet mother. I must close. I wrote last asking you to have my credit +renewed. I suppose it has been done. Love abounding to all. I will write +soon to Willy. I wrote lately to A. + +Yours ever, +H. + + + + +II + +PARIS AND LONDON + +(1875-1881) + + +AFTER another uneventful American year at Cambridge (1874-5,) during +which Roderick Hudson was running its course in the _Atlantic Monthly_, +Henry James came to Europe again with the clear intention of staying for +good. His first idea was to settle in Paris. There he would find the +literary world with which he had the strongest affinity, and it does not +seem to have occurred to him at the time to seek a European home +anywhere else. His knowledge of England was still very slight, and he +needed something more substantial to live and work upon than the romance +of Italy. In Paris he settled therefore, in the autumn of 1875, taking +rooms at 29 Rue du Luxembourg. He began to write The American, to +contribute Parisian Letters to the _New York Tribune_, and to frequent +the society of a few of his compatriots. He made the valued acquaintance +of Ivan Turgenev, and through him of the group which surrounded Gustave +Flaubert--Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, Zola +and others. But the letters which follow will shew the kind of doubts +that began to arise after a winter in Paris--doubts of the possibility +of Paris as a place where an American imagination could really take +root and flourish. He found the circle of literature tightly closed to +outside influences; it seemed to exclude all culture but its own after a +fashion that aroused his opposition; he speaks sarcastically on one +occasion of having watched Turgenev and Flaubert seriously discussing +Daudet's _Jack_, while he reflected that none of the three had read, or +knew English enough to read, _Daniel Deronda_. During a summer stay at +Etretat these doubts increased, and when he went back to Paris in the +autumn of 1876 he had already begun to feel the tug of an inclination +towards London. His brother William seems to have given the final +impulse which sent him over, and before the end of the year he was in +London at last. + +He took rooms at 3 Bolton Street, just off Piccadilly, and at first +found the change from 'glittering, charming, civilised Paris' rather +rude. But within a few weeks he was deep in London, with doors +unnumbered opening to him and a general welcome for the rising young +novelist from America. Letter after letter was sent home with accounts +of the visits and dinner-parties which were soon his habitual round. He +quickly discovered that this was his appointed home and set himself +deliberately to cultivate it. But his relief at finding a place of which +he could really take possession was entirely compatible with candid +criticism. Letter after letter, too, is filled with caustic reflections +on the minds and manners of the English; and as the following pages +contain not a few of these, so it should here be pointed out that his +correspondence was the only outlet open to these irrepressible +sentiments, and that they must be seen in due proportion with the +perfect courtesy of appreciation that he always shewed to his +well-meaning hosts. He was very much alone in his observing detachment +during these years. 'I wish greatly,' he writes to Miss Norton about +this time, 'you and Charles were here, so that I might have some one to +say the things that are in me too; I mean the things about England and +the English--the feelings, impressions, judgments, emotions of every +kind that are being perpetually generated, and that I can't utter to a +single Briton of them all with the smallest chance of being +understood.... The absence of a sympathetic, compatriotic, intelligent +spirit, like yours, is my greatest deprivation here, and everything is +corked up.' + +But whatever the shortcomings of the English might be, London life +closed round him and held him fast. He would break away for an +occasional excursion abroad, or he would carry his work into seaside +lodgings for the end of the summer. Otherwise he clung to London, with +such country visits as sprang naturally from his numerous relations with +the town and were simply an extension of these. During the years covered +by the present section he spent some weeks in Rome towards the end of +1877, three months in Paris in the autumn of 1879, and two in Italy +again, at Florence and Naples, in the following spring. By 1881 he was +sufficiently acclimatised in London to feel the need of escaping from +the 'season,' then so much more organised and exacting an institution +than it has since become; he went to Venice in March and did not return +till July. But these were the only variations from the life of a +'cockney _convaincu_,' as he admitted himself to be. The wonder is that +he found time under such conditions to accomplish the large amount of +work he still put forth year by year. In spite of health that continued +somewhat uncertain, he was able to concentrate upon his writing in the +midst of all distractions. Daisy Miller, The Europeans, Confidence, +Washington Square, and the Portrait of a Lady, all belong to the first +five years of his London life, besides an unbroken stream of shorter +pieces--fiction, picturesque sketches, reviews of books--contributed to +several English and American periodicals. Time slipped by, and he began +to wait upon the right opportunity for a long visit to his own country. +It was not indeed that he felt himself to be losing touch with it; his +appetite for American news was unassuageable, and by means of a +correspondence as copious as ever he jealously preserved and cherished +every possible tie with his old home. But he turned to his own family, +then as always afterwards, with an affection stimulated by his +unfathered state in England. His parents were growing old, his elder +brother (who had married in 1878) was beginning to enjoy and exhibit the +maturity of his genius, and it was more than time for a renewal of +associations on the spot. By the autumn of 1881 he had finished The +Portrait of a Lady, the longest and in every way the most important of +his works hitherto, and he could also feel that his grounding in London, +so to call it, was solid and secure. After six years of absence he then +saw America again. + + + + +_To his Father._ + + +29 Rue du Luxembourg. +April 11th [1876]. + +Dear Father, + +...The slender thread of my few personal relations hangs on, without +snapping, but it doesn't grow very stout. You crave chiefly news, I +suppose, about Ivan Sergeitch [Turgenev], whom I have lately seen +several times. I spent a couple of hours with him at his room, some time +since, and I have seen him otherwise at Mme. Viardot's. The latter has +invited me to her musical parties (Thursdays) and to her Sundays _en +famille_. I have been to a couple of the former and (as yet only) one of +the latter. She herself is a most fascinating and interesting woman, +ugly, yet also very handsome or, in the French sense, _tres-belle_. Her +musical parties are rigidly musical and to me, therefore, rigidly +boresome, especially as she herself sings very little. I stood the other +night on my legs for three hours (from 11 till 2) in a suffocating room, +listening to an interminable fiddling, with the only consolation that +Gustave Dore, standing beside me, seemed as bored as myself. But when +Mme. Viardot does sing, it is superb. She sang last time a scene from +Gluck's _Alcestis_, which was the finest piece of musical declamation, +of a grandly tragic sort, that I can conceive. Her Sundays seem rather +dingy and calculated to remind one of Concord 'historical games' etc. +But it was both strange and sweet to see poor Turgenev acting charades +of the most extravagant description, dressed out in old shawls and +masks, going on all fours etc. The charades are their usual Sunday +evening occupation and the good faith with which Turgenev, at his age +and with his glories, can go into them is a striking example of that +spontaneity which Europeans have and we have not. Fancy Longfellow, +Lowell, or Charles Norton doing the like, and every Sunday evening! I am +likewise gorged with music at Mme. de Blocqueville's, where I continue +to meet Emile Montegut, whom I don't like so well as his writing, and +don't forgive for having, a l'avenir, spoiled his writing a little for +me. Calling the other day on Mme. de B. I found with her M. Caro, the +philosopher, a man in the expression of whose mouth you would discover +depths of dishonesty, but a most witty and agreeable personage. I had +also the other day a very pleasant call upon Flaubert, whom I like +personally more and more each time I see him. But I think I easily--more +than easily--see all round him intellectually. There is something +wonderfully simple, honest, kindly, and touchingly inarticulate about +him. He talked of many things, of Theo. Gautier among others, who was +his intimate friend. He said nothing new or rare about him, except that +he thought him after the Pere Hugo the greatest of French poets, much +above Alfred de Musset; but Gautier in his extreme perfection was +unique. And he recited some of his sonnets in a way to make them seem +the most beautiful things in the world. Find in especial (in the volume +I left at home) one called _Les Portraits Ovales_.... I went down to +Chartres the other day and had a charming time--but I won't speak of it +as I have done it in the Tribune. The American papers over here are +_accablants_, and the vulgarity and repulsiveness of the Tribune, +whenever I see it, strikes me so violently that I feel tempted to stop +my letter. But I shall not, though of late there has been a painful +dearth of topics to write about. But soon comes the _Salon_.... I am +very glad indeed that Howells is pleased with my new tale; I am now +actively at work upon it. I am well pleased that the _Atlantic_ has +obtained it. His own novel I have not read, but he is to send it to me. + +Your home news has all been duly digested. Tell Willy that I will answer +his most interesting letter specifically; and say to my dearest sister +that if she will tell me which--black or white--she prefers I will send +her gratis a fichu of ecru lace, which I am told is the proper thing for +her to have. + +Ever, dearest daddy, your loving son, + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + The 'story' was _The American_, which began to appear in _The + Atlantic Monthly_ in June, 1876. + + +29 Rue du Luxembourg, Paris. +May 28th [1876]. + +Dear Howells, + +I have just received (an hour ago) your letter of May 14th. I shall be +very glad to do my best to divide my story so that it will make twelve +numbers, and I think I shall probably succeed. Of course 26 pp. is an +impossible instalment for the magazine. I had no idea the second number +would make so much, though I half expected your remonstrance. I shall +endeavour to give you about 14 pp., and to keep doing it for seven or +eight months more. I sent you the other day a fourth part, a portion of +which, I suppose, you will allot to the fifth. + +My heart was touched by your regret that I hadn't given you "a great +deal of my news"--though my reason suggested that I could not have given +you what there was not to give. "La plus belle fille du monde ne peut +donner que ce qu'elle a." I turn out news in very small quantities--it +is impossible to imagine an existence less pervaded with any sort of +_chiaroscuro_. I am turning into an old, and very contented, Parisian: I +feel as if I had struck roots into the Parisian soil, and were likely to +let them grow tangled and tenacious there. It is a very comfortable and +profitable place, on the whole--I mean, especially, on its general and +cosmopolitan side. Of pure Parisianism I see absolutely nothing. The +great merit of the place is that one can arrange one's life here exactly +as one pleases--that there are facilities for every kind of habit and +taste, and that everything is accepted and understood. Paris itself +meanwhile is a sort of painted background which keeps shifting and +changing, and which is always there, to be looked at when you please, +and to be most easily and comfortably ignored when you don't. All this, +if you were only here, you would feel much better than I can tell +you--and you would write some happy piece of your prose about it which +would make me feel it better, afresh. _Ergo_, come--when you can! I +shall probably be here still. Of course every good thing is still better +in spring, and in spite of much mean weather I have been liking Paris +these last weeks more than ever. In fact I have accepted destiny here, +under the vernal influence. If you sometimes read my poor letters in the +_Tribune_, you get a notion of some of the things I see and do. I +suppose also you get some gossip about me from Quincy St. Besides this +there is not a great deal to tell. I have seen a certain number of +people all winter who have helped to pass the time, but I have formed +but one or two relations of permanent value, and which I desire to +perpetuate. I have seen almost nothing of the literary fraternity, and +there are fifty reasons why I should not become intimate with them. I +don't like their wares, and they don't like any others; and besides, +they are not _accueillants_. Turgenev is worth the whole heap of them, +and yet he himself swallows them down in a manner that excites my +extreme wonder. But he is the most loveable of men and takes all things +easily. He is so pure and strong a genius that he doesn't need to be on +the defensive as regards his opinions and enjoyments. The mistakes he +may make don't hurt him. His modesty and naivete are simply infantine. I +gave him some time since the message you sent him, and he bade me to +thank you very kindly and to say that he had the most agreeable memory +of your two books. He has just gone to Russia to bury himself for two or +three months on his estate, and try and finish a long novel he has for +three or four years been working upon. I hope to heaven he may. I +suspect he works little here. + +I interrupted this a couple of hours since to go out and pay a visit to +Gustave Flaubert, it being his time of receiving, and his last Sunday in +Paris, and I owing him a farewell. _He_ is a very fine old fellow, and +the most interesting man and strongest artist of his circle. I had him +for an hour alone, and then came in his "following," talking much of +Emile Zola's catastrophe--Zola having just had a serial novel for which +he was handsomely paid interrupted on account of protests from +provincial subscribers against its indecency. The opinion apparently was +that it was a bore, but that it could only do the book good on its +appearance in a volume. Among your tribulations as editor, I take it +that this particular one is not in store for you. On my way down from +Flaubert's I met poor Zola climbing the staircase, looking very pale and +sombre, and I saluted him with the flourish natural to a contributor who +has just been invited to make his novel last longer yet.... + +Your inquiry "Why I don't go to Spain?" is sublime--is what Philip van +Artevelde says of the Lake of Como, "softly sublime, profusely fair!" I +shall spend my summer in the most tranquil and frugal hole I can unearth +in France, and I have no prospect of travelling for some time to come. +The Waverley Oaks seem strangely far away--yet I remember them well, and +the day we went there. I am sorry I am not to see your novel sooner, but +I applaud your energy in proposing to change it. The printed thing +always seems to me dead and done with. I suppose you will write +something about Philadelphia--I hope so, as otherwise I am afraid I +shall know nothing about it. I salute your wife and children a thousand +times and wish you an easy and happy summer and abundant inspiration. + +Yours very faithfully, +H. JAMES, jr. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +Etretat, +July 29th [1876]. + +Dear Wm. + +...I have little to tell you of myself. I shall be here till August +15-20, and shall then go and spend the rest of the month with the +Childes, near Orleans (an ugly country, I believe,) and after that try +to devise some frugal scheme for keeping out of Paris till as late as +possible in the autumn. The winter there always begins soon enough. I +am much obliged to you for your literary encouragement and advice--glad +especially you like my novel. I can't judge it. Your remarks on my +French tricks in my letters are doubtless most just, and shall be +heeded. But it's an odd thing that such tricks should grow at a time +when my last layers of resistance to a long-encroaching weariness and +satiety with the French mind and its utterance has fallen from me like a +garment. I have done with 'em, forever, and am turning English all over. +I desire only to feed on English life and the contact of English +minds--I wish greatly I knew some. Easy and smooth-flowing as life is in +Paris, I would throw it over tomorrow for an even very small chance to +plant myself for a while in England. If I had but a single good friend +in London I would go thither. I have got nothing important out of Paris +nor am likely to. My life there makes a much more succulent figure in +your letters, my mention of its thin ingredients as it comes back to me, +than in my own consciousness. A good deal of Boulevard and third-rate +Americanism: few retributive relations otherwise. I know the Theatre +Francais by heart! + +Daniel Deronda (Dan'l himself) is indeed a dead, though amiable, +failure. But the book is a large affair; I shall write an article of +some sort about it. All desire is dead within me to produce something on +George Sand; though perhaps I shall, all the same, mercenarily and +mechanically--though only if I am forced. _Please make a point of +mentioning_, by the way, whether a letter of mine, upon her, +exclusively, _did_ appear lately in the Tribune. I don't see the T. +regularly and have missed it. They misprint sadly. I never said, e.g., +in announcing her death, that she was '_fearfully_ shy': I used no such +vile adverb, but another--I forget which. + +I am hoping from day to day for another letter from home, as the period +has come round.... I hope your own plans for the summer will prosper, +and health and happiness be your portion. Give much love to Father, and +to the ladies. + +Yours always, +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To William James._ + + H. J. had by this time been settled in London for some three + months. + + +Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall. +March 29th, '77. + +Dear Wm. + +...London life jogs along with me, pausing every now and then at some +more or less succulent patch of herbage. I was almost ashamed to tell +you through mother that I, unworthy, was seeing a bit of Huxley. I went +to his house again last Sunday evening--a pleasant, easy, no-dress-coat +sort of house (in our old Marlboro' Place, by the way). Huxley is a very +genial, comfortable being--yet with none of the noisy and windy +geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when +you are responding to the remarks that they have made you. But of course +my talk with him is mere amiable generalities. These, however, he likes +to cultivate, for recreation's sake, of a Sunday evening. (The +thundering Spencer I have not lately seen here.) Some mornings since, I +breakfasted with Lord Houghton again--he invites me most dotingly. +Present: John Morley, Goldwin Smith (pleasanter than my prejudice +against him,) Henry Cowper, Frederick Wedmore, and a monstrous cleverly, +agreeably talking M.P., Mr. Otway. John Morley has a most agreeable +face, but he hardly opened his mouth. (He is, like so many of the men +who have done much here, very young-looking.) Yesterday I dined with +Lord Houghton--with Gladstone, Tennyson, Dr. Schliemann (the excavator +of old Mycenae, etc.) and half a dozen other men of 'high culture.' I +sat next but one to the Bard and heard most of his talk, which was all +about port wine and tobacco: he seems to know much about them, and can +drink a whole bottle of port at a sitting with no incommodity. He is +very swarthy and scraggy, and strikes one at first as much less handsome +than his photos: but gradually you see that it's a face of genius. He +had I know not what simplicity, speaks with a strange rustic accent and +seemed altogether like a creature of some primordial English stock, a +thousand miles away from American manufacture. Behold me after dinner +conversing affably with Mr. Gladstone--not by my own seeking, but by the +almost importunate affection of Lord H. But I was glad of a chance to +feel the 'personality' of a great political leader--or as G. is now +thought here even, I think, by his partisans, ex-leader. That of +Gladstone is very fascinating--his urbanity extreme--his eye that of a +man of genius--and his apparent self-surrender to what he is talking of, +without a flaw. He made a great impression on me--greater than any one I +have seen here: though 'tis perhaps owing to my naivete, and +unfamiliarity with statesmen.... + +Did I tell you that I had been to the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race? +But I have paragraphed it in the _Nation_, to which I refer you. It was +for about two minutes a supremely beautiful sight; but for those two +minutes I had to wait a horribly bleak hour and a half, shivering, in +mid-Thames, under the sour March-wind. I can't think of any other +adventures: save that I dined two or three days since at Mrs. Godfrey +Lushington's (they are very nice _blushing_ people) with a parcel of +quiet folk: but next to a divine little Miss Lushington (so pretty +English girls can be!) who told me that she lived in the depths of the +City, at Guy's Hospital, whereof her father is administrator. Guy's +Hospital--of which I have read in all old English novels. So does one +move all the while here on identified ground. This is the eve of Good +Friday, a most lugubrious day here--and all the world (save 4,000,000 or +so) are out of London for the ten days' Easter holiday. I think of +making two or three excursions of a few hours apiece, to places near +London whence I can come back to sleep: Canterbury, Chichester etc. (but +as I shall commemorate them for lucre I won't talk of them thus). + +Farewell, dear brother, I won't prattle further.... Encourage Alice to +write to me. My blessings on yourself from your fraternal + +H. J. jr. + + + + +_To Miss Grace Norton._ + + +3 Bolton St., Piccadilly. +August 7th, 1877. + +Dear Grace, + +...I feel now more at home in London than anywhere else in the world--so +much so that I am afraid my sense of peculiarities, my appreciation of +people and things, as _London_ people and things, is losing its edge. I +have taken a great fancy to the place; I won't say to the people and +things; and yet these must have a part in it. It makes a very +interesting residence at any rate; not the ideal and absolutely +interesting--but the relative and comparative one. I have, however, +formed no intimacies--not even any close acquaintances. I incline to +believe that I have passed the age when one forms friendships; or that +every one else has. I have seen and talked a little with a considerable +number of people, but I have become familiar with almost none. To tell +the truth, I find myself a good deal more of a cosmopolitan (thanks to +that combination of the continent and the U.S.A. which has formed my +lot) than the average Briton of culture; and to be--to have become by +force of circumstances--a cosmopolitan is of necessity to be a good deal +alone. I don't think that _London_, by itself, does a very great deal +for people--for its residents; and those of them who are not out of the +general social herd are potentially deadly provincial. I have become in +all these years as little provincial as possible. I don't say it from +fatuity and I may say it to you; and yet to be so is, I think, necessary +for forming here many close relations. So my interest in London is +chiefly that of an observer in a place where there is most in the world +to observe. I see no essential reason however why I should not some day +see much more of certain Britons, and think that I very possibly may. +But I doubt if I should ever marry--or want to marry--an English wife! +This is an extremely interesting time here; and indeed that is one +reason why I have not been able to bring myself to go abroad, as I have +been planning all this month to do. I can't give up the morning papers! +I am not one of the outsiders who thinks that the "greatness" of England +is now exploded; but there mingles with my interest in her prospects and +doings in all this horrible Eastern Question a sensible mortification +and sadness. She has not resolutely played a part--even a wrong one. She +has been weak and helpless and (above all) unskilful; she has drifted +and stumbled and not walked like a great nation. One has a feeling that +the affairs of Europe are really going to be settled without her. At any +rate the cynical, brutal, barbarous pro-Turkish attitude of an immense +mass of people here (I am no fanatic for Russia, but I think the Emperor +of R. might have been treated like a gentleman!) has thrown into vivid +relief the most discreditable side of the English character. I don't +think it is the largest side, by any means; but when one comes into +contact with it one is ready to give up the race! + +I saw the Lowells and can testify to their apparent good-humour and +prosperity. It was a great pleasure to talk with Lowell; but he is +morbidly Anglophobic; though when an Englishman asked me if he was not I +denied it. I envied him his residence in a land of colour and warmth, of +social freedom and personal picturesqueness; so many absent things here, +where the dusky misery and the famous "hypocrisy" which foreign writers +descant so much upon, seem sometimes to usurp the whole field of vision. +But I shall in all probability go abroad myself by Sept. 1st: go +straight to our blessed Italy. I hope to be a while at Siena, where you +may be sure that I shall think of you.... + +Yours always, dear Grace, in all tender affection, + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To Miss Grace Norton_, + + +Paris, Dec. 15th [1877]. + +Dear Grace, + +I hoped, after getting your letter of October 15th, to write you from +Siena, but I never got there. I only got to Rome (where your letter came +to me,) and in Rome I spent the whole of the seven weeks that I was +able to give to Italy. I have just come back, and am on my way to +London, whither I find I gravitate as toward the place in the world in +which, on the whole, I feel most at home. I went directly to Rome some +seven weeks since, and came directly back; but I spent a few days in +Florence on my way down. Italy was still more her irresistible ineffable +old self than ever, and getting away from Rome was really no joke. In +spite of the "changes"--and they are very perceptible--the old +enchantment of Rome, taking its own good time, steals over you and +possesses you, till it becomes really almost a nuisance and an +importunity. That is, it keeps you from working, from staying indoors, +etc. To do those things in sufficient measure one must live in an ugly +country; and that is why, instead of lingering in that golden climate, I +am going back to poor, smutty, dusky, Philistine London. Florence had +never seemed to me more lovely. Empty, melancholy, bankrupt (as I +believe she is), she is turning into an old sleeping, soundless city, +like Pisa. This sensible sadness, with the glorious weather, gave the +place a great charm. The Bootts were there, staying in a villa at +Bellosguardo, and I spent many hours in their garden, sitting in the +autumn sunshine and staring stupidly at that +never-to-be-enough-appreciated view of the little city and the +mountains.... + +I have had an autumn of things rather than of people, and have not much +to relate in regard to human nature. Here in Paris, for a few days, I +find I know really too many people--especially as they are for the most +part acquaintances retained for the sake of social decency rather than +of strong sentiment. They consume all my time, so that I can't even go +to the Theatre Francais! In Rome I found the relics and fragments of the +ancient American group, which has been much broken up--or rather broken +down. But neither in its meridian nor in its decline has it had any +very irresistible charms. The chief quality acquired by Americans who +have lived thirty years in Europe seems to me a fierce susceptibility on +the subject of omitted calls. + +Public matters here, just now, are more interesting than private--and in +France indeed are as interesting as can be. Parliamentary government is +really being put to the test, and bearing it. The poor foolish old +Marshal has at last succumbed to the liberal majority, and has +apparently no stomach to renew his resistance. Plevna is taken by the +Russians and England is supposed to be dreadfully snubbed. But one is +only snubbed if one feels it, and it remains to be seen how England will +take the Russian success. But one has a feeling now--to me it is a very +painful one--that England will take anything; that over-cautious and +somewhat sordid counsels will always prevail. On the continent, +certainly, her ancient "prestige" is gone; and I almost wish she would +fight in a bad cause, if only to shew that she still can, and that she +is not one vast, money-getting Birmingham. I really think we are +assisting at the political decadence of our mighty mother-land. When so +mealy-mouthed an organ as the _Times_ is correctly held to represent the +sentiment of the majority, this _must_ be. But I must say that even the +"decline" of England seems to me a tremendous and even, almost, an +inspiring spectacle, and if the British Empire is once more to shrink up +into that plethoric little island, the process will be the greatest +drama in history! + +This will reach you about Xmas-time, and I imagine you reading it at a +window that looks out upon the snow-laden pines and hemlocks of Shady +Hill. That white winter light that is sent up into a room from the deep +snow is something that one quite loses the memory of here; and yet, as I +think of it now, it is associated in my mind with all kinds of pleasant +and comfortable indoor scenes. I am afraid that, for you, the season +will have no great animation; but you will, I suppose, see a good deal +of infantine exhilaration about you.... + + + + +_To William James._ + + +8 Bolton St., W. +May 1st, '78. + +Dear William, + +...There were many interesting allusions in your letter which I should +like to take up one by one. I should like to see the fair Hellenists of +Baltimore; and I greatly regret that, living over here, my person cannot +profit by my American reputation. It is a great loss to have one's +person in one country and one's glory in another, especially when there +are lovely young women in the case. Neither can one's glory, then, +profit by one's person--as I flatter myself, even in your jealous teeth, +that mine might in Baltimore!! Also about my going to Washington and its +being my 'duty,' etc. I think there is much in that; but I can't whisk +about the world quite so actively as you seem to recommend. It would be +great folly for me, a peine established in London and getting a footing +here, to break it all off for the sake of going to spend four or five +months in Washington. I expect to spend many a year in London--I have +submitted myself without reserve to that Londonizing process of which +the effect is to convince you that, having lived here, you may, if need +be, abjure civilization and bury yourself in the country, but may not, +in pursuit of civilization, live in any smaller town. I am still +completely an outsider here, and my only chance for becoming a little +of an insider (in that limited sense in which an American can ever do +so) is to remain here for the present. After that--a couple of years +hence--I shall go home for a year, embrace you all, and see everything +of the country I can, including Washington. Meanwhile, if one will take +what comes, one is by no means cut off from getting impressions here.... +I know what I am about, and I have always my eyes on my native land. + +I am very glad that Howells's play seemed so pretty, on the stage. Much +of the dialogue, as it read, was certainly charming; but I should have +been afraid of the slimness and un-scenic quality of the plot. For +myself (in answer to your adjuration) it has long been my most earnest +and definite intention to commence at play-writing as soon as I can. +This will be soon, and then I shall astound the world! My inspection of +the French theatre will fructify. I have thoroughly mastered Dumas, +Augier, and Sardou (whom it is greatly lacking to Howells--by the +way--to have studied:) and I know all they know and a great deal more +besides. Seriously speaking, I have a great many ideas on this subject, +and I sometimes feel tempted to retire to some frugal village, for +twelve months, where, my current expenses being inconsiderable, I might +have leisure to work them off. Even if I could only find some manager or +publisher sufficiently devoted to believe in this and make me an +allowance for such a period, I would afterwards make a compact and sign +it with my blood, to reimburse him in thousands. But I shall not have to +come to this, or to depend upon it. + +I received a few days since your article on H. Spencer, but I have not +yet had time to read it. I shall very presently attack--I won't say +understand it. Mother speaks to me of your articles in Renouvier's +magazine--and why have you not sent me those? I wish you would do so, +punctually. I met Herbert Spencer the other Sunday at George Eliot's, +whither I had at last bent my steps. G.H. Lewes introduced me to him as +an American; and it seemed to me that at this fact, coupled with my +name, his attention was aroused and he was on the point of asking me if +I were related to you. But something instantly happened to separate me +from him, and soon afterwards he went away. The Leweses were very urbane +and friendly, and I think that I shall have the right _dorenavant_ to +consider myself a Sunday _habitue_. The great G.E. herself is both sweet +and superior, and has a delightful expression in her large, long, pale +equine face. I had my turn at sitting beside her and being conversed +with in a low, but most harmonious tone; and bating a tendency to +_aborder_ only the highest themes I have no fault to find with her.... + +We expect to hear at any hour that war has broken out; and yet it may +not be. It will be a good deal of a scandal if it does--especially if +the English find themselves fighting side by side with the bloody, +filthy Turks and their own Indian Sepoys. And to think that a clever Jew +should have juggled old England into it! The papers are full of the +Paris exhibition, which opens today; but it leaves me perfectly +incurious. Blessings on all from yours fraternally, + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To Miss Alice James._ + + H. J. was at this time contributing a series of articles on English + life and letters to the American _Nation_. + + +Tillypronie, Aberdeen. +Sept. 15th, 1878. + +Dearest Sister, + +On this howling stormy Sunday, on a Scotch mountainside, I don't know +what I can do better than give you a little old-world news. I have had +none of yours in some time; but I venture to interpret that as a good +sign and to believe that peace and plenty hovers over Quincy Street. I +shall continue in this happy faith and in the belief that you are gently +putting forth your strength again, until the contrary is proved. Behold +me in Scotland and very well pleased to be here. I am staying with the +Clarks, of whom you have heard me speak and than whom there could not be +a more tenderly hospitable couple. Sir John caresses me like a brother, +and her ladyship supervises me like a mother.... I have been here for +four or five days and I feel that I have done a very good thing in +coming to Scotland. Once you get the hang of it, and apprehend the type, +it is a most beautiful and admirable little country--fit, for +'distinction' etc., to make up a trio with Italy and Greece. There is a +little very good company in the house, including my brilliant friend +Lady Hamilton Gordon, and every day has brought with it some pretty +entertainment. I wish I could relate these episodes in detail; but I +shall probably do a little of it in mercenary print. On the first day I +went to some Highland sports, given by Lord Huntly, and to a sumptuous +lunch, in a coquettish marquee, which formed an episode of the same. The +next day I spent roaming over the moors and hills, in company with a +remarkably nice young fellow staying in the house, Sidney Holland, +grandson of the late Sir Henry (his father married a daughter of Sir +Chas. Trevelyan, sister of my friend Mrs. Dugdale). Nothing can be more +breezy and glorious than a ramble on these purple hills and a lounge in +the sun-warmed heather. The real way to enjoy them is of course supposed +to be with an eye to the grouse and partridges; but this is, happily, +little of a shooting house, though Holland keeps the table--one of the +best in England (or rather in Scotland, which is saying more)--supplied +with game. The next day I took part in a cavalcade across the hills to +see a ruined castle; and in the evening, if you please, stiff and sore +as I was, and am still, with my exploits in the saddle, which had been +sufficiently honourable, I went to a ball fifteen miles distant. The +ball was given by a certain old Mr. Cunliffe Brooks, a great proprietor +hereabouts and possessor of a shooting-lodge with a ball-room; a fact +which sufficiently illustrates the luxury of these Anglo-Scotch +arrangements. At the ball was the famous beauty Mrs. Langtry, who was +staying in the house and who is probably for the moment the most +celebrated woman in England. She is in sooth divinely handsome and it +was 'extremely odd' to see her dancing a Highland reel (which she had +been practising for three days) with young Lord Huntly, who is a very +handsome fellow and who in his kilt and tartan, leaping and hooting and +romping, opposite to this London divinity, offered a vivid reminder of +ancient Caledonian barbarism and of the roughness which lurks in all +British amusements and only wants a pretext to explode. We came home +from our ball (where I took out two young ladies who had gone with us +for a polka apiece) at four a.m., and I found it difficult on that +morning, at breakfast, to comply with that rigid punctuality which is +the custom of the house.... Today our fine weather has come to an end +and we are closely involved in a ferocious wet tornado. But I am glad of +the rest and quiet, and I have just bolted out of the library to escape +the 'morning service,' read by the worthy Nevin, the American Episcopal +chaplain in Rome, who is staying here, to which the dumb and decent +servants are trooping in. I am fast becoming a good enough Englishman to +respect inveterately my own habits and do, wherever I may be, only +exactly what I want. This is the secret of prosperity here--provided of +course one has a certain number of sociable and conformable habits, and +civil inclinations, as a starting-point. After that, the more positive +your idiosyncrasies the more positive the convenience. But it is drawing +toward lunch, and I can't carry my personality quite so far as to be +late for that. + +I have said enough, dear sister, to make you see that I continue to see +the world with perhaps even enviable profit. But don't envy me too much; +for the British country-house has at moments, for a cosmopolitanised +American, an insuperable flatness. On the other hand, to do it justice, +there is no doubt of its being one of the ripest fruits of time--and +here in Scotland, where you get the conveniences of Mayfair dovetailed +into the last romanticism of nature--of the highest results of +civilization. Such as it is, at any rate, I shall probably have a little +more of it.... Scotland is decidedly a thing to see and which it would +have been idiocy to have foregone. Did I tell you I was now London +correspondent of the _Nation_? Farewell, dearest child and sister. I +wish I could blow you a little of the salubrity of bonnie Scotland. The +lunch-bell is striking up and I hurry off with comprehensive blessings. + +Ever your faithfullest +H. J. jr. + + + + +_To William James._ + + The brief allusion at the end of this letter to two memorable + visits will recall the picture he long afterwards made of them, and + of the lady who inducted him, in _The Middle Years_. The closing + paragraph of _Daisy Miller_, it may be mentioned, gives a glance at + the hero's subsequent history and a hint that he became 'much + interested in a clever foreign lady.' The story about to appear in + the _Cornhill_ was _An International Episode_. + + +Devonshire Club, St. James's, S.W. +Nov. 14th, '78. + +My dear William, + +...I was much depressed on reading your letter by your painful +reflections on _The Europeans_; but now, an hour having elapsed, I am +beginning to hold up my head a little; the more so as I think I myself +estimate the book very justly and am aware of its extreme slightness. I +think you take these things too rigidly and unimaginatively--too much as +if an artistic experiment were a piece of conduct, to which one's life +were somehow committed; but I think also that you're quite right in +pronouncing the book 'thin' and empty. I don't at all despair, yet, of +doing something fat. Meanwhile I hope you will continue to give me, when +you can, your free impression of my performances. It is a great thing to +have some one write to one of one's things as if one were a third +person, and you are the only individual who will do this. I don't think +however you are always right, by any means. As for instance in your +objection to the closing paragraph of _Daisy Miller_, which seems to me +queer and narrow, and as regards which I don't seize your point of view. +J'en appelle to the sentiment of any other story-teller whatsoever; I am +sure none such would wish the paragraph away. You may say--'Ah, but +other _readers_ would.' But that is the same; for the teller is but a +more developed reader. I don't trust your judgment altogether (if you +will permit me to say so) about _details_; but I think you are +altogether right in returning always to the importance of subject. I +hold to this, strongly; and if I don't as yet seem to proceed upon it +more, it is because, being 'very artistic,' I have a constant impulse to +try experiments of form, in which I wish to not run the risk of wasting +or gratuitously using big situations. But to these I am coming now. It +is something to have learned how to write, and when I look round me and +see how few people (doing my sort of work) know how (to my sense,) I +don't regret my step-by-step evolution. I don't advise you however to +read the two last things I have written--one a thing in the Dec. and +Jan. _Cornhill_, which I will send home; and the other a piece I am just +sending to Howells. They are each quite in the same manner as _The +Europeans_. + +I have written you a letter after all. I am tired and must stop. I went +into the country the other day to stay with a friend a couple of days +(Mrs. Greville) and went with her to lunch with Tennyson, who, after +lunch, read us Locksley Hall. The next day we went to George Eliot's. + +Blessings on Alice. Ever your + +H. J. jr. + + + + +_To his Mother._ + + +3 Bolton St., W. +January 18th [1879]. + +My dearest Mother, + +I have before me your letter of December 30th, with its account of your +Christmas festivities and other agreeable talk, and I endeavour on this +'beastly' winter night, before my carboniferous hearth, to transport +myself into the family circle. + +Mrs. Kemble has returned to town for the winter--an event in which I +always take pleasure, as she is certainly one of the women I know whom I +like best. I confess I find people in general very vulgar-minded and +superficial--and it is only by a pious fiction, to keep myself going, +and keep on the social harness, that I succeed in postulating them as +anything else or better. It is therefore a kind of rest and refreshment +to see a woman who (extremely annoying as she sometimes is) gives one a +positive sense of having a deep, rich, human nature and having cast off +all vulgarities. The people of this world seem to me for the most part +nothing but _surface_, and sometimes--oh ye gods! such desperately poor +surface! Mrs. Kemble has no organized surface at all; she is like a +straight deep cistern without a cover, or even, sometimes, a bucket, +into which, as a mode of intercourse, one must tumble with a splash. You +mustn't judge her by her indifferent book, which is no more a part of +her than a pudding she might make.... Please tell William and Alice that +I received a short time since their kind note, written on the eve of +their going to Newport, and complimenting me on the first part of the +_International Episode_. You will have read the second part by this +time, and I hope that you won't, like many of my friends here (as I +partly know and partly suspect,) take it ill of me as against my +'British entertainers.' It seems to me myself that I have been very +delicate; but I shall keep off dangerous ground in future. It is an +entirely new sensation for them (the people here) to be (at all +delicately) _ironised_ or satirised, from the American point of view, +and they don't at all relish it. Their conception of the normal in such +a relation is that the satire should be all on their side against the +Americans; and I suspect that if one were to push this a little further +one would find that they are extremely sensitive. But I like them too +much and feel too kindly to them to go into the satire-business or even +the light-ironical in any case in which it would wound them--even if in +such a case I should see my way to it very clearly. Macmillan is just on +the point of bringing out Daisy Miller, The International Episode, and +Four Meetings in two little big-printed volumes, like those of the +_Europeans_. There is every reason to expect for them a very good +success, as Daisy M. has been, as I have told you before, a really quite +extraordinary hit. I will send you the new volumes.... Farewell, dearest +Mother. I send my filial duty to father, who I hope is worrying +comfortably through the winter (I am afraid that since you wrote you +have had severe weather)--and looking and listening always for a letter, +remain your very lovingest + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To Miss Grace Norton._ + + The 'short novel' he was now just finishing was _Confidence_. + + +3 Bolton St., W. +Sunday a.m., June 8th [1879]. + +My dear Grace, + +...It is difficult to talk to you about my impressions--it takes a great +deal of space to generalise; and (when one is talking of London) it +takes even more to specify! I am afraid also, in truth, that I am living +here too long to be an observer--I am sinking into dull British +acceptance and conformity. The other day I was talking to a very clever +foreigner--a German (if you can admit the "clever")--who had lived a +long time in England, and of whom I had asked some opinion. "Oh, I know +nothing of the English," he said, "I have lived here too long--twenty +years. The first year I really knew a great deal. But I have lost it!" +That is getting to be my state of mind and I am sometimes really +appalled at the matter of course way of looking at the indigenous life +and manners into which I am gradually dropping! I am losing my +standard--my charming little standard that I used to think so high; my +standard of wit, of grace, of good manners, of vivacity, of urbanity, of +intelligence, of what makes an easy and natural style of intercourse! +And this in consequence of my having dined out during the past winter +107 times! When I come home you will think me a sad barbarian--I may not +even, just at first, appreciate your fine points! You must take that +speech about my standard with a grain of salt--but excuse me; I am +treating you--a proof of the accusation I have brought against +myself--as if you were also a dull-eyed Briton. The truth is I am so +fond of London that I can afford to abuse it--and London is on the +whole such a fine thing that it can afford to be abused! It has all +sorts of superior qualities, but it has also, and English life, +generally, and the English character have, a certain number of great +plump flourishing uglinesses and drearinesses which offer themselves +irresistibly as pin-cushions to criticism and irony. The British mind is +so totally un-ironical in relation to itself that this is a perpetual +temptation. You will know the things I mean--you will remember them--let +that suffice. Non ragioniam di lor!--I don't suppose you will envy me +for having dined out 107 times--you will simply wonder what can have +induced me to perpetrate such a folly, and how I have survived to tell +the tale! I admit that it is enough for the present, and for the rest of +the summer I shall take in sail. When the warm weather comes I find +London evenings very detestable, and I marvel at the powers of endurance +of my fellow "factors," as it is now the fashion to call human +beings--(actors--poor blundering unapplauded Comedians would be a better +name). Would you like a little gossip? I am afraid I have nothing very +lively in hand; but I take what comes uppermost. I am to dine tonight at +Sir Frederick Pollock's, to meet one or two of the (more genteel) +members of the Comedie Francaise, who are here just now, playing with +immense success and supplying the London world with that invaluable +boon, a topic. I mean the whole Comedie is here _en masse_ for six +weeks. I have been to see them two or three times and I find their +artistic perfection gives one an immense lift out of British air. I took +with me one night Mrs. Kemble, who is a great friend of mine and to my +sense one of the most interesting and delightful of women. I have a sort +of notion you don't like her; but you would if you knew her better. She +is to my mind the first woman in London, and is moreover one of the +consolations of my life. Another night I had with me a person whom it +would divert you to know--a certain Mrs. Greville (a cousin, by +marriage, of the Greville Papers:) the queerest creature living, but a +mixture of the ridiculous and the amiable in which the amiable +preponderates. She is crazy, stage-struck, scatter-brained, what the +French call _extravagante_; but I can't praise her better than by saying +that though she is on the whole the greatest fool I have ever known, I +like her very much and get on with her most easily.... I am just +finishing a short novel which will appear presently in six numbers of +Scribner. This is to say please don't read it in that puerile periodical +(where its appearance is due to--what you will be glad to hear--large +pecuniary inducements,) but wait till it comes out as a book. It is +worth being read in that shape. I have asked you no questions--yet I +have finished my letter. Let my blessing, my tender good wishes and +affectionate assurances of every kind stand instead of them. Divide +these with Charles, with your mother, with the children, and believe me, +dear Grace, always very faithfully yours, + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + H.J.'s forthcoming story in the _Cornhill_ was _Washington Square_. + + +3 Bolton Street, W. +Jan. 31st [1880]. + +My dear Howells, + +Your letter of Jan. 19th and its enclosure (your review of my +_Hawthorne_) came to me last night, and I must thank you without delay +for each of them.... + +Your review of my book is very handsome and friendly and commands my +liveliest gratitude. Of course your graceful strictures seem to yourself +more valid than they do to me. The little book was a tolerably +deliberate and meditated performance, and I should be prepared to do +battle for most of the convictions expressed. It is quite true I use the +word provincial too many times--I hated myself for't, even while I did +it (just as I overdo the epithet "dusky.") But I don't at all agree f +with you in thinking that "if it is not provincial for an Englishman to +be English, a Frenchman French, etc., so it is not provincial for an +American to be American." So it is not provincial for a Russian, an +Australian, a Portuguese, a Dane, a Laplander, to savour of their +respective countries: that would be where the argument would land you. I +think it is extremely provincial for a Russian to be very Russian, a +Portuguese very Portuguese; for the simple reason that certain national +types are essentially and intrinsically provincial. I sympathize even +less with your protest against the idea that it takes an old +civilization to set a novelist in motion--a proposition that seems to me +so true as to be a truism. It is on manners, customs, usages, habits, +forms, upon all these things matured and established, that a novelist +lives--they are the very stuff his work is made of; and in saying that +in the absence of those "dreary and worn-out paraphernalia" which I +enumerate as being wanting in American society, "we have simply the +whole of human life left," you beg (to my sense) the question. I should +say we had just so much less of it as these same "paraphernalia" +represent, and I think they represent an enormous quantity of it. I +shall feel refuted only when we have produced (setting the present high +company--yourself and me--for obvious reasons apart) a gentleman who +strikes me as a novelist--as belonging to the company of Balzac and +Thackeray. Of course, in the absence of this godsend, it is but a +harmless amusement that we should reason about it, and maintain that if +right were right he should already be here. I will freely admit that +such a genius will get on _only_ by agreeing with your view of the +case--to do something great he must feel as you feel about it. But then +I doubt whether such a genius--a man of the faculty of Balzac and +Thackeray--_could_ agree with you! When he does I will lie flat on my +stomach and do him homage--in the very centre of the contributor's club, +or on the threshold of the magazine, or in any public place you may +appoint!--But I didn't mean to wrangle with you--I meant only to thank +you and to express my sense of how happily you turn those things.--I am +greatly amused at your picture of the contributing blood-hounds whom you +are holding in check. I wish immensely that you would let them fly at +me--though there is no reason, certainly, that the decent public should +be bespattered, periodically, with my gore. However my tender (or rather +my very tough) flesh is prescient already of the Higginsonian fangs. +Happy man, to be going, like that, to see your plays acted. It is a +sensation I am dying (though not as yet trying) to cultivate. What a +tremendous quantity of work you must get through in these years! I am +impatient for the next _Atlantic_. What is your _Cornhill_ novel about? +I am to precede it with a poorish story in three numbers--a tale purely +American, the writing of which made me feel acutely the want of the +"paraphernalia." I _must_ add, however (to return for a moment to this), +that I applaud and esteem you highly for not feeling it; i.e. the want. +You are certainly right--magnificently and heroically right--to do so, +and on the day you make your readers--I mean the readers who know and +appreciate the paraphernalia--do the same, you will be the American +Balzac. That's a great mission--go in for it! Wherever you go, receive, +and distribute among your wife and children, the blessing of yours ever, + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To Charles Eliot Norton._ + + +3 Bolton Street, W. +Nov. 13th, 1880. + +My dear Charles, + +...I wish you could take a good holiday and spend it in these countries. +I have got to feel like such an old European that I could almost pretend +to help to do you the honours. I am at least now a thoroughly +naturalised Londoner--a cockney "convaincu." I am attached to London in +spite of the long list of reasons why I should not be; I think it on the +whole the best point of view in the world. There are times when the fog, +the smoke, the universal uncleanness, the combined unwieldiness and +flatness of much of the social life--these and many other +matters--overwhelm the spirit and fill it with a yearning for other +climes; but nevertheless one reverts, one sticks, one abides, one even +cherishes! Considering that I lose all patience with the English about +fifteen times a day, and vow that I renounce them for ever, I get on +with them beautifully and love them well. Our dear Vasari, I fear, +couldn't have made much of them, and they would have been improved by a +slight infusion of the Florentine spirit; but for all that they are, for +me, the great race--even at this hour of their possible decline. Taking +them altogether they are more complete than other folk, more largely +nourished, deeper, denser, stronger. I think it takes more to make an +Englishman, on the whole, than to make anyone else--and I say this with +a consciousness of all that often seems to me to have been left out of +their composition. But the question is interminable, and idle into the +bargain. I am passing a quiet autumn. London has not yet waked up from +the stagnation that belongs to this period. The only incident of +consequence that has lately occurred to me was my dining a few days +since at the Guildhall, at the big scrambling banquet which the Lord +Mayor gives on the 9th November to the Cabinet, foreign ministers, etc. +It was uncomfortable but amusing--you have probably done it yourself. I +met Lowell there, whom I see, besides, with tolerable frequency. He is +just back from a visit to Scotland which he appears to have enjoyed, +including a speech-making at Edinburgh. He gets on here, I think, very +smoothly and happily; for though he is critical in the gross, he is not +in the detail, and takes things with a sort of boyish simplicity. He is +universally liked and appreciated, his talk enjoyed (as well it may be, +after some of their own!) and his poor long-suffering wife is doing very +well. I therefore hope he will be left undisturbed by Garfield to enjoy +the fruition of the long period of discomfort he has passed through. It +will be in the highest degree indecent to remove him; though I wish he +had a pair of secretaries that ministered a little more to the idea of +American brilliancy. Lowell has to do _that_ quite by himself.... + +Believe me always faithfully yours, + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To his Mother._ + + +Mentmore, Leighton Buzzard, +November 28th, 1880. + +Dearest mammy, + +...This is a pleasant Sunday, and I have been spending it (from +yesterday evening) in a very pleasant place. 'Pleasant' is indeed rather +an odd term to apply to this gorgeous residence, and the manner of life +which prevails in it; but it is that as well as other things beside. +Lady Rosebery (it is her enviable dwelling) asked me down here a week +ago, and I stop till tomorrow a.m. There are several people here, but no +one very important, save John Bright and Lord Northbrook, the last +Liberal Viceroy of India. Millais, the painter, has been here for a part +of the day, and I took a walk [with him] this afternoon back from the +stables, where we had been to see three winners of the Derby trotted out +in succession. This will give you an idea of the scale of Mentmore, +where everything is magnificent. The house is a huge modern palace, +filled with wonderful objects accumulated by the late Sir Meyer de +Rothschild, Lady R.'s father. All of them are precious and many are +exquisite, and their general Rothschild-ish splendour is only equalled +by their profusion.... + +I have spent a good part of the time in listening to the conversation of +John Bright, whom, though I constantly see him at the Reform Club, I had +never met before. He has the repute of being often "grumpy"; but on this +occasion he has been in extremely good form and has discoursed +uninterruptedly and pleasantly. He gives one an impression of sturdy, +honest, vigorous, English middle-class liberalism, accompanied by a +certain infusion of genius, which helps one to understand how his name +has become the great rallying-point of that sentiment. He reminds me a +good deal of a superior New Englander--with a fatter, damper nature, +however, than theirs.... They are at afternoon tea downstairs in a vast, +gorgeous hall, where an upper gallery looks down like the colonnade in +Paul Veronese's pictures, and the chairs are all golden thrones, +belonging to ancient Doges of Venice. I have retired from the glittering +scene, to meditate by my bedroom fire on the fleeting character of +earthly possessions, and to commune with my mammy, until a supreme being +in the shape of a dumb footman arrives, to ventilate my shirt and turn +my stockings inside out (the beautiful red ones imparted by Alice--which +he must admire so much, though he doesn't venture to show it,) +preparatory to my dressing for dinner. Tomorrow I return to London and +to my personal occupation, always doubly valued after 48 hours passed +among _ces gens-ci_, whose chief effect upon me is to sharpen my desire +to distinguish myself by personal achievement, of however limited a +character. It is the only answer one can make to their atrocious good +fortune. Lord Rosebery, however, with youth, cleverness, a delightful +face, a happy character, a Rothschild wife of numberless millions to +distinguish and demoralize him, wears them with such tact and bonhomie +that you almost forgive him. He is extremely nice with Bright, draws him +out, defers to him etc., with a delicacy rare in an Englishman. But, +after all, there is much to say--more than can be said in a +letter--about one's relations with these people. You may be interested, +by the way, to know that Lord R. said this morning at lunch that his +ideal of the happy life was that of Cambridge, Mass., "living like +Longfellow." You may imagine that at this the company looked awfully +vague, and I thought of proposing to him to exchange Mentmore for 20 +Quincy Street. + +I have little other personal news than this, which I have given you in +some detail, for entertainment's sake.... I embrace you, dearest mother, +and also your two companions. + +Ever your fondest +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To Mrs. Fanny Kemble._ + + +Hotel de la Ville, Milan. +March 24th, '81. + +My dear Mrs. Kemble, + +Your good letter of nearly four weeks ago lies before me--where it has +been lying for some days past--making me think of you so much that I +ended by feeling as if I had answered it. On reflection I see that I +haven't, however--that is, not in any way that you will appreciate. +Shall you appreciate a letter from Milan on a day blustering and hateful +as any you yourself can lately have been visited with? I have been +spending the last eight days at this place, but I take myself off--for +southern parts--to-morrow; so that by waiting a little I might have sent +you a little more of the genuine breath of Italy. But I can do that--and +I shall do it--at any rate, and meanwhile let my Milanese news go for +what it is worth. You see I travel very deliberately, as I started for +Rome six weeks ago, and I have only got thus far. My slowness has had +various causes; among others my not being in a particular hurry to join +the little nest of my compatriots (and yours) who cluster about the +Piazza di Spagna. I have enjoyed the independence of lingering in places +where I had no visits to pay--and this indeed has been the only charm +of Milan, which has seemed prosaic and winterish, as if it were on the +wrong side of the Alps. I have written a good deal (not letters), and +seen that mouldering old fresco of Leonardo, which is so magnificent in +its ruin, and the lovely young Raphael in the Brera (the Sposalizio) +which is still so fresh and juvenile, and Lucrezia Borgia's +straw-coloured lock of hair at the Ambrosian Library, and several other +small and great curiosities. I have kept pretty well out of the +Cathedral, as the chill of Dante's frozen circle abides within it, and I +have had a sore throat ever since I left soft San Remo. On the other +hand I have also been to the Scala, which is a mighty theatre, and where +I heard Der Freyschuetz done a l'italienne, and sat through about an hour +and three quarters of a ballet which was to last three. The Italians, +truly, are eternal children. They paid infinitely more attention to the +ballet than to the opera, and followed with breathless attention, and an +air of the most serious credulity, the interminable adventures of a +danseuse who went through every possible alternation of human experience +on the points of her toes. The more I see of them the more struck I am +with their having no sense of the ridiculous. + +It must have been at Marseilles, I think, that I wrote you before; so +that there is an hiatus in my biography to fill up. I went from +Marseilles to Nice, which I found more than usually detestable, and +pervaded, to an intolerable pitch, with a bad French carnival, which set +me on the road again till I reached San Remo, which you may know, and +which if you don't you ought to. I spent more than a fortnight there, +among the olives and the oranges, between a big yellow sun and a bright +blue sea. The walks and drives are lovely, and in the course of one of +them (a drive) I called upon our friends the George Howards, who have +been wintering at Bordighera, a few miles away. But he was away in +England getting himself elected to Parliament (you may have heard that +he has just been returned for East Cumberland,) and she was away with +him, helping him. The idea of leaving the oranges and olives for that! I +saw, however, a most delightful little maid, their eldest daughter, of +about 15, who had a mixture of shyness and frankness, the softness of +the papa and the decision of the mother, with which I quite fell in +love. I didn't fall in love with Mrs. William Morris, the strange, pale, +livid, gaunt, silent, and yet in a manner graceful and picturesque, wife +of the poet and paper-maker, who is spending the winter with the +Howards; though doubtless she too has her merits. She has, for instance, +wonderful aesthetic hair. From San Remo I came along the rest of the +coast to Genoa, _not_ by carriage however, as I might have done, for I +was rather afraid of three days "on end" of my own society: that is, not +on end, but sitting down. When I am tired of myself in common situations +I can get up and walk away; so, in a word, I came in the train, and the +train came in a tunnel--for it was almost all one--for five or six +hours. I have been going to Venice--but it is so cold and blustering +that I think to-morrow, when I depart from this place, the idea of +reaching the southernmost point will get the better of me, and I shall +make straight for Rome. I will write you from there--where I first +beheld you: that is, familiarity (if I may be allowed the expression). +Enough meanwhile about myself, my intentions and delays: let me hear, or +at least let me ask, about your own circumstances and propensities.... +You must have felt _spattered_, like all the world, with the blood of +the poor Russian Czar! Aren't you glad you are not an Empress? But you +are. God save your Majesty!--Mrs. Greville sent me Swinburne's +complicated dirge upon her poor simple mother, and I thought it wanting +in all the qualities that one liked in Mrs T. I should like very much to +send a tender message to Mrs Gordon: indefinite--but _very_ tender! To +you I am both tender and definite (save when I cross). + +Ever very faithfully yours, +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +III + +THE MIDDLE YEARS + +(1882-1888) + + +AFTER his long absence Henry James had a few crowded months of American +impressions, during the winter of 1881-2, in Boston, New York, and +Washington. He was as sociable as usual, where-ever he went, and he used +to the full the opportunity of reviving old memories and creating new. +It will be seen that he confesses to having enjoyed "a certain success"; +since the publication of Daisy Miller, three years before, he had known +what it was to be a well-known author in London, but it was a fresh +sensation on his native ground. Unhappily this interesting episode was +cut short by the first great sorrow that had fallen upon his house. His +mother died suddenly, in February 1882. To the end of his life Henry +James was to remember this loss as the deepest stroke he had ever +received; though she appears but little in his reminiscences there is no +doubt that her presence, her completely selfless devotion to her husband +and children, had been the greatest of all facts in their lives. Her +care, her pride in them, the surrender of her whole nature and will to +her love for them, had accompanied and supported all their doings; her +husband, during the long years in which he poured out the strange fruits +of his thought to a steadily indifferent world, had rested unreservedly +on her true and gentle companionship. Her second son's letters to her +from Europe will already have shewn the easy and delightful relation +that existed between her and her children; they confided in her and +leaned on her and rallied her, with an intimacy deepened by the almost +unbroken union of the whole household throughout their youth. Henry +James stayed by his father for some months after her death, and would +have stayed longer; but his father was anxious that he should return to +his own work and life. He sailed for England accordingly in May 1882. + +A summer in London was followed by the autumn excursion to Touraine and +Provence portrayed in _A Little Tour in France_. At Tours he had the +company of Mrs. Fanny Kemble and her daughter; and as usual he spent a +few weeks in Paris before going home. He arrived in London in December +to receive almost at once a message announcing that his father was +seriously ill. He started immediately for America, but it was already +too late; his father had died, so they felt, from mere cessation of the +will to live bereft of their mother. "Nothing--he had enabled himself to +make perfectly sure--was in the least worth while without her; this +attested, he passed away or went out, with entire simplicity, promptness +and ease, for the definite reason that his support had failed." So Henry +James wrote, thirty years later, in the _Notes of a Son and Brother_, +and his letters of the time confirm the impression. "There passes away +with him," he says in one of them, "a certain sense of inspiration and +protection which had, I think, accompanied each of us even to middle +life." Thenceforward it was to his elder brother that Henry James always +looked for something of the same kind of support, and many letters will +shew how close the bond remained. In the mere prose of business William +took complete charge of his brother's share in the family affairs, for +which the younger never claimed the smallest aptitude. But during the +months that followed their father's death William was in Europe, and it +fell to Henry to be occupied with the details of their property, for +perhaps the first and last time. The patrimony consisted mainly of +certain houses in the town of Syracuse, N. Y., where their grandfather +had had interests, and where "James Street" is still one of the +principal thoroughfares. Henry was kept in America by the necessity of +taking part in some rather complicated dispositions arising out of the +terms of their father's will; and also by his care for the future of his +sister Alice, the youngest of the family. Her health was very insecure, +and he proposed that she should join him in Europe; but for the present +she preferred to settle in Boston, where he helped her to instal +herself. He did not finally return to London until the following August, +1883. + +This was his last visit to America for more than twenty years. He now +subsided once more into the life of London, with its incessant round of +sociability and its equally incessant accompaniment of creative work. +Gradually his tone in regard to his English setting is modified and +deepened. In the correspondence of these middle years it is no longer +the interested but slightly rebellious immigrant who speaks; it is +rather the old-established colonist, now identified with his +surroundings, a sharer in the general fortunes and responsibilities of +the place. If he still regards himself as an observer from without and +is still capable, as he once says, of "raging against British density in +hours of irritation and disgust," it is none the less noticeable that +English difficulties, English wars and politics and social troubles, of +all of which these years were very full, begin to affect him as matters +that concern his pride and solicitude for the country. There mingles +with his exasperation an ardent desire that the English race may +continue to stand high in the world, in spite of the many voices +prophesying decadence and disaster. He writes as one who now has a stake +in an old and honourable institution, and who feels a personal interest +in its well-being and its good fame. Not indeed that he took, or ever +for a moment wished to take, any share in the common life of the place +but that of the most private fellowship; he resolutely avoided the least +appearance of publicity, always refused to be drawn into popular +functions, organisations, associations of any sort, and clung more and +more, in the midst of all distractions, to the secrecy and seclusion of +his work. And for that inner life these years were a very important +turning-point. He now reached a period of his development when an +immensely enlarged world of art seemed to open before him; and at the +same time he made the discovery--one that had a deep and special effect +upon him--that he was not the kind of writer who is rewarded with a big +audience. Both these matters are heard of in the letters of this time, +but their consequences do not appear fully until somewhat later. They +were various and far-reaching, and some of them can hardly be called +fortunate. + +Meanwhile the outward incidents of his life were as few and simple as +ever. The stream of social engagements remained indeed at its height, +notwithstanding his protests of withdrawal from the world; but otherwise +there is little to chronicle but the publication of his books and his +yearly journeys abroad. Early in 1884 he spent some weeks in Paris, +where the death of Turgenev had made a gap that he greatly felt. For the +rest of the year he was occupied in writing The Bostonians, and went no +further from London than to carry his manuscript into lodgings at Dover +for August and September. A little later his sister Alice arrived from +America, to make the experiment of life in Europe for the benefit of her +now confirmed ill-health. Her presence near at hand, for the few years +that remained to her, was a source of much pleasure, and also of +constant anxiety, to her brother. She was a woman of rare talent and of +strongly marked character; but the life of an invalid, which proved to +be all she was capable of, prevented her from using her opportunities +and from taking the place that would have been open to her. She lived in +great retirement, at first in London, afterwards chiefly at Bournemouth +and Leamington. Henry James was unwearied in his care for her; he +visited her constantly, and never without keen delight in her company +and her vigorous talk. His brotherly attention had yet a further reward +in the summer of 1885, when she was at Bournemouth. To be near her he +spent several weeks there, and was able at the same time to cultivate +the society of another imprisoned invalid, close by, with whom he had +already had some acquaintance. This was Robert Louis Stevenson, and the +intimacy that thus arose very fortunately still survives in many +admirable letters of each to the other. Stevenson's side of the +correspondence, edited by Sir Sidney Colvin, is well known, and Henry +James's can now be added to it; there could be no more illuminating +interchange between two fine artists, so unlike in everything but their +common passion. + +By this time The Bostonians was beginning to appear in an American +magazine, and a little later, again at Dover, The Princess Casamassima +was finished. For two years Henry James now wrote nothing but shorter +pieces (among them The Aspern Papers, The Lesson of the Master, The +Reverberator,) with growing disconcertment as he found how tardily they +seemed to appeal to editors, American or English. In the autumn of 1885 +he spent his accustomed month in Paris, after which he scarcely stirred +from London for another year. Early in 1886 he at last accomplished a +move from his Bolton Street lodging, never a very cheerful or convenient +abode, to a flat in Kensington (13 De Vere Mansions, presently known as +34 De Vere Gardens), close to the palace and the park, where he had much +more agreeable conditions of light and air and quiet. He was planning, +however, for another long absence in Italy, away from the interruptions +of London, and this he secured during the first seven months of 1887. +For most of the time he was at Florence, where he took rooms in a villa +overhanging the view from Bellosguardo; and he paid two lengthy visits +to Venice, staying first with Mrs. Bronson, in the apartment so often +occupied by Browning, and later with Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Curtis in the +splendid old Palazzo Barbaro, where years afterwards he placed the +exquisite and stricken heroine of The Wings of the Dove, for the climax +of her story. He returned to England, late in the summer, to settle down +to the writing of The Tragic Muse--the first time, as he mentions, that +he had attacked a purely English subject on a large scale. "I am getting +to know English life better than American," he writes in September 1888, +when he was still working upon the book, " ...and to understand the +English character, or at least the mind, as well as if I had invented +it--which indeed," he adds lightly, "I think I could have done without +any very extraordinary expenditure of ingenuity." The end of the summer +of 1888 was spent in an hotel at Torquay, which became one of his +favourite retreats; and later in the autumn he was for a short while +abroad, at Geneva and Paris, with a flying dip into Northern Italy. The +letter to his brother, written from Geneva, with which this section +closes, lucidly sums up the conclusions he had by now drawn from the +experience of a dozen years of England. At the age of forty-five he +could feel that he had exhausted the study of the old international +distinctions, English and American, that had engaged him for so long. He +was indeed to return to them again, later on, and to devote to them the +final elaboration of his art; but that lay far ahead, and now for many +years he faced in other directions. + +A vivid glimpse of Henry James at this time is given in the following +note of reminiscence, kindly written for this page by Mr. Edmund Gosse: + + In the late summer of 1886 an experience, more often imagined than + enjoyed, actually took place in the shape of a party of friends + independently dispersed in the hotel or in lodgings through the + Worcestershire village of Broadway, but with the home of Frank + Millet, the American painter, as their centre. Edwin Abbey, John S. + Sargent, Alfred Parsons, Fred Barnard and I, and others, lived + through five bright weeks of perfect weather, in boisterous + intimacy. Early in September Henry James joined us for a short + visit. The Millets possessed, on their domain, a medieval ruin, a + small ecclesiastical edifice, which was very roughly repaired so as + to make a kind of refuge for us, and there, in the mornings, Henry + James and I would write, while Abbey and Millet painted on the + floor below, and Sargent and Parsons tilted their easels just + outside. We were all within shouting distance, and not much serious + work was done, for we were in towering spirits and everything was + food for laughter. Henry James was the only sedate one of us + all--benign, indulgent, but grave, and not often unbending beyond a + genial chuckle. We all treated him with some involuntary respect, + though he asked for none. It is remembered with what affability he + wore a garland of flowers at a birthday feast, and even, nobly + descending, took part one night in a cake-walk. But mostly, though + not much our senior, he was serious, mildly avuncular, but very + happy and un-upbraiding. + + In those days Henry James wore a beard of vague darkish brown, + matching his hair, which had not yet withdrawn from his temples, + and these bushy ornaments had the effect of making him in a sense + shadowy. Almost every afternoon he took a walk with me, rarely with + Sargent, never with the sedentary rest; these walks were long in + time but not in distance, for Henry was inclined to saunter. He had + not wholly recovered from that weakness of the muscles of his back + which had so long troubled him, and I suppose that this was the + cause of a curious stiffness in his progress, which proceeded + rather slowly. He had certain preferences, in particular for the + level road through the green landscape to the ancient grey village + of Aston Somerville. He always made the same remark, as if he had + never noticed it before, that Aston was "so Italian, so Tuscan." + + His talk, which flowed best with one of us alone, was enchanting; + with me largely it concerned the craft of letters. I remember + little definitely, but recall how most of us, with the ladies, + spent one long rollicking day in rowing down the winding Avon from + Evesham to Pershore. There was much "singing in the English boat," + as Marvell says, and Edwin Abbey "obliged" profusely on the banjo. + Henry James I can still see sitting like a beneficent deity, a sort + of bearded Buddha, at the prow, manifestly a little afraid that + some of us would tumble into the river. + + + + +_To Miss Henrietta Reubell._ + + +Metropolitan Club, +Washington, D. C. + +Jan. 9th, 1882. + +My dear Miss Reubell, + +I have never yet thanked you for the amiable note in which you kindly +invited me to write to you from the Americas; and the best way I can do +so now is to simply respond to your invitation. I am in the Americas +indeed, and behold I write. These countries are extremely pleasant, and +I recommend you to come and see them au plus tot. You would have a great +career here, and would return--if you should return at all--with a +multitude of scalps at your slim girdle. There is a great demand for +brilliant women, and I can promise you that you would be intimately +appreciated. I shall return about the first of May--but without any +blond scalps, though with a great many happy impressions. Though I +should perhaps not linger upon the point myself, I believe I have had a +certain success. As for ces gens-ci, they have had great success with +me, and have been delightfully genial and hospitable. It is here that +people treat you well; venez-y voir. You have had a great many things, I +know; but you have not had a winter in the Americas. The people are +extremely nice and humane. I didn't care for it much at first--but it +improves immensely on acquaintance, and after you have got the right +point of view and _diapason_ it is a wonderfully entertaining and +amusing country. The skies are as blue as the blotting paper (as yet +unspotted) on which this scrawl reposes, and the sunshine, which is +deliciously warm, has always an air de fete. I have seen multitudes of +people, and no one has been disagreeable. That is different from your +pretentious Old World. Of Washington I can speak as yet but little, +having come but four days ago; but it is like nothing else in the old +world or the new. Enormous spaces, hundreds of miles of asphalte, a +charming climate and the most entertaining society in America. I spent a +month in Boston and another in New York, and have paid three or four +visits in the country. All this was very jolly, and it is pleasant to be +in one's native land, where one is someone and something. If I were to +abide by my vanity only I should never return to that Europe which +ignores me. Unfortunately I love my Europe better than my vanity, and I +appreciate you, if I may say so, better than either! Therefore I shall +return--about the month of May. I am thinking _tremendously_ about +writing to Mrs. Boit--kindly tell her so. My very friendly regards to +your dear Mother, and your Brother. A word to _Cambridge, Mass._ (my +father's) will always reach me. It would be very _charming_ of you to +address one to yours very faithfully, + +H. JAMES. + + + + +_To Charles Eliot Norton._ + + +20 Quincy Street, +Cambridge, Mass. + +Feb. 7th, 1882. + +My dear Charles, + +Only a word to thank you very heartily for your little note of +friendship, and to send you a grateful message, as well, from my father +and sister. My mother's death is the greatest change that could befall +us, but our lives are so full of her still that we scarcely yet seem to +have lost her. The long beneficence of her own life remains and +survives. + +I shall see you after your return to Shady Hill, as I am to be for a +good while in these regions. I wish to remain near my father, who is +infirm and rather tottering; and I shall settle myself in Boston for the +next four or five months. In other words I shall be constantly in +Cambridge and will often look in at you. I hope you have enjoyed your +pilgrimage. + +Ever faithfully yours, +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To Mrs. John L. Gardner._ + + The play referred to in this letter is doubtless the dramatic + version of _Daisy Miller_; it remained unacted, but was published + in America in 1883. + + +3 Bolton St., Piccadilly. +June 5th [1882]. + +My dear Mrs. Gardner, + +A little greeting across the sea! I meant to send it as soon as I +touched the shore; but the huge grey mass of London has interposed. I +experience the need of proving to you that I missed seeing you before I +left America--though I tried one day--the one before I quitted Boston; +but you were still in New York, contributing the harmony of your +presence and the melodies of your toilet, to the din of Wagnerian +fiddles and the crash of Teutonic cymbals. You must have passed me in +the train that last Saturday; but you have never done anything but pass +me--and _depasser_ me; so it doesn't so much matter. That final +interview--that supreme farewell--will however always be one of the most +fascinating incidents of life--the incidents that _didn't_ occur, and +leave me to muse on what they might have done for us. I think with +extraordinary tenderness of those two pretty little evenings when I read +you my play. They make a charming picture--a perfect picture--in my +mind, and the memory of them appeals to all that is most _raffine_ in my +constitution. Drop a tear--a diminutive tear (as _your_ tears must +be--small but beautifully-shaped pearls) upon the fact that my drama is +not after all to be brought out in New York (at least for the +present).... It is possible it may see the light here. I am to read it +to the people of the St. James's Theatre next week. _Please don't speak +of this._ London seems big and black and horrible and delightful--Boston +seems only the last named. You indeed could make it horrible for me if +you chose, and you could also make it big; but I doubt if you could make +it black. It would be a fair and glittering horror, suggestive of +icicles and white fur. I wonder if you are capable of writing me three +words? Let one of them tell me you are well. The second--what you +please! The third that you sometimes bestow a friendly thought upon +yours very faithfully, + +H. JAMES jr. + + + + +_To Miss Grace Norton._ + + +Hotel du Midi, +Toulouse. + +Oct. 17th [1882]. + +My dear Grace, + +You _shall_ have a letter this morning, whatever happens! I am waiting +for the train to Carcassonne, and you will perhaps ask yourself why you +are thus sandwiched between these two mouldy antiquities. It is +precisely because they are mouldy that I invoke your genial presence. +Toulouse is dreary and not interesting, and I am afraid that Carcassonne +will answer to the same description I heard given a couple of weeks ago +by an English lady in Touraine, of the charming Chateau d'Amboise: +"rather curious, you know, but very, very dirty." Therefore my spirit +turns for comfort to what I have known best in life. I got your last +excellent letter an abominable number of weeks ago; and I hereby +propose, as a rule of our future correspondence, that I be graciously +absolved from ever specifying the time that has elapsed since the +arrival of the letter I am supposed to be answering. This custom will +ease me off immensely. Your last, however, is not so remote but that the +scolding you gave me for sending your previous letter to Mrs. Kemble is +fearfully fresh in my mind. My dear Grace, I regret extremely having +irritated you; but I would fain wrestle with you on this subject. I +think you have a false code about the showing of letters--and in calling +it a breach of confidence you surely confound the limits of things. Of +course there is always a particular discretion for the particular case; +but what are letters but talk, and what is the showing them but the +repetition of talk? The same rules that govern that of course govern the +other; but I don't see why they should be more stringent. It is indeed, +I think, of the very essence of a good letter to be shown--it is wasted +if it is kept for _one_. Was not Mme. de Sevigne's last always handed +about to a hundred people--was not Horace Walpole's? What was right for +them is, it seems to me, right for you. However, I make this little +protest simply for the theory's sake, and promise you solemnly that in +practice, in future, you shall be my own exclusive and peculiar Sevigne! +Yet I don't at all insist on being your exclusive Walpole! I have +indeed the sweet security of the conviction that you will never "want," +as they say (_you_ don't) in Cambridge, to exhibit my epistles. Only I +give you full leave to read them aloud at your soirees! Have your +soirees recommenced by the way? Where are you, my dear Grace, and how +are you? The question about your whereabouts will perhaps make you +smile, if anything in this letter can, as I make no doubt you are +enjoying the gorgeous charm (I speak without irony) of a Cambridge +October. For myself, as you see, I am "doing" the south of France--for +literary purposes, into which I won't pretend to enter, as they are not +of a very elevated character. (I am trying to write some articles about +these regions for an American "illustrated"--_Harper_--but I don't +foresee, as yet, any very brilliant results.) I left England some five +weeks ago, and after a few days in Paris came down into Touraine--for +the sake of the chateaux of the Loire. At the hotel at Tours, where I +spent 12 days, I had the advantage of the society of Mrs. Kemble, and +her daughter Mrs. Wister, with the son of the latter. We made some +excursions together--that is, _minus_ Mrs. K. (a large void,) who was +too infirm to junket about, and then the ladies returned to Paris and I +took my way further afield. Touraine is charming, Chenonceaux, Chambord, +Blois, etc., very interesting, and that episode was on the whole a +success--enlivened too by my exciting company. But the rest of France +(that is those parts I have been through) [is] rather disappointing, +though I suppose when I recite my itinerary you will feel that I ought +to have found a world of picturesqueness--I mean at Bourges, Le Mans, +Angers, Nantes, La Rochelle, Poitiers, etc. The cathedral of Bourges is +worth a long pilgrimage to see; but for the rest France has preserved +the physiognomy of the past much less than England and than Italy. +Besides, when I come into the south, I don't console myself for not +being in the latter country. I don't care for these people, and in fine +I rather hate it. I return to Paris on November 1st, and spend a month +there. Then I return to England for the winter. When I am in that +country I want to get out of it, and when I am out of it I languish for +its heavy air. England is just now in a rather "cocky" mood, and +disposed to carry it high with her little Egyptian victories. It is such +a satisfaction to me to see her again counting for something in Europe +that I would give her _carte blanche_ to go as far as she chooses--or +dares; but at the same time I hope she won't exhibit a vulgar greed. It +has a really dramatic interest for me to see how the great Gladstone +will acquit himself of a situation in which all his high principles will +be subjected to an extraordinary strain. He will be, I suspect, neither +very lofty, nor very base, but will compromise. I don't suppose, +however, you care much about these far-away matters. I hope, my dear +Grace, that your life is taking more and more a possible shape--that +your summer has left you some pleasant memories, and your winter brings +some cheerful hopes. I don't _think_ I shall be so long again--at any +rate my letters are no proof of my sentiments--by which I mean that my +silence is no _dis_proof; for after all I wish to be believed when I +tell you that I am most affectionately yours, + +HENRY JAMES jr. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +131 Mt. Vernon St., +Boston. + +Dec. 26th, '82. + +My dear William-- + +You will already have heard the circumstances under which I arrived at +New York on Thursday 21st, at noon, after a very rapid and prosperous, +but painful passage. Letters from Alice and Katherine L. were awaiting +me at the dock, telling me that dear father was to be buried that +morning. I reached Boston at 11 that night; there was so much delay in +getting up-town. I found Bob at the station here. He had come on for the +funeral only, and returned to Milwaukee the next morning. Alice, who was +in bed, was very quiet and A. K. was perfect. They told me +everything--or at least they told me a great deal--before we parted that +night, and what they told me was deeply touching, and yet not at all +literally painful. Father had been so tranquil, so painless, had died so +easily and, as it were, deliberately, and there had been none--not the +least--of that anguish and confusion which we imagined in London.... He +simply, after the "improvement" of which, we were written before I +sailed, had a sudden relapse--a series of swoons--after which he took to +his bed not to rise again. He had no visible malady--strange as it may +seem. The "softening of the brain" was simply a gradual refusal of food, +because he _wished_ to die. There was no dementia except a sort of +exaltation of his belief that he had entered into "the spiritual life." +Nothing could persuade him to eat, and yet he never suffered, or gave +the least sign of suffering, from inanition. All this will seem strange +and incredible to you, but told with all the details, as Aunt Kate has +told it to me, it becomes real--taking father as he was--almost +natural. He prayed and longed to die. He ebbed and faded away, though in +spite of his strength becoming continually less, he was able to see +people and talk. He wished to see as many people as he could, and he +talked with them without effort. He saw F. Boott and talked much two or +three days before he died. Alice says he said the most picturesque and +humorous things. He knew I was coming and was glad, but not impatient. +He was delighted when he was told that you would stay in my rooms in my +absence, and seemed much interested in the idea. He had no belief +apparently that he should live to see me, but was perfectly cheerful +about it. He slept a great deal, and as A. K. says there was "so little +of the sick-room" about him. He lay facing the windows, which he would +never have darkened--never pained by the light.... 27th a.m. Will send +this now and write again tonight. All our wish here is that you should +remain abroad the next six months. + +Ever your +H. JAMES. + + + + +_To George du Maurier._ + + The article on George du Maurier was that reprinted in _Partial + Portraits_ (1888). + + +115 East 25th Street, +New York. + +April 17th, 1883. + +My dear Du Maurier, + +I send you by this post the sheets of that little tribute to your genius +which I spoke of to you so many months ago and which appears in the +_Century_ for May. The magazine is not yet out, or I would send you +that, and the long delay makes my article so slight in itself, rather +an impotent conclusion. Let me hasten to assure you that the "London +Society", tacked to the title, is none of my doing, but that of the +editors of the Magazine, who put in an urgent plea for it. Such as my +poor remarks are, I hope you will find in them nothing disagreeable, but +only the expression of an exceeding friendliness. May my blessing go +with them and a multitude of good wishes! + +I should have been to see you again long ago if I had not suddenly been +called to America (by the death of my father) in December last. The +autumn, before that, I spent altogether abroad, and have scarcely been +in England since I bade you good-bye, after that very delightful walk +and talk we had together last July--an episode of which I have the +happiest, tenderest memory. Romantic Hampstead seems very far away from +East 25th St; though East 25th St. has some good points. I have been +spending the winter in Boston and am here only on a visit to a friend, +and though I am "New Yorkais d'origine" I never return to this wonderful +city without being entertained and impressed afresh. New York is full of +types and figures and curious social idiosyncrasies, and I only wish we +had some one here, to hold up the mirror, with a 15th part of your +talent. It is altogether an extraordinary growing, swarming, glittering, +pushing, chattering, good-natured, cosmopolitan place, and perhaps in +some ways the best imitation of Paris that can be found (yet with a +great originality of its own.) But I didn't mean to be so geographical; +I only meant to shake hands, and to remind myself again that if my dear +old London life is interrupted, it isn't, heaven be praised, finished, +and that therefore there is a use--a delightful and superior use--in +"keeping up" my relations. I am talking a good deal like Mrs. Ponsonby +de Tomkyns, but when you reflect that you are not Sir Gorgius Midas, +you will acquit me. I have a fair prospect of returning to England late +in the summer, and that will be for a long day. I hope your winter has +used you kindly and that Mrs. du Maurier is well, and also the other +ornaments of your home, including the Great St. Bernard. I greet them +all most kindly and am ever very faithfully yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Miss Grace Norton._ + + +131 Mount Vernon St., Boston. +July 28th [1883]. + +My dear Grace, + +Before the sufferings of others I am always utterly powerless, and your +letter reveals such depths of suffering that I hardly know what to say +to you. This indeed is not my last word--but it must be my first. You +are not isolated, verily, in such states of feeling as this--that is, in +the sense that you appear to make all the misery of all mankind your +own; only I have a terrible sense that you give all and receive +nothing--that there is no reciprocity in your sympathy--that you have +all the affliction of it and none of the returns. However--I am +determined not to speak to you except with the voice of stoicism. I +don't know _why_ we live--the gift of life comes to us from I don't know +what source or for what purpose; but I believe we can go on living for +the reason that (always of course up to a certain point) life is the +most valuable thing we know anything about, and it is therefore +presumptively a great mistake to surrender it while there is any yet +left in the cup. In other words consciousness is an illimitable power, +and though at times it may seem to be all consciousness of misery, yet +in the way it propagates itself from wave to wave, so that we never +cease to feel, and though at moments we appear to, try to, pray to, +there is something that holds one in one's place, makes it a standpoint +in the universe which it is probably good not to forsake. You are right +in your consciousness that we are all echoes and reverberations of the +_same_, and you are noble when your interest and pity as to everything +that surrounds you, appears to have a sustaining and harmonizing power. +Only don't, I beseech you, _generalize_ too much in these sympathies and +tendernesses--remember that every life is a special problem which is not +yours but another's, and content yourself with the terrible algebra of +your own. Don't melt too much into the universe, but be as solid and +dense and fixed as you can. We all live together, and those of us who +love and know, live so most. We help each other--even unconsciously, +each in our own effort, we lighten the effort of others, we contribute +to the sum of success, make it possible for others to live. Sorrow comes +in great waves--no one can know that better than you--but it rolls over +us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we +know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we +remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and +it is blind, whereas we after a manner see. My dear Grace, you are +passing through a darkness in which I myself in my ignorance see nothing +but that you have been made wretchedly ill by it; but it is only a +darkness, it is not an end, or _the_ end. Don't think, don't feel, any +more than you can help, don't conclude or decide--don't do anything but +_wait_. Everything will pass, and serenity and _accepted_ mysteries and +disillusionments, and the tenderness of a few good people, and new +opportunities and ever so much of life, in a word, will remain. You will +do all sorts of things yet, and I will help you. The only thing is not +to _melt_ in the meanwhile. I insist upon the necessity of a sort of +mechanical condensation--so that however fast the horse may run away +there will, when he pulls up, be a somewhat agitated but perfectly +identical G. N. left in the saddle. Try not to be ill--that is all; for +in that there is a failure. You are marked out for success, and you must +not fail. You have my tenderest affection and all my confidence. Ever +your faithful friend-- + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +Hotel de Hollande, Paris. +Feb. 20th, '84. + +My dear William-- + +I owe you an answer to two letters--especially to the one in which you +announce to me the birth of your little Israelite. I bid him the most +affectionate welcome into this world of care and I hope that by this +time he has begun to get used to it. I am too delighted to hear of +Alice's well-being, and trust it has now merged into complete recovery. +Apropos of the Babe, allow me to express an earnest hope that you will +give him some handsome and pictorial name (within discreet limits). Most +of our names are rather colourless--collez-lui dessus, therefore, a +little patch of brightness--and don't call him _after_ any one--give him +a name quite to himself. And let it be only one.... I have seen several +times the gifted Sargent, whose work I admire exceedingly and who is a +remarkably artistic nature and charming fellow. I have also spent an +evening with A. Daudet and a morning at Auteuil with Ed. de Goncourt. +Seeing these people does me a world of good, and this intellectual +vivacity and _raffinement_ make an English mind seem like a sort of +glue-pot. But their ignorance, corruption and complacency are strange, +full strange. I wish I had time to give you more of my impressions of +them. They are at any rate very interesting and Daudet, who has a +remarkable personal charm and is as beautiful as the day, was extremely +nice to me. I saw also Zola at his house, and the whole group are of +course intense pessimists. Daudet justified this to me (as regards +himself) by the general sadness of life and his fear, for instance, +whenever he comes in, that his wife and children may have died while he +was out! I hope _you_ manage to keep free from this apprehension.... I +return to London on the 27th, to stick fast there till the summer. I +embrace Alice and the little Jew and am ever your affectionate + +HENRY. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + +Paris. +Feb. 21st, 1884. + +My dear Howells, + +Your letter of the 2d last gives me great pleasure. A frozen Atlantic +seemed to stretch between us, and I had had no news of you to speak of +save an allusion, in a late letter of T. B. A., to your having +infant-disease in your house. You give me a good account of this, and I +hope your tax is paid this year at least. These are not things to make a +hardened bachelor mend his ways.--Hardened as I am, however, I am not +proof against being delighted to hear that my Barberina tale entertained +you. I am not prepared even to resent the malignity of your remark that +the last third is not the best. It isn't; the [last] part is squeezed +together and ecourte! It is always the fault of my things that the head +and trunk are too big and the legs too short. I spread myself, always, +at first, from a nervous fear that I shall not have enough of my +peculiar tap to "go round." But I always (or generally) have, and +therefore, at the end, have to fill one of the cups to overflowing. My +tendency to this disproportion remains incorrigible. I begin short tales +as if they were to be long novels. Apropos of which, ask Osgood to show +you also the sheets of another thing I lately sent him--"A New England +Winter." It is not very good--on the contrary; but it will perhaps seem +to you to put into form a certain impression of Boston.--What you tell +me of the success of ----'s last novel sickens and almost paralyses me. +It seems to me (the book) so contemptibly bad and ignoble that the idea +of people reading it in such numbers makes one return upon one's self +and ask what is the use of trying to write anything decent or serious +for a public so absolutely idiotic. It must be totally wasted. I would +rather have produced the basest experiment in the "naturalism" that is +being practised here than such a piece of sixpenny humbug. Work so +shamelessly bad seems to me to dishonour the novelist's art to a degree +that is absolutely not to be forgiven; just as its success dishonours +the people for whom one supposes one's self to write. Excuse my +ferocities, which (more discreetly and philosophically) I think you must +share; and don't mention it, please, to any one, as it will be set down +to green-eyed jealousy. + +I came to this place three weeks since--on the principle that anything +is quieter than London; but I return to the British scramble in a few +days. Paris speaks to me, always, for about such a time as this, with +many voices; but at the end of a month I have learned all it has to say. +I have been seeing something of Daudet, Goncourt and Zola; and there is +nothing more interesting to me now than the effort and experiment of +this little group, with its truly infernal intelligence of art, form, +manner--its intense artistic life. They do the only kind of work, +to-day, that I respect; and in spite of their ferocious pessimism and +their handling of unclean things, they are at least serious and honest. +The floods of tepid soap and water which under the name of novels are +being vomited forth in England, seem to me, by contrast, to do little +honour to our race. I say this to you, because I regard you as the great +American naturalist. I don't think you go far enough, and you are +haunted with romantic phantoms and a tendency to factitious glosses; but +you are in the right path, and I wish you repeated triumphs +there--beginning with your Americo-Venetian--though I slightly fear, +from what you tell me, that he will have a certain "gloss." It isn't for +me to reproach you with that, however, the said gloss being a constant +defect of _my_ characters; they have too much of it--too damnably much. +But I am a failure!--comparatively. Read Zola's last thing: _La Joie de +Vivre_. This title of course has a desperate irony: but the work is +admirably solid and serious.... Addio--stia bene. I wish you could send +me anything _you_ have in the way of advance-sheets. It is rather hard +that as you are the only English novelist I read (except Miss Woolson), +I should not have more comfort with you. Give my love to Winnie: I am +sure she will dance herself well. Why doesn't Mrs. Howells try it too? + +Tout a vous, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To John Addington Symonds._ + + +(3 Bolton St., Piccadilly, W.) +Paris. + +Feb. 22nd, 1884. + +My dear J. A. Symonds, + +Your good letter came to me just as I was leaving London (for a month in +this place--to return there in a few days,) and the distractions and +interruptions incidental to a short stay in Paris must account for my +not having immediately answered it, as the spirit moved me to do. I +thank you for it very kindly, and am much touched by your telling me +that a communication from me should in any degree, and for a moment, +have lighted up the horizon of the Alpine crevice, in which I can well +believe you find it hard, and even cruel, to be condemned to pass life. +To condole with you on a fate so stern must seem at the best but a +hollow business; I will therefore only wish you a continuance of the +courage of which your abundant and delightful work gives such evidence, +and take pleasure in thinking that there may be entertainment for you in +any of my small effusions.--I _did_ send you the _Century_ more than a +year ago, with my paper on Venice, not having then the prevision of my +reprinting it with some other things. I sent it you because it was a +constructive way of expressing the good will I felt for you in +consequence of what you have written about the land of Italy--and of +intimating to you, somewhat dumbly, that I am an attentive and +sympathetic reader. I nourish for the said Italy an unspeakably tender +passion, and your pages always seemed to say to me that you were one of +a small number of people who love it as much as I do--in addition to +your knowing it immeasurably better. I wanted to recognize this (to +your knowledge;) for it seemed to me that the victims of a common +passion should sometimes exchange a look, and I sent you off the +magazine at a venture.... I thank you very sincerely for the +good-natured things you say of its companions. It is all very light +work, indeed, and the only merit I should dream of anyone finding in it +would be that it is "prettily turned." I thank you still further for +your offer to send me the Tauchnitz volumes of your Italian local +sketches. I know them already well, as I have said, and possess them in +the English issue; but I shall welcome them warmly, directly from +you--especially as I gather that they have occasional retouchings. + +I lately spent a number of months in America, after a long absence, but +I live in London and have put my constant address at the top of my +letter. I imagine that it is scarcely ever in your power to come to +England, but do take note of my whereabouts, for this happy (and +possibly, to you, ideal) contingency. I should very much like to see +you--but I go little, nowadays, to Switzerland in summer (though at one +time I was there a good deal). I think it possible moreover that at that +season you get out of your Alps. I certainly should, in your place, for +the Alps are easily too many for me.--I can well imagine the innumerable +things you miss at Davos--year after year--and (I will say it) I think +of you with exceeding sympathy. As a sign of that I shall send you +everything I publish. + +I shake hands with [you], and am very truly yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Alphonse Daudet._ + + +3 Bolton St., Piccadilly, W. +London, 19 Juin [1884]. + +Mon cher Alphonse Daudet, + +J'aurais du deja vous remercier de tout le plaisir que vous m'avez fait +en m'envoyant _Sapho_. Je vous suis tres-reconnaissant de cette bonne et +amicale pensee, qui s'ajoutera desormais, pour moi, au souvenir du +livre. Je n'avais pas attendu l'arrivee de votre volume pour le +lire--mais cela m'a donne l'occasion de m'y remettre encore et de tirer +un peu au clair les diverses impressions que tant d'admirables pages +m'ont laissees. Je n'essaierai pas de vous rapporter ces impressions +dans leur plenitude--dans la crainte de ne reussir qu'a deformer ma +pensee--tout autant que la votre. Un nouveau livre de vous me fait +passer par l'esprit une foule de belles idees, que je vous confierais de +vive voix--et de grand coeur--si j'avais le bonheur de vous voir plus +souvent. Pour le moment, je vous dirai seulement que tout ce qui vient +de vous compte, pour moi, comme un grand evenement, une jouissance rare +et fructueuse. Je vous aime mieux dans certaines pages que dans +d'autres, mais vous me charmez, vous m'enlevez toujours, et votre +maniere me penetre plus qu'aucune autre. Je trouve dans _Sapho_ +enormement de verite et de vie. Ce n'est pas du roman, c'est de +l'histoire, et de la plus complete et de la mieux eclairee. Lorsqu'on a +fait un livre aussi solide et aussi serieux que celui-la, on n'a besoin +d'etre rassure par personne; ce n'est donc que pour m'encourager +moi-meme que je constate dans Sapho encore une preuve--a ajouter a +celles que vous avez donnees--de tout ce que le roman peut accomplir +comme revelation de la vie et du drole de melange que nous sommes. La +fille est etudiee avec une patience merveilleuse--c'est un de ces +portraits qui epuisent un type. Je vous avouerai que je trouve le jeune +homme un peu sacrifie--comme etude et comme recherche--sa figure me +paraissant moins eclairee--en comparaison de celle de la femme--qu'il ne +le faudrait pour l'nteret moral la valeur tragique. J'aurais voulu que +vous nous eussiez fait voir davantage par ou il a passe--en matiere +d'experience plus personnelle et plus intime encore que les coucheries +avec Fanny--en matiere de rammollissement de volonte et de relachement +d'ame. En un mot, le drame ne se passe peut-etre pas assez dans l'ame et +dans la conscience de Jean. C'est a mesure que nous touchons a son +caractere meme que la situation devient interessante--et ce caractere, +vous me faites l'effet de l'avoir un peu neglige. Vous me direz que +voila un jugement bien anglais, et que nous inventons des abstractions, +comme nous disons, afin de nous dispenser de toucher aux grosses +realites. J'estime pourtant qu'il n'y a rien de plus reel, de plus +positif, de plus a peindre, qu'un caractere; c'est la qu'on trouve bien +la couleur et la forme. Vous l'avez bien prouve, du reste, dans chacun +de vos livres, et en vous disant que vous avez laisse l'amant de Sapho +un peu trop en blanc, ce n'est qu'avec vous-meme que je vous compare. +Mais je ne voulais que vous remercier et repondre a votre envoi. Je vous +souhaite tout le repos qu'il vous faudra pour recommencer encore! Je +garde de cette soiree que j'ai passee chez vous au mois de fevrier une +impression toute coloree. Je vous prie de me rappeler au souvenir +bienveillant de Madame Daudet, je vous serre la main et suis votre bien +devoue confrere, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + H. J.'s article on "The Art of Fiction" was reprinted in _Partial + Portraits_. Stevenson's "rejoinder" was the essay called "A Humble + Remonstrance," included in _Memories and Portraits_. + + +3 Bolton St., W. +Dec. 5th [1884]. + +My dear Robert Louis Stevenson, + +I read only last night your paper in the December _Longman's_ in genial +rejoinder to my article in the same periodical on Besant's lecture, and +the result of that charming half-hour is a friendly desire to send you +three words. Not words of discussion, dissent, retort or remonstrance, +but of hearty sympathy, charged with the assurance of my enjoyment of +everything you write. It's a luxury, in this immoral age, to encounter +some one who _does_ write--who is really acquainted with that lovely +art. It wouldn't be fair to contend with you here; besides, we agree, I +think, much more than we disagree, and though there are points as to +which a more irrepressible spirit than mine would like to try a fall, +that is not what I want to say--but on the contrary, to thank you for so +much that is suggestive and felicitous in your remarks--justly felt and +brilliantly said. They are full of these things, and the current of your +admirable style floats pearls and diamonds. Excellent are your closing +words, and no one can assent more than I to your proposition that all +art is a simplification. It is a pleasure to see that truth so neatly +uttered. My pages, in Longman, were simply a plea for liberty: they were +only half of what I had to say, and some day I shall try and express the +remainder. Then I shall tickle you a little affectionately as I pass. +You will say that my "liberty" is an obese divinity, requiring extra +measures; but after one more go I shall hold my tongue. The native +_gaiety_ of all that you write is delightful to me, and when I reflect +that it proceeds from a man whom life has laid much of the time on his +back (as I understand it), I find you a genius indeed. There must be +pleasure in it for you too. I ask Colvin about you whenever I see him, +and I shall have to send him this to forward to you. I am with +innumerable good wishes yours very faithfully, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + _The Literary Remains of the late Henry James_, with an + introduction by William James, had just been published in America. + + +3 Bolton Street, W. +Jan. 2d, 1885. + +Dear William-- + +I must give some response, however brief, to your letter of Dec. 21st, +enclosing the project of your house and a long letter from R. Temple. +Three days ago, too, came the two copies of Father's (and your) book, +which have [given] me great filial and fraternal joy. All I have had +time to read as yet is the introduction--your part of which seems to me +admirable, perfect. It must have been very difficult to do, and you +couldn't have done it better. And how beautiful and extraordinarily +individual (some of them magnificent) all the extracts from Father's +writings which you have selected so happily. It comes over me as I read +them (more than ever before,) how intensely original and personal his +whole system was, and how indispensable it is that those who go in for +religion should take some heed of it. I can't enter into it (much) +myself--I can't be so theological nor grant his extraordinary premises, +nor throw myself into conceptions of heavens and hells, nor be sure that +the keynote of nature is humanity, etc. But I can enjoy greatly the +spirit, the feeling, and the manner of the whole thing (full as this +last is of things that displease me too,) and feel really that poor +Father, struggling so alone all his life, and so destitute of every +worldly or literary ambition, was yet a great writer. At any rate your +task is beautifully and honourably done--may it be as great or even half +as great a service as it deserves to be, to his memory! The book came at +a bad time for Alice, as she has had an upset which I will tell you of; +but though she has been able to have it in her hand but for a moment it +evidently gives her great pleasure. She burst into tears when I gave it +to her, exclaiming "How beautiful it is that William should have done +it! Isn't it, isn't it beautiful? And how good William is, how good, how +good!" And we talked of poor Father's fading away into silence and +darkness, the waves of the world closing over this system which he tried +to offer it, and of how we were touched by this act of yours which will +(I am sure) do so much to rescue him from oblivion. I have received no +notice from Scribner of the arrival of the other volumes, and shall +write to him in a day or two if I don't hear. But I am rather +embarrassed as to what to do with so many--wishing only to dispose of +them in a manner which will entail some prospect of decent consideration +and courtesy. I can give away five or six copies to persons who will +probably have some attention and care for them (e.g. Fredk. Harrison, +Stopford Brooke, Burne-Jones, Mrs. Orr, etc.) But the newspapers and +reviews are so grim and philistine and impenetrable and stupid, that I +can scarcely think of any to which it isn't almost an act of +untenderness to send it. But I will go into the matter with Scribner.... +The project for your house is charming--very big it looks, and of a +most pleasant type. Love to all. + +Ever your +HENRY. + + + + +_To Miss Grace Norton._ + + +3 Bolton St., W. +Jan. 24th [1885]. + +My dear Grace, + + * * * * * + +It is a feature of life in this place that the longer it lasts the more +one's liabilities of every kind accumulate--the more things there are to +be done, every hour of the day. I have so many to do that I am thinking +of inventing some new day with 40 or 50 hours--or else some newer one +still, with only half a dozen, as that would simplify a large proportion +of one's diurnal duties out of existence.... I am having a "quieter" +winter than I have had for some years (in London) and have seen very few +new people and not even many old friends. My quietness (comparative of +course) is my solemn choice, and means that I have been dining out much +less than at most former times, for the sacred purpose of getting my +evenings to myself. I have been sitting at the festive British board for +so many years now that I feel as if I had earned the right to give it up +save in really seductive cases. You can guess the proportion of these! +It is the only way to find any time to read--and my reading was going to +the dogs. Therefore I propose to become henceforth an occasional and not +a regular diner, with the well-founded hope that my mind, body, spirits, +temper and general view of the human understanding and of the +conversational powers of the English race, will be the gainers by it. +Moreover, there is very little "going on"--the country is gloomy, +anxious, and London reflects its gloom. Westminster Hall and the Tower +were half blown up two days ago by Irish Dynamiters, there is a +catastrophe to the little British force in the Soudan in the air (rather +an ominous want of news since Gen. Stewart's victory at Aboukir a week +ago,) and a general sense of rocks ahead in the foreign relations of the +country--combined with an exceeding want of confidence--indeed a deep +disgust--with the present ministry in regard to such relations. I find +such a situation as this extremely interesting and it makes me feel how +much I am attached to this country and, on the whole, to its sometimes +exasperating people. The possible _malheurs_--reverses, dangers, +embarrassments, the "decline," in a word, of old England, go to my +heart, and I can imagine no spectacle more touching, more thrilling and +even dramatic, than to see this great precarious, artificial empire, on +behalf of which, nevertheless, so much of the strongest and finest stuff +of the greatest race (for such they are) has been expended, struggling +with forces which perhaps, in the long run, will prove too many for it. +If she only will struggle, and not collapse and surrender and give up a +part which, looking at Europe as it is to-day, still may be great, the +drama will be well worth watching from [such] a good, near standpoint as +I have here. But I didn't mean to be so beastly political! Another drama +interesting me is the question of poor dear J. R. Lowell's possible +recall after Cleveland mounts the throne. This, to me, is tragic, +pathetic. His position here is in the highest degree honourable, useful, +agreeable--in short perfect; and to give it all up to return, from one +day to another, to John Holmes and the Brattle Street horsecar (which is +very much what it amounts to--save when he goes to see you) seems to me +to be the sport of a cruel, a barbaric, fortune.... I haven't asked you +about yourself--the complexion of your winter, etc. But there are some +things I know sufficiently without asking. So do you--as that I am +always praying for you (though I don't pray, in general, and don't +understand it, I make this brilliant exception for _you_!) + +Your very faithful friend, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + The first number of _The Bostonians_ appeared this month in the + _Century Magazine_, containing scenes in which the veteran + philanthropist "Miss Birdseye" figured. + + +3 Bolton St., W. +Feb. 14th [1885]. + +Dear William, + +I am quite appalled by your note of the 2nd, in which you assault me on +the subject of my having painted a "portrait from life" of Miss Peabody! +I was in some measure prepared for it by Lowell's (as I found the other +day) taking for granted that she had been my model, and an allusion to +the same effect in a note from Aunt Kate. Still, I didn't expect the +charge to come from you. I hold, that I have done nothing to deserve +it.... I should be very sorry--in fact deadly sick, or fatally ill--if I +thought Miss Peabody _herself_ supposed I intended to represent her. I +absolutely had no shadow of such an intention. I have not seen Miss P. +for twenty years, I never had but the most casual observation of her, I +didn't know whether she was alive or dead, and she was not in the +smallest degree my starting-point or example. Miss Birdseye was evolved +entirely from my moral consciousness, like every other person I have +ever drawn, and originated in my desire to make a figure who should +embody in a sympathetic, pathetic, picturesque, and at the same time +grotesque way, the humanitary and ci-devant transcendental tendencies +which I thought it highly probable I should be accused of treating in a +contemptuous manner in so far as they were otherwise represented in the +tale. I wished to make this figure a woman, because so it would be more +touching, and an old, weary, battered, and simple-minded woman because +that deepened the same effect. I elaborated her in my mind's eye--and +after I had got going reminded myself that my creation would perhaps be +identified with Miss Peabody--_that_ I freely admit. So I have in mind +the sense of being careful, at the same time that I didn't see what I +could do but go my way, according to my own fancy, and make my image as +living as I saw it. The one definite thing about which I had a scruple +was some touch about Miss Birdseye's spectacles--I remembered that Miss +Peabody's were always in the wrong place; but I didn't see, really, why +I should deprive myself of an effect (as regards this point) which is +common to a thousand old people. So I thought no more about Miss P. _at +all_, but simply strove to realize my vision. If I have made my old +woman _live_ it is my misfortune, and the thing is doubtless a +rendering, a vivid rendering, of my idea. If it is at the same time a +rendering of Miss P. I am absolutely irresponsible--and extremely sorry +for the accident. If there is any chance of its being represented to +_her_ that I have undertaken to reproduce her in a novel I will +immediately write to her, in the most respectful manner, to say that I +have done nothing of the kind, that an old survivor of the New England +Reform period was an indispensable personage in my story, that my +paucity of data and not my repletion is the faulty side of the whole +picture, that, as I went, I had no sight or thought of her, but only of +an imaginary figure which was much nearer to me, and that in short I +have the vanity to claim that Miss Birdseye is a creation. You may think +I protest too much: but I am alarmed by the sentence in your letter--"It +is really a pretty bad business," and haunted by the idea that this may +apply to some rumour you have heard of Miss Peabody's feeling +_atteinte_. I can imagine no other reason why you should call the +picture of Miss Birdseye a "bad business," or indeed any business at +all. I would write to Miss P. on this chance--only I don't like to +_assume_ that she feels touched, when it is possible that she may not, +and knows nothing about the matter. If you can ascertain whether or no +she does and will let me know, I will, should there be need or fitness, +immediately write to her. Miss Birdseye is a subordinate figure in the +_Bostonians_, and after appearing in the first and second numbers +vanishes till toward the end, where she re-enters, briefly, and +pathetically and honourably dies. But though subordinate, she is, I +think, the best figure in the book; she is treated with respect +throughout, and every virtue of heroism and disinterestedness is +attributed to her. She is represented as the embodiment of pure, the +purest philanthropy. The story is, I think, the best fiction I have +written, and I expected you, if you said anything about it, would +intimate that you thought as much--so that I find this charge on the +subject of Miss Peabody a very cold douche indeed.... + +Ever yours, +H. JAMES. + + + + +_To James Russell Lowell._ + + Lowell was now leaving London after having held the post of + American Minister there since 1880. + + +St. Alban's Cliff, +Bournemouth. + +May 29th [1885]. + +My dear Lowell, + +My hope of coming up to town again has been defeated, and it comes over +me that your departure is terribly near. Therefore I write you a line of +hearty and affectionate farewell--mitigated by the sense that after all +it is only for a few months that we are to lose you. I trust, serenely, +to your own conviction of this fact, but for extra safety just remark +that if you don't return to London next winter I shall hurl myself +across the ocean at you like a lasso. As I look back upon the years of +your mission my heart swells and almost breaks again (as it did when I +heard you were superseded) at the thought that anything so perfect +should be gratuitously destroyed. But there is a part of your function +which can go on again, indefinitely, whenever you take it up--and that, +I repeat, I hope you will do soon rather than late. I think with the +tenderest pleasure of the many fire-side talks I have had with you, from +the first--and with a pleasure dimmed with sadness of so many of our +more recent ones. You are tied to London now by innumerable cords and +fibres, and I should be glad to think that you ever felt me, ever so +lightly, pulling at one of them. It is a great disappointment to me not +to see you again, but I am kept here fast and shall not be in town till +the end of June. I give you my blessing and every good wish for a happy +voyage. I wish I could receive you over there--and assist at your +arrival and impressions--little as I want you to go back. Don't forget +that you have produced a relation between England and the U.S. which is +really a gain to civilization and that you must come back to look after +your work. You can't look after it there: that is the function of an +Englishman--and if _you_ do it there they will call you one. The only +way you can be a good American is to return to our dear old stupid, +satisfactory London, and to yours ever affectionately and faithfully, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + To prevent confusion of names it should be mentioned that the + "Alice" referred to at the end of this letter is H. J.'s + sister-in-law, Mrs. William James. His sister, Miss Alice James, + remained in England till her death six years later. + + +13 De Vere Mansions, W. +March 9th [1886]. + +My dear William, + +Long before getting your most excellent letter of Feb. 21st I had been +pricked with shame and remorse at my long silence; you may imagine then +how this pang sharpened when, three or four days ago, that letter +arrived. There were all sorts of reasons for my silence which I won't +take up time now with narrating--further than to say that they were not +reasons of misfortune or discomfort--but only of +other-engagement-and-occupation pressure--connected with arrears of +writing, consumption of time in furnishing and preparing my new +habitation, and the constant old story of London interruptions and +distractions. Thank God I am out of them far more now than I have ever +been before--in my chaste and secluded Kensington quatrieme. I moved in +here definitely only three days ago, and am still rather upside down. +The place is excellent in every respect, improves on acquaintance every +hour and is, in particular, flooded with light like a photographer's +studio. I commune with the unobstructed sky and have an immense +bird's-eye view of housetops and streets. My rooms are very pretty as +well as very convenient, and will be more so when little by little I +have got more things. When I have time I will make you a diagram, and +later, when the drawing-room (or library: meantime I have a smaller +sitting-room in order) is furnished (I have nothing for it yet), I shall +have the place photographed. I shall do far better work here than I have +ever done before. + +Alice is going on the same very good way, and receiving visits almost +daily. A great many people come to see her; she is highly appreciated, +and might easily, if she were to stay here, getting sufficiently better +to exert herself more &c, become a great success and queen of society. +Her vigour of mind, decision of character &c, wax daily, and her +conversation is brilliant and semillant. She could easily, if she were +to stay, beat the British female all round. She is also looking very +well.... The weather continues bitterly cold, and there will be no +question of her going out for a long time to come. + +The two great public matters here have been the riot, and the +everlasting and most odious ---- scandal. (I mean, of course, putting +the all-overshadowing Irish question aside.) I was at Bournemouth +(seeing R. L. Stevenson) the day of the emeute, and lost the spectacle, +to my infinite chagrin. I should have seen it well from my balcony, as I +should have been at home when it passed, and it smashed the windows in +the houses (three doors from mine) on the corner of Bolton St. and +Piccadilly. Alice was all unconscious of it till the morrow, and was +not at all agitated. The wreck and ruin in Piccadilly and some other +places (I mean of windows) was, on my return from Bournemouth, +sufficiently startling, as was also the manner in which the carriages of +a number of ladies were stopped, and the occupants hustled, rifled, +slapped or kissed, as the case might be, and turned out. The real +unemployed, I believe, had very little share in all this: it was the +work of the great army of roughs and thieves, who seized, owing to the +very favourable nature of their opportunity, a day of licence. It is +difficult to know whether the real want of work is now, or not, so very +much greater than usual--in face of positive affirmations and negations; +there is, at any rate, immense destitution. Every one here is growing +poorer--from causes which, I fear, will continue. All the same, what +took place the other day is, I feel pretty sure, the worst that for a +long time to come, the British populace is likely to attempt.... I can't +talk about the Irish matter--partly because one is sick of it--partly +because I _know_ too little about it, and one is still more sick of all +the vain words on the subject, without knowledge or thought, that fill +the air here. I don't believe much in the Irish, and I believe still +less [in] (consider with less complacency) the disruption of the British +Empire, but I don't see how the management of their own affairs can be +kept away from them--or why it should. I can't but think that, as they +are a poor lot, with great intrinsic sources of weakness, their power to +injure and annoy England (if they were to get their own parliament) +would be considerably less than is assumed. + +The "Bostonians" must be out, in America, by this time; I told them, of +course, to send you a copy. It appears to be having a goodish success +there. All your tidings about your own life, Bob, &c, were of the +deepest interest.... I wish I could assist at your researches and see +the children, and commune with Alice--to whom I send much brotherly +love. + +Ever your +HENRY. + + + + +_To Charles Eliot Norton._ + + Professor Norton had sent H. J. the first instalment of his edition + of Carlyle's correspondence. + + +Milan, December 6th [1886]. + +My dear Charles, + +I ought long ago to have thanked you for your very substantial present +of Carlyle--but I waited in the first place till I should have read the +book (which business was considerably delayed,) and then till I had +wound up a variety of little matters, mainly matters of writing which +pressed upon me in anticipation of my leaving England for two or three +months. Now when at last I seize the moment, I _have_ left England, but +you will be as glad of a letter from here as from out of the dense grey +medium in which we had been living for a month before I quitted London. +I came hither straight from Dover last night through the hideous but +convenient hole in the dear old St. Gotthard, and I have been strolling +about Milan all the morning, drinking in the delicious Italian sun, +which fortunately shines, and giving myself up to the sweet sense of +living once more--after an interval of several years--in the adorable +country it illumines. It is Sunday and all the world is in the streets +and squares, and the Italian type greets me in all its handsomeness and +friendliness, and also, I fear I must add, not a little in its +vulgarity. But its vulgarity is the exaggeration of a merit and not, as +in England and the U.S., of a defect. Churches and galleries have such a +fatal chill that being sore-throatish and neuralgic I have had to keep +out of them, but the Duomo lifts all its pinnacles and statues into the +far away light, and looks across at the other white needles and spires +of the Alps in the same bewildering cluster. I go to spend the remainder +of this month in Florence and afterwards to--I hope--take a month +between Rome, Naples and Venice--but it will be as it will turn out. +Once I am in Italy it is about the same to me to be in one place as in +another. + +All this takes me away from Carlyle and from the Annandale view of life. +I read the two volumes with exceeding interest; for my admiration of +Carlyle as a letter writer is boundless, and it is curious to watch the +first step and gradual amplification of his afterwards extraordinary +style. Those addressed to his own family are most remarkable as +dedicated to a household of peasants, by one of themselves, and in short +for the _amateur_ of Carlyle the book has a high value. But I doubt +whether the general public will bite at it very eagerly. I don't know +why I allude to this, though--for the general public has small sense and +less taste, and its likes and dislikes, I think, must mostly make the +judicious grieve. You seem to me a most perfect and ideal editor--and it +is a great pleasure to me that so excellent and faultless a piece of +editorial work should proceed from our rough and ready country--but at +the same time your demolitions of the unspeakable Froude don't persuade +me that Carlyle was _amiable_. It seems to me he remains the most +disagreeable in character of men of genius of equal magnificence. In +these youthful letters it appears to me even striking how his +disagreeableness comes out more and more in proportion as his talent +develops. This doesn't prevent him, however, from being in my +opinion--and doubtless in yours--one of the very greatest--perhaps the +very greatest of letter writers; only when one thinks of the other most +distinguished masters of expression the image evoked has (though +sometimes it may be sad enough) a serenity, a general _pleasantness_. +When the vision of Carlyle comes to us there comes with it the idea of +harshness and discord. The difference between the man and the genius +seems to me, in other words, greater than in any other case--for if +Voltaire was a rascal he was eminently a social one--and Rousseau (to +think of a great intellectual swell who must have been odious) hadn't +anything like Carlyle's "parts." All the same, I shall devour the +volumes I am delighted to see you are still to publish. + +I ought to have plenty of London news for you--but somehow I feel as if +I had not brought it to Italy with me. Much of it, in these days, is +such as there must be little profit in carrying about with one. The +subject of the moment, as I came away, was the hideous ---- divorce +case, which will besmirch exceedingly the already very damaged prestige +of the English upper class. The condition of that body seems to me to be +in many ways very much the same rotten and _collapsible_ one as that of +the French aristocracy before the revolution--minus cleverness and +conversation; or perhaps it's more like the heavy, congested and +depraved Roman world upon which the barbarians came down. In England the +Huns and Vandals will have to come _up_--from the black depths of the +(in the people) enormous misery, though I don't think the Attila is +quite yet found--in the person of Mr. Hyndman. At all events, much of +English life is grossly materialistic and wants blood-letting. I had not +been absent from London for a year before this--save for two or three +days at a time. I remained in town all summer and autumn--only paying an +occasional, or indeed a rather frequent, country visit--a business, +however, which I endeavour more and more to keep, if possible, within +the compass of _hours_. The gilded bondage of the country house becomes +onerous as one grows older, and then the waste of time in vain sitting +and strolling about is a gruesome thought in the face of what one still +wants to do with one's remnant of existence. I saw Matt Arnold the other +night, and he spoke very genially of you and of his visit to +Ashfield--very _affectionately_, too, of George Curtis--which I loudly +echoed. M. A. said of Stockbridge and the summer life thereabouts, etc. +(with his chin in the air)--"Yes, yes--it's a proof that it's attaching +that one thinks of it again--one thinks of it again." This was amiably +sublime and amiably characteristic.--I see Burne-Jones from time to +time, but not as often as I should like. I am always so afraid of +breaking in on his work. Whenever he is at home he is working and when +he isn't working he's not at home. When I _do_ see him, it is one of the +best human pleasures that London has for me. But I don't understand his +life--that is the manner and tenor of his production--a complete +_studio_ existence, with doors and windows closed, and no search for +impressions outside--no open air, no real daylight and no looking out +for it. The things he does in these conditions have exceeding +beauty--but they seem to me to grow colder and colder--pictured +abstractions, less and less observed. Such as he is, however, he is +certainly the most distinguished artistic figure among Englishmen +to-day--the only one who has escaped vulgarization and on whom claptrap +has no hold. Moreover he is, as you know, exquisite in mind and +talk--and we fraternize greatly.... + + + + +_To Miss Grace Norton._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +July 23rd, 1887. + +My dear Grace, + +I am ashamed to find myself back in England without having fulfilled the +inward vow I took when I received your last good and generous +letter--that of writing to you before my long stay on the continent was +over. But I _almost_ don't fail of that vow--inasmuch as I returned only +day before yesterday. My eight months escape into the happy immunities +of foreign life is over and the stern realities of London surround me, +in the shape of stuffy midsummer heat (that of this metropolis has a +truly British ponderosity--it's as dull as an article in a Quarterly,) +smoke, circulars, invitations, _bills_, the one sauce that Talleyrand +commemorated, and reverberations of the grotesque Jubilee. On the other +hand my small house seems most pleasant and peculiar (in the sense of +being my own,) and my servants are as punctual as they are prim--which +is saying much. But I enjoyed my absence, and I shall endeavour to +repeat it every year, for the future, on a smaller scale; that is, to +leave London, not at the beginning of the winter but at the end, by the +mid-April, and take the period of the insufferable Season regularly in +Italy. It was a great satisfaction to me to find that I am as fond of +that dear country as I ever was--and that its infinite charm and +interest are one of the things in life to be most relied upon. I was +afraid that the dryness of age--which drains us of so many +sentiments--had reduced my old _tendresse_ to a mere memory. But no--it +is really so much in my pocket, as it were, to feel that Italy is always +there. It is rather rude, my dear Grace, to say all this to you--for +whom it is there to so little purpose. But if I should observe this +scruple about all the places that you don't go to, or are not in, when I +write to you, my writing would go very much on one leg. I was back again +in Venice--where I paid a second visit late in the season (from the +middle of May to July 1st)--when I got your last letter. I was staying +at the Palazzo Barbaro, with the Daniel Curtises--the happy owners, +to-day, of that magnificent house--a place of which the full charm only +sinks into your spirit as you go on living there, seeing it in all its +hours and phases. I went for ten days, and they clinging to me, I stayed +five weeks: the longest visit I ever paid a "private family." ... In the +interval between my two visits to Venice I took again some rooms at the +Villa Bricchieri at Bellosguardo--the one just below your old +Ombrellino--where I had stayed for three December weeks on my arrival in +Florence. The springtime there was enchanting, and you know what a thing +that incomparable view is to live with. I really _did_ live with it, and +rejoiced in it every minute, holding it to be (to my sensibilities) +positively the most beautiful and interesting in the world. Florence was +given over to fetes during most of those weeks--the fetes of the +completion of the facade of the Duomo--which by the way (the new facade) +isn't "half bad." It is of a very splendouriferous effect, and there is +doubtless too much of it. But it does great honour to the contemporary +(as well as to the departed) Italian--and I don't believe such work +could have been produced elsewhere than in that country of the delicate +hand and the insinuating chisel. I stepped down into the fetes from my +hill top--and even put on a crimson _lucco_ and a beautiful black velvet +headgear and disported myself at the great _ballo storico_ that was +given at the Palazzo Vecchio to the King and Queen. This had the defect +of its class--a profusion of magnificent costumes but a want of +_entrain_; and the success of the whole episode was much more a certain +really splendid procession of the old time, with all the Strozzis, +Guicciardinis, Rucellais, etc., mounted on magnificent horses and +wearing admirable dresses with the childlike gallantry and glee with +which only Italians can wear them, riding through the brown old streets +and followed by an immense train of citizens all in the carefullest +quattro-cento garb. This was really a noble picture and testified to the +latent love of splendour which is still in those dear people and which +only asks for a favouring chance to shine out, even at the cost of +ruining them. Before leaving Italy I spent a week with Mrs. Kemble at +Lago Maggiore--she having dipped over there, in spite of torrid heat. +She is a very (or at least a partly) extinct volcano to-day, and very +easy and delightful to dwell with, in her aged resignation and +_adoucissements_. But she did suggest to me, on seeing her again after +so long an interval, that it is rather a melancholy mistake, in this +uncertain life of ours, to have founded oneself on so many rigidities +and rules--so many siftings and sortings. Mrs. Kemble is _toute d'une +piece_, more than any one, probably, that ever lived; she moves in a +mass, and if she does so little as to button her glove it is the whole +of her "personality" that does it. Let us be flexible, dear Grace; let +us be flexible! and even if we don't reach the sun we shall at least +have been up in a balloon.--I left Stresa on the 15th of this month, had +a glorious day on the Simplon amid mountain streams and mountain +flowers, and came quickly home.... I shall be here for the rest of the +summer--save for little blotches of absence--and I look forward to some +quiet months of work. I am trying, not without success, to get out of +society--as hard as some people try to get in. I want to be dropped and +cut and consummately ignored. This only demands a little patience, and I +hope eventually to elbow my way down to the bottom of the wave--to +achieve an obscurity. This would sound fatuous if I didn't add that +success is easily within my grasp. I know it all--all that one sees by +"going out"--to-day, as if I had made it. But if I had, I would have +made it better! I think of you on your porch--amid all your creepers and +tendrils; and wherever you are, dear Grace, I am your very faithful and +much remembering friend, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + Stevenson and his family sailed for America a few days after the + date of this letter. Mr. Gosse has described the episode in his + recollections of R. L. S. (_Critical Kit-kats_). Stevenson's life + in the South Seas began in the following year, and his friends in + England saw him no more. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +August 17th [1887]. + +Dear Gosse, + +I went to-day to R. L. S.'s ship, which is at the Albert Dock, about 20 +minutes in the train from Fenchurch Street. Its sailing has been put off +till Monday forenoon, so there is more time to do something. I couldn't, +after all, get _on_ the ship--as she stood off from the dock, without a +convenient approach, and both the captain and the steward (whom I wanted +to see) were not there, as I was told by a man on the dock who was +seeing some things being put on by a crane in which I couldn't be +transferred. The appearance of the vessel was the reverse of attractive, +though she is rather large than small. I write to-night to Mrs. +Stevenson, to ask if they are really coming up to sail--that is if +nothing has interfered at the last moment. If they are, there is nothing +to be done to deter them, that I see. I shall ask her to _telegraph_ me +an answer. I shall feel that I must go again (to the ship), as I don't +very well see how things are to be sent there. I will telegraph you what +she telegraphs me and what I decide to do. + +Ever yours, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + H. J.'s article on R. L. S. appeared in the _Century Magazine_, + April, 1888, and was reprinted in _Partial Portraits_. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +October 30th, 1887. + +My dear Louis, + +It is really a delight to get your charming letter (from the +undecipherable lake) just this very blessed minute. Long alienation has +made my American geography vague, and not knowing _what_ your lake is I +know still less _where_ it is. Nevertheless I roughly suspect it of +being in the Adirondacks; if it isn't, may it excuse the injury. Let me +tell you, quickly and crudely, that I am quite exhilarated that you like +the Article. I thought--or rather I hoped--that you would, and yet I +feared you wouldn't--i.e. mightn't--and altogether I was not so +convinced but that your expression of pleasure is a reassurance to me as +well as a gratification. I felt, while I wrote, that you served me well; +you were really, my dear fellow, a capital subject--I will modestly +grant you that, though it takes the bloom from my merit. To be not only +witty one's self but the cause in others of a wit that is not at one's +expense--that is a rare and high character, and altogether yours. I +devoutly hope that it's in the November Century that the thing appears, +and also that it was not too apparent to you in it that I hadn't seen a +proof--a privation I detest. I wrote to you some three weeks or so +ago--c/o Scribners. Wondrous seems to me the fate that leads you to the +prospect of wintering at--well, wherever you are. The succession of +incidents and places in your career is ever romantic. May you find what +you need--white, sunny Winter hours, not too stove-heated nor too +pork-fed, with a crisp dry air and a frequent leisure and no desperation +of inanition. And may much good prose flow from it all. I wish I could +see you--in my mind's eye: but que dis-je? I do--and the minutest +particularities of your wooden bower rise before me. I see the +clapboards and the piazza and the door-step and the door-handle, and the +road in front and the yard behind. Don't yearn to extinction for the +trim little personality of Skerryvore. I have great satisfaction in +hearing (from Mrs. Procter, of course) that that sweet house is let--to +those Canadians. May they be punctual with their rent. Do tell your +wife, on her return from the wild West, that I _supplicate_ her to write +to me, with items, details, specifications, and insistences. I am now +collecting some papers into a volume; and the Article, par excellence, +in the midst. May the American air rest lightly on you, my dear friend: +I wish it were mine to turn it on! + +Ever faithfully yours, +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. My love to your wife goes without saying--but I send a very +explicit friendliness to your mother. I hope she returns the liking of +America. And I bless the ticking Lloyd. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + Stevenson's letter (answered by the following) of admiration of + _Roderick Hudson_ and _execration_ of _The Portrait of a Lady_ is + included in the _Letters to his Family and Friends_, edited by Sir + Sidney Colvin. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +December 5th [1887]. + +My dear Louis, + +I could almost hate poor Roderick H. (in whom, at best, as in all my +past and shuffled off emanations and efforts, my interest is of the +slenderest,) for making you write so much more about him than about a +still more fascinating hero. If you had only given me a small instalment +of that romantic serial, The Mundane Situation of R. L. S.! My dear +fellow, you skip whole numbers at a time. Your correspondent wouldn't. I +am really delighted you can find something at this late day in that work +in which my diminutive muse first tried to elongate her little legs. It +is a book of considerable good faith, but I think of limited skill. +Besides, directly my productions are finished, or at least thrust out to +earn their living, they seem to _me_ dead. They dwindle when +weaned--removed from the parental breast, and only flourish, a little, +while imbibing the milk of my plastic care. None the less am I touched +by your excellent and friendly words. Perhaps I am touched even more by +those you dedicate to the less favoured _Portrait_. My dear Louis, I +don't think I follow you here--why does that work move you to such +scorn--since you can put up with Roderick, or with any of the others? As +they are, so it is, and as it is, so they are. Upon my word you are +unfair to it--and I scratch my head bewildered. 'Tis surely a graceful, +ingenious, elaborate work--with too many pages, but with (I think) an +interesting subject, and a good deal of life and style. There! _All_ my +works may be damnable--but I don't perceive the particular damnability +of that one. However I feel as if it were almost gross to defend +myself--for even your censure pleases and your restrictions refresh. I +have this very day received from Mr. Bain your _Memories and Portraits_, +and I lick my chops in advance. It is very delectable, I can see, and it +has the prettiest coat and face of any of your volumes.--London is +settling to its winter pace, and the cool rich fogs curtain us in. I see +Colvin once in a while _dans le monde_, which however I frequent less +and less. I miss you too sensibly. My love to your wife and mother--my +greeting to the brave Lloyd. + +Ever yours very faithfully, +H. JAMES. + +P.S. I am unspeakably vexed at the Century's long delay in printing my +paper on you--it is quite sickening. But I am helpless--and they tell me +it won't come out till _March_--d----n 'em all. I am also +sorry--very--not to have any other prose specimens of my own genius to +send you. I have really written a good deal lately--but the beastly +periodicals hold them back: I can't make out why. But I trust the dance +will begin before long, and that then you may glean some pleasure. I +pray you, do write something yourself for one who _knows_ and yet is +famished: for there isn't a morsel here that will keep one alive. I +won't question you--'twere vain--but I wish I knew more about you. I +want to _see_ you--where you live and _how_--and the complexion of your +days. But I don't know even the name of your habitat nor the date of +your letter: neither were on the page. I bless you all the same. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +January 2nd, 1888. + +My dear Howells, + +Your pretty read book (that is a misprint for _red_, but it looks well, +better than it deserves, so I let it stand,) the neat and attractive +volume, with its coquettish inscription over its mystifying date, came +in to me exactly as a new year's gift. I was delighted to get it, for I +had not perused it in the pages of Harper, for reasons that you will +understand--knowing as you must how little the habit of writing in the +serial form encourages one to read in that odious way, which so many +simple folk, thank heaven, think the best. I was on the point of getting +_April Hopes_ to add to the brave array of its predecessors (mine by +purchase, almost all of them,) when your graceful act saved me the +almost equally graceful sacrifice. I can make out why you are at Buffalo +almost as little as I believe that you believe that I have "long +forgotten" you. The intimation is worthy of the most tortuous feminine +mind that you have represented--say this wondrous lady, with the +daughter, in the very first pages of April Hopes, with whom I shall make +immediate and marvelling acquaintance. Your literary prowess takes my +breath away--you write so much and so well. I seem to myself a small +brown snail crawling after a glossy antelope. Let me hope that you +_enjoy_ your work as much as you ought to--that the grind isn't greater +than the inevitable (from the moment one really tries to _do_ anything). +Certainly one would never guess it, from your abounding page. How much I +wish I could keep this lovely new year by a long personal talk with you. +I am troubled about many things, about many of which you could give me, +I think (or rather I am sure,) advice and direction. I have entered +upon evil days--but this is for your most private ear. It sounds +portentous, but it only means that I am still staggering a good deal +under the mysterious and (to me) inexplicable injury +wrought--apparently--upon my situation by my two last novels, the +_Bostonians_ and the _Princess_, from which I expected so much and +derived so little. They have reduced the desire, and the demand, for my +productions to zero--as I judge from the fact that though I have for a +good while past been writing a number of good short things, I remain +irremediably unpublished. Editors keep them back, for months and years, +as if they were ashamed of them, and I am condemned apparently to +eternal silence. You must be so widely versed in all the reasons of +things (of this sort, to-day) in the U.S. that if I could discourse with +you awhile by the fireside I should endeavour to draw from you some +secret to break the spell. However, I don't despair, for I think I am +now really in better form than I have ever been in my life, and I +propose yet to do many things. Very likely too, some day, all my buried +prose will kick off its various tombstones at once. Therefore don't +betray me till I myself have given up. That won't be for a long time +yet. If we could have that rich conversation I should speak to you too +of your monthly polemics in _Harper_ and tell you (I think I should go +as far as that) of certain parts of the business in which I am less with +you than in others. It seems to me that on occasions you mix things up +that don't go together, sometimes make mistakes of proportion, and in +general incline to insist more upon the restrictions and limitations, +the _a priori_ formulas and interdictions, of our common art, than upon +that priceless freedom which is to me the thing that makes it worth +practising. But at this distance, my dear Howells, such things are too +delicate and complicated--they won't stand so long a journey. Therefore +I won't attempt them--but only say how much I am struck with your +energy, ingenuity, and courage, and your delightful interest in the +charming questions. I don't care how much you dispute about them if you +will only remember that a grain of example is worth a ton of precept, +and that with the imbecility of babyish critics the serious writer need +absolutely not concern himself. I am surprised, sometimes, at the things +you notice and seem to care about. One should move in a diviner air.... +I even confess that since the _Bostonians_, I find myself holding the +"critical world" at large in a singular contempt. I go so far as to +think that the literary sense is a distinctly waning quality. I can +speak of your wife and children only interrogatively--which will tell +you little--and me, I fear, less. But let me at least be affirmative to +the extent of wishing them all, very affectionately, and to Mrs. H. in +particular, the happiest New Year. Go on, my dear Howells, and send me +your books always--as I _think_ I send you mine. Continue to write only +as your admirable ability moves you and believe me + +Ever faithfully yours, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + The novel, just begun, was _The Tragic Muse_. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +July 31st [1888]. + +My dear Louis, + +You are too far away--you are too absent--too invisible, inaudible, +inconceivable. Life is too short a business and friendship too delicate +a matter for such tricks--for cutting great gory masses out of 'em by +the year at a time. Therefore come back. Hang it all--sink it all and +come back. A little more and I shall cease to believe in you: I don't +mean (in the usual implied phrase) in your veracity, but literally and +more fatally in your relevancy--your objective reality. You have become +a beautiful myth--a kind of unnatural uncomfortable unburied _mort_. You +put forth a beautiful monthly voice, with such happy notes in it--but it +comes from too far away, from the other side of the globe, while I +vaguely know that you are crawling like a fly on the nether surface of +my chair. Your adventures, no doubt, are wonderful; but I don't +successfully evoke them, understand them, believe in them. I do in those +you write, heaven knows--but I don't in those you perform, though the +latter, I know, are to lead to new revelations of the former and your +capacity for them is certainly wonderful enough. This is a selfish +personal cry: I wish you back; for literature is lonely and Bournemouth +is barren without you. Your place in my affection has not been usurped +by another--for there is not the least little scrap of another to usurp +it. If there were I would perversely try to care for him. But there +isn't--I repeat, and I literally care for nothing but your return. I +haven't even your novel to stay my stomach withal. The wan wet months +elapse and I see no sign of it. The beautiful portrait of your wife +shimmers at me from my chimney-piece--brought some months ago by the +natural McClure--but seems to refer to one as dim and distant and +delightful as a "toast" of the last century. I wish I could make you +homesick--I wish I could spoil your fun. It is a very featureless time. +The summer is rank with rheumatism--a dark, drowned, unprecedented +season. The town is empty but I am not going away. I have no money, but +I have a little work. I have lately written several short fictions--but +you may not see them unless you come home. I have just begun a novel +which is to run through the _Atlantic_ from January 1st and which I +aspire to finish by the end of this year. In reality I suppose I shall +not be fully delivered of it before the middle of next. After that, with +God's help, I propose, for a longish period, to do nothing but short +lengths. I want to leave a multitude of pictures of my time, projecting +my small circular frame upon as many different spots as possible and +going in for number as well as quality, so that the number may +constitute a total having a certain value as observation and testimony. +But there isn't so much as a creature here even to whisper such an +intention to. Nothing lifts its hand in these islands save blackguard +party politics. Criticism is of an abject density and puerility--it +doesn't exist--it writes the intellect of our race too low. Lang, in the +D.N., every morning, and I believe in a hundred other places, uses his +beautiful thin facility to write everything down to the lowest level of +Philistine twaddle--the view of the old lady round the corner or the +clever person at the dinner party. The incorporated society of authors +(I belong to it, and so do you, I think, but I don't know what it is) +gave a dinner the other night to American literati to thank them for +praying for international copyright. I carefully forbore to go, thinking +the gratulation premature, and I see by this morning's _Times_ that the +banquetted boon is further off than ever. Edmund Gosse has sent me his +clever little life of Congreve, just out, and I have read it--but it +isn't so good as his Raleigh. But no more was the insufferable +subject.... Come, my dear Louis, grow not too thin. I can't question +you--because, as I say, I don't conjure you up. You have killed the +imagination in me--that part of it which formed your element and in +which you sat vivid and near. Your wife and Mother and Mr. Lloyd suffer +also--I must confess it--by this failure of breath, of faith. Of course +I have your letter--from Manasquan (is that the idiotic name?) of +the--ingenuous me, to think there was a date! It was terribly +impersonal--it did me little good. A little more and I shan't believe in +you enough to bless you. Take this, therefore, as your last chance. I +follow all with an aching wing, an inadequate geography and an +ineradicable hope. Ever, my dear Louis, yours, to the last snub-- + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +Hotel de l'Ecu, Geneva. +October 29th, 1888. + +My dear William, + +Your beautiful and delightful letter of the 14th, from your country +home, descended upon me two days ago, and after penetrating myself with +it for 24 hours I sent it back to England, to Alice, on whom it will +confer equal beatitude: not only because so copious, but because so +"cheerful in tone" and appearing to show that the essentials of health +and happiness are with you. I wish to delay no hour longer to write to +you, though I am at this moment rather exhausted with the effort of a +long letter, completed five minutes since, to Louis Stevenson, in answer +to one I lately received from his wife, from some undecipherable +cannibal-island in the Pacific. They are such far-away, fantastic, +bewildering people that there is a certain fatigue in the achievement of +putting one's self in relation with them. I may mention in this +connection that I have had in my hands the earlier sheets of the _Master +of Ballantrae_, the new novel he is about to contribute to Scribner, and +have been reading them with breathless admiration. They are wonderfully +fine and perfect--he is a rare, delightful genius. + +I am sitting in our old family _salon_ in this place, and have sat here +much of the time for the last fortnight in sociable converse with family +ghosts--Father and Mother and Aunt Kate and our juvenile selves. I +became conscious, suddenly, about Oct. 10th, that I wanted very much to +get away from the stale dingy London, which I had not quitted, to speak +of, for 15 months, and notably not all summer--a detestable summer in +England, of wet and cold. Alice, whom I went to see, on arriving at this +conclusion, assured me she could perfectly dispense for a few weeks with +my presence on English soil; so I came straight here, where I have a +sufficient, though not importunate sense of being in a foreign country, +with a desired quietness for getting on with work. I have had 16 days of +extraordinarily beautiful weather, full of autumn colour as vivid as +yours at Chocorua, and with the Mt. Blanc range, perpetually visible, +literally hanging, day after day, over the blue lake. I have treated +myself, as I say, to the apartments, or a portion of them, in which we +spent the winter of '59-'60, and in which nothing is changed save that +the hotel seems to have gone down in the world a little, before the +multiplication of rivals--a descent, however, which has the _agrement_ +of unimpaired cleanliness and applies apparently to the prices as well. +It is very good and not at all dear. Geneva seems both duller and +smarter--a good deal bigger, yet emptier too. The Academy is now the +University--a large, winged building in the old public garden below the +Treille. But all the old smells and tastes are here, and the sensation +is pleasant. I expect in three or four days to go to Paris for about +three weeks--and back to London after that. I shall be very busy for the +next three or four months with the long thing I am doing for the +_Atlantic_ and which is to run no less than 15--though in shorter +instalments than my previous fictions; so that I have no time for wanton +travelling. But I enjoy the easier, lighter feeling of being out of +England. I suppose if one lived in one of these countries one would take +its problems to one's self, also, or be oppressed and darkened by +them--even as I am, more or less, by those which hang over me in London. +But as it is, the Continent gives one a refreshing sense of getting +_away_--away from Whitechapel and Parnell and a hundred other constantly +thickening heavinesses.... It is always a great misfortune, I think, +when one has reached a certain age, that if one is living in a country +not one's own and one is of anything of an ironic or critical +disposition, one mistakes the inevitable reflections and criticisms that +one makes, more and more as one grows older, upon life and human nature +etc., for a judgment of that particular country, its natives, +peculiarities, etc., to which, really, one has grown exceedingly +accustomed. For myself, at any rate, I am deadly weary of the whole +"international" state of mind--so that I _ache_, at times, with fatigue +at the way it is constantly forced upon me as a sort of virtue or +obligation. I can't look at the English-American world, or feel about +them, any more, save as a big Anglo-Saxon total, destined to such an +amount of melting together that an insistence on their differences +becomes more and more idle and pedantic; and that melting together will +come the faster the more one takes it for granted and treats the life of +the two countries as continuous or more or less convertible, or at any +rate as simply different chapters of the same general subject. +Literature, fiction in particular, affords a magnificent arm for such +taking for granted, and one may so do an excellent work with it. I have +not the least hesitation in saying that I aspire to write in such a way +that it would be impossible to an outsider to say whether I am at a +given moment an American writing about England or an Englishman writing +about America (dealing as I do with both countries,) and so far from +being ashamed of such an ambiguity I should be exceedingly proud of it, +for it would be highly civilized. You are right in surmising that it +must often be a grief to me not to get more time for reading--though not +in supposing that I am "hollowed out inside" by the limitations my +existence has too obstinately attached to that exercise, combined with +the fact that I produce a great deal. At times I do read almost as much +as my wretched little _stomach_ for it literally will allow, and on the +whole I get much more time for it as the months and years go by. I +touched bottom, in the way of missing time, during the first half of my +long residence in London--and traversed then a sandy desert, in that +respect--where, however, I took on board such an amount of human and +social information that if the same necessary alternatives were +presented to me again I should make the same choice. One can read when +one is middle-aged or old; but one can mingle in the world with fresh +perceptions only when one is young. The great thing is to be _saturated_ +with something--that is, in one way or another, with life; and I chose +the form of my saturation. Moreover you exaggerate the degree to which +my writing takes it out of my mind, for I try to spend only the interest +of my capital. + +I haven't told you how I found Alice when I last saw her. She is now in +very good form--still going out, I hear from her, in the mild moments, +and feeling very easy and even jolly about her Leamington winter. My +being away is a sign of her really good symptoms. She was _wuethend_ +after the London police, in connection with the Whitechapel murders, to +a degree that almost constituted robust health. I have seen a great many +(that is, more than usual) Frenchmen in London this year: they bring me +notes of introduction--and the other day, the night before coming away, +I entertained at dinner (at a club,) the French Ambassador at Madrid +(Paul Cambon), Xavier Charmes of the French Foreign Office, G. du +Maurier, and the wonderful little Jusserand, the charge d'affaires in +London, who is a great friend of mine, and to oblige and relieve whom it +was that I invited the two other diplomatists, his friends, whom he had +rather helplessly on his hands. THERE is the _real_ difference--a gulf +from the English (or the American) to the Frenchman, and vice versa +(still more); and not from the Englishman to the American. The Frenchmen +I see all seem to me wonderful the first time--but not so much, at all, +the second.--But I must finish this without having touched any of the +sympathetic things I meant to say to you about your place, your work on +it, Alice's prowesses as a country lady, the children's vie champetre, +etc. Aunt Kate, after her visit to you, praised all these things to us +with profusion and evident sincerity. I wish I could see them--but the +day seems far.--I haven't lain on the ground for so many years that I +feel as if I had spent them up in a balloon. Next summer I shall come +here--I mean to Switzerland, for which my taste has revived. I am full +of gratulation on your enlarged classes, chances of reading, etc., and +on your prospect of keeping the invalid child this winter. Give my +tender love to Alice. You are entering the period of keen suspense about +Cleveland, and I share it even here. I have lately begun to receive and +read the _Nation_ after a long interval--and it seems to me very rough. +Was it _ever_ so?... Ever your affectionate + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +IV + +LATER LONDON YEARS + +(1889-1897) + + +For the next five years, when once The Tragic Muse was off his hands, +Henry James gave himself up with persevering determination to the +writing of plays. He speaks very plainly, in his letters of the time, +concerning the motives which urged him to the theatre, and there is no +doubt that the chief of them was the desire for a kind of success which +his fiction failed to achieve. He puts it simply that he wished to make +money, that his books did not sell, and that he regarded the theatre +solely as a much-needed pecuniary resource. But such belittling of his +own motives--out of a feeling that was partly pride and partly +shyness--was not unusual with him; and it seems impossible to take this +language quite literally. For a man of letters with moderate tastes and +no family, Henry James's circumstances were more than easy, even if his +writings should earn him nothing at all; and he had no reason to doubt +that his future was sufficiently assured. Moreover, though his work +might have no great popular vogue--it had had a measure of that too, at +the time of Daisy Miller--it still never wanted its own attentive +circle; so that he had not to complain of the utter indifference that +may wear upon the nerves of even the most disinterested artist. The +sense of solitude that began to weigh upon him was perhaps more a matter +of temperament than of fact; it never for a moment meant that he had +lost faith in himself and his powers, but there mingled with it his +inveterate habit of forecasting the future in the most ominous light. As +he looked forward, he saw the undoubted decline of his popularity +carrying him further and further away from recognition and its rewards; +and the prospect, once the thought of it had taken root in his +imagination, distressed and dismayed him. All would be righted, he felt, +by the successful conquest of the theatre; there lay the way, not only +to solid gains, but to the reassurance of vaguer, less formulated +anxieties. With such a tangible gage of having made his impression he +would be relieved for ever from the fear of working in vain and alone. + +But from the moment when he began to write plays instead of novels, the +task laid hold upon him with other attractions; and it was these, no +doubt, which kept him at it through so many troubles and +disappointments. The dramatic form itself, in the first place, delighted +and tormented him with its difficulty; the artistic riddle of lucidity +in extreme compression, what he once characteristically described as the +"passionate economy" of the play as he wrote it, appealed to him and +drew him on to constantly renewed attempts. He admits that, but for this +perpetual challenge to his ingenuity, he could never have supported the +annoyances and irritations entailed by practical commerce with the +theatre. And yet it is easy to see that these too had a certain +fascination for him. He could not have been so eloquent in his +denunciation of all theatrical conditions, the "saw-dust and +orange-peel" of the trade, if he had not been enjoyably stimulated by +them; and indeed from his earliest youth his interest in the stage had +been keenly professional. The Tragic Muse herself, outcome of +innumerable sessions at the Theatre Francais, shews how intently he had +studied the art of acting--not as a spectacle only, but as a business +and a life. The world behind the theatrical scene, though in the end he +broke away from it with relief, closely occupied his mind during these +few years; and with his gift for turning all experience to imaginative +account he could scarcely look back on it afterwards as time wasted, +little as his heavy expenditure of spirit and toil had to shew for it. +His hope of finding fame and fortune in this direction failed +utterly--and failed, which was much to the good, with clearness and +precision at a given moment, so that he was able to make a clean cut and +return at once to his right line. But he took with him treasures of +observation lodged in a memory that to the end of his life always dwelt +upon the theatre with a curious mixture of exasperation and delight. + +Of all the plays, seven or eight in number, that he wrote between 1889 +and 1894, only two were actually seen upon the stage. The first of these +was a dramatic version of The American, produced by Edward Compton (who +played the principal part) at Southport in January 1891. The piece had a +fairly successful provincial life, but it failed to make good its hold +upon London, where it was given for the first time on September 26, +1891, at the Opera Comique, by the same company. It ran for about two +months, after which it was seen no more in London, though it continued +for some while longer to figure in Compton's provincial repertory. In +its later life it was played with a re-written last act, in which, much +against his will, Henry James conceded to popular taste a "happy ending" +for his hero and heroine. The other and much more elaborate production +was that of _Guy Domville_ at the St. James's Theatre on January 5, +1895, with George Alexander and Miss Marion Terry in the chief parts. +The story of this unfortunate venture is to be read in the letters that +follow. The play (which has never been published) was enthusiastically +received by the few and roughly rejected by the many; it ran for exactly +a month and then disappeared for good. It was the most ambitious, and no +doubt the best, piece of dramatic work that Henry James had produced, +and he immediately accepted its failure as the end, for the present, of +his play-writing. The first night of Guy Domville had been marked by an +incident which wounded him so deeply that he could never afterwards bear +the least reference to it; after the fall of the curtain he had been +exposed, apparently by a misunderstanding, to the hostility of the +grosser part of the audience, and the affront, the shock to his +sensitive taste, was extreme and enduring. There had been various plans +and projects in connection with his other plays, but by this time they +had all come to nothing. To the relief of those friends who knew what an +intolerable strain the whole agitated time had thrown upon his nerves, +he went back to the work and the life which were so evidently the right +scope for his genius. But before doing so he published four of his plays +in two volumes of _Theatricals_ (1894, 1895,) to the second of which he +prefixed an introduction which sums up, with great candour and dignity, +a part of the lesson he had learnt from his discouraging experience. + +Outside the theatre his life proceeded as usual, and his yearly visits +to Paris or Italy are almost the only events to be recorded. He was in +Paris in the autumn of 1889 and in Italy, chiefly at Florence and +Venice, for the following summer. But both these centres of attraction +were beginning to lose their hold on him a little, though for different +reasons: Paris for something in its artistic self-sufficiency that he +found increasingly unsympathetic--and Italy as it became more and more +a field of social claims, English and American, irresistible on the spot +but destructive of quiet work. He began to feel the need of some settled +country-home of his own in England, though for some years yet he took no +practical steps to find one. He was in Paris again, early in 1891. At +the end of the same year he was called to Dresden by the sudden death in +hospital there of a gifted young American friend with whom he had +latterly been much associated--Wolcott Balestier, whose short but +remarkable career, as a writer and still more as a "literary agent" for +other writers (including Henry James), has been commemorated by Mr. +Gosse in his _Portraits and Sketches_. From this distressing excursion +Henry James returned home to face another and greater sorrow which had +begun to threaten him for some time past. For two years his sister had +been growing steadily weaker; she had moved to London, and lived near +her brother in Kensington, but her seclusion was so rigid that only +those who knew him well understood how great a part she played in his +life. Her vigour of mind and imagination was as keen as ever, and though +the number of people she was able to see and know in England was very +small she lived ardently in the interest, highly critical for the most +part, that she took in public affairs. Her death in March 1892 meant for +Henry James not only the end of a companionship that was very dear to +him, but the breaking of the only family tie that he had had or was ever +to have in England. So long as his sister was near him there was one +person who shared his old memories and with whom he was in his own home; +and when it is recalled how intensely he always clung to his distant +kindred, and what a sense of support he drew from them even in his long +separation, it is possible to measure the loss that befell him +now--exactly at a time when such familiar and natural sympathy was most +precious to him. + +He spent the summer of 1892 again in Italy, avoiding the tourist-stream +by settling at Siena, after it had subsided, in the company of M. and +Mme. Paul Bourget, by this time his intimate friends. William James and +his family were now in Europe for a year of Switzerland and Italy, and +Henry joined them at Lausanne on his way home. The next two years of +London were given up, almost without intermission, to the hopes and +anxieties of his theatrical affairs, in which he was now completely +immersed--so much so, indeed, as to test his very remarkable powers of +physical endurance, which seem in middle life to have thrown off the +early troubles of his health. When this time of fevered agitation was +over he was able to compose himself at once to happier work, without +apparently feeling even the need of a day's holiday. In 1893 he was in +Paris in the spring, and again for a short while in Switzerland with his +brother; but these excursions were never real holidays--he was quickly +uneasy if he had not work of some kind on hand. He projected another +summer in Italy for the following year, and spent it chiefly in Venice +and Rome. This was the last of Italy, however, for some time; there were +too many friends everywhere--"the most disastrous attempt I have ever +made," he writes, "to come abroad for privacy and quiet." Still the only +alternative seemed to be sea-side lodgings in England; and for the +summer of 1895, escaping from the London season as usual, he went to +Torquay. By this time Guy Domville had failed and he was free again; he +had the happiest winter of work in London that he had known for five +years. After finishing some short stories he began The Spoils of +Poynton, and with it the series of his works that belong definitely to +his "later manner." At last, in 1896, instead of his usual esplanade, +he settled for a while upon an English country-side, making an +accidental choice that was to prove momentous. He took a small house for +the summer on the hill of Playden, in Sussex, where for the first time +in his life, and after twenty years of England, he enjoyed a solitude of +his own among trees and fields. From his terrace, where he sat under an +ash-tree working at his novel, he looked across a wide valley to the +beautiful old red-roofed town of Rye, climbing the opposite hill and +crowned with its church-tower. The charm and tranquillity of the place +were perfect, and when he had to give up the house at Playden he moved +for the autumn into the old Rye vicarage. Exploring the steep cobbled +streets round the church he came upon a singularly delightful old house, +of the early eighteenth century, with a large walled garden behind it, +which attracted him to the point of enquiring whether he might hope to +possess it. There appeared to be no prospect of this; but he went back +to London with a vivid sense that Lamb House was exactly the place he +needed, if it should ever fall to him. + +He had already finished The Spoils of Poynton and had immediately set to +work on What Maisie Knew, deeply reconciled now to the indifference of +the general public, which indeed became more and more confirmed. The +only question by this time was whether London was any longer the right +place for the determined concentration upon fiction that he decided was +to fill the rest of his life. The country would hardly have drawn him +thither for its own sake; there could not have been such a lack of it in +his existence, for more than fifty years, if it had strongly appealed to +him in itself. But London had long ago given him all it could, and his +great desire now was for peace and quiet and freedom from interruption. +In 1897, after a summer of the usual kind, at Bournemouth and Dunwich, +he suddenly learned that a tenant was being sought for Lamb House, and +he signed the lease within a few days. It was the most punctual and +appropriate stroke of fortune that could have been devised. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +April 29th, 1889. + +This is really dreadful news, my dear Louis, odious news to one who had +neatly arranged that his coming August should be spent gobbling down +your yarns--by some garden-window of Skerryvore--as the Neapolitan +lazzarone puts away the lubricating filaments of the vermicelli. And +yet, with my hideous capacity to understand it, I am strong enough, +superior enough, to say _anything_, for conversation, later. It's in the +light of unlimited conversation that I see the future years, and my +honoured chair by the ingleside will require a succession of new +cushions. I miss you shockingly--for, my dear fellow, there is no +one--literally no one; and I don't in the least follow you--I can't go +with you (I mean in conceptive faculty and the "realising sense,") and +you are for the time absolutely as if you were dead to me--I mean to my +imagination of course--not to my affection or my prayers. And so I shall +keep humble that you may pump into me--and make me stare and sigh and +look simple and be quite out of it--for ever and ever. It's the best +thing that can happen to one to see it written in your very hand that +you have been so uplifted in health and cheer, and if another year will +screw you up so tight that you won't "come undone" again, I will try and +hold on through the barren months. I will go to Mrs. Sitwell, to hear +what has made you blush--it must be something very radical. Your +chieftains are dim to me--why shouldn't they be when you yourself are? +_Va_ for another year--but don't stay away longer, for we should really, +for self-defence, have to outlive [?] you.... I myself do little but sit +at home and write little tales--and even long ones--you shall see them +when you come back. Nothing would induce me, by sending them to you, to +expose myself to damaging Polynesian comparisons. For the rest, there is +nothing in this land but the eternal Irish strife--the place is all +gashed and gory with it. I can't tell you of it--I am too sick of +it--more than to say that two or three of the most interesting days I +ever passed were lately in the crowded, throbbing, thrilling little +court of the Special Commission, over the astounding drama of the forged +_Times_ letters. + +I have a hope, a dream, that your mother may be coming home and that one +may go and drink deep of her narrations. But it's idle and improbable. A +wonderful, beautiful letter from your wife to Colvin seemed, a few +months ago, to make it clear that _she_ has no quarrel with your wild +and wayward life. I hope it agrees with her a little too--I mean that it +renews her youth and strength. It is a woeful time to wait--for your +prose as for your person--especially as the prose can't be better though +the person may. + +Your very faithful +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +Hotel de Hollande, Paris. +Nov. 28th, '89. + +My dear William, + +...I send you this from Paris, where I have been for the last five +weeks. Toward the end I relented in regard to the exhibition and came +over in time for the last fortnight of it. It was despoiled of its +freshness and invaded by hordes of furious Franks and fiery Huns--but it +was a great impression and I'm glad I sacrificed to it. So I've remained +on. I go back Dec. 1st. It happens that I have been working very hard +all this month--almost harder than ever in my life before--having on top +of other pressing and unfinished tasks undertaken, for the bribe of +large lucre, to translate Daudet's new _Tartarin_ novel for the +Harpers.... I had a talk of one hour and a half with him the other +day--about "our work" (!!) and his own queer, deplorable condition, +which he intensely converts into art, profession, success, copy, +etc.--taking perpetual notes about his constant suffering (terrible in +degree,) which are to make a book called _La Douleur_, the most detailed +and pessimistic notation of pain _qui fut jamais_. He is doing, in the +midst of this, his new, gay, lovely "Tartarin" for the Harpers _en +premier lieu_; that is, they are to publish it serially with wonderfully +"processed" drawings before it comes out as a book in France--and I am +to represent him, in English (a difficult, but with ingenuity a pleasant +and amusing task,) while this serial period lasts. I have seen a good +deal of Bourget, and as I have breakfasted with Coppee and twice dined +in company with Meilhac, Sarcey, Albert Wolff, Goncourt, Ganderax, +Blowitz, etc., you will judge that I am pretty well saturated and ought +to have the last word about ces gens-ci. That last word hasn't a grain +of subjection or of mystery left in it: it is simply, "Chinese, Chinese, +Chinese!" They are finished, besotted mandarins, and their Paris is +their celestial Empire. With that, such a Paris as it sometimes seems! +Nevertheless I've enjoyed it, and though I am very tired, too tired to +write to you properly, I shall have been much refreshed by my stay here, +and have taken aboard some light and heat for the black London +winter.... I hope that above house and college and life and everything +you still hold up an undemented head, and are not in a seedy way. + +Ever your affectionate +HENRY. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + Stevenson was now beginning to break to his friends at home the + possibility that he might settle permanently in the South Seas; but + he still projected a preliminary visit to England, or at least to + Europe. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +March 21st, 1890. + +My dear Louis and my dear Mrs. Louis, + +It comes over me with horror and shame that, within the next very few +months, your return to England may become such a reality that I shall +before long stand face to face with you branded with the almost +blood-guilt of my long silence. Let me break that silence then, before +the bliss of meeting you again (heaven speed the day) is qualified, in +prospect, by the apprehension of your disdain. I despatch these +incoherent words to Sydney, in the hope they may catch you before you +embark for our palpitating England. My despicable dumbness has been a +vile accident--I needn't assure you that it doesn't pretend to the +smallest backbone of system or sense. I have simply had the busiest year +of my life and have been so drained of the fluid of expression--so +tapped into the public pitcher--that my whole correspondence has dried +up and died of thirst. Then, somehow, you had become inaccessible to the +mind as well as to the body, and I had the feeling that, in the midst of +such desperate larks, any news of mine would be mere irrelevant drivel +to you. Now, however, you _must_ take it, such as it is. It won't, of +course, be news to you at all that the idea of your return has become +altogether the question of the day. The other two questions (the eternal +Irish and Rudyard Kipling) aren't in it. (We'll tell you all about +Rudyard Kipling--your nascent rival; he has killed one immortal--Rider +Haggard; the star of the hour, aged 24 and author of remarkable +Anglo-Indian and extraordinarily observed barrack life--Tommy +Atkins--tales.) What I am pledged to do at the present moment (pledged +to Colvin) is to plead with you passionately on the question of Samoa +and expatriation. But somehow, when it comes to the point, I can't do +it--partly because I can't really believe in anything so dreadful (a +long howl of horror has gone up from all your friends), and partly +because before any step so fatal is irretrievably taken we are to have a +chance to see you and bind you with flowery chains. When you tell me +with your own melodious lips that you're committed, I'll see what's to +be done; but I won't take a single plank of the house or a single hour +of the flight for granted. Colvin has given me instantly all your recent +unspeakable news--I mean the voyage to Samoa and everything preceding, +and your mother has kindly communicated to me her own wonderful +documents. Therefore my silence has been filled with sound--sound +infinitely fearful sometimes. But the joy of your health, my dear +Louis, has been to me as an imparted sensation--making me far more glad +than anything that I could originate with myself. I shall never be as +well as I am glad that you are well. We are poor tame, terrified +products of the tailor and the parlour-maid; but we have a fine +sentiment or two, all the same.... I, thank God, am in better form than +when you first took ship. I have lately finished the longest and most +careful novel I have ever written (it has gone 16 months in a +periodical) and the last, in that form, I shall ever do--it will come +out as a book in May. Also other things too flat to be bawled through an +Australasian tube. But the intensest throb of my literary life, as of +that of many others, has been the Master of Ballantrae--a pure hard +crystal, my boy, a work of ineffable and exquisite art. It makes us all +as proud of you as you can possibly be of _it_. Lead him on blushing, +lead him back blooming, by the hand, dear Mrs. Louis, and we will talk +over everything, as we used to lang syne at Skerryvore. When we _have_ +talked over everything and when all your tales are told, then you may +paddle back to Samoa. But we shall call time. My heartiest greeting to +the young Lloyd--grizzled, I fear, before his day. I have been very +sorry to hear of your son-in-law's bad case. May all that tension be +over now. _Do_ receive this before you sail--_don't_ sail till you get +it. But then bound straight across. I send a volume of the Rising Star +to goad you all hither with jealousy. He has quite done for your +neglected even though neglectful friend, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +April 28th, '90. + +My dear Louis, + +I didn't, for two reasons, answer your delightful letter, or rather +exquisite note, from the Sydney Club, but I must thank you for it now, +before the gulfs have washed you down, or at least have washed away from +you all after-tastes of brineless things--the stay-at-home works of +lubberly friends. One of the reasons just mentioned was that I had +written to you at Sydney (c/o the mystic Towns,) only a few days before +your note arrived; the other is that until a few days ago I hugged the +soft illusion that by the time anything else would reach you, you would +already have started for England. This fondest of hopes of all of us has +been shattered in a manner to which history furnishes a parallel only in +the behaviour of its most famous coquettes and courtesans. You are +indeed the male Cleopatra or buccaneering Pompadour of the Deep--the +wandering Wanton of the Pacific. You swim into our ken with every +provocation and prospect--and we have only time to open our arms to +receive you when your immortal back is turned to us in the act of still +more provoking flight. The moral is that we have to be virtuous whether +we like it or no. Seriously, it was a real heart-break to have September +substituted for June; but I have a general faith in the fascinated +providence who watches over you, to the neglect of all other human +affairs--I believe that even _He_ has an idea that you know what you are +about, and even what _He_ is, though He by this time doesn't in the +least know himself. Moreover I have selfish grounds of resignation in +the fact that I shall be in England in September, whereas, to my almost +intolerable torment, I should probably not have been in June. Therefore +when you come, if you ever do, which in my heart of hearts I doubt, I +shall see you in all your strange exotic bloom, in all your paint and +beads and feathers. May you grow a magnificent extra crop of all such +things (as they will bring you a fortune here,) in this much grudged +extra summer. Charming and delightful to me to see you with a palate for +_my_ plain domestic pudding, after all the wild cannibal smacks that you +have learned to know. I think the better of the poor little study in the +painfully-familiar, since hearing that it could bear such voyages and +resist such tests. You have fed a presumption that vaguely stirs within +me--that of trying to get at you in June or July with a fearfully +long-winded but very highly-finished novel which I am putting forth in +(probably) the last days of May. If I were sure it would overtake you on +some coral strand I shouldn't hesitate; for, seriously and selfishly +speaking, I can't (spiritually) afford _not_ to put the book under the +eye of the sole and single Anglo-saxon capable of perceiving--though he +may care for little else in it--how well it is written. So I shall +probably cast it upon the waters and pray for it; as I suppose you are +coming back to Sydney, it may meet you there, and you can read it on the +voyage home. In that box you'll _have_ to. I don't say it to bribe you +in advance to unnatural tolerance--but I have an impression that I +didn't make copious or clear to you in my last what a grand literary +life your Master of B. has been leading here. Somehow, a miracle has +been wrought for you (for you they are,) and the fine old feather-bed of +English taste _has_ thrilled with preternatural recognitions. The most +unlikely number of people _have_ discerned that the Master is "well +written." It has had the highest success of honour that the +English-reading public can now confer; where it has failed (the +success, save that it hasn't failed at all!) it has done so through the +constitutional incapacity of the umpire--infected, by vulgar +intercourses, as with some unnameable disease. We have lost our +status--_nous n'avons plus qualite_--to confer degrees. Nevertheless, +last year you woke us up at night, for an hour--and we scrambled down in +our shirt and climbed a garden-wall and stole a laurel, which we have +been brandishing ever since over your absent head. I tell you this +because I think Colvin (at least it was probably he--he is visibly +better--or else Mrs. Sitwell) mentioned to me the other day that you had +asked in touching virginal ignorance for news of the fate of the book. +Its "fate," my dear fellow, has been glittering glory--simply: and I +ween--that is I hope--you will find the glitter has chinked as well. I +sent you a new Zola the other day--at a venture: but I have no +confidence that I gratified a curiosity. I haven't read The Human +Beast--one knows him without that--and I am told Zola's account of him +is dull and imperfect. I would read anything new about him--but this is +old, old, old. I hope your pen, this summer, will cleave the deeps of +art even as your prow, or your keel, or whatever's the knowing name for +it, furrows the Pacific flood. Into what strange and wondrous dyes you +must be now qualified to dip it! Roast yourself, I beseech you, on the +sharp spit of perfection, that you may give out your aromas and +essences! Tell your wife, please, to read between the lines of this, and +between the words and the letters, all that I miss the occasion to write +directly to _her_. I hope she has continued to distil, to your mother, +the honey of those impressions of which a few months ago the latter lent +me for a day or two a taste--on its long yellow foolscap combs. They +would make, they _will_ make, of course, a deliciously sweet book. I +hope Lloyd, whom I greet and bless, is living up to the height of his +young privilege--and secreting honey too, according to the mild +discipline of the hive. There are lots of things more to tell you, no +doubt, but if I go on they will all take the shape of questions, and +that won't be fair. The supreme thing to say is Don't, oh _don't_, +simply ruin our nerves and our tempers for the rest of life by _not_ +throwing the rope in September, to him who will, for once in his life, +not muff his catch: + +H.J. + + + + +_To William James._ + + The project guardedly referred to in this letter was that of + writing a series of plays. He had already finished the + dramatisation of _The American_. + + +Hotel de la Ville, Milan. +May 16th, 1890. + +My dear William, + +...I have been both very busy and very bent on getting away this year +without fail, for a miracle, from the oppressive London season. I have +just accomplished it; I passed the St. Gotthard day before yesterday, +and I hope to find it possible to remain absent till August 1st. After +that I am ready to pay cheerfully and cheaply for my journey by staying +quietly in town for August and September, in the conditions in which you +saw me last year. I shall take as much as possible of a holiday, for I +have been working carefully, consecutively and unbrokenly for a very +long time past--turning out one thing (always "highly finished") after +another. However, I _like_ to work, thank heaven, and at the end of a +month's privation of it I sink into gloom and discomfort--so that I +shall probably not wholly "neglect my pen".... I hope you will have +received promptly a copy of _The Tragic Muse_, though I am afraid I sent +my list to the publishers a little late. I don't in the least know, +however, when the book is supposed to come out. I have no opinion or +feeling about it now--though I took long and patient and careful trouble +(which no creature will recognise) with it at the time: too much, no +doubt: for my mind is now a muddled, wearied blank on the subject. I +have shed and ejected it--it's void and dead--and my feeling as to what +may become of it is reduced to the sordid hope it will make a little +money--which it won't.... The matter you expressed a friendly hope about +the success of, and which for all sorts of reasons I desire to be +extremely secret, silent and mysterious about--I mean the enterprise I +covertly mentioned to you as conceived by me with a religious and +deliberate view of gain over a greater scale than the Book (my Books at +least) can ever approach bringing in to me: this matter is on a good and +promising footing, but it is too soon to say anything about it, save +that I am embarked in it seriously and with rather remarkably good +omens. By which I mean that it is not to depend on a single attempt, but +on half a dozen of the most resolute and scientific character, which I +find I am abundantly capable of making, but which, alas, in the light of +this discovery, I become conscious that I ought to have made ten years +ago. I was then discouraged all round, while a single word of +encouragement would have made the difference. Now it is late. But on the +other hand the thing would have been then only an experiment more or +less like another--whereas now it's an absolute necessity, imposing +itself without choice if I wish a loaf on the shelf for my old age. +Fortunately as far as it's gone it announces itself well--but I can't +tell you yet how far that is. The only thing is to do a great lot. + +By the time this reaches you I suppose your wife and children will have +gone to recline under the greenwood tree. I hope their gentle outlawry +will be full of comfort for them. It's poor work to me writing about +them without ever seeing them. But my interest in them is deep and +large, and please never omit to give my great love to them: to Alice +first in the lump, to be broken up and distributed by her. May you +squeeze with a whole skin through the tight weeks of the last of the +term--may you live to rest and may you rest to live. I shall not, I +think, soon again write to you so rarely as for the last year. This will +be partly because _The Tragic Muse_ is to be my last long novel. For the +rest of my life I hope to do lots of short things with irresponsible +spaces between. I see even a great future (ten years) of such. But they +won't make money. Excuse (you probably rather will esteem) the sordid +tone of your affectionate + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + +Hotel de la Ville, Milan. +May 17th, 1890. + +My dear Howells, + +I have been not writing to you at a tremendous, an infamous rate, for a +long time past; but I should indeed be sunk in baseness if I were to +keep this pace after what has just happened. For what has just happened +is that I have been reading the _Hazard of New Fortunes_ (I confess I +should have liked to change the name for you,) and that it has filled me +with communicable rapture. I remember that the last time I came to Italy +(or almost,) I brought your Lemuel Barker, which had just come out, to +read in the train, and let it divert an intense professional eye from +the most clamourous beauties of the way--writing to you afternoons from +this very place, I think, all the good and all the wonder I thought of +it. So I have a decent precedent for insisting to you, now, under +circumstances exactly similar (save that the present book is a much +bigger feat,) that, to my charmed and gratified sense, the _Hazard_ is +simply prodigious.... I should think it would make you as happy as poor +happiness will let us be, to turn off from one year to the other, and +from a reservoir in daily domestic use, such a free, full, rich flood. +In fact your reservoir deluges me, altogether, with surprise as well as +other sorts of effusion; by which I mean that though you do much to +empty it you keep it remarkably full. I seem to myself, in comparison, +to fill mine with a teaspoon and obtain but a trickle. However, I don't +mean to compare myself with you or to compare you, in the particular +case, with anything but life. When I do that--with the life you see and +represent--your faculty for representing it seems to me extraordinary +and to shave the truth--the general truth you aim at--several degrees +closer than anyone else begins to do. You are less _big_ than Zola, but +you are ever so much less clumsy and more really various, and moreover +you and he don't see the same things--you have a wholly different +consciousness--_you_ see a totally different side of a different race. +Man isn't at all _one_ after all--it takes so much of him to be +American, to be French, &c. I won't even compare you with something I +have a sort of dim stupid sense you might be and are not--for I don't in +the least know that you might be it, after all, or whether, if you were, +you wouldn't cease to be that something you are which makes me write to +you thus. We don't know what people might give us that they don't--the +only thing is to take them on what they do and to allow them absolutely +and utterly their conditions. This alone, for the tastes, secures +freedom of enjoyment. I apply the rule to you, and it represents a +perfect triumph of appreciation; because it makes me accept, largely, +all your material from you--an absolute gain when I consider that I +should never take it from myself. I note certain things which make me +wonder at your form and your fortune (e.g.--as I have told you +before--the fatal colour in which they let _you_, because you live at +home--is it?--paint American life; and the fact that there's a whole +quarter of the heaven upon which, in the matter of composition, you seem +consciously--_is_ it consciously?--to have turned your back;) but these +things have no relevancy whatever as grounds of dislike--simply because +you communicate so completely _what_ you undertake to communicate. The +novelist is a particular _window_, absolutely--and of worth in so far as +he is one; and it's because you open so well and are hung so close over +the street that I could hang out of it all day long. Your very value is +that you choose your own street--heaven forbid I should have to choose +it for you. If I should say I mortally dislike the people who pass in +it, I should seem to be taking on myself that intolerable responsibility +of selection which it is exactly such a luxury to be relieved of. Indeed +I'm convinced that no readers above the rank of an idiot--this number is +moderate, I admit--really fail to take any view that is really _shown_ +them--any gift (of subject) that's really given. The usual imbecility of +the novel is that the showing and giving simply don't come off--the +reader never touches the subject and the subject never touches the +reader; the window is no window at all--but only childish _finta_, like +the ornaments of our beloved Italy. This is why, as a triumph of +_communication_, I hold the _Hazard_ so rare and strong. You communicate +in touches so close, so fine, so true, so droll, so frequent. I am +writing too much (you will think me demented with chatter;) so that I +can't go into specifications of success.... + +I continue to scribble, though with relaxed continuity while abroad; but +I can't talk to you about it. One thing only is clear, that henceforth I +must do, or half do, England in fiction--as the place I see most today, +and, in a sort of way, know best. I have at last more acquired notions +of it, on the whole, than of any other world, and it will serve as well +as any other. It has been growing distincter that America fades from me, +and as she never trusted me at best, I can trust _her_, for effect, no +longer. Besides I can't be doing _de chic_, from here, when you, on the +spot, are doing so brilliantly the _vecu_.... + + + + +_To Miss Alice James._ + + The play which H. J. had given his sister to read was the dramatic + version of _The American_. It had now been accepted for production + by Edward Compton, who was to play the part of Christopher Newman. + Some intentional and humorous exaggeration, it ought perhaps to be + mentioned, enters into H. J.'s constant appeal for discreet silence + in these matters. As for the projected excursion with Mr. and Mrs. + Curtis, he eventually went with them the whole way, and saw the + Passion Play at Oberammergau. + + +Palazzo Barbaro, Venice. +June 6th [1890]. + +Dearest Sister, + +I am ravished by your letter after reading the play (keep it locked up, +safe and secret, though there are three or four copies in existence) +which makes me feel as if there had been a triumphant premiere and I had +received overtures from every managerial quarter and had only to count +my gold. At any rate I am delighted that you have been struck with it +exactly as I have tried to strike, and that the pure practical character +of the effort has worked its calculated spell upon you. For what +encourages me in the whole business is that, as the piece stands, there +is not, in its felicitous form, the ghost of a "fluke" or a mere chance: +it is all "art" and an absolute address of means to the end--the end, +viz., of meeting exactly the immediate, actual, intense British +conditions, both subjective and objective, and of acting in (to a +minute, including entr'actes) 2 hours and 3/4. Ergo, I can do a dozen +more infinitely better; and I am excited to think how much, since the +writing of this one piece has been an education to me, a little further +experience will do for me. Also I am sustained by the sense, on the +whole, that though really superior acting would help it immensely, yet +mediocrity of handling (which is all, at the best, I am pretty sure, +that it will get) won't and can't kill it, and that there may be even +something sufficiently general and human about it, to make it (given its +eminent actability) "keep the stage," even after any first vogue it may +have had has passed away. That fate--in the poverty-stricken condition +of the English repertory--would mean profit indeed, and an income to my +descendants. But one mustn't talk of this kind of thing yet. However, +since you have been already so deeply initiated, I think I will enclose +(keep it sacredly for me) an admirable letter I have just received from +the precious Balestier in whose hands, as I wrote you, I placed the +settlement of the money-question, the terms of the writing agreement +with Compton. Compton saw him on Monday last--and I send the letter +mainly to illustrate the capital intelligence and competence of +Balestier and show you in what good hands I am. He will probably strike +you, as he strikes me, as the perfection of an "agent"--especially when +you consider that he has undertaken this particular job out of pure +friendship. Everything, evidently, will be well settled--on the basis, +of course, which can't be helped, of production in London only about +the middle of next year. But by that time I hope to have done a good bit +more work--and I shall be beguiled by beginning to follow, in the +autumn, the rehearsals for the country production. Keep Balestier's +letter till I come back--I shall get another one from him in a day or +two with the agreement to sign.... These castles in Spain are at least +exhilarating: in a certain sense I should like you very much to +communicate to William your good impression of the drama--but on the +whole I think you had better not, for the simple reason that it is very +important it shouldn't be talked about (especially so long) in +advance--and it wouldn't be safe, inasmuch as every whisper gets into +the papers--and in some fearfully vulgarized and perverted form. You +might hint to William that you have read the piece under seal of secresy +to me and think so-and-so of it--but are so bound (to me) not to give a +sign that he must bury what you tell him in tenfold mystery. But I doubt +if even this would be secure--it would be in the _Transcript_ the next +week. + +Venice continues adorable and the Curtises the soul of benevolence. +Their upstairs apartment (empty and still unoffered--at forty pounds a +year--to any one but me) beckons me so, as a foot-on-the-water here, +that if my dramatic ship had begun to come in, I should probably be +tempted to take it at a venture--for all it would matter. But for the +present I resist perfectly--especially as Venice isn't all advantageous. +The great charm of such an idea is the having, in Italy, a little cheap +and private refuge independent of hotels etc., which every year grow +more disagreeable and German and tiresome to face--not to say dearer +too. But it won't be for this year--and the Curtises won't let it. What +Pen Browning has done here ... with the splendid Palazzo Rezzonico, +transcends description for the beauty, and, as Ruskin would say, +"wisdom and rightness" of it. It is altogether royal and imperial--but +"Pen" isn't kingly and the _train de vie_ remains to be seen. Gondoliers +ushering in friends from pensions won't fill it out.... I am thinking, +after all, of joining the Curtises in the evidently most beautiful drive +(of upwards of a week, with rests) they are starting upon on the 14th, +from a place called Vittorio, in the Venetian Alps, two hours rail from +here, through Cadore, Titian's country, the Dolomites etc., toward +Oberammergau. They offer me pressingly the fourth seat in the carriage +that awaits them when they leave the train--and also an extra ticket +they have taken for the play at Oberammergau, if I choose to go so far. +This I shall scarcely do, but I shall probably leave with them, drive 4 +or 5 days and come back, via Verona, by rail--leaving my luggage here. +Continue to address here--unless, before that, I give you one other +address while I am gone. I shall find all letters here, on my return, if +I do go, in the keeping of the excellent _maestro di casa_--the Venetian +Smith. I should be back, at the latest, by the 25th--probably by the +20th. In this case I shall presumably go back to Florence to spend 4 or +5 days with Baldwin (going to Siena or Perugia;) after which I have a +dream of going to Vallombrosa (nearly 4000 feet above the sea--but of a +softness!) for 2 or 3 weeks--till I have to leave Italy on my way home. +I am writing to Edith Peruzzi, who has got a summer-lodge there, and is +already there, for information about the inn. If I don't go there I +shall perhaps try Camaldoli or San Marcello--all high in the violet +Apennines, within 3 or 4 hours, and mainly by a little carriage, of +Florence. But I want to compass Vallombrosa, which I have never seen and +have always dreamed of and which I am assured is divine--infinitely +salubrious and softly cool. The idea of lingering in Italy a few weeks +longer on these terms is very delightful to me--it does me, as yet, +nothing but good. But I shall see. I put B.'s letter in another +envelope. I rejoiced in your eight gallops; they may be the dozen now. + +Ever your HENRY. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +Paradisino, Vallombrosa, Tuscany. +July 23rd, 1890. + +My dear Brother, + +I had from you some ten days ago a most delightful letter written just +after the heroic perusal of my interminable novel--which, according to +your request, I sent off almost too precipitately to Alice, so that I +haven't it here to refer to. But I don't need to "refer" to it, inasmuch +as it has plunged me into a glow of satisfaction which is far, as yet, +from having faded. I can only thank you tenderly for seeing so much good +in the clumsy thing--as I thanked your Alice, who wrote me a most lovely +letter, a week or two ago. I have no illusions of any kind about the +book, and least of all about its circulation and "popularity." From +these things I am quite divorced and never was happier than since the +dissolution has been consecrated by (what seems to me) the highest +authorities. One must go one's way and know what one's about and have a +general plan and a private religion--in short have made up one's mind as +to _ce qui en est_ with a public the draggling after which simply leads +one in the gutter. One has always a "public" enough if one has an +audible vibration--even if it should only come from one's self. I shall +never make my fortune--nor anything like it; but--I know what I shall +do, and it won't be bad.--I am lingering on late in Italy, as you see, +so as to keep away from London till August 1st or thereabouts. (I stay +in this exquisite spot till that date.) I shall then, returning to my +normal occupations, have had the best and clearest and pleasantest +holiday of three months, that I have had for many a day. I have been +accompanied on this occasion by a literary irresponsibility which has +caused me to enjoy Italy perhaps more than ever before;--let alone that +I have never before been perched (more than three thousand feet in the +air) in so perfect a paradise as this unspeakable Vallombrosa. It is +Milton's Vallombrosa, the original of his famous line, the site of the +old mountain monastery which he visited and which stands still a few +hundred feet below me as I write, "suppressed" and appropriated some +time ago by the Italian Government, who have converted it to the State +school of "Forestry." This little inn--the Paradisino, as it is called, +on a pedestal of rock overhanging the violet abysses like the prow of a +ship, is the Hermitage (a very comfortable one) of the old convent. The +place is extraordinarily beautiful and "sympathetic," the most romantic +mountains and most admirable woods--chestnut and beech and magnificent +pine-forests, the densest, coolest shade, the freshest, sweetest air and +the most enchanting views. It is full 20 years since I have done +anything like so much wandering through dusky woods and lying with a +book on warm, breezy hillsides. It has given me a sense of summer which +I had lost in so many London Julys; given me almost the summer of one's +childhood back again. I shall certainly come back here for other Julys +and other Augusts--and I hate to go away now. May you, and all of you, +these weeks, have as sweet, or half as sweet, an impression of the +natural universe as yours affectionately, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + The "ordeal" was the first night of _The American_, produced by + Edward Compton and his company at Southport in anticipation of its + eventual appearance in London. + + +Prince of Wales Hotel, +Southport. + +Jan. 3rd [1891]. + +My dear Gosse, + +I am touched by your _petit mot_. De gros mots seem to me to be so much +more applicable to my fallen state. The only thing that can be said for +it is that it is not so low as it may perhaps be to-morrow--after the +vulgar ordeal of to-night. Let me therefore profit by the few remaining +hours of a recognizable _status_ to pretend to an affectionate +reciprocity. I am yours and your wife's while yet I _may_ be. After 11 +o'clock to-night I _may_ be the world's--you know--and I may be the +undertaker's. I count upon you both to spend this evening in fasting, +silence and supplication. I will send you a word in the morning--wire +you if I can--if there is anything at all to boast of. My hopes rest +solely on intrinsic charms--the adventitious graces of art are not "in +it." I am so nervous that I miswrite and misspell. Pity your infatuated +but not presumptuous friend, + +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. It would have been delightful--and terrible--if you had been able +to come. I believe Archer is to come. + +P.P.S. I don't return straight to London--don't get there till Tuesday +or Wednesday. I shall have to wait and telegraph you which evening I can +come in. + + + + +_To Mrs. Hugh Bell._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Jan. 8th [1891]. + +Dear Mrs. Bell, + +Your most kind gratulatory note deserved an answer more gratefully +prompt than this. But I extended my absence from town to a short visit +at Cheltenham, and the whole thing was virtually, till yesterday, a +complete extinction of leisure. Delightful of you to want "details." I +think, if I were to inflict them on you, they would all be illustrative +of the cheering and rewarding side of our feverish profession. The +passage from knock-kneed nervousness (the night of the _premiere_, as +one clings, in the wing, to the curtain rod, as to the _pied des +autels_) to a simmering serenity is especially life-saving in its +effect. I flung myself upon Compton after the 1st act: "In heaven's +name, is it _going_?" "Going?--Rather! You could hear a pin drop!" Then, +after that, one felt it--one _heard_ it--one blessed it--and, at the end +of all, one (after a decent and discreet delay) simpered and gave +oneself up to _courbettes_ before the curtain, while the applausive +house emitted agreeable sounds from a kind of gas-flaring +indistinguishable dimness and the gratified Compton publicly pressed +one's hand and one felt that, really, as far as Southport could testify +to the circumstance, the stake was won. Of course it's only +Southport--but I have larger hopes, inasmuch as it was just the meagre +provincial conditions and the limited provincial interpretation that +deprived the performance of all adventitious aid. And when my hero and +heroine and another friend supped with me at the inn after the battle, I +felt that they were really as radiant as if we were carousing among the +slain. They _seem_ indeed wondrous content. The great feature of the +evening was the way Compton "came out" beyond what he had done or +promised at rehearsal, and acted really most interestingly and +admirably--if not a "revelation" at any rate a very jolly surprise. His +part is one in which I surmise he really counts upon making a large +success--and though I say it who shouldn't, it is one of incontestable +opportunities. However, all this is to come--and we stumble in judgment. +Amen. Voila, ma chere amie. You have been through all this, and more, +and will tolerate my ingenuities.... + +All merriment to _your_ "full house." + +Yours most truly, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +January 12th, 1891. + +My dear Louis, + +I have owed you a letter too shamefully long--and now that I have taken +my pen in hand, as we used to say, I feel how much I burn to communicate +with you. As your magnanimity will probably have forgotten how long ago +it was that you addressed me, from Sydney, the tragic statement of your +permanent secession I won't remind you of so detested a date. That +statement, indeed, smote me to the silence I have so long preserved: I +couldn't--I didn't protest; I even mechanically and grimly assented; but +I couldn't _talk_ about it--even to you and your wife. Missing you is +always a perpetual ache--and aches are disqualifying for gymnastic +feats. In short we forgive you (the Muses and the soft Passions forgive +_us_!) but we can't quite _treat_ you as if we did. However, all this +while I have many things to thank you for. In the first place for Lloyd. +He was delightful, we loved him--nous nous l'arrachames. He is a most +sympathetic youth, and we revelled in his rich conversation and +exclaimed on his courtly manners. How vulgar you'll think us all when +you come back (there is malice in that "when.") Then for the beautiful +strange things you sent me and which make for ever in my sky-parlour a +sort of dim rumble as of the Pacific surf. My heart beats over them--my +imagination throbs--my eyes fill. I have covered a blank wall of my +bedroom with an acre of painted cloth and feel as if I lived in a Samoan +tent--and I have placed the sad sepia-drawing just where, 50 times a +day, it most transports and reminds me. To-day what I am grateful for is +your new ballad-book, which has just reached me by your command. I have +had time only to read the first few things--but I shall absorb the rest +and give you my impression of them before I close this. As I turn the +pages I seem to see that they are full of charm and of your "Protean" +imaginative life--but above all of your terrible far-off-ness. My state +of mind about that is of the strangest--a sort of delight at having you +poised there in the inconceivable; and a miserable feeling, at the same +time, that I am in too wretched a back seat to assist properly at the +performance. I don't want to lose _any_ of your vibrations; and, as it +is, I feel that I only catch a few of them--and that is a constant woe. +I read with unrestrictive relish the first chapters of your prose volume +(kindly vouchsafed me in the little copyright-catching red volume,) and +I loved 'em and blessed them quite. But I _did_ make one restriction--I +missed the _visible_ in them--I mean as regards people, things, objects, +faces, bodies, costumes, features, gestures, manners, the introductory, +the _personal_ painter-touch. It struck me that you either didn't +feel--through some accident--your responsibility on this article quite +enough; or, on some theory of your own, had declined it. No theory is +kind to us that cheats us of _seeing_. However, no doubt we shall rub +our eyes for satiety before we have done. Of course the +pictures--Lloyd's blessed photographs--y sont pour beaucoup; but I +wanted more the note of portraiture. Doubtless I am greedy--but one _is_ +when one dines at the Maison d'or. I have an idea you take but a +qualified interest in "Beau Austin"--or I should tell you how +religiously I was present at that memorable premiere. Lloyd and your +wonderful and delightful mother will have given you the agreeable facts +of the occasion. I found it--not the occasion, so much, but the +work--full of _quality_, and stamped with a charm; but on the other hand +seeming to shrug its shoulders a little too much at scenic precautions. +I have an idea, however, you don't care about the matter, and I won't +bore you with it further than to say that the piece has been repeatedly +played, that it has been the only honourable affair transacted dans +notre sale tripot for many a day--and that Wm. Archer _en raffole_ +periodically in the "World." Don't despise me too much if I confess that +_anch' io son pittore_. Je fais aussi du theatre, moi; and am doing it, +to begin with, for reasons too numerous to burden you with, but all +excellent and practical. In the provinces I had the other night, at +Southport, Lancashire, with the dramatization of an early novel--_The +American_--a success dont je rougis encore. This thing is to be played +in London only after several months--and to make the tour of the British +Islands first. Don't be hard on me--simplifying and chastening necessity +has laid its brutal hand on me and I have had to try to make somehow or +other the money I don't make by literature. My books don't sell, and it +looks as if my plays might. Therefore I am going with a brazen front to +write half a dozen. I have, in fact, already written two others than the +one just performed; and the success of the latter pronounced--really +_pronounced_--will probably precipitate them. I am glad for all this +that you are not here. Literature is out of it. I miss no occasion of +talking of you. Colvin I tolerably often see: I expect to do so for +instance to-night, at a decidedly too starched dining-club to which we +both belong, of which Lord Coleridge is president and too many persons +of the type of Sir Theodore Martin are members. Happy islanders--with no +Sir Theodore Martin. On Mrs. Sitwell I called the other day, in a +charming new habitat: all clean paint and fresh chintz. We always go on +at a great rate about you--celebrate rites as faithful as the early +Christians in the catacombs.... + +January 13th.--I met Colvin last night, after writing the above--in the +company of Sir James Stephen, Sir Theo. Martin, Sir Douglas Galton, Sir +James Paget, Sir Alfred Lyall, Canon Ainger, and George du Maurier. How +this will make you lick your chops over Ori and Rahiro and Tamatia and +Taheia--or whatever ces messieurs et ces dames, your present visiting +list, are called. He told me of a copious diary-letter he has just got +from you, bless you, and we are discussing a day on which I shall soon +come to meat or drink with him and listen to the same. Since yesterday I +have also read the ballad book--with the admiration that I always feel +as a helplessly verseless creature (it's a sentiment worth nothing as a +testimony) for all performances in rhyme and metre--especially on the +part of producers of fine prose. + +January 19th.--I stopped this more than a week ago, and since then I +have lacked time to go on with it--having been out of town for several +days on a base theatrical errand--to see my tribute to the vulgarest of +the muses a little further on its way over the provincial circuit and +re-rehearse two or three portions of it that want more effective +playing. Thank heaven I shall have now no more direct contact with it +till it is produced in London next October.--I broke off in the act of +speaking to you about your ballad-book. The production of ringing and +lilting verse (by a superior proser) always does _bribe_ me a +little--and I envy you in that degree yours; but apart from this I +grudge your writing the like of these ballads. They show your +"cleverness," but they don't show your genius. I should say more if it +were not odious to a man of my refinement to write to you--so +expectantly far away--in remonstrance. I don't find, either, that the +cannibalism, the savagery _se prete_, as it were--one wants either less +of it, on the ground of suggestion--or more, on the ground of statement; +and one wants more of the high impeccable (as distinguished from the +awfully jolly,) on the ground of poetry. Behold I _am_ launching across +the black seas a page that may turn nasty--but my dear Louis, it's only +because I love so your divine prose and want the comfort of it. Things +are various because we do 'em. We mustn't do 'em because they're +various. The only news in literature here--such is the virtuous vacancy +of our consciousness--continues to be the infant monster of a Kipling. I +enclose, in this, for your entertainment a few pages I have lately +written about him, to serve as the preface to an (of course authorized) +American _recueil_ of some of his tales. I may add that he has just put +forth his longest story yet--a thing in Lippincott which I also send you +herewith--which cuts the ground somewhat from under my feet, inasmuch as +I find it the most youthfully infirm of his productions (in spite of +great "life,") much wanting in composition and in narrative and +explicative, or even implicative, art. + +Please tell your wife, with my love, that all this is constantly +addressed to her also. I try to see you all, in what I fear is your +absence of habits, as you live, grouped around what I also fear is in +no sense the domestic hearth. Where do you go when you want to be +"cosy"?--or what at least do you _do_? You think a little, I hope, of +the faithful forsaken on whose powers of evocation, as well as of +attachment, you impose such a strain. I wish I could send a man from +Fortnum and Mason's out to you with a chunk of _mortadella_. I am trying +to do a series of "short things" and will send you the least bad. I mean +to write to Lloyd. Please congratulate your heroic mother for me very +cordially when she leaps upon your strand, and believe that I hold you +all in the tenderest remembrance of yours ever, my dear Louis, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Feb. 6th, 1891. + +My dear William, + +Bear with me that I haven't written to you, since my last, in which I +promised you a better immediate sequel, till the receipt of your note of +the 21st, this a.m., recalls me to decency. Bear with me indeed, in this +and other ways, so long as I am in the fever of dramatic production with +which I am, very sanely and practically, trying to make up for my late +start and all the years during which I have _not_ dramatically produced, +and, further, to get well ahead with the "demand" which I--and others +for me--judge (still very sanely and sensibly) to be _certain_ to be +made upon me from the moment I have a _London_, as distinguished from a +provincial success. (You can form no idea--outside--of how a provincial +success is confined to the provinces.) Now that I have tasted blood, +c'est une rage (of determination to _do_, and triumph, on my part,) for +I feel at last as if I had found my _real_ form, which I am capable of +carrying far, and for which the pale little art of fiction, as I have +practised it, has been, for me, but a limited and restricted substitute. +The strange thing is that I always, universally, knew _this_ was my more +characteristic form--but was kept away from it by a half-modest, +half-exaggerated sense of the difficulty (that is, I mean the practical +odiousness) of the conditions. But now that I have accepted them and met +them, I see that one isn't at all, needfully, their victim, but is, from +the moment one is anything, one's self, worth speaking of, their +_master_; and may use them, command them, squeeze them, lift them up and +better them. As for the form _itself_, its honour and inspiration are (a +defaut d'autres) in its difficulty. If it were easy to write a good play +I couldn't and wouldn't think of it; but it is in fact damnably hard (to +this truth the paucity of the article--in the English-speaking +world--testifies,) and that constitutes a solid +respectability--guarantees one's _intellectual_ self-respect. At any +rate I am working hard and constantly--and am just attacking my 4th!... + +No. 4 has a destination which it would be premature to disclose; and, in +general, please breathe no word of these confidences, as publicity blows +on such matters in an injurious and deflowering way, and interests too +great to be hurt are at stake. I make them, the confidences, because it +isn't fair to myself not to let you know that I may be absorbed for some +months to come--as long as my present fit of the "rage" lasts--to a +degree which may be apparent in my correspondence--I mean in its +intermittence and in my apparent lapse of attention to, or appreciation +of, other things. For instance, I blush to say that I haven't had +freedom of mind or cerebral freshness (I find the drama much more +_obsedant_ than the novel) to tackle--more than dipping in just here +and there--your mighty and magnificent book, which requires a stretch of +leisure and an absence of "crisis" in one's own egotistical little +existence. As this is essentially a year of crisis, or of epoch-making, +for me, I shall probably save up the great volumes till I can recline +upon roses, the fruits of my production fever, and imbibe them like sips +of sherbet, giving meanwhile all my cerebration to the condensation of +masterpieces.... + +Farewell, dear William, and bear with my saw-dust and orange-peel phase +till the returns begin to flow in. The only hitch in the prospect is +that it takes so long to "realise." _The American_, in the country, +played only on Friday nights, with the very low country prices, gives me +nothing as yet to speak of--my royalty making only about L5-0-0 for each +performance. Later all this may be thoroughly counted upon to be +different. + +Ever your +HENRY. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Feb. 18th, 1891. + +My dear Louis, + +Your letter of December 29th is a most touching appeal; I am glad my own +last had been posted to you 2 or 3 weeks before it reached me. Whether +mine has--or will have been--guided to your coral strand is a matter as +to which your disclosures touching the state of the Samoan post inspire +me with the worst apprehensions. At any rate I did despatch +you--supposedly via San Francisco--a really pretty long screed about a +month ago. I ought to write to you all the while; but though I seem to +myself to live with my pen in my hand I achieve nothing capable of +connecting me so with glory. I am going to Paris to-morrow morning for a +month, but I have vowed that I will miss my train sooner than depart +without scrawling you and your wife a few words to-night. I shall +probably see little or nothing there that will interest you much (or +even interest myself hugely--) but having neither a yacht, an island, an +heroic nature, a gallant wife, mother and son, nor a sea-stomach, I have +to seek adventure in the humblest forms. In writing the other day I told +you more or less what I was doing--_am_ doing--in these elderly days; +and the same general description will serve. I am doing what I can to +launch myself in the dramatic direction--and the strange part of the +matter is that I am doing it more or less seriously, as if we _had_ the +Scene Anglaise which we haven't. And I secretly dream of supplying the +vile want? Pas meme--and my zeal in the affair is only matched by my +indifference. What is serious in it is that having begun to work in this +sense some months ago, to give my little ones bread--I find the _form_ +opens out before me as if there were a kingdom to conquer--a kingdom +forsooth of ignorant brutes of managers and dense cabotins of actors. +All the same, I feel as if I had at last _found_ my form--my real +one--that for which pale fiction is an ineffectual substitute. God grant +this unholy truth may not abide with me more than two or three +years--time to dig out eight or ten rounded masterpieces and make withal +enough money to enable me to retire in peace and plenty for the +unmolested business of a _little_ supreme writing, as distinguished from +gouging--which is the Form above-mentioned. Your loneliness and your +foodlessness, my dear Louis, bring tears to my eyes. If there were only +a parcels' post to Samoa I would set Fortnum and Mason to work at you at +this end of the line. But if they intercept the hieroglyphics at +Sydney, what would they do to the sausage? Surely there is some cure for +your emptiness; if nothing else, why not coming away? Don't eat up Mrs. +Louis, whatever you do. You are precious to literature--but she is +precious to the affections, which are larger, yet in a still worse +way.... I shall certainly do my utmost to get to Egypt to see you, if, +as is hinted to me by dear Colvin, you turn up there after the fitful +fever of Samoa. Your being there would give me wings--especially if +plays should give me gold. This is an exquisitely blissful dream. Don't +fail to do your part of it. I almost joy in your lack of the _Tragic +Muse_; as proving to me, I mean, that you are curious enough to have +missed it. Nevertheless I have just posted to you, registered, the first +copy I have received of the 1 vol. edition; but this moment out. I +wanted to send you the three volumes by Lloyd, but he seemed clear you +would have received it, and I didn't insist, as I knew he was charged +with innumerable parcels and bales. I will presently send another +_Muse_, and one, at least, must reach you.... Colvin is really better, I +think--if any one can be better who is so absolutely good. I hope to God +my last long letter will have reached you. I promise to write soon +again. I enfold you all in my sympathy and am ever your faithfullest + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Charles Eliot Norton._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Aug. 28th, 1891. + +My dear Charles, + +It is only the conspiracy of hindrances so perpetually characteristic of +life in this place, even when it is theoretically not alive, as in the +mid-August, that has stayed my hand, for days past, when it has most +longed to write to you. Dear Lowell's death--the words are almost as +difficult as they are odious to write--has made me think almost as much +of you as of him. I imagine that you are the person in the world to whom +it makes the most complete and constant difference that he is no longer +here; just as you must have been the one most closely associated with +the too vain watching of his last struggle with the monster. It is a dim +satisfaction to me, therefore, to say to you how fond I was of him and +how I shall miss him and miss him and miss him. During these last +strange English years of his life (it would take me long to tell you why +I call them strange,) I had seen a great deal of him, and all with the +effect of confirming my affection for him. London is bestrewn, to my +sense, with reminders of his happy career here, and his company and his +talk. He was kind and delightful and gratifying to me, and all sorts of +occasions in which he will ever be vivid swarm before me as I think of +him.... Strange was his double existence--the American and the English +sides of his medal, which had yet so much in common. That is, I don't +know how English he was at home, but he was conspicuously American here. +However, I am not trying to characterize him, to you least of all who +had known him well so much longer and seen all, or most, of the chapters +of his history; but only letting you see how much I wish we might talk +of him together. Some day we will, though it's a date that seems +unfixable now. I am taking for granted ... that you inherit the greatest +of literary responsibilities to his memory. I think of this as a very +high interest, but also a very arduous labour. It's a blessing, however, +to feel that such an office is in such hands as yours. The posthumous +vulgarities of our day add another grimness to death. Here again is +another matter as to which I really miss not having the opportunity to +talk with you. This is a brief communication, my dear Charles, for I am +literally catching a train. I go down to the Isle of Wight half an hour +hence.... + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + This refers to the recent production of _The American_ in London. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +October 2nd [1891]. + +My dear Gosse, + +Your good and charming letter should have been answered on the spot--but +my days are abnormal and perspective and relation are blurred. I shall +come to see you the moment you return, and then I shall be able to tell +you more in five minutes than in fifteen of such hurried scrawls as +this. Meanwhile many thanks for your sympathy and curiosity and +suspense--_all_ thanks, indeed--and, in return, all eagerness for your +rentree here. My own suspense has been and still is great--though the +voices of the air, rightly heard, seem to whisper _prosperity_. The +papers have been on the whole quite awful--but the audiences are +altogether different. The only thing is that these first three or four +weeks _must_ be up-hill: London is still empty, the whole enterprise is +wholly new--the elements must assemble. The strain, the anxiety, the +peculiar form and colour of such an ordeal (not to be divined the least +in advance) have sickened me _to death_--but I am getting better. I +forecast nothing, however--I only wait. Come back and wait with me--it +will be easier. Your picture of your existence and circumstance is like +the flicker of the open door of heaven to those recumbent in the +purgatory of yours not _yet_ damned--ah no!-- + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Mahlon Sands._ + + +Hotel de l'Europe, +Dresden. + +Dec. 12th [1891]. + +Dear Mrs. Sands, + +Just a word--in answer to your note of sympathy--to say that I am +working through my dreary errand and service here as smoothly as three +stricken women--a mother and two sisters--permit. They are however very +temperate and discreet--and one of the sisters a little person of +extraordinary capacity--who will float them all successfully home. +Wolcott Balestier, the young American friend beside whose grave I stood +with but three or four others here on Thursday, was a very remarkable +creature who had been living in London for some three years--he had an +intimate _business_-relation with literature and was on the way to have +a really artistic and creative one. He had made himself a peculiar +international place--which it would take long to describe, and was full +of capacities, possibilities and really big inventions and ideas. He had +rendered me admirable services, become in a manner a part of my life, +and I was exceedingly attached to him. And now, at 30, he dies--in a +week--in a far-away German hospital--his mother and sisters were in +Paris--of a damnable vicious typhoid, contracted in his London office, +the "picturesqueness" of which he loved, as it was in Dean's Yard, +Westminster, just under the Abbey towers, and in a corner like that of a +peaceful Cathedral close. Many things, many enterprises, interests, +visions, originalities perish with him. Oh, the "ironies of fate," the +ugly tricks, the hideous practical jokes of life! I start for London +some time next week and shall very soon come and see you. I hope all is +well with you. + +Yours always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Humphry Ward._ + + The following was written a few days after the death of Miss Alice + James. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +March 10th [1892]. + +Dear Mrs. Ward, + +Many, many thanks for your friendly remembrance of me--the flowers are +full of spring and life and the universe, as it were, and, besides this, +are very close and charming company to me as I sit scribbling--writing +many notes among other things--in still, indoor days that are grateful +to me. You were one of the very few persons in England who had seen my +sister even a little--and I am very glad of that. She was a rare and +remarkable being, and her death makes a great difference in my +existence. But for her it is only blessed. I hope you are happy in the +good reasons you have for being so--if one _is_ happy strictly +(certainly one isn't the reverse) for "reasons." + +Believe me yours always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + Stevenson, it will be recalled, dedicated _Across the Plains_ to M. + Paul Bourget, as an expression of his delight in that author's + _Sensations d'Italie_, sent him by H. J. Mr. Kipling did not, as it + turned out, pay his projected visit to Samoa, referred to in this + letter. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +March 19th, 1892. + +My dear Louis, + +I send you to-day by book-post, registered, a little volume of tales +which I lately put forth--most of which however you may have seen in +magazines. Please accept at any rate the modest offering. Accept, too, +my thanks for your sweet and dateless letter which I received a month +ago--the one in which you speak with such charming appreciation and +felicity of Paul Bourget. I echo your admiration--I think the Italian +book one of the most exquisite things of our time. I am in only very +occasional correspondence with him--and have not written since I heard +from you; but I shall have an early chance, now probably, to repeat your +words to him, and they will touch him in a tender place. He is living +much, now, in Italy, and I may go there for May or June--though indeed I +fear it is little probable. Colvin tells me of the volume of some of +your _inedites_ beauties that is on the point of appearing, and the news +is a bright spot in a vulgar world. The vulgarity of literature in these +islands at the present time is not to be said, and I shall clutch at you +as one turns one's ear to music in the clatter of the market-place. Yet, +paradoxical as it may appear, oh Louis, I have still had the refinement +not to read the _Wrecker_ in the periodical page. This is an enlightened +and judicious heroism, and I do as I would be done by. Trust me, +however, to taste you in long draughts as soon as I can hold the book. +Then will I write to you again. You tell me nothing of yourself--so I +have nothing to take up or take hold of, save indeed the cherished +superstition that you enjoy some measure of health and cheer. You are, +however, too far away for my imagination, and were it not for dear +Colvin's friendly magic, which puts in a pin here and there, I shouldn't +be able to catch and arrest at all the opaline iridescence of your +legend. Yet even when he speaks of intending wars and the clash of arms, +it all passes over me like an old-time song. You see how much I need you +close at hand to stand successfully on the tiptoe of emulation. You +fatigue, in short, my credulity, though not my affection. We lately +clubbed together, all, to despatch to you an eye-witness in the person +of the genius or the _genus_, in himself, Rudyard, for the concussion of +whose extraordinary personality with your own we are beginning soon to +strain the listening ear. We devoutly hope that this time he will really +be washed upon your shore. With him goes a new little wife--whose +brother--Wolcott Balestier, lately dead, in much youthful promise and +performance (I don't allude, in saying that, especially to the literary +part of it,) was a very valued young friend of mine.... The main thing +that has lately happened to myself is the death of my dear sister a +fortnight ago--after years of suffering, which, however, had not made +her any less rare and remarkable a person or diminished the effect of +the event (when it should occur) in making an extreme difference in my +life. Of my occupation what shall I tell you? I have of late years left +London less and less--but I am thinking sooner or later (in a near +present) of making a long foreign, though not distant, absence. I am +busy with the _short_--I have forsworn the long. I hammer at the horrid +little theatrical problem, with delays and intermissions, but, horrible +to relate, no failure of purpose. I shall soon publish another small +story-book which I will incontinently send you. I have done many brief +fictions within the last year.... The good little Thomas Hardy has +scored a great success with _Tess of the d'Urbervilles_, which is +chock-full of faults and falsity and yet has a singular beauty and +charm.... + +What we most talk of here, however, is the day when it may be believed +that you will come to meet us on some attainable southern shore. We will +_all_ go to the Mediterranean for you--let that not nail you to Samoa. I +send every greeting to your play-fellows--your fellow-phantoms. The +wife-phantom knows my sentiments. The ghost of a mother has my heartiest +regard. The long Lloyd-spectre laughs an eerie laugh, doubtless, at my +[word illegible] embrace. Yet I feel, my dear Louis, that I _do_ hold +you just long enough to press you to the heart of your very faithful old +friend, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +April 15th, 1892. + +My dear Louis, + +I send you by this post the magnificent Memoires de Marbot, which should +have gone to you sooner by my hand if I had sooner read them and sooner, +thereby, grasped the idea of how much they would probably beguile for +you the shimmering tropical noon. The three volumes go to you in three +separate registered book-post parcels and all my prayers for an escape +from the queer perils of the way attend and hover about them. Some +people, I believe, consider this fascinating warrior a bien-conditionne +Munchausen--but perish the injurious thought. Me he not only charms but +convinces. I can't manage a letter, my dear Louis, to-day--I wrote you a +longish one, via San Francisco (like this,) just about a month ago. But +I mustn't fail to tell you that I have just read the last page of the +sweet collection of some of your happiest lucubrations put forth by the +care of dear Colvin. They make a most desirable, and moreover a very +honourable, volume. It was indispensable to bring them together and they +altogether justify it. The first one, and the Lantern-Bearers and two +last, are of course the best--these last are all made up of high and +admirable pages and do you the greatest credit. You have never felt, +thought, said, more finely and happily than in many a passage here, and +are in them altogether at your best. I don't see reviews or meet +newspapers now (beside which the work is scarcely in the market,) so I +don't know what fortune the book encounters--but it is enough for me--I +admit it can hardly be enough for you--that I love it. I pant for the +completion of The Wrecker--of which Colvin unwove the other night, to my +rapturous ear, the weird and wondrous tangle. I hope I don't give him +away if I tell you he even read me a very interesting letter from +you--though studded with critical stardust in which I a little lost my +way--telling of a project of a dashing roman de moeurs all about a +wicked woman. For this you may imagine how I yearn--though not to the +point of wanting it before the sequel of _Kidnapped_. For God's sake let +me have them both. I marvel at the liberality of your production and +rejoice in this high meridian of your genius. I leave London presently +for 3 or 4 months--I wish it were with everything required for leaping +on your strand. Sometimes I think I have got through the worst of +missing you and then I find I haven't. I pine for you as I pen these +words, for I am more and more companionless in my old age--more and more +shut up to the solitude inevitably the portion, in these islands, of him +who would really try, even in so small a way as mine, to _do_ it. I'm +often on the point of taking the train down to Skerryvore, to serenade +your ghosts, get them to throw a fellow a word. Consider this, at any +rate, a plaintive invocation. Again, again I greet your wife, that lady +of the closed lips, and I am yours, my dear Louis, and Lloyd's and your +mother's undiscourageably, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To the Countess of Jersey._ + + The "little story" is _The Lesson of the Master_, the opening + scenes of which take place at "Summersoft." Lord Jersey was at this + time Governor of New South Wales. + + +Hotel de Sienne, Siena. +June 11th [1892]. + +Dear Lady Jersey, + +Your kind letter finds me in a foreign land--the land in the world, I +suppose, least like New South Wales--and gives me very great pleasure. +It is charming to hear your voice so distinctly round so many corners of +the globe. Yes, "Summersoft" _did_ venture in a timorous and hesitating +manner to be an affectionate and yet respectful reminiscence of Osterley +the exquisite--of whose folded and deserted charms I can't bear to +think. But I beg you to believe--as indeed you will have perceived if +you were so good as to look at the little story--that the attempted +resemblance was only a matter of the dear old cubic sofa-cushions and +objects of the same delightful order, and not of the human furniture of +the house. I take the liberty of being, in your absence, so homesick for +Osterley that I can scarcely conceive of the pangs by which you and your +children and Lord Jersey--with your much greater right to indulge in +them--must sometimes be visited. I am delighted, however, to gather from +your letter that you have occupations and interests which drop a kindly +veil over that dreamland. It must indeed, I can imagine, be a +satisfaction to be really lending a hand in such a great young growing +world--doing something in it and with it and for it. May the sense of +all this make the years roll smoothly--till they roll you back into our +ken.... Please give my very friendliest remembrance to Lord Jersey--to +whom I wish--as to all of you--and indeed to myself, that you may serve +your term with an appearance of rapidity. And please believe, dear Lady +Jersey, that when it is over, no one will more heartily rejoice than +yours most faithfully, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Charles Eliot Norton._ + + +Hotel de Sienne, Siena. +July 4th, 1892. + +My dear Charles, + +Too long have I owed you a letter and too many times have your +generosities made me blush for my silence. I have received beautiful +books from you and they have given me almost more pleasure as signs of +your remembrance than as symbols of your wisdom and worth. The +Purgatorio reached me just before I came abroad--or a short time--and I +was delighted to know that you continue to find time and strength for +labours so various and so arduous. Great glory is yours--for making +something else come out of America than railway-smashes and young ladies +for lords. During a singularly charming month that I have been spending +in this most loveable old city I have often thought of you and wished I +had a small fraction of your power to put the soul of history into +Italian things. But I believe I shouldn't love Siena any better even if +I knew it better. I am very happy indeed to feel that--as I grow +older--many things come and go, but Italy remains. I have been here many +times--regularly every year or almost, for many years now, but the +spell, the charm, the magic is still in the air. I always try, between +May and August, to give London a wide berth, and I find these parts far +and away most pleasant when the summer has begun and the barbarians have +fled. As one stays and stays on here--I mean on _this_ spot--one feels +how untouched Siena really is by the modern hand. Yesterday was the +Palio of the ten contrade, and though I believe it is not so intense a +festival as the second one--of Aug. 15th (you have probably--or +certainly--seen them both)--it was a most curious and characteristic (of +an uninterrupted tradition) spectacle. The Marchese Chigi asked me and a +couple of friends--or rather asked _them_, and me with them--to see it +from the balcony of his extraordinarily fine old palace, where by the +way he has a large collection of Etruscan and Tarentine treasures--a +collection to break the heart of envy. My friends were Paul Bourget, the +French essayist and novelist (some of whose work you probably know,) and +his very remarkably charming, cultivated and interesting young wife. +They have been living in Italy these two years--ever since their +marriage, and I have been living much _with_ them here. Bourget is a +very interesting mind--and figure altogether--and the first--easily, to +my sense--of all the talkers I have ever encountered. But it would take +me much too far to _begin_ to give you a portrait of such a complicated +cosmopolitan Frenchman as he! But they departed, alas, this morning, for +the Piedmontese Alps, and I take my way, in a couple of hours, to +Venice, where I spend but a few days--with perhaps a few more at +Asolo--before joining my brother William and his wife for a month in +Switzerland. After that I expect to return to London for the last of the +summer and the early autumn--the season I prefer there above all others. +But before I do this I wish I could talk to you more about this sweet +old Siena. I have been talking for a month about it with Bourget--but +how much better it would have been for both of us if you could have +broken in and taken up the tale! But you did, sometimes, very +happily--for Mme. Paul knows you by heart (she is the Madonna of +cosmopolitan culture) and cites you with great effect. Have you read P. +B.'s _Sensations d'Italie_? If you haven't, do--it is one of the most +exquisite of books. Have you read any of his novels? If you haven't, +_don't_, though they have remarkable parts. Make an exception, however, +for _Terre Promise_, which is to appear a few months hence, and which I +have been reading in proof, here--if on trial, indeed, you find you can +stand so suffocating an analysis. It is perhaps "psychology" gone +mad--but it is an extraordinary production. A fortnight ago, on a +singularly lovely Sunday, we drove to San Gimignano and back. I had +never been there before, and the whole day was a delight. There are of +course four Americans living at San G.--one of whom proved afterwards to +have been an American "lady-newspaper-correspondent" furious at having +missed two such birds as Bourget and me--whom a single stone from that +rugged old quarry would have brought down. But she didn't know us until +we had departed and we fortunately didn't suspect her till a suppliant +card reached us two days later at Siena. We were in the hands of the +good old Canonico--the proposito, as they call him--and he put us gently +through. You remember well enough of course--though to such a far-away +world your Siena summer must seem to belong--the rich loveliness, at +this moment, of this exquisite old Tuscany. One can't say enough about +it, and the way the great sea of growing things--the corn and the vines +and the olives--breaks in green surges at the very foot of the old +golden-brown ramparts, is one of the most enchanting features of Siena. +There is still never a suburb to speak of save in the quarter of the +railway-station, and everywhere you look out of back-windows and +back-doors and off terraces and over parapets straight down into the +golden grain and the tangled poderi. Every evening we have gone to walk +in the Lizza and hang over the bastions of the Castello; where the near +views and the far, and the late afternoons and the sunsets and the +mountains have made us say again and again that we could never, never go +away. But we are coming back, and I greatly wish _you_ were. We went the +other day to the archivio, which I had never seen before, and where I +was amazed and fascinated. (It is a great luxury to be in Italy with a +French celebrity--he is so tremendously known and well treated, as the +"likes" of _us_ can never be, and one comes in for some of his +privileges.) You of course probably know, however, what the fullness, +detail, continuity and curiosity of the records of this place +are--filling with their visible, palpable medievalism the great upper +chamber of Pal. Piccolomini. + +Basta--I have my trunk to pack and my reckoning to pay. I am very glad +to have shaken hands with you before I go. I saw dear Burne-Jones +tolerably often this spring--often unwell, but almost always stippling +away. He is the most loveable of men and the most disinterested of +artists, but sometimes I wish that he set himself a different order of +tasks. _Painting_--as I feel it most--it is true I have ceased to feel +it very much--is, with him, more and more "out of it." There remains, +however, a beautiful poetry.... I want to ask you 20 questions about +[Lowell's] papers--but I feel it isn't fair--and I must wait and see. I +hope this work--and your masses of other work--don't take all your +holiday.... I shall send this to Ashfield, and if you are there will you +give, for me, a very cordial greeting to that mythical man George +Curtis? I embrace all your house and am, my dear Charles, very +affectionately yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Jan. 29th [1893]. + +My dear Howells, + +Two beneficent notes have I had from you since last I wrote you a word: +one in regard to looking, effectively, after some _Cosmopolitan_ +business in the autumn; the other a heavenly remark or two (still +further sublimated by Mildred's lovely photograph) in lately forwarding +me--with a courtesy worthy of a better cause--a particularly shameless +autograph-seeker's letter. For such and all of these good gifts I am +more thankful than the hurrying, days have left me much of a chance to +tell you. Most especially am I grateful for the portrait of the +beautiful, beautiful maiden. Please thank her from me, if not for +sending it, at least for so felicitously sitting for it. It makes me +jump the torrent of the years and reconstruct from her fine features the +mythological past--a still tenderer youth than her present youth. (I +ought to be able to mean my _own_; but I can't manage it--her profile +won't help me to _that_.) I envy you and your wife her company and I +rejoice for you in her presence. I rejoice for myself, my dear Howells, +about your so delicate words to me in regard to a bit of recent work. +They go to my heart--they go perhaps still straighter to my head! I am +so utterly lonely here--on the "literary plane"--that it is the +strangest as well as the sweetest sensation to be conscious in the +boundless void--the dim desert sands--of any human approach at all or +any kindly speech. Therefore please be very affectionately thanked.--All +this while I never see anything that you yourself have lately flowered +with--I mean the volumes that you freehandedly scatter. I console myself +with believing that one or two of your last serial fictions are not +volumes yet. Please hold them not back from soon becoming so. I see you +are drawing a longish bow in the _Cosmopolitan_--but I only read you +when I can sit down to a continuous feast and all the courses. You asked +me in your penultimate--I am talking now of your early-in-the-winter +letter--if I should object to being made a feature of your composed +reminiscences. To which I reply that I only wish that I could enrich +them better. I won't pretend that I like being written about--the sight +of my own name on a printed page makes me as ill (and the sensibility +increases strangely with time) as that of one of my creations makes me +well. I have a morbid passion for personal privacy and a standing +quarrel with the blundering publicities of the age. I wince even at +eulogy, and I wither (for exactly 2 minutes and 1/2) at any +qualification of adulation. But on the other hand I like, I love, to be +remembered by you and I surrender myself to your discretion. I hope your +winter, and Mrs. Howells' and the fairest of daughters's, is rich and +full and sane. How you must miss the Boy. I go abroad soon and hope to +see him in Paris. When do you do the same? Yours always, my dear +Howells, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Feb. 17th, 1893. + +My dear distant Louis, + +The charmingest thing that had happened to me for a year was the advent +of your reassuring note of Dec. 5th (not 189_1_--my dear time-deluded +islander: it is enviable to see you so luxuriously "out." When you +indulge in the eccentricity of a date you make it eccentric indeed.) I +call your good letter reassuring simply on the general ground of its +making you credible for an hour. You are otherwise wholly of the stuff +that dreams are made of. I think this is why I don't keep writing to +you, don't talk to you, as it were, in my sleep. Please don't think I +forget you or am indifferent to anything that concerns you. The mere +thought of you is better company than almost any that is tangible to me +here, and London is more peopled to me by your living in Samoa than by +the residence of almost anybody else in Kensington or Chelsea. I fix my +curiosity on you all the while and try to understand your politics and +your perils and your public life. If in these efforts I make a poor +figure it is only because you are so wantonly away. Then I think I envy +you too much--your climate, your thrill of life, your magnificent +facility. You judge well that I have far too little of this last--though +you _can't_ judge how much more and more difficult I find it every day +to write. None the less I am presently putting forth, almost with exact +simultaneity, three little (distinct) books--2 volumes of penny fiction +and one of little essays, all material gathered, no doubt, from sources +in which you may already have encountered some of it. However this may +be, the matter shall again be (D.V.) deposited on your coral strand. +Most refreshing, even while not wholly convincing, was the cool +trade-wind (is the trade-wind cool?) of your criticism of some of _ces +messieurs_. I grant you Hardy with all my heart.... I am meek and +ashamed where the public clatter is deafening--so I bowed my head and +let "Tess of the D.'s" pass. But oh yes, dear Louis, she is vile. The +pretence of "sexuality" is only equalled by the absence of it, and the +abomination of the language by the author's reputation for style. There +are indeed some pretty smells and sights and sounds. But you have better +ones in Polynesia. On the other hand I can't go with you three yards in +your toleration either of ---- or of ----. Let me add that I can't read +them, so I don't know anything about them. All the same I make no bones +to pronounce them shameless _industriels_ and their works only glories +of Birmingham. You will have gathered that I delight in your year of +literary prowess. None the less I haven't read a word of you since the +brave and beautiful _Wrecker_. I won't _touch_ you till I can feel that +I embrace you in the embracing cover. So it is that I languish till the +things now announced appear. Colvin makes me impatient for _David +Balfour_--but doesn't yet stay my stomach with the _Beach of Falesa_.... +Mrs. Sitwell _me fait part_ of every savoury scrap she gets from you. I +know what you all magnificently eat, and what dear Mrs. Louis splendidly +(but not somewhat transparently--no?) wears. Please assure that +intensely-remembered lady of my dumb fidelity. I am told your mother +nears our shores and I promise myself joy on seeing her and pumping her. +I don't know, however, alas, how long this ceremony may be delayed, as +I go to Italy, for all the blessed spring, next week. I have been in +London without an hour's absence since the middle of Aug. last. I hear +you utter some island objurgation, and go splashing, to banish the +stuffy image, into the sapphire sea. Is it all a fable that you will +come some month to the Mediterranean? I would go to the Pillars of +Hercules to greet you. Give my love to the lusty and literary Lloyd. I +am very glad to observe him spreading his wings. There is absolutely +nothing to send you. The Muses are dumb, and in France as well. Of +Bourget's big 7 franc _Cosmopolis_ I have, alas, purchased three +copies--and given them away; but even if I were to send you one you +would find it too round and round the subject--which heaven knows it +is--for your taste. I will try and despatch you the charming little +"Etui de Nacre" of Anatole France--a real master. Vale--age. Yours, my +dear Louis, in a kind of hopeful despair and a clinging alienation, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Edmund Gosse._ + + +Hotel Westminster, Paris. +March 21st [1893]. + +Dear Mrs. Gosse, + +Many thanks for your better news--and especially for the good news that +Gosse is coming to Paris. I shall be very glad to see him and shall +rejoice to take him gently by that injured--but I trust soon to be +reanimated--member. Please express this to him, with all my sympathy and +impatience. Won't he--or won't you (though indeed I shall cull the +precious date from Harland,) give me a hint, in advance of the +particular moment at which one may look for him? Please tell him +confidently to expect that Paris will create within him afresh all the +finest pulses of life. It is mild, sunny, splendid--blond and fair, all +in order for his approach. I allude of course to the specious +allurements of its exterior. The state is odorously rotten--but +everything else is charming. And then it's such a blessing, after long +grief and pain, to find the arms of a _climate_ around us once again! +Hasten, my dear Edmund, to be healed. + +Thank heaven, my allusion to my own manual distress was mainly a florid +figure. My hand _is_ infirm--but I am not yet thinking of the knife. +Mille choses to the Terrace. + +Yours and Gosse's always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + The seductive "Queen of the Golconda," and of the Boulevard St. + Michel, appears in Mr. Gosse's anecdote of Paul Verlaine (_French + Profiles._) The passage of Loti's _Matelot_, to which H. J. refers, + is the following: "Donc, ils en venaient a s'aimer d'une egalement + pure tendresse, tous les deux. Elle, ignorante des choses d'amour + et lisant chaque soir sa bible; elle, destinee a rester inutilement + fraiche et jeune encore pendant quelques printemps pales comme + celui-ci, puis a vieillir et se faner dans l'enserrement monotone + de ces memes rues et de ces memes murs. Lui, gate deja par les + baisers et les etreintes, ayant le monde pour habitation + changeante, appele a partir, peut-etre demain, pour ne revenir + jamais et laisser son corps aux mers lointaines." + + +Hotel Westminster, Paris. +Monday [May 1st, 1893]. + +My dear Gosse, + +I have delayed too long to thank you for your genial last: which please +attribute to the misery of my Boulevard-baffled aspirations. Paris n'est +plus possible--from any point of view--and I leave it tomorrow or next +day, when my address will become: _Hotel National, Lucerne_. I join my +brother there for a short time. This place continues to _rengorger_ with +sunshine and sauces, not to mention other appeals to the senses and +pitfalls to the pocket. I am not alluding in particular to the Queen of +Golconda! I have read _Matelot_ more or less over again; for the extreme +penury of the _idea_ in Loti, and the almost puerile thinness of this +particular donnee, wean me not a jot from the irresistible charm the +rascal's very limitations have for me. I drink him down as he _is_--like +a philtre or a _baiser_, and the coloration of his _moindre mots_ has a +peculiar magic for me. Read _aloud_ to yourself the passage ending +section XXXV--the upper part of page 165, and perhaps you will find in +it something of the same strange _eloquence_ of suggestion and rhythm as +I do: which is what literature gives when it is most exquisite and which +constitutes its sovereign value and its resistance to devouring time. +And yet what _niaiseries_! Paris continues gorgeous and rainless, but +less torrid. I have become inured to fear as careless of penalties. +There are no new books but old papiers de famille et d'arriere-boutique +dished up. Poor Harland came and spent 2 or 3 hours with me the other +afternoon--at a cafe-front and on chairs in the Champs-Elysees. He +looked better than the time previous, but not well; and I am afraid +things are not too well _with_ him. One would like to help him--and I +try to--in talk; but he is not too helpable, for there is a chasm too +deep to bridge, I fear, in the pitfall of his literary longings +unaccompanied by the _faculty_. Apropos of such things I am very glad to +see _your_ faculty is reflowering. I shall return to England for the +volume. Are you writing about Symonds? Vale--especially in the manual +part. And valeat your _dame compagne_. + +Yours, my dear Gosse, always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + Stevenson, writing to H. J. from Vailima, June 17, 1893, announced + that he was sending a photograph of his wife. "It reminds me of a + friend of my grandmother's who used to say when talking to younger + women, 'Aweel, when I was young, I wasnae just exactly what ye wad + call _bonny_, but I was pale, penetratin', and interestin'.'" + (_Letters to his Family and Friends._) + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +August 5th, 1893. + +My dear Louis, + +I have a most charming and interesting letter, and a photographic +representation of your fine head which I cannot so unrestrictedly +commend, to thank you for. The portrait has its points as a memento, but +they are not fine points as a likeness. I remember you, I think of you, +I evoke you, much more plastically. But it was none the less liberal and +faithful of you to include me in the list of fond recipients. Your +letter contained all sorts of good things, but best of all the happy +news of your wife's better condition. I rejoice in that almost +obstreperously and beg you to tell her so with my love. The Sydney +photograph that you kindly announce (of her) hasn't come, but I +impatiently desire it. Meanwhile its place is gracefully occupied by +your delightful anecdote of your mother's retrospective Scotch +friend--the pale, penetratin' and interestin' one. Perhaps you will +permit me to say that it is exquisitely Scotch; at any rate it moves +altogether in the highest walks of anecdote. + +I get, habitually, the sympathetic infection, from Colvin, of so much +general uneasiness and even alarm about you, that it is reassuring to +find you apparently incommoded by nothing worse than the privation of +liquor and tobacco. "Nothing worse?" I hear you echo, while you ask to +what more refined savagery of torture I can imagine you subjected. You +would rather perhaps--and small blame to you--perish by the sword than +by famine. But you won't perish, my dear Louis, and I am here to tell +you so. _I_ should have perished--long ago--if it were mortal. No +liquor--to speak of--passes my wasted lips, and yet they are capable of +the hypocrisy of the sigh of resignation. I am very, very sorry for +you--for I remember the genial tray which in the far-off, fabulous time +used to be placed, as the evening waxed, under the social lamp at +Skerryvore. The evenings wax at Vailima, but the tray, I gather, has +waned. May this heavy trial be lightened, and, as you missionaries say, +be even blessed to you. It wounds, I repeat, but it doesn't kill--more's +the pity. The tobacco's another question. I have smoked a cigarette--at +Skerryvore; and I shall probably smoke one again. But I don't look +forward to it. However, you will think me objectionably destitute of +temperament. What depresses me much more is the sad sense that you +receive scarcely anything I send you. This, however, doesn't deter me +from posting you to-day, registered, via San Francisco (it is post-day,) +a volume of thin trifles lately put forth by me and entitled _Essays in +London and Elsewhere_. It contains some pretty writing--not addressed to +the fishes. My last letter to you, to which yours of June 17th [was a +reply]--the only dated one, dear Louis, I ever got from you!--was +intended to accompany two other volumes of mine, which were despatched +to you, registered, via San F., at the same moment (_The Real Thing_ and +_The Private Life_.) Yet neither of these works, evidently, had reached +you when you ask me not to send you the former (though my letter +mentioned that it had started,) as you had ordered it. It is all a +mystery which the fishes only will have sounded. I also post to you +herewith Paul Bourget's last little tale (_Un Scruple_,) as to which +nothing will induce me to utter the faintest rudiments of an opinion. It +is full of talent (I don't call _that_ a rudiment,) but the French are +passing strange. I am very glad to be able to send you herewith enclosed +a _petit mot_ from the said Paul Bourget, in response to your sense of +outrage at his too-continuous silence.... His intentions, I can answer +for it, had been the best; but he leads so migratory a life that I don't +see how _any_ intention can ever well fructify. He has spent the winter +in the Holy Land and jumps thence in three weeks (from Beyrout) to his +queer American expedition. A year ago--more--he earnestly asked me (at +Siena) for your address. I as eagerly gave it to him--par ecrit--but the +acknowledgment that he was then full of the desire to make to you +succumbed to complex frustrations. Now that, at last, here it is, I wish +you to be able to _read_ it! But you won't. My hand is the hand of +Apollo to it. + +I have been at the sea-side for six weeks, and am back in the empty town +mainly because it is empty. _My_ sea-side is the sordid sands of +Ramsgate--I see your coral-reefs blush pink at the vulgarity of the +name. The place has for me an unutterable advantage (in the press of +working-weeks) which the beach of Falesa would, fortunately, _not_ +have--that of being full of every one I don't know. The beach of Falesa +would enthrall but sterilize me--I mean the social muse would disjoint +the classic nose of the other. You will certainly think me barren enough +as I am. I am really less desiccated than I seem, however, for I am +working with patient subterraneity at a trade which it is dishonour +enough to practise, without talking about it: a trade supremely +dangerous and heroically difficult--_that_ credit at least belongs to +it. The case is simplified for me by the direst necessity: the _book_, +as my limitations compel me to produce it, doesn't bring me in a penny. +Tell it not in Samoa--or at least not in Tahiti; but I _don't_ sell ten +copies!--and neither editors nor publishers will have anything whatever +to say to me. But I never mention it--nearer home. "Politics," dear +politician--I rejoice that you are getting over them. When you say that +you always "believed" them beastly I am tempted to become superior and +say that I always knew them so. At least I don't see how one can have +glanced, however cursorily, at the contemporary newspapers (I mean the +journal of one's whole time,) and had any doubt of it. The morals, the +manners, the materials of all those gentlemen are writ there more large +than any record is elsewhere writ, and the impudence of their airs and +pretensions in the presence of it revolts even the meekness of a spirit +as resigned to everything as mine. The sordid fight in the House of +Commons the other night seemed to me only a momentary intermission of +hypocrisy. The hypocrisy comes back with the pretended confusion over +it. The Lives of the Stevensons (with every respect to them) isn't what +I want you most to write, but I would rather you should publish ten +volumes of them than another letter to the _Times_. Meanwhile I am +languishing for _Catriona_--and the weeks follow and I must live without +you. It isn't life. But I am still amicably yours and your wife's and +the insidious Lloyd's, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Robert Louis Stevenson._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +October 21st [1893.] + +My dear Louis, + +The postal guide tells me, disobligingly, that there is no mail to you +via San Francisco this month and that I must confide my few lines to +the precarious and perfidious Hamburg. I do so, then, for the plain +reason that I can no longer repress the enthusiasm that has surged +within me ever since I read _Catriona_. I missed, just after doing so, +last month's post, and I was infinitely vexed that it should not have +conveyed to you the freshness of my rapture. For the said _Catriona_ so +reeks and hums with genius that there is no refuge for the desperate +reader but in straightforward prostration. I'm not sure that it's +magnanimous of you to succeed so inconsiderately--there is a modesty in +easy triumph which your flushed muse perhaps a little neglects.--But +forgive that lumbering image--I won't attempt to carry it out. Let me +only say that I don't despatch these ineffectual words on their too +watery way to do anything but thank you for an exquisite pleasure. I +hold that when a book has the high beauty of that one there's a poor +indelicacy in what simple folk call criticism. The work lives by so +absolute a law that it's grotesque to prattle about what _might_ have +been! I shall express to you the one point in which my sense was +conscious of an unsatisfied desire, but only after saying first how rare +an achievement I think the whole personality and tone of David and with +how supremely happy a hand you have coloured the palpable women. They +are quite too lovely and everyone is running after them. In David not an +error, not a false note ever; he is all of an exasperating truth and +rightness. The one thing I miss in the book is the note of +_visibility_--it subjects my visual sense, my _seeing_ imagination, to +an almost painful underfeeding. The _hearing_ imagination, as it were, +is nourished like an alderman, and the loud audibility seems a slight +the more on the baffled lust of the eyes--so that I seem to myself (I am +speaking of course only from the point of view of the way, as I read, +_my_ impression longs to complete itself) in the presence of voices in +the darkness--voices the more distinct and vivid, the more brave and +sonorous, as voices always are--but also the more tormenting and +confounding--by reason of these bandaged eyes. I utter a pleading moan +when you, e.g., transport your characters, toward the end, in a line or +two from Leyden to Dunkirk without the glint of a hint of all the +ambient picture of the 18th century road. However, stick to your own +system of evocation so long as what you positively achieve is so big. +Life and letters and art all take joy in you. + +I am rejoiced to hear that your wife is less disturbed in health and +that your anxieties are somewhat appeased. I don't know how sufficiently +to renew, to both of you, the assurance of all my friendliest sympathy. +You live in conditions so unimaginable and to the tune of experience so +great and so strange that you must forgive me if I am altogether out of +step with your events. I know you're surrounded with the din of battle, +and yet the beauty you produce has the Goethean calm, even like the +beauty distilled at Weimar when the smoke was over Jena. Let me touch +you at least on your bookish side and the others may bristle with +heroics. I pray you be made accessible some day in a talkative armchair +by the fire. If it hadn't been for _Catriona_ we couldn't, this year, +have held up our head. It had been long, before that, since any decent +sentence was turned in English. We grow systematically vulgarer and +baser. The only blur of light is that your books are tasted. I shall try +to see Colvin before I post this--otherwise I haven't seen him for three +months. I've had a summer of the British seaside, the bathing machine +and the German band. I met Zola at luncheon the day before he left +London and found him very sane and common and inexperienced. Nothing, +literally nothing, has ever happened to him but to write the +Rougon-Macquart. It makes that series, I admit, still more curious. +Your tour de force is of the opposite kind. Renew the miracle, my dear +Louis, and believe me yours already gaping, + +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. I have had to keep my poor note several days--finding that after +all there _is_, thank heaven, a near post by San Francisco. Meanwhile I +have seen Colvin and made discreetly, though so eagerly, free of some of +your projects--and gyrations! Trapezist in the Pacific void! + +..."Catriona" is more and more BEAUTIFUL. There's the rub! + +H.J. + + + + +_To William James._ + + The incident referred to in the following letter was the unexpected + miscarriage of one of H. J.'s theatrical schemes. Meanwhile _Guy + Domville_ had been accepted for future production at the St. + James's Theatre. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Dec. 29th, 1893. + +...I rejoice greatly in Alice's announcement (which you, William, coyly +don't mention) of the presidency of the [Society for Psychical +Research]. I hope it's all honour and kudos and pleasantness, without a +tax of botherations. I wish I could give you some correspondingly good +tidings of my own ascensory movement; but I had a fall--or rather took a +jump--the other day (a month ago) of which the direction was not +vulgarly--I mean theatrically and financially--upward. You are so +sympathetic about the whole sordid development that I make a point of +mentioning the incident.... It was none the less for a while a lively +disgust and disappointment--a waste of patient and ingenious labour and +a sacrifice of coin much counted on. But a la guerre comme a la guerre. +I mean to wage this war ferociously for one year more--1894--and then +(unless the victory and the spoils have by that become more +proportionate than hitherto to the humiliations and vulgarities and +disgusts, all the dishonour and chronic insult incurred) to "chuck" the +whole intolerable experiment and return to more elevated and more +independent courses. The whole odiousness of the thing lies in the +connection between the drama and the theatre. The one is admirable in +its interest and difficulty, the other loathsome in its conditions. If +the drama could only be theoretically or hypothetically acted, the +fascination resident in its all but unconquerable (_circumspice!_) form +would be unimpaired, and one would be able to have the exquisite +exercise without the horrid sacrifice. However, Alexander's preparations +of my play are going on sedulously, as to which situation and +circumstances are all essentially different. He will produce me at no +distant date, infallibly.... But meanwhile I am working heroically, +though it every month becomes more difficult to give time to things of +which the pecuniary fruit is remote. Excuse these vulgar confidences. I +_have_ come to _hate_ the whole theatrical subject.... Don't write to +condole with me about the business. I don't in the least "require" it. +May the new year not have too many twists and turns for you, but lie +straight and smooth before you. + +Evermore your +HENRY. + + + + +_To Julian R. Sturgis._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Sunday [1893]. + +My dear Julian, + +I wish I had your gift of facile and fascinating rhyme: I would turn it +to account to thank you for your note and your sympathy. Yes, Ibsen is +ugly, common, hard, prosaic, bottomlessly bourgeois--and with his +distinction so far _in_, as it were, so behind doors and beyond +vestibules, that one is excusable for not pushing one's way to it. And +yet of his art he's a master--and I feel in him, to the pitch of almost +intolerable boredom, the presence and the insistence of life. On the +other hand his mastery, so bare and lean as it is, wouldn't count nearly +as much in any medium in which the genus was otherwise represented. In +_our_ sandy desert even this translated octopus (excuse my confusion of +habitats!!) sits alone, and isn't kept in his place by relativity. +"Thanks awfully" for having retained an impression from the few Tales. +My intentions are mostly good. I hope to knock at your door this p.m. + +Yours always, +HENRY JAMES. + + +_To George du Maurier._ + + An article by H. J. on George du Maurier had appeared in _Harper's + Weekly_, April 14, 1894. + + +Casa Biondetti, San Vio 715, +Venice. + +Thursday [May 1894]. + +Only see, my dear Kikaccio, to what my thick-and-thin espousal of your +genius exposes me at the hands of an unknown American female. +Guileless, stupid, muddled, distracted, well-meaning, but slightly +hypocritical American female!--Don't return, of course, the letter. I +haven't seen the little _cochonnerie_ I wrote about you, bothered, +preoccupied with other work, more and more incapable of writing _that_ +sort of thing gracefully and properly--in the muddle and confusion of my +coming abroad; and I hope _you_ haven't, by the trop bons soins of +McIlvaine, seen it either. But I bless it in that through arousing the +American female my clumsy 'critique' has given me the occasion to +salutarvi tutti. Are you on the hill or in the vale? I give it up, only +pressing you all to my bosom wherever you are. Trilby goes on with a +life and charm and loveability that gild the whole day one reads her. +It's most delightfully and vividly talked! And then drawn!--no, it isn't +fair. Well, I'm in Venice and you're not--so you've not got quite +everything. It has been cold and wet; but Italy is always Italy--and the +only thing really to be depended on quand meme. I hope you have not +returned to Hampstead, if you _have_ returned, without tying your legs +somewhere or other to Bayswater. I hope that everything has been well +with you all--you yourself most well. It makes me homesick to write to +you--but it is the only thing that does. I trust fame and flattery and +flowers flow in upon you with the revolving Harpers.... Write me a +word--tell me you don't hate me. I seem to remember rather disagreeably +what I wrote about you. + +Yours, caro mio, always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + H. J. had just received from his brother the diary which their + sister had kept during her last years in England. + + +Grand Hotel, Rome. +May 28th, 1894. + +My dear William:--my dear Alice:-- + +I wrote you a scrabbly note from Ravenna a few days since--but I must +follow it up, without delay, with something better. I came on here an +hour afterwards, and shall remain till June 1st or 2nd. I find Rome +deliriously cool and empty, and still very pleasing in spite of the +"ruining" which has been going on so long and of which one has heard so +much, i.e., the redemption and cockneyfication of the ruins. This +"changes" immensely--as everyone says; but I find myself, I am afraid, +so much _more_ changed--since I first knew and rhapsodized over it, that +I am bound in justice to hold Rome the less criminal of the two. I am +thinking a little about going down--if the coolness lasts--for three or +four days to Naples; but I haven't decided. I feel rather hard and +heartless to be prattling about these touristries to you, with the sad +picture I have had these last weeks of your--William's--state of +suffering. But it is only a way of saying that that state makes one feel +it to be the greater duty for me to be as well as I can. Absit omen! +Your so interesting letter of the 6th dictated to Alice speaks of the +possibility of your abscess continuing not to heal--but I trust the +event has long ere this reassured, comforted and liberated you. +Meanwhile may Alice have smoothed your pillow as even she has never +smoothed it before.... As regards the life, the power, the temper, the +humour and beauty and expressiveness of the Diary in itself--these +things were partly "discounted" to me in advance by so much of Alice's +talk during her last years--and my constant association with her--which +led me often to reflect about her extraordinary force of mind and +character, her whole way of taking life--and death--in very much the +manner in which the book does. I find in its pages, for instance, many +things I heard her say. None the less I have been immensely impressed +with the thing as a revelation of a moral and personal picture. It is +heroic in its individuality, its independence--its face-to-face with the +universe for and by herself--and the beauty and eloquence with which she +often expresses this, let alone the rich irony and humour, constitute (I +wholly agree with you) a new claim for the family renown. This last +element--her style, her power to write--are indeed to me a delight--for +I have had many letters from her. Also it brings back to me all sorts of +things I am glad to keep--I mean things that happened, hours, occasions, +conversations--brings them back with a strange, living richness. But it +also puts before me what I was tremendously conscious of in her +life-time--that the extraordinary intensity of her will and personality +really would have made the equal, the reciprocal, life of a "well" +person--in the usual world--almost impossible to her--so that her +disastrous, her tragic health was in a manner the only solution for her +of the practical problem of life--as it suppressed the element of +equality, reciprocity, etc. The violence of her reaction against her +British _ambiente_, against everything English, engenders some of her +most admirable and delightful passages--but I feel in reading them, as I +always felt in talking with her, that inevitably she simplified too +much, shut up in her sick room, exercised her wondrous vigour of +judgment on too small a scrap of what really surrounded her. It would +have been modified in many ways if she had _lived_ with them (the +English) more--seen more of the men, etc. But doubtless it is fortunate +for the fun and humour of the thing that it wasn't modified--as surely +the critical emotion (about them,) the essence of much of their nature, +was never more beautifully expressed. As for her allusions to H.--they +fill me with tears and cover me with blushes.... I find an immense +eloquence in her passionate "radicalism"--her most distinguishing +feature almost--which, in her, was absolutely direct and original (like +everything that was in her,) unreflected, uncaught from entourage or +example. It would really have made her, had she lived in the world, a +feminine "political force." But had she lived in the world and seen +things nearer she would have had disgusts and disillusions. However, +what comes out in the book--as it came out to me in fact--is that she +was really an Irishwoman; transplanted, transfigured--yet none the less +fundamentally national--in spite of her so much larger and finer than +Irish intelligence. She felt the Home Rule question absolutely as only +an Irishwoman (not anglicised) could. It was a tremendous emotion with +her--inexplicable in any other way--but perfectly explicable by +"atavism." What a pity she wasn't born there--and had her health for it. +She would have been (if, always, she had not fallen a victim to +disgust--a large "if") a national glory! But I am writing too much and +my late hindrances have left me with tremendous arrears of +correspondence. I thank you, dear Alice, _caramente_, for your sweet +letter received two or three weeks before William's. I crudely hope you +won't let your house--so as to have it to go to in the summer. Otherwise +what will become of you. I dig my nose into the fleshiest parts of the +young Francis. Tell Peggy I cling to her--and to Harry too, and Billy +not less.... I haven't sent you "The Yellow Book"--on purpose; and +indeed I have been weeks and weeks receiving a copy of it myself. I say +on purpose because although my little tale which ushers it in ("The +Death of the Lion") appears to have had, for a thing of mine, an unusual +success, I hate too much the horrid aspect and company of the whole +publication. And yet I am again to be intimately, conspicuously +associated with the 2d number. It is for gold and to oblige the +worshipful Harland (the editor). Wait and read the two tales in a +volume--with 2 or 3 others. Above all be _debout_ and forgive the long +reticence of your affectionate + +HENRY. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + Mr. Gosse and his family, with Mr. A. C. Benson, were at this time + spending a holiday in Switzerland, apparently not without + mischance. Stevenson's offending letter is to be found among his + published correspondence, dated from Vailima, July 7, 1894. H. J. + misrepresents the phrase he quotes. "I decline any longer to give + you examples of how not to write" are Stevenson's words. + + +Tregenna Castle Hotel, +St. Ives. + +August 22nd [1894]. + +My dear Gosse, + +I should have been very glad to hear from you yesterday if only for the +sweet opportunity it gives me of crying out that I told you so! It gives +me more than this--and I _didn't_ tell you so; but I wanted to +awfully--and I only smothered my wisdom under my waistcoat. Tell Arthur +Benson that I wanted to tell _him_ so too--that guileless morning at +Victoria: I knew so well, both then and at Delamere Terrace, with my +half century of experience, straight into what a purgatory you were +_all_ running. The high Swiss mountain inn, the crowd, the cold, the +heat, the rain, the Germans, the scramble, the impossible rooms and the +still more impossible everything else--the hope deferred, the money +misspent, the weather accurst: these things I saw written on your azure +brows even while I perfidiously prattled with your prattle. The only +thing was to let you do it--for one can no more come between a lady and +her Swiss hotel than between a gentleman and his wife. Meanwhile I sit +here looking out at _my_ nice, domestic, inexpensive English rain, in +_my_ nice bad stuffy insular inn, and thanking God that I am not as +Gosses and Bensons are. I am pretty bad, I recognise--but I am not so +bad as you. I am so bad that I am fleeing in a day or two--as I hope you +will have been doing if your ineluctable fate doesn't spare you. I +stopped on my way down here to spend three days with W. E. Norris, which +were rendered charming by the urbanity of my host and the peerless +beauty of Torquay, with which I fell quite in love. Here I go out for +long walks on wet moors with the silent Stephen, the almost speechless +Leslie. In the morning I improve the alas not shining hours, in a little +black sitting-room which looks out into the strange area--like unto that +of the London milkman--with which this ci-devant castle is encompassed +and which sends up strange scullery odours into my nose. I am very sorry +to hear of any friends of yours suffering by the Saturday Review, but I +know nothing whatever of the cataclysm. It's a journal which (in spite +of the lustre you add to it) I haven't so much as seen for 15 years, and +no echoes of its fortunes ever reach me. + +23rd. I broke off yesterday to take a long walk over bogs and brambles, +and this morning my windows are lashed by a wet hurricane. It makes me +wish I could settle down to a luxurious irresponsible day with the +_Lourdes_ of your appreciation, which lies there on my table still +uncut. But my "holiday" is no holiday and I must drive the mechanic pen. +Moreover I have vowed not to open _Lourdes_ till I shall have closed +with a final furious bang the unspeakable _Lord Ormont_, which I have +been reading at the maximum rate of ten pages--ten insufferable and +unprofitable pages, a day. It fills me with a critical rage, an artistic +fury, utterly blighting in me the indispensable principle of _respect_. +I have finished, at this rate, but the first volume--whereof I am moved +to declare that I doubt if any equal quantity of extravagant verbiage, +of airs and graces, of phrases and attitudes, of obscurities and +alembications, ever _started_ less their subject, ever contributed less +of a statement--told the reader less of what the reader needs to know. +All elaborate predicates of exposition without the ghost of a nominative +to hook themselves to; and not a difficulty met, not a figure presented, +not a scene constituted--not a dim shadow condensing once either into +audible or into visible reality--making you hear for an instant the tap +of its feet on the earth. Of course there are pretty things, but for +what they are they come so much too dear, and so many of the +profundities and tortuosities prove when threshed out to be only +pretentious statements of the very simplest propositions. Enough, and +forgive me. Above all don't send this to the P.M.G. There is another +side, of course, which one will utter another day. I have a dictated +letter from R. L. S., sent me through Colvin, who is at Schwalbach with +the horsey Duchess of Montrose, a disappointing letter in which the too +apt pupil of Meredith tells me nothing that I want to know--nothing save +that his spirits are low (which I would fain ignore,) and that he has +been on an excursion on an English man-of-war. The devilish letter is +wholly about the man-of-war, not a word else; and at the end he says "I +decline to tell you any more about it!" as if I had prescribed the +usurping subject. You shall see the rather melancholy pages when you +return--I must keep them to answer them. Bourget and his wife are in +England again--at Oxford: with Prevost at Buxton, H. Le Roux at +Wimbledon etc., it is the Norman conquest beginning afresh. What will be +the end, or the effect, of it? P. B. has sent me some of the sheets (100 +pp.) of his _Outremer_, which are singularly agreeable and lively. It +will be much the prettiest (and I should judge kindest) +socio-psychological book written about the U.S. That is saying little. +It is very living and interesting. Prevost's fetid etude (on the little +girls) represents a perfect bound, from his earlier things, in the way +of hard, firm, knowing ability. So clever--and so common; no ability to +imagine his "queenly" girl, made to dominate the world, do anything +finally by way of illustrating her superiority but become a professional +cocotte, like a _fille de portier_. + +Pity's akin to love--so I send that to Mrs Nellie and Tessa and to A. +Benson. + +Yours ever, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + This refers to an essay by Mr. Gosse on the Norwegian novelist + Bjoernson, prefixed to an English translation of his _Synnoeve + Solbakken_. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Nov. 9th, 1894. + +My dear Gosse, + +Many thanks for the study of the roaring Norseman, which I read +attentively last night--without having time, claimed by more _intimes_ +perusals, for reading his lusty fable. Bjoernson has always been, I +frankly confess, an untended prejudice--a hostile one--of mine, and the +effect of your lively and interesting monograph has been, I fear, to +validate the hardly more than instinctive mistrust. I don't think you +justify him, _rank_ him enough--hardly quite enough for the attention +you give him. At any rate he sounds in your picture--to say nothing of +looking, in his own!--like the sort of literary fountain from which I am +ever least eager to drink: the big, splashing, blundering genius of the +hit-or-miss, the _a peu pres_, family--without perfection, or the effort +toward it, without the exquisite, the love of selection: a big +super-abundant and promiscuous democrat. On the other hand the +impossibly-named _Novelle_ would perhaps win me over. But the human +subject-matter in these fellows is so rebarbatif--"Mrs. Bang-Tande!" +What a Romeo and Juliet! Have you seen Maurice Barres's last volume--"Du +Sang, de la Volupte et de la Mort"? That is exquisite in its fearfully +intelligent impertinence and its diabolical Renanisation. We will talk +of these things--all thanks meanwhile for the book. + +Yours ever, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + Mr. Gosse's study of Walter Pater is included in his _Critical + Kit-kats_. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +[Dec. 13th, 1894.] + +My dear Gosse, + +I return with much appreciation the vivid pages on Pater. They fill up +substantially the void of one's ignorance of his personal history, and +they are of a manner graceful and luminous; though I should perhaps +have relished a little more insistence on--a little more of an inside +view of--the nature of his mind itself. Much as they tell, however, how +curiously negative and faintly-grey he, after all telling, remains! I +think he has had--will have had--the most exquisite literary fortune: +i.e. to have taken it out all, wholly, exclusively, with the pen (the +style, the genius,) and absolutely not at all with the person. He is the +mask without the face, and there isn't in his total superficies a tiny +point of vantage for the newspaper to flap his wings on. You have been +lively about him--but about whom _wouldn't_ you be lively? I think you'd +be lively about _me_!--Well, faint, pale, embarrassed, exquisite Pater! +He reminds me, in the disturbed midnight of our actual literature, of +one of those lucent matchboxes which you place, on going to bed, near +the candle, to show you, in the darkness, where you can strike a light: +he shines in the uneasy gloom--vaguely, and has a phosphorescence, not a +flame. But I quite agree with you that he is not of the little day--but +of the longer time. + +Will you kindly ask Tessa if I may _still_ come, on Saturday? My visit +to the country has been put off by a death--and if there is a little +corner for me I'll appear. If there isn't--so late--no matter. I daresay +I ought to write to Miss Wetton. Or will Tessa amiably inquire? + +Yours always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + The news of Stevenson's death in Samoa reached London at this + moment, when H. J. was deeply occupied with the rehearsals of _Guy + Domville_ at the St. James's Theatre. "Jan. 5th" was to be the + first night of the play. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Dec. 17th, 1894. + +My dear Gosse, + +I meant to write you to-night on another matter--but of what can one +think, or utter or dream, save of this ghastly extinction of the beloved +R.L.S.? It is too miserable for cold words--it's an absolute desolation. +It makes me cold and sick--and with the absolute, almost alarmed sense, +of the visible material quenching of an indispensable light. That he's +silent forever will be a fact hard, for a long time, to live with. +To-day, at any rate, it's a cruel, wringing emotion. One feels how one +cared for him--what a place he took; and as if suddenly _into_ that +place there had descended a great avalanche of ice. I'm not sure that +it's not for _him_ a great and happy fate; but for us the loss of charm, +of suspense, of "fun" is unutterable. And how confusedly and pityingly +one's thought turns to those far-away stricken women, with their whole +principle of existence suddenly quenched and yet all the monstrosity of +the rest of their situation left on their hands! I saw poor Colvin +to-day--he is overwhelmed, he is touching: But I can't write of this--we +must talk of it. Yet these words have been a relief. + +And I can't write, either, of the matter I had intended to--viz. that +you are to rest secure about the question of Jan. 5th--I will do +everything for you. _That_ business becomes for the hour tawdry and +heartless to me. + +Yours always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Sidney Colvin._ + + H. J. unexpectedly found himself named by Stevenson as one of his + executors; but this charge he felt it impossible to undertake, on + account of his complete inexperience in matters of business. The + last paragraph of this letter refers to a suggestion that the + cabled news of Stevenson's death might prove to be mistaken. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Dec. 20th, '94. + +My dear Colvin, + +I didn't come, as I threatened, to see you this a.m.; because up to the +time I was forced (early) to absent myself from home for several hours +no sign had come from Edinburgh. On coming home at 4 o'clock, however, I +found both a telegram and a letter from Mr. Mitchell. The telegram asked +for a telegraphic _Yea_ or _Nay_ that might instantly be cabled to +Baxter at Port Said. I immediately wired a profoundly regretful, but +unconditional and insurmountable refusal. The absolute necessity of +doing this has gathered still more overwhelming force since I saw you +yesterday--if indeed there could have been any "still more" when the +maximum had been so promptly reached. To ease still more (at all events) +my conscience--though God knows it was, and is, easy!--I conferred last +p.m. with a sage friend about the matter, and if I had been in the +smallest degree unsettled some words he dropped about the pecuniary +liability of executors, under certain new regulations (in regard to the +Revenue &c,) would sufficiently have fixed me. But in truth the +question was not even one to talk of at all--even to the extent of +asking for confirmations. I wish the thing could have been otherwise. +But that is idle. So I have answered Mr. Mitchell's letter, by this +evening's post, in a manner that leaves no doubt either of my decision +or my sorrow. There _may_ be something legal for me to do to be +exonerated: I have inquired. + +And meanwhile comes the torture of such phenomena as Dr. Balfour's +letter in to-day's _P.M.G._--a torture doubtless only meant (by a +perverse Providence) to deepen the final pain. At any rate it is +unsettling to the point of nervous anguish--or a peu pres. But to whom +do I say this? I don't like to think of _your_ horrible worry--your all +but damnable suspense. _Don't answer this_--or write me unless you +particularly want to: I ache, in sympathy, under the letters, telegrams, +complications of every sort you have to meet: that you may find strength +to bear which is the hearty wish of yours, my dear Colvin, more than +ever, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Miss Henrietta Reubell._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +December 31st, 1894. + +Dear Miss Etta, + +This is to wish you a brand-New Year, and to wish it very +affectionately--and to wish it of not more than usual length but of more +than usual fulness. I have had an unacknowledged letter from you longer +than is decorous. But I have shown you ere this that epistolary decorum +is a virtue I have ceased to pretend to. And during the last month I +have not pretended to any other virtue either--save an endless patience +and an heroic resignation, as I have been, and still am, alas, in the +sorry position of having in rehearsal a little play--3 acts--which is to +be produced on Saturday next, at the St. James's Theatre, as to which I +beg you heartily to indulge for me, about 8.30 o'clock on that evening, +in very fervent prayer. It is a little "romantic" play of which the +action is laid (in England) in the middle of the last century, and it +will be exquisitely mounted, dressed &c., and very creditably acted, as +things go here. But rehearsal is an _ecoeurment_ is the right +spelling] and one's need of heroic virtues infinite. I have been in the +breach daily for 4 weeks, and am utterly exhausted. To-night (the +theatre being closed for the week on purpose) is the first dress +rehearsal--which is here of course not a public, as in Paris, but an +intensely private function--all for me, _me prelassant dans mon +fauteuil_, alone, like the King of Bavaria at the opera. There are to be +three nights more of this, to give them ease in the wearing of their +clothes of a past time, and that, after the grind of the earlier work, +is rather amusing--as amusing as anything can be, for a man of taste and +sensibility, in the odious process of practical dramatic production. I +may have been meant for the Drama--God knows!--but I certainly wasn't +meant for the Theatre. C'est pour vous dire that I am much pressed and +am only sending you mes voeux tres-sinceres in a shabbily brief little +letter. There are a number of interesting things in your last to which I +want to respond. I send you also by post 3 or 4 miserable little (old) +views of Tunbridge Wells, which I have picked up in looking, at rare +leisure moments, for one good one for you. I haven't, alas, found that; +but I think I am on the track of it, and you shall have it as soon as it +turns up. Accept these meanwhile as a little stop-gap and a symbol of my +New Year's greeting.... I hope you are in good case and good hope. We +are having here an excellent winter, almost fogless and generally +creditable. Write me a little word of hope and help for the 5th; I shall +regard it as a happy influence for yours forever, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Jan. 9th, 1895. + +My dear William, + +I never cabled to you on Sunday 6th (about the first night of my play,) +because, as I daresay you will have gathered from some despatches or +newspapers (if there have been any, and you have seen them,) the case +was too complicated. Even now it's a sore trial to me to have to write +about it--weary, bruised, sickened, disgusted as one is left by the +intense, the cruel ordeal of a first night that--after the immense +labour of preparation and the unspeakable tension of suspense--has, in a +few brutal moments, not gone well. In three words the delicate, +picturesque, extremely human and extremely artistic little play was +taken profanely by a brutal and ill-disposed gallery which had shown +signs of malice prepense from the first and which, held in hand till the +end, kicked up an infernal row at the fall of the curtain. There +followed an abominable quarter of an hour during which all the forces of +civilization in the house waged a battle of the most gallant, prolonged +and sustained applause with the hoots and jeers and catcalls of the +roughs, whose _roars_ (like those of a cage of beasts at some infernal +"zoo") were only exacerbated (as it were) by the conflict. It was a +cheering scene, as you may imagine, for a nervous, sensitive, exhausted +author to face--and you must spare my going over again the horrid hour, +or those of disappointment and depression that have followed it; from +which last, however, I am rapidly and resolutely, thank God, emerging. +The "papers" have, into the bargain, been mainly ill-natured and densely +stupid and vulgar; but the only two dramatic critics who count, W. +Archer and Clement Scott, have done me more justice. Meanwhile all +_private_ opinion is apparently one of extreme admiration--I have been +flooded with letters of the warmest protest and assurance.... Everyone +who was there has either written to me or come to see me--I mean every +one I know and many people I don't. Obviously the little play, which I +strove to make as broad, as simple, as clear, as British, in a word, as +possible, is over the heads of the _usual_ vulgar theatre-going London +public--and the chance of its going for a while (which it is too early +to measure) will depend wholly on its holding on long enough to attract +the _unusual_. I was there the second night (Monday, 7th) when, before a +full house--a remarkably good "money" house Alexander told me--it went +singularly well. But it's soon to see or to say, and I'm prepared for +the worst. The thing fills me with horror for the abysmal vulgarity and +brutality of the theatre and its regular public, which God knows I have +had intensely even when working (from motives as "pure" as pecuniary +motives _can_ be) against it; and I feel as if the simple freedom of +mind thus begotten to return to one's legitimate form would be simply by +itself a divine solace for everything. Don't worry about me: I'm a Rock. +If the play has no life on the stage I shall publish it; it's altogether +the best thing I've done. You would understand better the elements of +the case if you had seen the thing it followed (_The Masqueraders_) and +the thing that is now succeeding at the Haymarket--the thing of Oscar +Wilde's. On the basis of _their_ being plays, or successes, my thing is +necessarily neither. Doubtless, moreover, the want of a roaring +actuality, simplified to a few big _familiar_ effects, in my subject--an +episode in the history of an old English Catholic family in the last +century--militates against it, with all usual theatrical people, who +don't want plays (from variety and nimbleness of fancy) of different +_kinds_, like books and stories, but only of one kind, which their +stiff, rudimentary, clumsily-working vision recognizes as the kind +they've had before. And yet I had tried so to meet them! But you can't +make a sow's ear out of a silk purse.--I can't write more--and don't ask +for more details. This week will probably determine the fate of the +piece. If there is increased advance-booking it will go on. If there +isn't, it will be withdrawn, and with it all my little hope of profit. +The time one has given to such an affair from the very first to the very +last represents in all--so inconceivably great, to the uninitiated, is +the amount--a pitiful, tragic bankruptcy of hours that might have been +rendered retroactively golden. But I am not plangent--one must take the +thick with the thin--and I have such possibilities of another and better +sort before me. I am only sorry for your and Alice's having to be so +sorry for yours forever, + +HENRY. + + + + +_To George Henschel._ + + Answering a suggestion that H. J. should write a libretto to be set + to music by Sir George Henschel. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +January 22d, 1895. + +My dear Henschel, + +Your flattering dream is beautiful--but, I fear, alas, delusive. When I +say I 'fear' it, I mean I only too completely feel it. It is a charming +idea, but the root of the libretto is not in me. We will talk of +it--yes: because I will talk with you, with joy, of _anything_--will +even play to myself that I have convictions I haven't, for that +privilege. But I am unlyrical, unmusical, unrhythmical, unmanageable. +And I hate "old New England stories"!--which are lean and pale and poor +and ugly. But let us by all means talk--and the more the better. I am +touched by your thinking so much good of me--and I embrace you, my dear +Henschel, for such rich practical friendship and confidence. I +congratulate you afresh on your glorious wife, I await you with +impatience, and I stretch out to you across the wintry wastes the very +grateful hand of yours always, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +January 22d, 1895. + +My dear Howells, + +...I am indebted to you for your most benignant letter of December last. +It lies open before me and I read it again and am soothed and cheered +and comforted again. You put your finger sympathetically on the place +and spoke of what I wanted you to speak of. I _have_ felt, for a long +time past, that I have fallen upon evil days--every sign or symbol of +one's being in the least _wanted_, anywhere or by any one, having so +utterly failed. A new generation, that I know not, and mainly prize not, +has taken universal possession. The sense of being utterly out of it +weighed me down, and I asked myself what the future would be. All these +melancholies were qualified indeed by one redeeming reflection--the +sense of how little, for a good while past (for reasons very logical, +but accidental and temporary,) I had been producing. I _did_ say to +myself "Produce again--produce; produce better than ever, and all will +yet be well;" and there was sustenance in that so far as it went. But it +has meant much more to me since _you_ have said it--for it _is_, +practically, what you admirably say. It is exactly, moreover, what I +meant to admirably do--and have meant, all along, about this time to get +into the motion of. The whole thing, however, represents a great change +in my life, inasmuch as what is clear is that periodical publication is +practically closed to me--I'm the last hand that the magazines, in this +country or in the U.S., seem to want. I won't afflict you with the now +accumulated (during all these past years) evidence on which this +induction rests--and I have spoken of it to no creature till, at this +late day, I speak of it to you.... All this, I needn't say, is for your +segretissimo ear. What it means is that "production" for me, as +aforesaid, means production of the little _book_, pure and +simple--independent of any antecedent appearance; and, truth to tell, +now that I wholly _see_ that, and have at last accepted it, I am, +incongruously, not at all sorry. I am indeed very serene. I have always +hated the magazine form, magazine conditions and manners, and much of +the magazine company. I hate the hurried little subordinate part that +one plays in the catchpenny picture-book--and the negation of all +literature that the insolence of the picture-book imposes. The +money-difference will be great--but not so great after a bit as at +first; and the other differences will be so all to the good that even +from the economic point of view they will tend to make up for that and +perhaps finally even completely do so. It is about the distinctness of +one's _book-position_ that you have so substantially reassured me; and I +mean to do far better work than ever I have done before. I have, +potentially, improved immensely and am bursting with ideas and +subjects--though the act of composition is with me more and more slow, +painful and difficult. I shall never again write a _long_ novel; but I +hope to write six immortal short ones--and some tales of the same +quality. Forgive, my dear Howells, the cynical egotism of these +remarks--the fault of which is in your own sympathy. Don't fail me this +summer. I shall probably not, as usual, absent myself from these +islands--not be beyond the Alps as I was when you were here last. That +way Boston lies, which is the deadliest form of madness. I sent you only +last night messages of affection by dear little "Ned" Abbey, who +presently sails for N.Y. laden with the beautiful work he has been doing +for the new Boston public library. I hope you will see him--he will +speak of me competently and kindly. I wish all power to your elbow. Let +me hear as soon as there is a sound of packing. Tell Mildred I rejoice +in the memory of her. Give my love to your wife, and believe me, my dear +Howells, yours in all constancy, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +February 2nd, 1895. + +...The poor little play seems already, thank God, ancient history, +though I have lived through, in its company, the horridest four weeks of +my life. Produce a play and you will know, better than I can tell you, +how such an ordeal--odious in its essence!--is only made tolerable and +palatable by great success; and in how many ways accordingly non-success +may be tormenting and tragic, a bitterness of every hour, ramifying into +every throb of one's consciousness. Tonight the thing will have lived +the whole of its troubled little life of 31 performances, and will be +"taken off," to be followed, on Feb. 5th, by a piece by Oscar Wilde that +will have probably a very different fate. On the night of the 5th, too +nervous to do anything else, I had the ingenious thought of going to +some other theatre and seeing some other play as a means of being +coerced into quietness from 8 till 10.45. I went accordingly to the +Haymarket, to a new piece by the said O.W. that had just been +produced--"An Ideal Husband." I sat through it and saw it played with +every appearance (so far as the crowded house was an appearance) of +complete success, and _that_ gave me the most fearful apprehension. The +thing seemed to me so helpless, so crude, so bad, so clumsy, feeble and +vulgar, that as I walked away across St. James's Square to learn my own +fate, the prosperity of what I had seen seemed to me to constitute a +dreadful presumption of the shipwreck of _G.D._, and I stopped in the +middle of the Square, paralyzed by the terror of this +probability--afraid to go on and learn more. "How _can_ my piece do +anything with a public with whom _that_ is a success?" It couldn't--but +even then the full truth was, "mercifully," not revealed to me; the +truth that in a short month my piece would be whisked away to make room +for the triumphant Oscar. If, as I say, this episode has, by this time, +become ancient history to me, it is, thank heaven, because when a thing, +for me (a piece of work,) is done, it's done: I get quickly detached and +away from it, and am wholly given up to the better and fresher life of +the next thing to come. This is particularly the case now, with my +literary way blocked so long and my production smothered by these +theatrical lures: I have such arrears on hand and so many things seem to +wait for me--that I want far more and that it will be nobler to do--that +I am looking in a very different direction than in that of the +sacrificed little play. Partly for this reason, this receiving from you +all the retarded echo of my reverse and having to live over it with you +(you must excuse me if I don't do so much,) is the thing, in the whole +business, that has been most of an anguish and that I dreaded most in +advance. As for the play, in three words, it has been, I think I may +say, a rare and distinguished private success and scarcely anything at +all of a public one. By a private success, I mean with the even +moderately cultivated, civilised and intelligent _individual_, with +"people of taste" in short, of almost any kind, as distinguished from +the vast English Philistine mob--the regular "theatrical public" of +London, which, of all the vulgar publics London contains, is the most +brutishly and densely vulgar. This congregation the things they do like +sufficiently judge.... I no sooner found myself in the presence of those +yelling barbarians of the first night and learned what could be the +savagery of their disappointment that one wasn't perfectly the _same_ as +everything else they had ever seen, than the dream and delusion of my +having made a successful appeal to the cosy, childlike, naif, domestic +British imagination (which was what I had calculated) dropped from me in +the twinkling of an eye. I saw they couldn't care one straw for a damned +young last-century English Catholic, who lived in an old-tune Catholic +world and acted, with every one else in the play, from remote and +romantic Catholic motives. The whole thing was, for them, remote, and +all the intensity of one's ingenuity couldn't make it anything else. It +has made it something else for the _few_--but that is all. Such is the +bare history of poor G.D.--which, I beg you to believe, throws no light +on my "technical skill" which isn't a light that that mystery ought to +rejoice to have thrown. The newspaper people muddle things up with the +most foredoomed crudity; and I am capable of analysing the whole thing +far more scientifically and drawing from it lessons far more pertinent +and practical than all of them put together. It is perfectly true that +the novelist has a fearful long row to hoe to get into any practical +relation to the grovelling stage, and his difficulty is precisely +double: it bears, on one side, upon the question of method and, on the +other, upon the question of subject. If he is really in earnest, as I +have been, he surmounts the former difficulty before he surmounts the +latter. I have worked like a horse--far harder than any one will ever +know--over the whole stiff mystery of "technique"--I have run it to +earth, and I don't in the least hesitate to say that, for the +comparatively poor and meagre, the piteously simplified, purposes of the +English stage, I have made it absolutely my own, put it into my pocket. +The question of realising how different is the attitude of the +theatre-goer toward the quality of thing which might be a story in a +book from his attitude toward the quality of thing that is given to him +as a story in a play is another matter altogether. _That_ difficulty is +portentous, for any writer who doesn't approach it naively, as only a +very limited and simple-minded writer can. One has to _make_ one's self +so limited and simple to conceive a subject, see a subject, simply +enough, and that, in a nutshell, is where I have stumbled. And yet if +you were to have seen my play! I haven't been near the theatre since the +second night, but I shall go down there late this evening to see it +buried and bid good-bye to the actors.... I am very sorry for Marion +Terry, who has delighted in her part and made the great hit of her +career, I should suppose, in it, and who has to give it up thus +untimely. Her charming acting has done much for the little run.... The +money disappointment is of course keen--as it was wholly for money I +adventured. But the poor four weeks have brought me $1,100--which shows +what a tidy sum many times four weeks would have brought; without my +lifting, as they say, after the first performance, a finger. + +I have written you so long-windedly on this matter that I have left +neither time nor space for anything else. I must catch the post and will +write more sociably something by the next one. One's time, in the whole +history, has gone like water, and still it pours out. _Please_ don't +send me anything out of newspapers. + +Always your +HENRY. + + + + +_To Sidney Colvin._ + + The first of Stevenson's letters to be published, it will be + remembered, were the "Vailima Letters" to Sir Sidney Colvin. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Feb. 19th, 1895. + +My dear Colvin, + +I shall send you all the Vailima Letters back to-morrow or next day by +hand. I have completely read them. I can't say, and I don't want to say, +anything of them but "Publish them--they make the man so loveable." It's +on _that_ I should take my stand. I think your estimate of them as +ranking high in their class (epistolary) is perhaps (if I remember what +you seemed to express of it) a larger one than I should concur in; but I +think still more that that makes little difference; for they will +assuredly be _liked_--immensely, and that is mainly what one is +concerned to ask for him. They are charming, living, touching, +absolutely natural; and I think _better_ toward the end than at the +beginning. What they suffer from is: 1º Want of interest and want of +clearness as to the subject-matter of much of them--the Samoan +personalities, politics, &c; all to me almost squalid--and the +irritating effect of one's sense of his clearing the very ground to be +able to do his daily work. Want also to a certain extent of +_generalization_ about all these matters and some others--into the +dreary specifics of which the reader perhaps finds himself plunged too +much. 2º A certain tormenting effect in his literary confidences (to +you,) glimpses, promises, revelations &c., arising from his so seldom +telling the subject, the _idea_ of the thing--what he sees, what he +wants to do, &c--as against his pouring forth titles, chapters, +divisions, names &c, in such magnificent abundance.--On the other hand +the personality shines out so beautiful and there are so many charming +things--passages, pages--that not to publish them would seem to me like +the burial of something alive. I see but little in what you have left in +these copies to excise on grounds of discretion, unless it be many of +those reports of the state of public affairs and allusions to public +personages which are _primarily_ excisable by reason of obscurity, +failure to appeal to reader's interest, &c. But I should like to see you +and talk about the matter with you better than thus, and shall take the +earliest occasion. The hideous sadness of them--to _us_! To readers at +large--no. But I feel as though I had been sitting with him for hours. + +Yours always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. John L. Gardner._ + + +Royal Hospital, Dublin. +March 23d, 1895. + +Dear Isabella Gardner, + +Yes, I have delayed hideously to write to you, since receiving your note +of many days ago. But I always delay hideously, and my shamelessness is +rapidly becoming (in the matter of letter-writing) more disgraceful even +than my procrastination. I brought your letter with me to Ireland more +than a fortnight ago with every intention of answering it on the morrow +of my arrival; but I have been leading here a strange and monstrous life +of demoralisation and frivolity and the fleeting hour has mocked, till +today, at my languid effort to stay it, to clutch it, in its passage. I +have been paying three monstrous visits in a row; and if I needed any +further demonstration of the havoc such things make in my life I should +find it in this sense of infidelity to a charming friendship of so many +years. + +I return to England to enter a monastery for the rest of my days--and +crave your forgiveness before I take this step. I have been staying in +this queer, shabby, sinister, sordid place (I mean Dublin,) with the +Lord Lieutenant (poor young Lord Houghton,) for what is called (a +fragment, that is, of what is called) the "Castle Season," and now I am +domesticated with very kind and valued old friends, the Wolseleys--Lord +W. being commander of the forces here (that is, head of the little +English army of occupation in Ireland--a five-years appointment) and +domiciled in this delightfully quaint and picturesque old structure, of +Charles II's time--a kind of Irish Invalides or Chelsea Hospital--a +retreat for superannuated veterans, out of which a commodious and +stately residence has been carved. We live side by side with the 140 +old red-coated cocked-hatted pensioners--but with a splendid great +rococo hall separating us, in which Lady Wolseley gave the other night +the most beautiful ball I have ever seen--a fancy-ball in which all the +ladies were Sir Joshuas, Gainsboroughs, or Romneys, and all the men in +uniform, court dress or evening hunt dress. (_I_ went as--guess +what!--alas, nothing smarter than the one black coat in the room.) It is +a world of generals, aide-de-camps and colonels, of military colour and +sentinel-mounting, which amuses for the moment and makes one reflect +afresh that in England those who _have_ a good time have it with a +vengeance. The episode at the tarnished and ghost-haunted Castle was +little to my taste, and was a very queer episode indeed--thanks to the +incongruity of a vice-regal "court" (for that's what it considers +itself) utterly boycotted by Irish (landlord) society--the present +viceroy being the nominee of a home-rule government, and reduced to +dreary importation from England to fill its gilded halls. There was a +ball every night, etc., but too much standing on one's hind-legs--too +much pomp and state--for nothing and nobody. On my return (two days +hence) to my humble fireside I get away again as quickly as possible +into the country--to a cot beside a rill, the address of which no man +knoweth. There I remain for the next six months to come; and nothing of +any sort whatever is to happen to me (this is all arranged,) save that +you are to come down and stay a day or two with me when you come to +England. There is, alas, to be no "abroad" for me this year. I rejoice +with you in _your_ Rome--but my Rome is in the buried past. I spent, +however, last June there, and was less excruciated than I feared. Have +you seen my old friend Giuseppe Primoli--a great friend, in particular, +of the Bourgets? I dare say you have breakfasted deep with him. May +this find you perched on new conquests. It's vain to ask you to write +me, or tell me, anything. Let me only ask you therefore to believe me +your very affectionate old friend. + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Arthur Christopher Benson._ + + The excursion to Windsor was one of several on which H. J. + conducted Alphonse Daudet and his family during their visit to + England this spring. The "adorable cottage" was the house then + occupied by Mr. Benson as a master at Eton. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +May 11th [1895]. + +My dear Arthur B. + +A quelque chose malheur est bon: my very natural failure to find you +brought me your engaging letter. Strike, but hear me. I knew but too +well that it would not seem felicitous to you that I should leave a mere +card at your ravishing bower: but please believe that I had no +alternative. I weighed the question of notifying you in advance--weighed +it anxiously; but the scale against it was pressed down by overwhelming +considerations. Daudet is so unwell and fatigable and unable to walk or +to mount steps or stairs (he could do Windsor Castle only from the +carriage,) that I didn't know he would pull through the excursion at +all--and I thought it unfair to inflict on you the awkward problem of +his getting, or not getting, into your house--of his getting over to +Eton at all--and of the five other members of his family being hurled +upon you. We had, in fact, only just time to catch our return train. +Still, I had a sneaking romantic _hope_ of you. I should have liked +them, hungry for the great show, to behold you! As I turned sadly from +your "adorable cottage" and got back into the carriage A. D. said to +me--having waited contemplatively during my conference with your +domestic: "Ah, si vous saviez comme ces petits coins d'Angleterre +m'amusent!" A. C. B. would have amused him still more. Content yourself, +for the hour, my dear Arthur Benson, with "amusing" a humbler master of +Dichtung--and an equal one, perhaps, of Wahrheit. I am delighted you +have been thinking of me--and beg you to be sure that _whenever_ you +happen to do so, Telepathy, as you say, will happen to be in it! This +time, e.g., it was intensely in it--for you had been peculiarly present +to me all these last days in connection with my alternations of writing +to you or not writing to you about the projected Thursday at Windsor. I +wanted to confine myself to the pure feasible for Daudet, and yet I +wanted (still more) to write to you "anyway," as they say in the U. S. +And I _am_ writing to you--q.e.d. So there we are. I rejoice in a +certain air of happiness in your letter. Dine with you some day? De +grand coeur--after a little--after the very lively practical +pre-occupation of the presence of my helpless and bewildered Gauls has +abated. There is a late train from Windsor that would put me back after +dinner--unless I err. Your mother has kindly invited me to a party on +the 16th and I shall certainly go--if I survive (and return from) the +process of taking Daudet down to see G. Meredith at Box Hill--which has +been fixed for that day. You won't be there (at Lambeth) I ween--but if +you _were_, what possibilities (of the order hinted at above) we might +discuss in a Gothic embrasure! + +Respond--respond, if ever so briefly, to yours, my dear Arthur Benson, +for ever, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. E. Norris._ + + The "American outbreak" was the trouble over the question of the + Venezuelan frontier. The articles in the _Times_ by the late G. W. + Smalley (correspondent for the journal in New York) did much, in H. + J.'s view, to preserve the relations between England and the United + States during this difficult time. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Feb. 4th [1896]. + +My dear Norris, + +Your letter is as good as the chair by your study-table (betwixt it, as +it were, and the tea-stand) used to be; and as that luxurious piece of +furniture shall (D.V.) be again. Your news, your hand, your voice +sprinkle me--most refreshingly--with the deep calm of Torquay. It is in +short in every way good to hear from you, so that, behold, for your +sweet sake, I perpetrate that intensest of my favourite immoralities--I +snatch the epistolary, the disinterested pen before (at 10 a.m.) +squaring my poor old shoulders over the painful instrument that I fondly +try to believe to be lucrative. It _isn't_--but one must keep up the +foolish fable to the end. I am having in these difficult conditions a +very decent winter. It is mild, and it isn't wet--not here and now; and +it is--for me--thanks to more than Machiavellian cunning, more +dinnerless than it has, really, ever been. My fireside really knows me +on some evenings. I forsake it too often--but a little less and less. So +you bloom and smack your lips, while I shrivel and tighten my waistband. +In spite of my gain of private quiet I have suffered acutely by my loss +of public. The American outbreak has darkened all my sky--and made me +feel, among many other things, how long I have lived away from my native +land, how long I _shall_ (D.V.!) live away from it and how little I +understand it today. The explosion of jingoism there is the result of +all sorts of more or less domestic and internal conditions--and what is +most indicated, on the whole, as coming out of it, is a vast new split +or cleavage in American national feeling--politics and parties--a split +almost, roughly speaking, between the West and the East. There are +really two civilisations there side by side--in one yoke; or rather one +civilisation and a barbarism. All the expressions of feeling _I_ have +received from the U.S. (since this hideous row) have been, intensely, of +course, from the former. It is, on the whole, the stronger force; but +only on condition of its fighting hard. But I think it _will_ fight +hard. Meanwhile, the whole thing sickens me. That unfortunately, +however, is not a reason for its not being obviously there. It's there +all the while. But let it not be any more _here_: I mean in this +scribblement. My admiration of Smalley is boundless, and my appreciation +and comfort and gratitude. He has really _done_ something--and will do +more--for peace and decency. + +I went yesterday to Leighton's funeral--a wonderful and slightly curious +public demonstration--the streets all cleared and lined with police, the +day magnificent (his characteristic good fortune to the end;) and St. +Paul's very fine to the eye and crammed with the _whole_ London +world.... The music was fine and severe, but I thought wanting in volume +and force--thin and meagre for the vast space. But what do I know? + +No, my dear Norris, I _don't_ go abroad--I go on May 1st into the depths +(somewhere) of old England. A response to that proposal I spoke to you +of (from Rome) is utterly impossible to me now.... I've two novels to +write before I can _dream_ of anything else; and to go abroad is to +plunge into the fiery furnace of people. So either Devonshire or some +other place will be my six months' lot. I must take a house, this +time--a small and cheap one--and I must (deride me not) be somewhere +where I can, without disaster, bicycle. Also I must be a little nearer +town than last year. I'm afraid these things rather menace Torquay. But +it's soon to say--I must wait. I shall decide in April--or by +mid-March--only. Meanwhile things will clear up. I'm intensely, thank +heaven, busy. I will, I think, send you the little magazine tale over +which (I mean over whose number of words--infinite and awful) I +struggled so, in Sept. and Oct. last, under your pitying eye and with +your sane and helpful advice. It comes in to me this a.m. + +...I hope your daughter is laying up treasure corporeal in Ireland. I +like _your_ dinners--even I mean in the houses of the other hill-people; +and I beg you to feel yourself clung to for ever by yours irrepressibly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +Point Hill, +Playden, Rye. + +July 24th, 1896. + +My dear William, + +...I wrote you at some length not very long since, and my life has been, +here, so peaceful that nothing has happened to me since save an incident +terminated this a.m.--a charming little visit (of 24 hours) from Wendell +Holmes, who was in admirable youth, spirits, health and "form," and +whose presence I greatly enjoyed. He is--or has been--having his usual +social triumphs in London, was as vivid and beautiful as ever about +them--also seems to enjoy much _this_ humble but picturesque little +place and sails for the U.S. on Aug. 22nd. Save that he seems to see you +rarely and precariously, he will carry you good news of me. I have only +five days more of Point Hill, alas--but I have solved the problem of not +returning on Aug. 1st to the stifling London (we are having a summer of +transcendent droughts and heat--like last, only more so,) and not on the +other hand sacrificing precious days to hunting up another +refuge--solved it by taking, for two months, the Vicarage at Rye, which +is shabby, fusty--a sad drop from P.H., but close at hand to this (15 +minutes walk,) and has much of the same picturesque view (from a small +terrace garden behind--a garden to sit in, and more or less, as here, to +_eat_ in) and almost the same very moderate _loyer_. It has also more +room, and more tumblers and saucepans, and above all, at a moment when I +am intensely busy, saves me a wasteful research. So I shall be there +from the 29th of this month till the last week in September. "_The +Vicarage, Rye, Sussex_," is my address. The place, unfortunately, isn't +quite up to the pretty suggestion of the name. But this little corner of +the land endears itself to me--and the peace of the country is a balm. +It is all, about here, most mild and mellow and loveable--too +"relaxing," but that is partly the exceptional summer. I have been able, +_every_ evening, for three months, to dine, at _8_, on my little +terrace. So the climate of England is, literally, not always to be +sneezed at. But the absence of rain threatens a water-famine, and the +"tub" is a short allowance. With Chocorua let, I am at a loss to place +you all, and only hope you are succeeding better in placing yourselves. +It would delight me to hear that Alice is "boarding" somewhere with +Peggy and the afflicted infant whom I refuse to denominate "Tweedy." I +hope, at any rate, she is getting rest and refreshment of some sort. +There would be room for two or three of you at my Vicarage--I wish you +were here to feel the repose of it. May your summer be merciful and your +lectures _on ne peut plus suivies_. I say nothing about the political +bear-garden--I fear I pusillanimously keep out of it. I am well (absit +omen) and interested in what I _am_ in--and I embrace you all. Ever your +affectionate + +HENRY. + + + + +_To Edmumd Gosse._ + + _The Spoils of Poynton_ (under the title of _The Old Things_) had + begun to appear in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in April 1896. + + +The Vicarage, +Rye. + +August 28th, 1896. + +My dear Edmund, + +Don't think me a finished brute or a heartless fiend or a soulless one, +or any other unhappy thing with a happy name. I have pressed your letter +to my bosom again and again, and if I've not sooner expressed to you how +I've prized it, the reason has simply been that for the last month there +has been no congruity between my nature and my manners--between my +affections and my lame right hand. A crisis overtook me some three weeks +ago from which I emerge only to hurl myself on this sheet of paper and +consecrate it to _you_. I will reserve details--suffice it that in an +evil hour I began to pay the penalty of having arranged to let a current +serial begin when I was too little ahead of it, and when it proved a +much slower and more difficult job than I expected. The printers and +illustrators overtook and denounced me, the fear of breaking down +paralysed me, the combination of rheumatism and fatigue rendered my +hand and arm a torture--and the total situation made my existence a +nightmare, in which I answered not a single note, letting correspondence +go to smash in order barely to save my honour. I've finished (day before +yesterday,) but I fear my honour--with _you_--lies buried in the ruin of +all the rest. You will soon be coming home, and this will meet or reach +you God only knows when. Let it take you the assurance that the most +lurid thing in my dreams has been the glitter of your sarcastic +spectacles. It was charming of you to write to me from dear little old +devastated Vevey--as to which indeed you make me feel, in a few vivid +touches, a faint nostalgic pang. I don't want to think of you as still +in your horrid ice-world (for it is cold even here and I scribble by a +morning fire;) and yet it's in my interest to suppose you still feeling +so all abroad that these embarrassed lines will have for you some of the +charm of the bloated English post. That makes me, at the same time, +doubly conscious that I've nothing to tell you that you will most +languish for--news of the world and the devil--no throbs nor thrills +from the great beating heart of the thick of things. I went to town for +a week on the 15th, to be nearer the devouring maw into which I had to +pour belated copy; but I spent the whole time shut up in De Vere Gardens +with an inkpot and a charwoman. The only thing that befell me was that I +dined one night at the Savoy with F. Ortmans and the P. Bourgets--and +that the said Bourgets--but two days in London--dined with me one night +at the Grosvenor club. But these occasions were not as rich in incident +and emotion as poetic justice demanded--and your veal-fed table d'hote +will have nourished your intelligence quite as much. The only other +thing I did was to read in the Revue de Paris of the 15th Aug. the +wonderful article of A. Daudet on Goncourt's death--a little miracle of +art, adroitness, demoniac tact and skill, and taste so abysmal, judged +by _our_ fishlike sense, that there is no getting alongside of it at +all. But I grieve to say I can't send you the magazine--I saw it only at +a club. Doubtless you will have come across it. I have this ugly house +till the end of September and don't expect to move from Rye even for a +day till then. The date of your return is vague to me--but if it should +be early in the month I wonder if you couldn't come down for another +Sunday. I fear you will be too blase, much. For comfort my Vicarage is +distinctly superior to my eagle's nest--but, alas, beauty isn't in it. +The peace and prettiness of the whole land, here, however, has been good +to me, and I stay on with unabated relish. But I stay in solitude. I +don't see a creature. That, too, dreadful to relate, I like. You will +have been living in a crowd, and I expect you to return all garlanded +and odorous with anecdote and reminiscence. Mrs Nelly's will all bear, I +trust, on miraculous healings and feelings. I feel far from all access +to the French volume you recommend. Are you crawling over the Dorn, or +only standing at the bottom to catch Philip and Lady Edmund as they +drop? Pardon my poverty and my paucity. It is your absence that makes +them. Yours, my dear Edmund, not inconstantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Jonathan Sturges._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Thursday [Nov. 5, 1896]. + +My dear Jonathan, + +I spill over, this a.m., in a certain amount of jubilation--all the more +that I have your little letter of the other day to thank you for. One +breathes, I suppose--the alarmed, anxious, prudent part of one. But I +don't feel that McKinley is the _end_ of anything--least of all of big +provincial iniquities and abuses and bloody billionaires. However he's +more decent than the alternative--and your fortune will flow in, more +regularly; and mine will permit me to say I'm delighted you "accept," +and shall see that the cold mutton is not too much "snowed under" before +you come. Only give me a few--three or four if possible--days' notice: +then we will talk of many things--and among them of Rudyard Kipling's +"Seven Seas," which he has just sent me and which I will send you +tomorrow or next day (kindly guard it,) on the assumption that you won't +have seen it. I am laid low by the absolutely uncanny talent--the +prodigious special faculty of it. It's all _violent_, without a dream of +a _nuance_ or a hint of "distinction"; all prose trumpets and castanets +and such--with never a touch of the fiddle-string or a note of the +nightingale. But it's magnificent and masterly in its way, and full of +the most insidious art. He's a rum 'un--and one of the very few first +_talents_ of the time. There's a vilely idiotic reference to his +"coarseness" in this a.m.'s _Chronicle_. The coarseness of the _The Mary +Gloster_ is absolutely one of the most triumphant "values" of that +triumphant thing. How lovely, in these sweet days, your Haslemere +hermitage must be! I hope you've still the society of your young +friend--it eases the mind of your old one. What you said about Howells +most true--he is very touching. And I feel so _remote_ from him! The +little red book is extremely charming. Write to me. Tout a vous, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. E. Norris._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Dec. 23rd, 1896. + +My dear Norris, + +I respond with joy to your suggestion in your beautiful letter of two +days ago--that I shall enable you to find a word from me on your table +on the darkest a. m. of the year; in the first place because I am much +touched by your attaching to any word of mine any power to comfort or +charm; and in the second because I can well measure--by my own--your +sense of a melancholy from which you must appeal. It is indeed a +lugubrious feast and a miserable merriment. But it is something to spend +the evil season by one's own poor hearthstone (save that yours is +opulent), crouching over the embers and chuckling low over all the +dreadful places where one is not! I've been literally pressed to go to +two or three--one of them in Northumberland! (the cheek of some people!) +and the reflection that I _might_ be there and yet by heaven's mercy am +not, does give a faint blush as of the rose to my otherwise deep +depression. It is a mild, gray, rainless, sunless inoffensive sort of +Xmas here--and the shop fronts look rather prettily pink and green and +golden in the dear dirty old London streets--and I have ventured into +three or four--but _I_ do it, bless you, for nine and sevenpence +half-penny, all told! No wonder you want epistolary balm if you're +already in the fifties! Do you give them diamond necklaces and Arab +horses all round?--But Torquay, I too intensely felt, has gorgeous ways +of its own. Really it isn't bad here, for almost every one has left +town. I have yet had nothing worse to suffer than a first night at the +Lyceum--the too great Irvingism of which--mainly in Ellen Terry's +box--had been, the same day, pleasantly mitigated, in advance, by Tessa +Gosse in Sheridan's _Critic_. Tessa had a play and acted Mr Puff better +than any of her blushing fellow-nymphs acted anything else. And on New +Year's eve I go to her parents for a carouse of some sort, and until +then, thank God! I don't dine out save on Xmas day. Nor in 1897--by all +that's holy! _ever_ again! I have been quite smothered with it these two +months--and it's getting far beyond a joke.... I see no literary fry, +and languish in incorrigible obscurity. I had a fevered dream that _The +Other House_ might reach a second edition--but it declines to do +anything of the sort, and the pauper's grave continues to yawn. +Nevertheless--as it is assured any way--I _may_ go to Italy on April +1st. Meanwhile, my dear Norris, I think of you with a degree of envy +which even the manners of Topper scarce avail to diminish--I mean +because you have a beautiful home and are so many miles nearer than I am +to nature. You are also nearer to Miss Norris, and that is another +advantage, even though it does make a hole in L50! I have nothing better +to offer her on Xmas a.m. than the very friendly handshake of yours and +hers, my dear Norris, affectionately and always, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Arthur Christopher Benson._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +December 28th, 1896. + +My dear Arthur, + +Your generous letter has, this wild, mild, soft, sombre morning, made me +feel as if I were standing beside you, with my hand on your shoulder, in +an embrasure of one of the windows--at that fine old Farnham Castle that +I have seen (years ago)--that look out on the noble things you speak +of. And the communication in question is worthy, exactly, of the +_things_ in question; and grave and handsome and interesting and +touching even as they are. "Burn" it, quotha!--it _wouldn't_ have burnt, +I would have you know: it would have flown straight up the chimney and +taken, unscathed as marble, its invulnerable way to the individual for +whom it had just been so admirably winged. You say to me exactly the +right things, and you say them to exactly the right person. I can't tell +you how glad I am for you that you have all that highest sanity and +soundness (though it isn't as if I doubted it!) of emotion, full, frank +and deep. If there be a wisdom in not feeling--to the last throb--the +great things that happen to us, it is a wisdom I shall never either know +or esteem. Let your soul live--it's the only life that isn't, on the +whole, a sell. You have evidently been magnificent, and as I have my +hand on your shoulder I take the opportunity of patting you very +tenderly on the back. That back will evidently carry its load and be all +the straighter for the--as it seems to me--really quite massive +experience. I rejoice that the waters have held you up--they do, always, +I think, when they are only deep _enough_. And all your missings and +memories and contrasts and tendernesses are a part--the essence--of the +very force that is in you to live, and to feel again--and yet again and +again; when, at last, to _have_ so felt will be the thing in the world +you'll be gladdest to have done. + +I don't know, in spite of your compliment, whether I _am_ much like +Gray, save in the devil of a time it takes me to do a thing. What keeps +me incommunicative, however, is not indifference, but almost a kind of +suspense, a fear to break--by speaking--the spell of some _other_ +spectacle--other than that of my own _fonctionnement_. But I respond to +the lightest touch of a friendly hand, I think I may say; and I haven't +the slightest fear of breaking any spell in saying--to you--that I seem +to myself just now (absit omen!) to _fonctionner_ pretty well. I am as +occupied and preoccupied with work as even _my_ technical temper can +desire, and out of it something not irremediably nauseating will not +improbably spring! I never had more intentions--what do I say?--more +ferocities; I am sitting in my boat and my oars rhythmically creak. In +short I propose to win my little battle--and even believe, more than +hitherto, that I may annex my little province. It will be as small as +the Grand Duchy of Pumpernickel--but there will be room to put up a +friend. Therefore you must come and stay with me there; in fact I give +you rendez-vous on the battlefield itself, the moment the day is +declared. I mix my metaphors--but it all means that it's _all_ a fight +and that the only thing that changes is our fighting train. Let us then +fight side by side, never too far out of sight. + +How I congratulate you on the value of your friends; I mean the +particular Davidsons. I don't know them, but I like them for liking you. +I think I have a strong sense, too, of the beauty and charm of many of +the conditions in which you are engaged and which have a really +decorative effect--so that the aesthetic sense too is pleased--on +everything that makes you minister to the confidence, my dear Arthur, of +yours very constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To the Viscountess Wolseley._ + + The reference in the following letter is to a visit paid by H. J., + with Lady Wolseley, to the elaborately beautiful old house of the + late C. E. Kempe, the well-known artist of church-decoration, at + Lindfield, Sussex. + + +_Dictated._ + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +8th March, 1897. + +Dear Lady Wolseley, + +I was so deprived, yesterday, for all those beautiful hours, of a word +with you away from our host that I felt as if I didn't say to you a +tenth of what I wanted; which, however, will make it all the better for +our next meeting--when I shall overflow like a river fed by melting +snows. Let these few words, therefore, not anticipate the deluge--let +them only express to you afresh my grateful sense of the interest and +success of our excursion. The whole wonder of it was the greater through +my wholly unprepared state, my antecedent inward blank--which blank is +now overscored with images and emotions as thick as any page of any of +your hospitable house-books ever was with visitors' names. The man +himself made the place more wonderful and the place the man. I was +greatly affected by his courtesy and charm; and I got afterwards, in the +evening, a little of the light that I couldn't snatch from you under his +nose. What struck me most about the whole thing was the consummate +cleverness: _that_ was the note it sounded for me more than any one of +the notes more imposing, more deep, that an artistic creation _may_ +throw out. Don't for the world--and for my ruin--ever breathe to him I +have said it; but the whole thing, and his taste, are far too Germanic, +too Teutonic, a business to make a medium in which I could ever sink +down in final peace or take as the domestic and decorative last word. +The element of France and Italy are too much out of it--and they, to me, +are the real secret of Style. But we will talk of these things--heaven +speed the day. Do have a little of France and a great deal of Italy at +South Wraxall; but do have also a great deal of the cunning Kempe and of +the candid--too candid--companion of your pilgrimage. Don't imagine the +companion didn't have a most sweet and glorious day--from which the +light, even in London dusk again, has not yet wholly faded. I hope your +security was complete to the end, and I am, in earnest hope also of a +speedy reunion, yours, dear Lady Wolseley, more gratefully, if possible, +than ever, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Miss Frances R. Morse._ + + H. J.'s admiration for St. Gaudens's memorial to Col. R. G. Shaw, + when he afterwards saw it at Boston, found expression, it will be + remembered, in _The American Scene_. + + +_Dictated._ + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +June 7th, 1897. + +My dear Fanny, + +I have, as usual, endless unacknowledged benefits to thank you for after +too many days. The last is your letter of the end of March, full of +interesting substance as always and of things that no one else has the +imagination or the inspiration to tell me. (My allusion to the +imagination there is not, believe me, an imputation on your exactitude. +The light of truth, of good solid vivid Boston truth, shines in each of +your pages.) Especially are you interesting and welcome, as I have told +you before, I think, on the young generations and full-blown, though +new, existences, that are in possession of a scene I knew as otherwise +occupied. All the old names--or most of them--appear to be represented +by the remote posterity of my old acquaintance. In this remote +posterity, however, I take an interest--and scraps and specimens of it, +even here, occasionally flash past me.... + +I have stayed on in town later than for some years past, and though I +had, at the end of March, all my plans made to go to Italy, have put it +off till so late that, in a few days, I shall have to be content with +simply crossing to Paris and seeing then what is to be further done. +London is given up to carpenters and seat-mongers--being prepared, on an +enormous scale and a rather unsightly way, for the "circus" of the 22nd. +The circus is already, amid the bare benches and the mere _bousculade_ +of the preparations, a thing to fly from--in spite of the good young +George Vanderbilt's having offered me an ample share of a beautiful +balcony in Pall Mall to see it from. I shall spend the next few weeks in +some place or places, north of the Alps, as yet utterly undefined, and +be back in England before the summer is over. The voice of Venice, all +this time, has called very loud. But it has been drowned a good deal in +the click of the typewriter to which I dictate and which, some months +ago, crept into my existence through the crevice of a lame hand and now +occupies in it a place too big to be left vacant for long periods of +hotel and railway life. All this time I am not coming to the great +point, which is my hope that you may have been able to be present (I +believe with all my heart of course you were) at the revelation of the +Shaw Memorial. In charity, my dear Fanny, if this be the case, do write +me a frank word about it. I heard from William and Alice more or less on +the eve, but I fear they will have afterwards--just now be having--too +much to do to be able to send me many echoes. I daresay that you will, +for that matter, already have sent me one. I receive, as it happens, +only this morning, a copy of Harper's Weekly with a big reproduction of +St. Gaudens's bas-relief, which strikes me as extraordinarily beautiful +and noble. How I rejoice that something really fine is to stand there +forever for R. G. S.--and for all the rest of them. This thing of St. +G.'s strikes me as a real perfection, and I have appealed to William to +send me the finest and biggest photograph of it that can be found--for +such surely have been taken. How your spiritual lungs must, over it all, +have filled themselves with the air of the old wartime. Even here--I +mean simply in the depths of one's own being--I myself, for an hour, +seem to breathe it again. But the strange thing is that however much, in +memory and imagination, it may live for one again, with all its dim +figures and ghosts and reverberations and emotions, it appears to belong +yet to some far away _other_ world and state of being. I talked of this +the other day with Sara Darwin, whose memories are so much identical +with my own, and it was a relief to do so--in the absence of all other +communications: that absence produced by the up-growth, since, of a +whole generation, which began after the end and for which the whole +history is as alien as the battles of Alexander. But I am writing you a +long letter when I only meant to wave you a hand of greeting and +gratitude. Correspondence is rather heavy to me, for I can tackle it +only in the margin of time left over after the other matters that my +machine has to grind. I hope your summer promises, and in the midst of a +peculiar degree, at the present moment, of smoky London stuffiness, I +envy you--for I see you in the mind's eye at Beverly--the element of +wide verandahs, cut peaches--I mean peaches and cream, you know--white +frocks and Atlantic airs. You make me, my dear Fanny, in these high +lights, quite incredibly homesick.... Yours very constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. George Hunter._ + + Instead of going abroad for the summer, as he had proposed, H. J. + went first to Bournemouth, and from there to join his cousin, Mrs. + George Hunter, and her daughters at Dunwich, near Saxmundham. + + +Bath Hotel, Bournemouth. +Saturday [July 3, 1897]. + +Dearest Elly, + +It is an immense satisfaction to get your news--and no figure of speech +to say that it has found me literally on the point of reaching out, for +it, into the thick twilight of your whereabouts. I have had my general +silence much on my conscience--and especially my dumbness and darkness +to Rosina and Bay, for whom my movements must have been enveloped in a +perfidious mystery that has caused me, I fear, to forfeit all their +esteem. But let me tell you first of all how I rejoice in your good +conditions and in your having found your feet. It was "borne in" upon +me, on general grounds, that Southwold would never do for long, and it +is charming that you have found so near and so nice a substitute. I +especially delight (without wanting to sacrifice the rest of you) in +such a letting-down-easy of the Art-Daughters. Please give them my +tender love and tell them that, preposterous as it sounds, I have never, +all this time, and in spite of the rosiest asseverations, crossed the +channel at all. The nearest I have come to it is to have, early last +month, come down here to the edge of the sea and collapsed into the +peace and obscurity of this convenient corner (long familiar to me,) +which, having a winter season, is practically empty at present. I will +tell R. and B. when I see them just how it was that I happened to be so +false--it is too long a story now. Suffice it that my reasons (for +continuing to hug this fat country) were overwhelming, and my regrets +(at not tasting of their brave Bohemia) of the sharpest. Moreover all's +well that ends well. If I _had_ gone abroad I should be abroad now and +the rest of the summer; and therefore unable to join you on your Suffolk +shore--or at least alight upon you there--which is what I shall be +enchanted to do. You describe a little Paradise--houris and all; and I +beseech you to keep a divan for me there. The only thing is that I fear +I shan't be able to come till toward the end--or _by_ the end--of the +month. I have more or less engaged myself (to a pair of friends who are +coming down here next week for my--strange as it may seem--sweet sake) +to remain on this spot till toward the 25th. But I will come then, and +stay as long as you will let me. If you can _bespeak_ any quarters for +me at the inn, in advance, I will take it very kindly of you. Can they +give me a little _sitting-room_ as well as a bed-room? If you can +achieve any effective [word illegible] at them to do so I shall be very +grateful. I always _need_ some small literary bower other than the +British bed-room--and in this case I would of course "meal" there, as +that makes them always more zealous. I don't know the East Coast to +speak of at all--and I can imagine no more winsome introduction to it. I +quite yearn to commune with the young Parisians. Bravo, McMonnies. Bravo +everybody--especially Grenville. How I shall joy to frolic with him in +the sand! Have they seen--the art-daughters--the image of the St. +Gaudens Shaw? It is altogether great. William's oration was a +first-class success. I encircle you all and will write again! + +Ever, my dear Elly, so constantly yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. The oddest trio of coincidences yesterday afternoon. I was reading +the delightful Letters of that peculiarly Suffolk genius (of Woodbridge) +Edward FitzGerald ("Omar Khayyam") and, just finishing a story in one of +them about his relations with a boatman of Saxmundham (a name--seen for +the first time--that struck me--by its strangeness and handsomeness,) +laid down the book and went a long walk--five miles along this coast, to +where, in a very picturesque and lonely spot, I met a sea-faring man +with whom I fraternised. + +"Do you belong to this place?" + +"Oh no. I've been here five years; but I come from the Suffolk +coast--Saxmundham." + +"Did you know Mr. FitzGerald?" + +"Know him? My brother was his boatman!"--and he tells me the story! Then +I walk home and coming in, find your letter on my table. I tear it open +and the first word I see in it--in your date--is _Saxmundham_! +Tableau!!! It never rains but it pours!-- + + + + +_To Edward Warren._ + + On returning from Dunwich--it was there that he had been bicycling + with Mr. Warren--H. J. heard that Lamb House, which he had seen and + admired at Rye the year before, was unexpectedly vacant. He at once + appealed to Mr. Warren for professional advice with regard to the + condition of the house, and as this proved satisfactory, secured it + without delay. + + +_Dictated._ + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +15th September, 1897. + +My dear Edward, + +Very kindly read, for me, the enclosed--which throws an odd coincidental +light on the very house we talked of, day before yesterday (or was it +yesterday?) as we bumped and bounced and vainly shifted sides. The place +in question is none other than the mansion with the garden-house perched +on the wall; and though to be fairly confronted with the possibility and +so brought to the point is a little like a blow in the stomach, what I +am minded to say to you is that perhaps you may have a chance to tell +me, on Friday, that you will be able to take some day next week to give +me the pleasure of going down there with me for a look. I feel as if I +couldn't _think_ on the subject at all without seeing it--the +subject--again; and there would be no such seeing it as seeing it in +your company. Perhaps I shall have speech of you long enough on Friday +to enable us to settle a day. _I_ should be capable of Monday. I hope +you slid gently home and are fairly on all fours--that is on hands and +feet--again. What a day we should have had again also--I mean this +one--if we had kept it up! But basta cosi!--it does beautifully for +your journey. A thousand friendships to Margaret. Always yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Arthur Christopher Benson._ + + The following refers to a manuscript diary of Mr. Benson's and to + the privately printed _Letters and Journals_ of William Cory, + author of _Ionica_. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +September 25th, 1897. + +My dear Arthur, + +Send me by all means the Diary to which you so kindly allude--nothing +could give me greater pleasure than to feel I might freely--and yet so +responsibly--handle it. I hope it contains a record of your Hawarden +talk--of which you speak. + +I shall be very glad indeed of a talk with you about W. Cory--my +impression of whom, on the book, you deepen--whenever anything so +utterly unlikely as articulate speech between us miraculously comes to +pass.--I am just drawing a long breath from having signed--a few moments +since--a most portentous parchment: the lease of a smallish, charming, +cheap old house in the country--down at Rye--for _21_ years! (One would +think I was _your_ age!) But it is exactly what I want and secretly and +hopelessly coveted (since knowing it) without dreaming it would ever +fall. But it _has_ fallen--and has a beautiful room for you (the "King's +Room"--George II's--who slept there;) together with every promise of +yielding me an indispensable retreat from May to October. I hope you are +not more sorry to take up the load of life that awaits, these days, the +hunch of one's shoulders than _I_ am. You'll ask me what I mean by +"life." Come down to Lamb House and I'll tell you. And open the private +page, my dear Arthur, to yours very eagerly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. William James._ + + +_Dictated._ + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +1st December, 1897. + +Dearest Alice, + +It's too hideous and horrible, this long time that I have not written +you and that your last beautiful letter, placed, for reminder, well +within sight, has converted all my emotion on the subject into a +constant, chronic blush. The reason has been that I have been driving +very hard for another purpose this inestimable aid to expression, and +that, as I have a greater loathing than ever for the mere manual act, I +haven't, on the one side, seen my way to inflict on you a written +letter, or on the other had the virtue to divert, till I should have +finished my little book, to another stream any of the valued and +expensive industry of my amanuensis. I _have_, at last, finished my +little book--that is _a_ little book, and so have two or three mornings +of breathing-time before I begin another. Le plus clair of this small +interval "I consecrate to thee!" + +I am settled in London these several weeks and making the most of that +part of the London year--the mild, quiet, grey stretch from the +mid-October to Christmas--that I always find the pleasantest, with the +single defect of its only not being long enough. We are having, +moreover, a most creditable autumn; no cold to speak of and almost no +rain, and a morning-room window at which, this December 1st, I sit with +my scribe, admitting a radiance as adequate as that in which you must be +actually bathed, and probably more mildly golden. I have no positive +plan save that of just ticking the winter swiftly away on this most +secure basis. There are, however, little doors ajar into a possible +brief absence. I fear I have just closed one of them rather ungraciously +indeed, in pleading a "non possumus" to a most genial invitation from +John Hay to accompany him and his family, shortly after the new year, +upon a run to Egypt and a month up the Nile; he having a boat for that +same--I mean for the Nile part--in which he offers me the said month's +entertainment. It is a very charming opportunity, and I almost blush at +not coming up to the scratch; especially as I shall probably never have +the like again. But it isn't so simple as it sounds; one has on one's +hands the journey to Cairo and back, with whatever seeing and doing by +the way two or three irresistible other things, to which one would feel +one might never again be so near, would amount to. (I mean, of course, +then or never, on the return, Athens, Corfu, Sicily the never-seen, +etc., etc.) It would all "amount" to too much this year, by reason of a +particular little complication--most pleasant in itself, I hasten to +add--that I haven't, all this time, mentioned to you. Don't be scared--I +haven't accepted an "offer." I have only taken, a couple of months ago, +a little old house in the country--for the rest of my days!--on which, +this winter, though it is, for such a commodity, in exceptionally good +condition, I shall have to spend money enough to make me quite +concentrate my resources. The little old house you will at no distant +day, I hope, see for yourself and inhabit and even, I trust, temporarily +and gratuitously possess--for half the fun of it, in the coming years, +will be occasionally to lend it to you. I marked it for my own two years +ago at Rye--so perfectly did it, the first instant I beheld it, offer +the solution of my long-unassuaged desire for a calm retreat between May +and November. It is the very calmest and yet cheerfullest that I could +have dreamed--_in_ the little old, cobble-stoned, grass-grown, +red-roofed town, on the summit of its mildly pyramidal hill and close to +its noble old church--the chimes of which will sound sweet in my goodly +old red-walled garden. + +The little place is so rural and tranquil, and yet discreetly animated, +that its being within the town is, for convenience and immediate +accessibility, purely to the good; and the house itself, though modest +and unelaborate, full of a charming little stamp and dignity of its +period (about 1705) without as well as within. The next time I go down +to see to its "doing up," I will try to have a photograph taken of the +pleasant little old-world town-angle into which its nice old red-bricked +front, its high old Georgian doorway and a most delightful little old +architectural garden-house, perched alongside of it on its high brick +garden-wall--into which all these pleasant features together so happily +"compose." Two years ago, after I had lost my heart to it--walking over +from Point Hill to make sheep's eyes at it (the more so that it is +called Lamb House!)--there was no appearance whatever that one could +ever have it; either that its fond proprietor would give it up or that +if he did it would come at all within one's means. So I simply sighed +and renounced; tried to think no more about it; till at last, out of the +blue, a note from the good local ironmonger, to whom I had whispered at +the time my hopeless passion, informed me that by the sudden death of +the owner and the preference (literal) of his son for Klondyke, it might +perhaps drop into my lap. Well, to make a long story short, it _did_ +immediately drop and, more miraculous still to say, on terms, for a long +lease, well within one's means--terms quite deliciously moderate. The +result of these is, naturally, that they will "do" nothing to it: but, +on the other hand, it has been so well lived in and taken care of that +the doing--off one's own bat--is reduced mainly to sanitation and +furnishing--which latter includes the peeling off of old papers from +several roomfuls of pleasant old top-to-toe wood panelling. There are +two rooms of complete old oak--one of them a delightful little parlour, +opening by one side into the little vista, church-ward, of the small +old-world street, where not one of the half-dozen wheeled vehicles of +Rye ever passes; and on the other straight into the garden and the +approach, from that quarter, to the garden-house aforesaid, which is +simply the making of a most commodious and picturesque detached study +and workroom. Ten days ago Alfred Parsons, best of men as well as best +of landscape-painters-and-gardeners, went down with me and revealed to +me the most charming possibilities for the treatment of the tiny +out-of-door part--it amounts to about an acre of garden and lawn, all +shut in by the peaceful old red wall aforesaid, on which the most +flourishing old espaliers, apricots, pears, plums and figs, assiduously +grow. It appears that it's a glorious little growing exposure, air, and +soil--and all the things that were still flourishing out of doors +(November 20th) were a joy to behold. There went with me also a good +friend of mine, Edward Warren, a very distingue architect and loyal +spirit, who is taking charge of whatever is to be done. So I hope to get +in, comfortably enough, early in May. In the meantime one must "pick up" +a sufficient quantity of ancient mahogany-and-brass odds and ends--a +task really the more amusing, here, where the resources are great, for +having to be thriftily and cannily performed. The house is really quite +charming enough in its particular character, and as to the stamp of its +period, not to do violence to by rash modernities; and I am developing, +under its influence and its inspiration, the most avid and gluttonous +eye and most infernal watching patience, in respect of lurking +"occasions" in not too-delusive Chippendale and Sheraton. The "King's +Room" will be especially treated with a preoccupation of the comfort and +aesthetic sense of cherished sisters-in-law; King's Room so-called by +reason of George Second having passed a couple of nights there and so +stamped it for ever. (He was forced ashore, at Rye, on a progress +somewhere with some of his ships, by a tempest, and accommodated at Lamb +House as at the place in the town then most consonant with his grandeur. +It would, for that matter, quite correspond to this description still. +Likewise the Mayors of Rye have usually lived there! Or the persons +usually living there have usually _become_ mayors! That was +conspicuously the case with the late handsome old Mr. Bellingham, whose +son is my landlord. So you see the ineluctable dignity in store for me.) +But enough of this swagger. I have been copious to copiously amuse you. + +Your beautiful letter, which I have just read over again, is full of +interest about you all; causing me special joy as to what it says of +William's present and prospective easier conditions of work, +relinquishment of laboratory, refusal of outside lectures, etc., and of +the general fine performance, and promise, all round, of the children. +What you say of each makes me want to see that particular one most.... I +had a very great pleasure the other day in a visit, far too short--only +six hours--from dear old Howells, who did me a lot of good in an +illuminating professional (i.e. commercial) way, and came, in fact, at +quite a psychological moment. I hope you may happen to see him soon +enough to get from him also some echo of _me_--such as it may be. But, +my dear Alice, I must be less interminable. Please tell William that I +have two Syracuse "advices," as yet gracelessly unacknowledged--I mean +to him--to thank him for. It's a joy to find these particular months +less barren than they used to be. I embrace you tenderly all round and +am yours very constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Miss Grace Norton._ + + +_Dictated._ + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Christmas Day, 1897. + +My dear Grace, + +Is it really a year? I have been acutely conscious of its getting to be +a horrible time, but it hadn't come home to me that it was taking on +quite that insolence. Well, you see what the years--since years _il y +a_--are making of me: I don't write to you for a hideous age, and then, +when at last I do, I take the romantic occasion of this particular day +to write in this _un_sympathetic ink. But that is exactly what, as I +say, the horrid time has made of me. The use of my hand, always +difficult, has become impossible to me; and since I am reduced to +dictation, this form of dictation is the best. May its distinctness make +up for its indirectness.... + +I dare say that, from time to time, you hear something of me from +William; and you know, by that flickering light, that my life has had, +for a long time past, a very jog-trot sort of rhythm. I have ceased +completely to "travel." It is going on into four years since I have +crossed the Channel; and the day is not yet. This will give you a +ghastly sense of the insular object that I must have become; however, I +shall break out yet, perhaps, and surprise you. Meanwhile, none the +less, I was unable, these last days, to break the spell of immobility +even to the extent of going over to Paris to poor Daudet's funeral. I +felt that, la-bas--by which I mean in the immediate house--a certain +expectation rested on me, but I looked it straight in the face and +cynically budged not. I dislike, more and more, the terrific organized +exploitation, in Paris, on the occasion of death and burial, of every +kind of personal privacy and every kind of personal hysterics. It is +newspaperism and professionalism gone mad--in a way all its own; and I +felt as if _I_ should go mad if I even once more, let alone twenty times +more, heard Daudet personally compared (more especially _facially_ +compared, eyeglass and all) to Jesus Christ. Not a French notice of him +that I have seen but has plumped it coquettishly out. I had not seen +him, thanks to my extreme recalcitrance, since the month he spent more +than two years ago in London. His death was not unhappy--was indeed too +long delayed, for all his later time has been sadly (by disease, borne +with wonderful patience and subtlety) blighted and sterilized. Yet it is +a wonderful proof of what a success his life had been that it had +remained a success in spite of that. It was the most _worked_ thing that +ever was--I mean his whole career. His talent was so great that I feel, +as to his work, that the best of it will quite intensely remain. But he +was a queer combination of a great talent with an absence of the greater +mind, as it were--the greater feeling. + +...Well, my dear Grace, I can't tell you the comfort and charm it is to +be talking with you even by this horrid machinery, and to squeeze the +little round golden orange of your note dry of every testimony to your +honoured tranquillity that I can gouge out of it. My metaphors are +mixed, but my fidelity is pure. How is the mighty Montaigne? I don't +read him a millionth part as much as I ought, for of all the horrors of +London almost the worst horror is the way it conspires against the +evening book under the evening lamp. I don't "go out"--and yet, far too +much of the time, I _am_ out. The main part of the rest I devote to +wondering how I got there. A propos of which, as much as anything, do +you read Maurice Barres? If you do, his last thing, Les Deracines, is +very curious and serious, but a gruesome picture of young France. If it +didn't sound British and Pharisaic I would almost risk saying that, on +all the more and more showing, young and old France both seem to me to +be in a strange state of moral and intellectual decomposition. But this +isn't worth saying without going into the detail of the evidence--and +that would take me too far. Then there is Leslie Stephen and the little +Kiplings. Leslie seems to be out-weathering his woes in the most +extraordinary way. His health is literally better than it was in his +wife's lifetime, and is perhaps, more almost than anything else, a proof +of what a life-preserver in even the wildest waves is the perfect +possession of a _metier_. His admirable habit and knowledge of work have +saved him.... Rudyard and his wife and offspring depart presently for +South Africa. They have settled upon a small propriete at Rottingdean +near the [Burne-Jones's], and the South Africa is but a parenthetic +family picnic. It would do as well as anything else, perhaps, if one +still felt, as one used to, that everything is grist to his mill. I +don't, however, think that everything is, as the affair is turning out, +at all; I mean as to the general complexity of life. His _Ballad_ future +may still be big. But my view of his prose future has much shrunken in +the light of one's increasingly observing how little of life he can make +use of. Almost nothing civilised save steam and patriotism--and the +latter only in verse, where I _hate_ it so, especially mixed up with +God and goodness, that that half spoils my enjoyment of his great +talent. Almost nothing of the complicated soul or of the female form or +of any question of _shades_--which latter constitute, to my sense, the +real formative literary discipline. In his earliest time I thought he +perhaps contained the seeds of an English Balzac; but I have quite given +that up in proportion as he has come steadily from the less simple in +subject to the more simple--from the Anglo-Indians to the natives, from +the natives to the Tommies, from the Tommies to the quadrupeds, from the +quadrupeds to the fish, and from the fish to the engines and screws.... + +Goodbye, my dear Grace. Believe that through all fallacious appearances +of ebb and flow, of sound and silence, of presence and absence, I am +always constantly yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +V + +RYE + +(1898-1903) + + +The first five years that Henry James spent at Rye were the least +eventful and the most serenely occupied of his life. Even at the height +of his London activities he had always clung fast to his daily work; and +now that his whole time was his own, free from all interruptions save +those invited by his own hospitality, he lived in his writing with a +greater concentration than ever before. His letters shew indeed that he +could still be haunted occasionally by the thought of the silence with +which his books were received by the public at large--an indifference, +it must be said, which he was always inclined to exaggerate; but these +misgivings were superficial in comparison with the deep joy of surrender +to his own genius, now at the climax of its power. He was satisfied at +length with his mastery of his instrument; he knew perfectly what he +wished to do and knew that he could do it; and the long mornings of +summer in the pleasant old garden-room of Lamb House, or of winter in +his small southern study indoors, were perhaps the best, the most +intimately contenting hours he had ever passed. He was now confirmed in +the habit of dictation, and never again wrote his books with his own +hand except under special stress. At Rye or in London his secretary +would be installed at the typewriter by ten o'clock in the morning, and +for three or four hours he would pace the room, pausing, hesitating, +gradually massing and controlling the stream of his imagination, till at +a favouring moment it rolled forward without a check. So, in these five +years, the most characteristic works of his later maturity were +produced. They began with The Awkward Age, The Sacred Fount, and many +short stories presently collected in The Soft Side and The Better Sort; +and they culminated, still within the limit of this short period, with +the great triad of novels that were to crown the long tale of his +fiction--The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl. + +With his life at Rye, too, his correspondence with his family and his +friends began to spread out in an amplitude of which the following +selection can give at the best a very imperfect idea. The rich apologies +for silence and backwardness that preface so many of his letters must be +interpreted in the light, partly indeed of his natural luxuriance of +phraseology, but much more of his generous conception of the humblest +correspondent's claim on him for response. He could not answer a brief +note of friendliness but with pages of abounding eloquence. He never +dealt in the mere small change of intercourse; the post-card and the +half-sheet did not exist for him; a few lines of enquiry would bring +from him a bulging packet of manuscript, overwhelming in its +disproportion. No wonder that with this standard of the meaning of a +letter he often groaned under his postal burden. He discharged himself +of it, in general, very late at night; the morning's work left him too +much exhausted for more composition until then. At midnight he would sit +down to his letter-writing and cover sheet after sheet, sometimes for +hours, with his dashing and not very readable script. Occasionally he +would give up a day to the working off of arrears by dictation, seldom +omitting to excuse himself to each correspondent in turn for the +infliction of the "fierce legibility" of type. The number of his letters +was in fact enormous, and even within the limits of the present +selection they form a picture of his life at Rye to which there is +little to add. + +He had intended Lamb House to be a retreat from the pressure of the +world, but it need hardly be said that from the first it was thrown open +to his friends with hospitable freedom. In the matter of entertainment +his standard again was munificently high, and the consequences it +entailed were sometimes weightier than he found to his liking. But once +more it is necessary to read his laments over his violated hermitage +with many reserves. Lonely as he was in his work, he was not made for +any other kind of solitude; he needed companionship, and soon missed it +when it was withdrawn. After a few experiments he discovered that the +isolation of the winter at Rye by no means agreed with him; for the +short days and long evenings he preferred Pall Mall, where (after +letting his flat in Kensington) he engaged a permanent lodging at the +Reform Club. He could thus divide the year as he chose between London +and Rye, and the arrangement was so much to his liking that in five +years he made only one long absence from home. In 1899 he returned again +to Italy for the summer, paying a visit on the way to M. and Mme. +Bourget at Hyeres. At Rome many associations were recalled for him by a +suggestion that he should write the life of William Wetmore Story, his +friend and host of twenty years before--a suggestion carried out +somewhat later in a book filled, as he said, with the old Roman +gold-dust of the seventies. He brought back new impressions also from a +visit to Mrs. Humphry Ward at Castel Gandolfo--where she and her family +were spending some weeks at the Villa Barberini, on the ridge between +the Roman Campagna and the Alban lake--and another to Marion Crawford at +Sorrento. He stayed briefly at Florence and Venice, and returned home to +find a special reason awaiting him for renewed application to work. He +had taken Lamb House on a lease, but the death of its owner now made it +necessary to decide whether he should purchase it outright. He paid the +price without hesitation; he was by this time deeply attached to the +place and he seized the chance of making it his own. The earnings of his +work would not go far towards paying for it, but he felt it all the more +urgent to concentrate upon production for some time to come. He did not +leave England again till four years later, nor his own roof for more +than a few days now and then. + +By far the greatest of all his interests, outside his work, was the +opportunity he now had of seeing more than hitherto of his elder brother +and his household. In the autumn of 1899 Professor and Mrs. William +James came to Europe for a visit of two years, and during that time the +brothers were together in London or at Lamb House as often as possible. +Unfortunately it was the state of his health that had made a long +holiday desirable for William James, and most of the time had to be +spent by him in a southern climate, in Italy or on the Riviera. +Nevertheless it was a deep delight to the younger brother to feel able +to share the life of the elder at nearer range. They were curiously +unlike in their whole cast of mind; nothing could have been further from +Henry James's massive and ruminatory imagination than his brother's +quick-footed, freely-ranging, experimental genius. But their devotion to +each other grew only the closer as their intellectual lives diverged; +and as they approached old age together, there was still something +protective in William James's attitude, and in Henry something that +appealed to his brother, and to his brother only, for moral support and +reassurance. The next generation, moreover, were by this time growing up +and were beginning to take a place in Henry James's life that was a +source of ever-increasing pride and pleasure to him. From now onward +there was nothing he so welcomed as the recurring visits to Lamb House +of one or other of his elder brother's children. William James was again +in Europe in 1902, delivering at Edinburgh the lectures that presently +appeared as The Varieties of Religious Experience. + +It was now all but twenty years since Henry had last seen America, and +the desire once more to visit his country began to stir obscurely in his +mind. The idea was long pondered and circuitously approached, but it +will be seen from one of the following letters that it had become +definite in 1903. Long absence had made a return seem a formidable +adventure, and it was not in his nature to undertake it without many +scruples and debates. In the midst of these his mind was gradually made +up and the journey determined upon for 1904. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +January 28th, 1898. + +My dear Howells, + +Too long, too long have I delayed to thank you for your last good +letter; yet if I've been thus guilty the fault--as it were! the deep +responsibility--is largely your own. It all comes from that wonderful +(and still-in-my-ears reverberating) little talk we had that morning +here in the soft lap, and under the motherly apron, of the dear old +muffling fog--which will have kept every one else from hearing +_ever_--and only let me hear, and have been heard! I mean that the +effect of your admirable counsel and comfort was from that moment to +give me the sense of being, somehow, suddenly, preposterously, +renewingly and refreshingly, at a kind of practical high pressure which +has--well, which has simply, my dear Howells, made all the difference! +There it is. It is the absurd, dizzy consciousness of this difference +that has constituted (failing other things!) an exciting, absorbing +feeling of occupation and preoccupation--and thereby paralysed the mere +personal activity of my pen.... + +I hope you have by this time roared--and not _wholly_ with rage and +despair!--through the tunnel of your dark consciousness of return. I +dare say you are now quite out on the flowery meads of almost doubting +of having been away. This makes me fear your promise to come back--right +soon--next summer--may even now have developed an element of base +alloy. I rushed off to see Mrs. Harland the instant I heard _she_ was +back, and got hold of you--and of Mildred--for five minutes (and of all +the handsomest parts of both of you) in her talk. She had left a dying +mother, however, and her general situation has, I fear, its pressure and +pinch. What an interest indeed your boy's outlook must be to you! But, +as you say--seeing them _commence_--! Well, they never commenced before; +and the pain is all in _us_--not out of us. The thing is to keep it in. +But this scrawl--or sprawl--is about all my poor hand can now +sustainedly perpetrate; if I continue I shall have to clamour for a +mount--a lift--my brave boy of the alphabetic hoofs. But I spare you +those caracoles. I greet you each again, affectionately, and am yours, +my dear Howells, intensely, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Arthur Christopher Benson._ + + The origin of _The Turn of the Screw_ in an anecdote told him by + Archbishop Benson is described in the preface that H. J. wrote for + it when it appeared in the collected edition of his works. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +March 11th, 1898. + +My dear Arthur, + +I suppose that in the mysterious scheme of providence and fate such an +inspiration as your charming note--out of the blue!--of a couple of days +ago, is intended somehow to make up to me for the terror with which my +earlier--in fact _all_ my past--productions inspire me, and for the +insurmountable aversion I feel to looking at them again or to +considering them in any way. This morbid state of mind is really a +blessing in disguise--for it has for happy consequences that such an +incident as your letter becomes thereby extravagantly pleasant and gives +me a genial glow. All thanks and benedictions--I shake your hand very +hard--or _would_ do so if I could attribute to you anything so palpable, +personal and actual _as_ a hand. Yet I shall never write a sequel to the +_P. of an L._--admire my euphonic indefinite article. It's all too faint +and far away--too ghostly and ghastly--and I have bloodier things _en +tete_. I can do better than that! + +But a propos, precisely, of the ghostly and ghastly, I have a little +confession to make to you that has been on my conscience these three +months and that I hope will excite in your generous breast nothing but +tender memories and friendly sympathies. + +On one of those two memorable--never to be obliterated--winter nights +that I spent at the sweet Addington, your father, in the drawing-room by +the fire, where we were talking a little, in the spirit of recreation, +of such things, repeated to me the few meagre elements of a small and +gruesome spectral story that had been told _him_ years before and that +he could only give the dimmest account of--partly because he had +forgotten details and partly--and much more--because there had _been_ no +details and no coherency in the tale as he received it, from a person +who also but half knew it. The vaguest essence only was there--some dead +servants and some children. This essence _struck_ me and I made a note +of it (of a most scrappy kind) on going home. There the note remained +till this autumn, when, struck with it afresh, I wrought it into a +fantastic fiction which, first intended to be of the briefest, finally +became a thing of some length and is now being "serialised" in an +American periodical. It will appear late in the spring (chez Heinemann) +in a volume with _one_ other story, and then I will send it to you. In +the meanwhile please think of the _doing_ of the thing on my part as +having sprung from that kind old evening at Addington--quite gruesomely +as my unbridled imagination caused me to see the inevitable development +of the subject. It was all worth mentioning to you. I am very busy and +very decently fit and very much yours, always, my dear Arthur, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + The following letter was written immediately before the outbreak of + war between Spain and the United States. + + +_Dictated._ + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +20 April, 1898. + +My dear William, + +There are all sorts of _intimes_ and confidential things I want to say +to you in acknowledgment of your so deeply interesting letter--of April +10th--received yesterday; but I must break the back of my response at +least with this mechanical energy; not having much of any other--by +which I mean simply too many odd moments--at my disposal just now. I do +answer you, alas, almost to the foul music of the cannon. It is this +morning precisely that one feels the fat to be at last fairly in the +fire. I confess that the blaze about to come leaves me woefully cold, +thrilling with no glorious thrill or holy blood-thirst whatever. I see +nothing but the madness, the passion, the hideous clumsiness of rage, of +mechanical reverberation; and I echo with all my heart your denouncement +of the foul criminality of the screeching newspapers. They have long +since become, for me, the danger that overtops all others. That became +clear to one, even here, two years ago, in the Venezuela time; when one +felt that with a week of simple, enforced silence everything could be +saved. If things _were_ then saved without it, it is simply that they +hadn't at that time got so bad as they are now in the U.S. My sympathy +with you all is intense--the whole horror must so mix itself with all +your consciousness. I am near enough to hate it, without being, as you +are, near enough in some degree, perhaps, to understand. I am leading at +present so quiet a life that I don't measure much the sentiment, the +general attitude around me. Much of it can't possibly help being +Spanish--and from the "European" standpoint in general Spain _must_ +appear savagely assaulted. She is so quiet--publicly and politically--so +decent and picturesque and harmless a member of the European family that +I am bound to say it argues an extraordinary illumination and a very +predetermined radicalism not to admire her pluck and pride. But +publicly, of course, England will do nothing whatever that is not more +or less--negatively--for our benefit. I scarcely know what the +newspapers say--beyond the Times, which I look at all for Smalley's +cables: so systematic is my moral and intellectual need of ignoring +them. One must save one's life if one can. The next weeks will, however, +in this particular, probably not a little break me down. I must at least +read the Bombardment of Boston. May you but scantly suffer from it!... + +I rejoice with intense rejoicing in everything you tell me of your own +situation, plans, arrangements, honours, prospects--into all of which I +enter with an intimacy of participation. Your election to the _Institut_ +has, for me, a surpassing charm--I simply revel and, as it were, wallow +in it. Je m'y vautre. But oh, if it could only have come soon enough for +poor Alice to have known it--such a happy little nip as it would have +given her; or for the dear old susceptible Dad! But things come as they +can--and I am, in general, lost in the daily miracle of their coming at +all: I mean so many of them--few as that many may be: and I speak above +all for myself. I am lost, moreover, just now, in the wonder of what +effect on American affairs, of every kind, the shock of battle will +have. Luckily it's of my nature--though not of my pocket--always to be +prepared for the worst and to expect the least. Like you, with all my +heart, I have "finance on the brain." At least I try to have it--with a +woeful lack of natural talent for the same. It is none too soon. But one +arrives at dates, periods, corners of one's life: great changes, deep +operations are begotten. This has more portee than I can fully go into. +I shall certainly do my best to let my flat when I am ready to leave +town; the difficulty, this year, however, will be that the time for +"season" letting begins now, and that I can't depart for at least +another month. Things are not ready at Rye, and won't be till then, with +the limited local energy at work that I have very wisely contented +myself with turning on there. It has been the right and much the best +way in the long run, and for one's good little relations there; only the +run has been a little longer. The remnant of the season here may be +difficult to dispose of--to a sub-lessee; and my books--only a part of +which I can house at Rye--are a complication. However, I shall do what I +can this year; and for subsequent absences, so long as my present lease +of De Vere Gardens runs, I shall have the matter on a smooth, organised, +working basis. I mean to arrange myself always to let--being, as such +places go, distinctly lettable. And for my declining years I have +already put my name down for one of the invaluable south-looking, +Carlton-Gardens-sweeping bedrooms at the Reform Club, which are let by +the year and are of admirable and convenient (with all the other +resources of the place at one's elbow) _general_ habitability. The only +thing is they are so in demand that one has sometimes a long time to +await one's turn. On the other hand there are accidents--"occasions." +... I embrace you all--Alice longer than the rest--and am--with much +actuality of emotion, ever your + +HENRY. + + + + +_To Miss Muir Mackenzie._ + + Miss Muir Mackenzie, who was staying at Winchelsea, had reported on + the progress of the preparations at Lamb House. + + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +Thursday [May 19, 1898]. + +Dear Miss Muir Mackenzie, + +Forgive the constant pressure which has delayed the expression of my +gratitude for your charming, vivid, pictorial report of--well, of +everything. It was most kind of you to paddle again over to Rye to +minister to my anxieties. You both assuage and encourage them--but with +the right thing for each. I am content enough with the bathroom--but +hopeless about the garden, which I don't know what to do with, and shall +never, _never_ know. I am _densely_ ignorant--only just barely know +dahlias from mignonette--and shall never be able to work it in any way. +So I shan't try--but remain gardenless--only go in for a lawn; which +requires mere brute force--no intellect! For the rest I shall do +decently, perhaps--so far as one can do for two-and-ninepence. I shall +have nothing really "good"--only the humblest old fifth-hand, 50th hand, +mahogany and brass. I have collected a handful of feeble relics--but I +fear the small desert will too cruelly interspace them. Well, +_speriamo_. I'm very sorry to say that getting down before Saturday has +proved only the fondest of many delusions. The whole place has to be +mattinged before the rickety mahogany can go in, and the end of +that--or, for aught I know, the beginning--is not yet. I have but just +received the "estimate" for the (humblest) window-curtains (two tiers, +_on_ the windows, instead of blinds: white for downstairs etc., +greeny-blue for _up_, if you like details,) and the "figure" leaves me +prostrate. Oh, what a tangled web we weave!--Still, I hope _you_, dear +lady, have a nice tangled one of some sort to occupy you such a day as +this. I think of you, on the high style of your castled steep, with +tender compassion. I scarce flatter myself you will in the hereafter +again haunt the neighbourhood; but if you ever do, I gloat over the idea +of making up for the shame of your having gone forth tea-less and +toast-less from any door of mine. I wish that, within it--my door--we +might discuss still weightier things. Of an ordinary--a normal--year, I +hope always to be there in May. + +Deeply interesting your Winchelsea touches--especially so the portrait +of my future colleague--confrere--the Mayor--for the inhabitants of Lamb +House have always been Mayors of Rye. When I reach this dignity I will +appoint you my own Sketcher-in-Chief and replace for you by Chateau +Ypres (the old Rye stronghold) the limitations of Chateau Noakes. I +express to you fresh gratitude and sympathy, and am yours, dear Miss +Muir Mackenzie, most cordially, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Gaillard T. Lapsley._ + + +_Dictated._ + +34 De Vere Gardens, W. +17th June, 1898. + +My dear G. T. L. + +I am very unhappy and humiliated at not having succeeded in again +putting my hand on you, and the fear that you may possibly have departed +altogether is a fearful aggravation of my misery. Therefore I am verily +stricken--so stricken as to be incapable of holding a pen and to be +reduced to this ugly--by which I mean this thoroughly +beautiful--substitute. If I wait for a pen, God knows when or where I +shall overtake you. Accordingly, in my effort to catch up, I let +Remington shamelessly loose. I lash his sides--I damn his eyes. Be found +by him, my dear man, somehow or somewhere--before the burden of my shame +crushes me to the earth and I sink beneath it into a frequently desired +grave. The worst of it all is that I saw E. Fawcett yesterday and he +told me he really believed you _had_ gone. I hammer away, but I don't in +the least know where to send this. Fawcett gave me a sort of a tip--at +which I think I shall clutch. A day or two after I last saw you I went +out of town till the following Monday, and then, coming back, had but +the Tuesday here, crammed with a frenzy and fury of conflicting duties. +On Wednesday I was obliged to dash away again--to go down to Rye, where +domestic complications of the gravest order held me fast the rest of the +week, or at least till the Saturday, when I rushed up to town only in +time to rush off again and spend, at Cobham, two days with the Godkins, +to whose ensconcement there it had been, for a long time before, one of +the features of a devouring activity that I had responsibly helped to +contribute. But now that I am at home again till, as soon as possible, +I succeed in breaking away for the rest of the summer, I have lost you +beyond recall, and my affliction is deep and true. But we know what it +is better to have done even as an accompaniment of losing than never to +have done at all. And I didn't do nothing at all--on the contrary, I did +_that_: that which is better. This is but a flurried and feverish +word--hurried off in the hope of keeping your inevitable hating me from +becoming a settled habit. I follow you with much sympathy, and with +still more interest, attention and hope. I follow you, in short, with a +great many sentiments. May the great globe whirl round before long some +such holiday for you as will convert--for _me_--the pursuit I so +inadequately allude to into something in the nature of an encounter. +Only write to me. Do write to me. I mean when you begin to see your way. +I know you will have lots to do first--and I am very patient, as befits +one who is so constantly yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Paul Bourget._ + + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +19th August, 1898. + +Mon cher Ami, + +I have hideously delayed to acknowledge your so interesting letter from +Paris, and now the manner of my response does little to repair the +missing grace of my silence. I trust, however, to your general +confidence not to exact of me the detail of the reasons why I am more +and more _asservi_ to this benevolent legibility, which I so delight in +on the part of others that I find it difficult to understand their +occasional resentment of the same on my own--a resentment that I know +indeed, from generous licence already given, you do not share. I have +promised myself each day to attack you pen in hand, but the overpowering +heat which, I grieve to say, has reigned even on my balmy hilltop, has, +by really sickening me, taken the colour out of all my Gallo-latin, +leaving very blanched as well the paler idiom in which I at last +perforce address you. + +I have been entering much more than my silly silence represents into the +sequel of your return to London, and not less into the sequel of _that_. +Please believe in my affectionate participation as regards the Bezly +Thorne consultation and whatever emotion it may have excited in either +of you. To that emotion I hope the healing waters have already applied +the most cooling, soothing, softening douche--or administered a not less +beneficent draught if the enjoyment of them has had in fact to be more +inward. I congratulate you on the decision you so speedily took and, +with your usual Napoleonic celerity when the surface of the globe is in +question, so energetically acted upon. I trust you are, in short, really +settled for a while among rustling German woods and plashing German +waters. (Those are really, for the most part, my own main impressions of +Germany--the memory of ancient summers there at more or less bosky +Baeder, or other Kur-orten, involving a great deal of open air strolling +in the shade and sitting under trees.) This particular dose of +Deutschland will, I feel, really have been more favourable to you than +your having had to swallow the Teuton-element in the form of the +cookery, or of any other of the manifold attributes, of the robust +fausse anglaise whom I here so confoundingly revealed to you. Let it +console you also a little that you would have had to bear, as well, with +that burden, a temperature that the particular conditions of the house +I showed you would not have done much to minimise. I have been grilled, +but I have borne it better for not feeling that I had put you also on +the stove. Rye goes on baking, this amazing summer, but, though I +suppose the heat is everywhere, you have a more refreshing regimen. I +pray for the happiest and most marked results from it. + +I have received the _Duchesse Bleue_, and also the Land of Cockaigne +from Madame Paul, whom I thank very kindly for her inscription. I had +just read the Duchess, but haven't yet had leisure to attack the great +Matilda. The Duchess inspires me with lively admiration--so close and +firm, and with an interest so nourished straight from the core of the +subject, have you succeeded in keeping her. I never read you sans +vouloir me colleter with you on what I can't help feeling to be the +detrimental parti-pris (unless it be wholly involuntary) of some of your +narrative, and other technical, processes. These questions of art and +form, as well as of much else, interest me deeply--really much more than +any other; and so, not less, do they interest you: yet, though they +frequently come up between us, as it were, when I read you, I nowadays +never seem to see you long enough at once to thresh them comfortably out +with you. Moreover, after all, what does threshing-out avail?--that +conviction is doubtless at the bottom of my disposition, half the time, +to let discussion go. Each of us, from the moment we are worth our salt, +writes as he can and only as he can, and his writing at all is +conditioned upon the very things that from the standpoint of another +method most lend themselves to criticism. And we each know much better +than anyone else can what the defect of our inevitable form may appear. +So, though it does strike me that your excess of anticipatory analysis +undermines too often the reader's curiosity--which is a gross, loose +way of expressing one of the things I mean--so, probably, I really +understand better than anyone except yourself why, to do the thing at +all, you must use your own, and nobody's else, trick of presentation. No +two men in the world have the same idea, image and measure of +presentation. All the same, I must some day read one of your books with +you, so interesting would it be to me--if not to _you_!--to put, from +page to page and chapter to chapter, your finger on certain places, +showing you just where and why (selon moi!) you are too prophetic, too +exposedly constructive, too disposed yourself to swim in the thick +reflective element in which you set your figures afloat. All this is a +clumsy notation of what I mean, and, on the whole, mal apropos into the +bargain, inasmuch as I find in the Duchess plenty of the art I most like +and the realisation of an admirable subject. Beautifully done the whole +episode of the actress's intervention in the rue Nouvelle, in which I +noted no end of superior touches. I doubt if any of your readers lose +less than I do--to the fiftieth part of an intention. All this part of +the book seems to me thoroughly handled--except that, I think, I should +have given Molan a different behaviour after he gets into the cab with +the girl--not have made him act so _immediately_ "in character." He +takes there no line--I mean no deeper one--which is what I think he +would have done. In fact I think I see, myself, positively what he would +have done; and in general he is, to my imagination, as you give him, too +much in character, too little mysterious. So is Mme. de Bonnivet--so +too, even, is the actress. Your love of intellectual daylight, +absolutely your pursuit of complexities, is an injury to the patches of +ambiguity and the abysses of shadow which really are the clothing--or +much of it--of the _effects_ that constitute the material of our trade. +Basta! + +I ordered my year-old "Maisie" the other day to be sent to you, and I +trust she will by this time have safely arrived--in spite of some +ambiguity in the literation of the name of your villa as, with your +letter in my hand, I earnestly meditate upon it. I have also despatched +to Madame Paul myself a little volume just published--a poor little +pot-boiling study of nothing at all, qui ne tire pas a consequence. It +is but a monument to my fatal technical passion, which prevents my ever +giving up anything I have begun. So that when something that I have +supposed to be a subject turns out on trial really to be none, je m'y +acharne d'autant plus, for mere superstition--superstitious fear, I +mean, of the consequences and omens of weakness. The small book in +question is really but an exercise in the art of not appearing to one's +self to fail. You will say it is rather cruel that for such exercises +the public also should have to pay. Well, Madame Paul and you get your +exemplaire for nothing. + +I have not seen La Femme et le Pantin--I see nothing in the way of books +here; but what you tell me disposes me to send for it--as well as my +impression of the only other thing that I have read by the same hand. +Only, on the question of talent and of effect produced, don't you +forget, too much, with such people, that talent and effect are +comparatively easy things with the licence of such gros moyens? They are +a great short-cut--the extremities to which all these people proceed, +and anyone can--no matter who--be more or less striking with them. But I +am writing you an interminable letter. Do let me know--sans m'en vouloir +for the quantity and quality of it--how Nauheim turns out, and receive +my heartiest wishes for all sorts of comfortable results. Yours both +always constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +19th August, 1898. + +My dear Howells, + +I throw myself without hesitation into this familiar convenience, for +the simple reason that I can thus thank you to-day for your blessed +letter from York Harbour, whereas if I were to wait to be merely +romantic and illegible, I should perhaps have, thanks to many things, to +put off _la douce affaire_ till week after next. If I strike, moreover, +while the iron is hot, I strike also while the weather is--so +unprecedentedly hot for this lukewarm land that even the very moderate +cerebral performance to which I am treating you requires [_sic_] no +manual extension. It has been delicious to hear from you, and, even +though I be here domiciled in some gentility, in a little old +quasi-historic wainscotted house, with a real lawn and a real +mulberry-tree of my own to kick my heels on and under, I draw from the +folds of your page a faint, far sense of the old and remembered breath +of New England woods and New England waters--such as there is still +somewhere on my jaded palate the power to taste and even a little, +over-built and over-planted as I at the best am, to languish for.... + +I can't speak to you of the war very much further than to admire the wit +of your closing epigram about it, which, however, at the rate you throw +out these things, you must long since have forgotten. But my silence +isn't in the least indifference; it is a deep embarrassment of +thought--of imagination. I have hated, I have almost loathed it; and yet +I can't help plucking some food for fancy out of its results--some +vision of how much the bigger complexity we are landed in, the bigger +world-contacts, may help to educate us and force us to produce people of +capacity greater than a less pressure demands. Capacity for _what_? you +will naturally ask--whereupon I scramble out of our colloquy by saying +that I should perhaps tell you beautifully if you were here and sitting +with me on the darkening lawn of my quaint old garden at the end of this +barely endurable August day. I will make more things than that clear to +you if you will only turn up there. Each of you, Mrs. Howells, Mildred, +and John all included--for I have four spare rooms, tell it not +anywhere--has been individually considered, as to what you would most +like, in my domestic arrangements. Good-bye, good-bye. It is getting so +dark that I can't see to dictate--which represents to you sufficiently +the skill of my secretary. I am deeply impatient for your novel. But I +fear a painful wait.... Yours, my dear Howells, evermore, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Madame Paul Bourget._ + + _The Awkward Age_ began to appear in _Harper's Weekly_ on October + 1, 1898. Madame Bourget had sent H. J. her translation into French + of Mathilde Serao's _Paese di Cuccagna_. + + +Lamb House, Rye. +August 22nd, 1898. + +Dear Madame Paul, + +I rejoice in your charming letter and find it most kind. I wrote to +Bourget four or five days ago, so that you are not without my news +(unless my misconstruction of the name of your villa has deprived you,) +and meanwhile it is an immense satisfaction to have something of the +detail of yours. It rather sounds, indeed, as if it were summed up in +the one word (con rispetto parlando) perspiration--but I doubt if the +difference between Rye and Nauheim has been other than that of the +frying-pan and the fire. Here we have very sufficiently fried, and I +have been moved to see the finger of Providence in the large, fat, dirty +_index_ of the bouncing dame who, to your vision, pointed away from +Watchbell St. I have said to myself on the torrid afternoons: "Les +malheureux--boxed up with that staircase in that stuffiness--comment y +eussent-ils survecu!" Such reflections are what has principally happened +to me--except, thank heaven, to get on more or less with my novel, the +serial publication of which begins, in New York, on October 1st. I hope +with all my heart that, in spite of everything, you feel your cure to be +deep-based and wide-striking.... I am distressed that "Maisie" hasn't +yet reached you, and will immediately write to London to see how my +publishers have _envisage_ the address I sent them. But I trust she may +perhaps be in the act of arriving--now. It is a volume the merit of +which is that the subject--and there is a subject--is, I think, +exhaustively treated--over-treated, I dare say. But I feel it--suppose +it--to be probably what I have done, in the way of meeting the artistic +problem, of best. The elements, however, are none of the largest. Let me +thank you more directly for the solid _cadeau_ of your so accomplished +translation. I am only waiting for the first cool day to begin it: I +shrink a little, otherwise, under the dog-star, from Naples and the +ardent Matilda. But you will neither of you lose by it.... My +affectionate greeting to Bourget. Believe me, dear Madame Paul, yours +very constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Miss Frances R. Morse._ + + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +October 19th, 1898. + +My dear Fanny, + +I have received, month after month, the most touching and admirable +signs of your remembrance, and yet haven't--visibly to yourself--so much +as waved a hat at you in return: a brutality which, however, is all on +the surface only and no measure of the deep appreciation I have really +felt. Your letters, from the moment the war began, were a real waft of +the real thing, penetrating all the more deeply on account of all the +old memories stirred by the particular things, the names and persons and +kind of anxiety, they were full of--so many echoes of the far-away time +it makes one, in the presence of the _un_-knowing generation, feel so +horribly old to recall. I can thank you, affectionately, for all these +things now very much better than I can explain in detail why you have +not heard from me sooner. The best explanation is simply the general +truth that I've had a summer in which my correspondence has very much +gone to the wall. I moved down here rather early, but that operated not +quite--or really not at all--as a simplification. You know for yourself +what it means to start a new home, on however humble a basis--from the +moment one has to do it mainly single-handed and with a great deal else +to do at the same tune. Here I am at last on somewhat quieter +days--though even this does happen to be a week of such small +hospitalities as I am restricted to, and I have, if only from the still +large arrears of my correspondence, which reduce me to this ugly +process, the sense of the shining hour at best unimproved. + +I won't attempt to take up in detail your innumerable bits of news and +all your evocations of the Boston picture. I move through _that_, +always, as through a company of ghosts, so completely have sound and +sight of individuals and presences faded away from me. Still, I _have_ +had some close reminders. Wendell Holmes was here, still beautiful and +charming, for a day or two, and above all, off and on, for a couple of +months my nephew Harry, whom you well know, and in whom I took no end of +comfort and pleasure. His being here was a great satisfaction to me--and +doubled by the fact of my so getting more news of William and Alice than +I have had for many a year. She sent to the boy all his father's letters +from California and elsewhere--the consequence of which, for me, was a +wonderful participation and interest. William appears to have had a +magnificent sort of summer and no end of success on the Pacific +slope--besides innumerable impressions by the way and an excellent +series of weeks in the Adirondacks before going forth. But after all, +all these things have flashed by. The very war, now that it's over, +seems merely to have flashed--the dreadful marks of the flash, in so +many a case, being beyond my ken. Well, I won't attempt to go into +it--it's all beyond me. It only, I'm afraid, makes me want to curl up +more closely in this little old-world corner, where I can successfully +beg such questions. They become a spectacle merely--a drama of great +interest, but as to which judgment and prophecy are withered in me, or +at all events absolutely checked. + +I am very sorry you and your mother have ceased coming out just at the +time I've something to show you. My little old house is really pretty +enough for that, and has given me, all this wonderful, hot, rainless, +radiant summer, a peace that would pass understanding if I had only got +through the first botherations a little earlier in the season. However, +I've done very well--have only not been quite such an anchorite as I had +planned. The bump of luggage has been frequent on my stair, and the +conference with the cook proved a greater strain than, in that +particular way, I have ever before had to meet. But it's doubtless my +own fault. I should have sought a drearier refuge. I am staying here +late--as far on into the autumn as wind and weather may permit. I hope +this will find you in the very heart of the American October crystal.... +I congratulate you, my dear Fanny, on all the warm personal, local life +that surrounds you, and that you touch at so many points very much more +the normal state for one's afternoon of existence, after all, than my +expatriated one. But we go on as we may. I don't feel as if I had +thanked you half enough for your so many beautiful bulletins--and can +only ask you to believe that each, in its order, more or less brought +tears to my eyes. Recall me, please, to your mother's kindest +remembrance, and believe me + +Yours evermore, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Dr. Louis Waldstein._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Oct. 21st, 1898. + +Dear Sir, + +Forgive my neglect, under great pressure of occupation, of your so +interesting letter of the 12th. I have since receiving it had +complicated calls on my time. That the _Turn of the Screw_ has been +suggestive and significant to you--in any degree--it gives me great +pleasure to hear; and I can only thank you very kindly for the impulse +of sympathy that made you write. I am only afraid, perhaps, that my +conscious intention strikes you as having been larger than I deserve it +should be thought. It is the intention so primarily, with me, always, of +the artist, the _painter_, that _that_ is what I most, myself, feel in +it--and the lesson, the idea--ever--conveyed is only the one that deeply +lurks in any vision prompted by life. And as regards a presentation of +things so fantastic as in that wanton little Tale, I can only rather +blush to see real substance read into them--I mean for the generosity of +the reader. _But_, of course, where there _is_ life, there's truth, and +the truth was at the back of my head. The poet is always justified when +he is not a humbug; always grateful to the justifying commentator. My +bogey-tale dealt with things so hideous that I felt that to save it at +all it needed some infusion of beauty or prettiness, and the beauty of +the pathetic was the only attainable--was indeed inevitable. But ah, the +exposure indeed, the helpless plasticity of childhood that isn't dear or +sacred to _some_body! That _was_ my little tragedy--over which you show +a wisdom for which I thank you again. Believe me, thus, my dear Sir, +yours most truly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To H. G. Wells._ + + The reference in the second paragraph of this letter is to + _Covering End_, the second story of _The Two Magics_. Mr. Wells was + at this time living near Folkestone, distant from Rye by the + breadth of Romney Marsh. + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Dec. 9th, 1898. + +My dear H. G. Wells, + +Your so liberal and graceful letter is to my head like coals of fire--so +repeatedly for all these weeks have I had feebly to suffer frustrations +in the matter of trundling over the marsh to ask for your news and wish +for your continued amendment. The shortening days and the deepening mud +have been at the bottom of this affair. I never get out of the house +till 3 o'clock, when night is quickly at one's heels. I would have taken +a regular day--I mean started in the a.m.--but have been so ridden, +myself, by the black care of an unfinished and _running_ (galloping, +leaping and bounding,) serial that parting with a day has been like +parting with a pound of flesh. I am still a neck ahead, however, and +_this_ week will see me through; I accordingly hope very much to be able +to turn up on one of the ensuing days. I will sound a horn, so that you +yourself be not absent on the chase. Then I will express more +articulately my appreciation of your various signs of critical interest, +as well as assure you of my sympathy in your own martyrdom. What will +you have? It's all a grind and a bloody battle--as well as a +considerable lark, and the difficulty itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity. Bless your heart, I think I could easily say worse of the T. +of the S., the young woman, the spooks, the style, the everything, than +the worst any one else could manage. One knows the most damning things +about one's self. Of course I had, about my young woman, to take a very +sharp line. The grotesque business I had to make her picture and the +childish psychology I had to make her trace and present, were, for me at +least, a very difficult job, in which absolute lucidity and logic, a +singleness of effect, were imperative. Therefore I had to rule out +subjective complications of her own--play of tone etc.; and keep her +impersonal save for the most obvious and indispensable little note of +neatness, firmness and courage--without which she wouldn't have had her +data. But the thing is essentially a pot-boiler and a _jeu d'esprit_. + +With the little play, the absolute creature of its conditions, I had +simply to make up a deficit and take a small _revanche_. For three +mortal years had the actress for whom it was written (utterly to try to +_fit_) persistently failed to produce it, and I couldn't wholly waste my +labour. The B.P. won't read a play with the mere names of the +speakers--so I simply paraphrased these and added such indications as +might be the equivalent of decent acting--a history and an evolution +that seem to me moreover explicatively and sufficiently smeared all over +the thing. The moral is of course: Don't write one-act plays. But I +didn't mean thus to sprawl. I envy your hand your needle-pointed +fingers. As you don't say that you're _not_ better I prepare myself to +be greatly struck with the same, and with kind regards to your wife, + +Believe me yours ever, +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. What's this about something in some newspaper?--I read least of +all--from long and deep experience--what my friends write about me, and +haven't read the things you mention. I suppose it's because they know I +don't that they dare! + + + + +_To F. W. H. Myers._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Dec. 19, 1898. + +My dear Myers, + +I don't know what you will think of my unconscionable delay to +acknowledge your letter of so many, so very many days ago, nor exactly +how I can make vivid to you the nature of my hindrances and excuses. I +have, in truth, been (until some few days since) intensely and anxiously +busy, finishing, under pressure, a long job that had from almost the +first--I mean from long before I had reached the end--begun to be +(loathsome name and fact!) "serialized"--so that the printers were at my +heels and I had to make a sacrifice of my correspondence _utterly_--to +keep the sort of cerebral freshness required for not losing my head or +otherwise collapsing. But I won't expatiate. Please believe my silence +has been wholly involuntary. And yet, now that I _am_ writing I scarce +know what to say to you on the subject on which you wrote, especially as +I'm afraid I don't quite _understand_ the principal question you put to +me about "The Turn of the Screw." However, that scantily matters; for in +truth I am afraid I have on some former occasions rather awkwardly +signified to you that I somehow can't pretend to give any coherent +account of my small inventions "after the fact." There they are--the +fruit, at best, of a very imperfect ingenuity and with all the +imperfections thereof on their heads. The one thing and another that are +questionable and ambiguous in them I mostly take to be conditions of +their having got themselves pushed through at all. The _T. of the S._ is +a very mechanical matter, I honestly think--an inferior, a merely +_pictorial_, subject and rather a shameless pot-boiler. The thing that, +as I recall it, I most wanted not to fail of doing, under penalty of +extreme platitude, was to give the impression of the communication to +the children of the most infernal imaginable evil and danger--the +condition, on their part, of being as _exposed_ as we can humanly +conceive children to be. This was my artistic knot to untie, to put any +sense or logic into the thing, and if I had known any way of producing +_more_ the image of their contact and condition I should assuredly have +been proportionately eager to resort to it. I evoked the worst I could, +and only feel tempted to say, as in French: "Excusez du peu!" + +I am living so much down here that I fear I am losing hold of some of my +few chances of occasionally seeing you. The charming old humble-minded +"quaintness" and quietness of this little brown hilltop city lays a +spell upon me. I send you and your wife and all your house all the +greetings of the season and am, my dear Myers, yours very constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. William James._ + + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +19th December, 1898. + +Dearest Alice, + +I have gone on and on most abominably and inexorably owing you a letter +since a date so distant that I associate the time intimately with the +admirable summer, here, that we so long ago left behind and of which +Harry will--at a period by this time quite prehistoric--have given you +something of the pleasant little story. But the sense always abides with +me that when I am for weeks and months together dumb--as I know I more +than once _have_ been--you and William are quite _de force_ to read into +it all the kindly extenuations I require. I have in fact, for many +weeks, down here, been taking the general line of saving up all the +cerebration not imperatively drained off from day to day for a long job +that I have had to carry through under the nightmare of belatedness--a +belatedness so great (produced by time lost originally in arranging this +place, moving down, taking possession, etc.) as to leave me no margin +whatever for accident, indisposition or languor. My capacity for the +distillation of prose of decent quality remains, alas, with all the +amendments time has brought it, still, each day, so limited that I get +awfully nervous under a very continuous task unless I by certain +flagrant sacrifices keep up to myself the fiction of freshness--of not +getting simply _sick_, in other words, by adding any writing that I +haven't absolutely to do to the quantity that _is_ each morning imposed. +So the sacrifices, for a long time past, have been, as usual, my +correspondence, and as the most tender morsels for the Moloch you and +William naturally _en premiere ligne_. The Moloch at last, +however--since these four or five days, has been temporarily appeased; +and I have instantly begun to transfer my attention from one form of +belatement to another. I am working off arrears of letters, and if I +take you, dearest Alice, in the heap, I at least pay you the sweet +tribute of taking you _first_. You have been without sign or sound of me +so long that I daresay you may have even wild imaginings about my +"location" and other conditions. I am located only just where Harry left +me and where I have stuck fast since July last without the excision of +twenty-four hours. The autumn and the early winter have followed the +ardent summer here only to multiply my points of contact with my +environment and to saturate me more deeply with the grateful sense of +it. This contentment has defied all winds and weathers--in plenty of +which we have for the last two months rejoiced. I like to send all our +little news of such matters in the form of news to Harry in particular, +whose mind is furnished with the proper little hooks for it to hold on +by. Tell him then, since I won't attempt to burden him individually with +acknowledgements that will overload him, that everything he fancied and +fondled here only kept growing, all the autumn long, more adapted to +such a relation, and that in short both the little brown city and the so +amiable countryside were not in July and August a "patch," for charm, +colour, "subtlety" and every kind of daily grace, to what they became, +in an uninterrupted crescendo, all through October and November. All the +good that I hoped of the place has, in fine, profusely bloomed and +flourished here. It was really at about the end of September, when the +various summer supernumeraries had quite faded away, that the special +note of Rye, the feeling of the little hilltop community, bound together +like a very modest, obscure and impecunious, but virtuous and amiable +family, began most unmistakably to come out. This is the present note of +life here, and it has floated me (excuse mixture of metaphor) very +placidly along. Nothing would induce me now _not_ to be here for +Christmas and nothing will induce me not to do my best at least to be +here for the protrusion of the bulbs--the hyacinths and tulips and +crocuses--that, in return for expended shillings, George Gammon promises +me for the earliest peep of spring. As he has broken no word with me +yet, I trust him implicitly for this. Meantime too I have trusted him, +all the autumn, for all sorts of other things as well: we have committed +to the earth together innumerable unsightly roots and sprigs that I am +instructed to depend upon as the fixed foundation of a future +herbaceous and perennial paradise. Little by little, even with other +cares, the slowly but surely working poison of the garden-mania begins +to stir in my long-sluggish veins. Tell Harry, as an intimate instance, +that by a masterly inspiration I have at one bold stroke swept away all +the complications in the quarter on which the studio looks down, +uprooting the wilderness of shrubs, relaying paths, extending borders, +etc., and made arrangements to throw the lawn, in one lordly sweep, +straight up into that angle--a proceeding that greatly increases our +apparent extent and dignity: an improvement, in short, quite +unspeakable. But the great charm is the simply _being_ here, and in +particular the beginning of the day no longer with the London blackness +and foulness, the curtain of fog and smoke that one has each morning +muscularly to lift and fasten back; but with the pleasant, sunny garden +outlook, the grass all haunted with starlings and chaffinches, and the +in-and-out relation with it that in a manner gilds and refreshes the +day. This indeed--with work and a few, a very few, people--is the _all_. +But that is just the beauty. I've missed nothing that I haven't been +more than resigned to. There have been a few individuals from Saturday +to Monday, and one--Jonathan Sturges, whose identity, if it is too dim +for you, it would take me too long to explain--ever since mid-October. +He remains till over Christmas; but save as making against pure +intensity of concentration, he is altogether a boon. I go to town the +last of the month, but only for two or three weeks and in a pure +picnicking way. I have a plan and a desire really to achieve this winter +after an intermission of five years, ten or twelve weeks in Italy; and +it now seems probable I shall do so. I shall not know with absolute +definiteness till I go to London; but the omens and portents are +favourable. On my return I shall come straight down here, and I already +foresee how the thought of the spring here will draw me from almost +wherever I may at that time be. I shall write you again, however, about +this; so that you shall definitely know what becomes of me. You see this +is a pure outpouring of the ego. I am after all without fresh news of +yourselves to rebound from. The latest and best is William's kind +dispatch to me of his "Immortality" lecture, for which I heartily thank +him, and which I have read with great appreciation of the art and +interest of it. I am afraid I don't very consciously come in to either +of the classes it is designed to pacify--either that of the yearners, I +mean, or that of the objectors. It isn't the difficulties that keep me +from the yearning--it is somehow the lack of the principle of the same. +However, I go not now into this. I only acknowledge, till after the turn +of the year I write to him, William's communication of the book. Every +illustration of his magnificent activity--at the spectacle of which I am +condemned to such a woefully back seat--gives me more joy than I will +now pretend to express. For the rest, dearest Alice, take from me all my +"hopes"; the inevitable vain ones about your household health and +happiness and the complexion and outlook of the season for all of you. I +try to see you all as cheerfully and gregariously--yet not, for the +dignity of each, too much of the latter--fire-lighted and eke +furnace-heated. Strange things contend with this image--wild newspaper +blizzards and other public bewilderments. Are you individually +expanding?--I mean even to the islands of the sea. I myself have no +policy. I have no judgment. I am too far and too unadvised and too out +of it and too "subtle," also, to see gospel truth in all the so genial +encouragement that our swelling state finds, naturally and very +logically, in this country. That the two countries should swell together +offers material convenience--and that is for much. But I only meant to +ask if William and you and the children are definitely in or out of the +swell. I will be myself wherever you are.... Yours dearest Alice, always +constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Charles Eliot Norton._ + + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +26th December, 1898. + +My dear Charles, + +...Let me say at once that a great part of the secret of my horrid +prolonged dumbness has been just this ugly fact of my finding myself +reduced, in my declining years, like a banker or a cabinet minister, +altogether to _dictating_ my letters. The effect of this, in turn, has +been to give me a great shyness about them--which has indeed stricken me +with silence just in proportion as the help so rendered has seemed to +myself really to minister to speech. Many people, I find, in these +conservative climes, take it extremely ill to be addressed in +Remingtonese.... Forgive, however, this long descant on my delays, my +doubts and fears, my final jump, rendered thus clumsy by my +nervousness.... + +The worst of such predicaments is, my dear Charles, that when one does +write, everything one has, at a thousand scattered moments, previously +wanted to say, seems to have dried up with desuetude and neglect. Oh, +all the things that should have been said on the spot if they were ever +to be said at all! This applies, you will immediately recognise--though +it's a stern truth by which I suffer most--very poignantly to all the +utterance I feel myself to have so odiously failed of at the time of +the death of dear Burne-Jones. I can only give you a very partially +lucid account of why on _that_ occasion at least no word from me reached +you. I saw myself, heard myself, felt myself, not write--and yet even +then knew perfectly both that I should be writing now and that I should +now be sorrier than ever for not writing then. It came, the miserable +event, at the very moment I was achieving, very single-handed and +unassisted, a complicated transfer of residence from London to this +place, with all sorts of bewildering material detail (consequent on +renovation, complete preparation of every kind, of old house and garden) +adding its distraction to the acute sense of pressing work fatally +retarded and blighted; so that a postponement which has finally grown to +this monstrous length began with being a thing only of moments and +hours. Then, moreover, it was simply so wretched and odious to feel him, +by a turn of the wheel of fate that had taken but an instant, gone for +ever from sight and sound and touch. I was tenderly attached to him, +with abundant reason for being, and there was something that choked and +angered me beyond what words could trust themselves to express, in the +mere blind betise of the business. So the days and the weeks went. I +went up from here to town, and thence to Rottingdean, for the committal +of his ashes, there, to the earth of the little grey-towered churchyard, +in sight of the sea, that was at the moment all smothered in lovely +spring flowers. It was a day of extraordinary beauty, and in every way a +quite indescribably sincere--I remember I could find at the time no +other word for the impression--little funeral and demonstration. The +people from London were those, almost all, in whose presence there was a +kind of harmony.... I had seen the dear man, to my great joy, only a few +hours before his death: meeting him at a kind of blighted and abortive +wedding-feast (that is a dinner before a marriage that was to take +place on the morrow) from which we were both glad to disembroil +ourselves: so that we drove together home, intimately moralising and +talking nonsense, and he put me, in the grey London midnight, down at my +corner to go on by himself to the Grange. It was the last time I saw +him, and, as one always does, I have taken ever since a pale comfort in +the thought that our parting was explicitly affectionate and such, +almost, as one would have wished it even had one known. I miss him even +here and now. He was one of the most loveable of men and most charming +of friends--altogether and absolutely distinguished. I think his career, +as an artistic one, and speaking quite apart from the degree of one's +sympathy with his work, one of the greatest of boons to our most vulgar +of ages. There was no false note in him, nothing to dilute the strain; +he knew his direction and held it hard--wrought with passion and went as +straight as he could. He was for all this always, to me, a great +comfort. For the rest death came to him, I think, at none so bad a +moment. He had, essentially, to my vision, really _done_. And he was +very tired, and his cup was, with all the mingled things, about as full +as it would hold. It was so good a moment, in short, that I think his +memory is already feeling the benefit of it in a sort of rounded +finished way. I was not at the sale of his pictures and drawings which +took place after his death--I have not stirred from this spot since I +came to it at the end of June; but though I should immensely have +cherished some small scrap, everything went at prices--magnificent for +his estate--that made acquisition a vain dream.... I have had--and +little wonder--scant news of you. I know you've renounced your +professorship. I know you felt strongly on public events. But I am in a +depressed twilight--of discrimination, I mean--that enables me to make +less of these things than I should like to do. So much has come and +gone, these six months, that how can I talk about it? It's strange, the +consciousness possible to an American here to-day, of being in a country +in which the drift of desire--so far as it concerns itself with the +matter--is that we _shall_ swell and swell, and acquire and _re_quire, +to the top of our opportunity. My own feeling, roughly stated, is that +we have not been good enough for our opportunity--vulgar, in a manner, +as that was and is; but it may be the real message of the whole business +to make us as much better as the great grabbed-up British Empire has, +unmistakeably, made the English. But over these abysses--into them +rather--I peer with averted eye. I fear I am too lost in the mere +spectacle for any decent morality. Good-bye, my dear Charles, and +forgive my mechanic volubility. Isn't it better to have ticked and +shocked than never to have ticked at all? I send my love to all your +house.... + +Your ever, my dear Charles, affectionate old friend, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Henry James, junior._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Feb. 24, 1899. + +Dearest Harry, + +I have a good letter from you too long unanswered--but you will easily +condone my offence of not too soon loading you with the burdensome sense +that it is I--not your virtuous self--who have last written. And you +must now let that sense sit on you very lightly. Don't trouble about me +till all college pressure is completely over--by which I mean till some +as yet comparatively remote summer-day.... We've had of late a good lot +of wondrous, sunny, balmy days--to-day is splendid--in which I have +kept saying to myself "What a climate--dear old much-abused thing--after +all!" and feeling quite balmily and baskingly southern. I've been +"sitting" all the last month in the green upstairs south-west room, +whose manifest destiny is clearly to become a second-story boudoir. +Whenever my books arrive in their plenitude from De Vere Gardens it will +be absolutely required to help to house them. It has been, at any rate, +constantly flooded with sun, and has opened out its view toward +Winchelsea and down the valley in the most charming way. The garden is +beginning to smile and shimmer almost as if it were already May. Half +the crocuses and hyacinths are up, the primrose and the jonquil abound, +the tulips are daily expected, and the lawn is of a rich and vivid green +that covers with shame the state in which you saw it. George Gammon +proves as regular as a set of false teeth and improves each shining +hour. In short the quite essential amiability of L.H. only deepens with +experience. Therefore see what a house I'm keeping for you.... + +But I am writing you a letter that _will_ burden you. I won't break +ground on the greater questions--though I think them--think _it_, at +least, in the U.S., the main one, extraordinarily interesting. To live +in England is, inevitably, to feel the "imperial" question in a +different way and take it at a different angle from what one might, with +the same mind even, do in America. Expansion has so made the English +what they are--for good or for ill, but on the whole for good--that one +doesn't quite feel one's way to say for one's country "No--I'll have +_none_ of it!" It has educated the English. Will it only demoralize +_us_? I suppose the answer to that is that we can get at home a bigger +education than they--in short as big a one as we require. Thank God, +however, I've no _opinions_--not even on the Dreyfus case. I'm more and +more only aware of things as a more or less mad panorama, phantasmagoria +and dime museum. It would take me longer than to finish this paper to +send you all the fond incitement or solicitation that I have on hand for +you or to work off my stored-up messages to your _Eltern_ and brethren. +There is time to talk of it, but I count on as many of you as possible +for next summer.... I hope you are conscious of a little tethering +string of attachment to the old mulberry in the garden, and am ever your +affectionate + +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. Am just up again from such a sweet sunny spacious after-luncheon +stroll in the garden. You'll think it very vulgar of me, but I continue +to find it ravishing. + + + + +_To A. F. de Navarro._ + + +Lamb House, +Rye. + +Monday--Small hours--1.30 a.m. +[Feb. 27. 1899]. + +My dear Don Tony, + +You can't say I overwhelm you with acknowledgments, din my gratitude +into your ear or make you curse the day you suffered a kindly impulse to +an intensely susceptible friend to get the better of your appreciation +of a quiet life. No--you can do none of these things. On the other hand +you can perhaps complete your graceful generosity by remembering that +your admirable little Xmas memento was accompanied with a "Now hold your +tongue!" almost as admirable in its distinguished consideration as the +felicitous object itself. It was, clearly, that you felt: "Oh yes, _of +course_ you're charmed: a qui le dites-vous? But for heaven's sake, +thanked to satiety as I am on all sides, don't set your ponderous +machinery in motion to drop the last straw!" So I've put out the fires +and stopped the wheels and paid off the stokers till now. I've held my +tongue like an angel, but I've thought of you--and of your matchless +mate--like--well, if not _a_, at least, _the_ devil, and at last the +whole shop insists on beginning again to hum. I cherish your so +periodical and so munificent thoughts of me as one of the good things of +this world of worries. Nothing ever touches me more. I am finally going +abroad for three months--on Tuesday or Wednesday, and the little +sensitive blank record, in its little green sheath, accompanies me--to +drink in Impressions--in the usual itinerant shrine of your gifts: my +left-hand upper waistcoat-pocket. There are vulgar things--a watch, an +eyeglass, seven-and-sixpence--in the other pockets; but nothing but +_you_ in that one. Voila. I go to Italy after more than 5 years +interlude. + + * * * * * + +Drama--tableau! My dear Tony, you are literally my saviour. The above +row of stars represents midnight emotions and palpitations of no mean +order. As I finished the line just before the stars I became aware that +a smell of smoke, a sense of burning that had worried me for the +previous hour, had suddenly very much increased and that the room was +full of it. _De fil en aiguille_, and in much anxiety, I presently +discovered that the said smoke was coming up through the floor between +the painted dark-green planks (_dark_ green!) of the margin--outside of +matting and rugs, and under a table near the fireplace. To assure myself +that there was no source of flame in the room below, and then to go up +and call my servant, do you see? (he long since snoring in bed--for it's +now 2.15 a.m.) was the work of a moment. With such tools as we could +command we hacked and pried and sawed and tore up a couple of +planks--from which volumes of smoke issued!! Do you see the midnight +little flurry? Bref, we got _at_ it--a charred, +smouldering--_long_-smouldering, I suppose--beam under, or almost under, +the hearthstone and in process of time kindled--that is heated to +smoking-point by its temperature (that of the hearth,) which was very +high. We put him out, we made him stop, with soaked sponges--and then +the relief: even while gazing at the hacked and smashed and disfigured +floors. Now my man is gone to bed, and I, rather enlivened for immediate +sleep, sit and watch by the scene of the small scare and finish my +letter to you: really, you know, to grasp your hand, to hang upon your +neck, in gratitude, you being at the bottom of the whole thing. I sat up +late in the first instance to write to you, because I knew I shouldn't +have time to-morrow: and it was because I did so that I was saved a much +worse later alarm. Two or three hours hence the smoke would have +penetrated to the rest of the house and we should have started up to +"fly round" to a much livelier tune. + +Bravo, then, again, dear indispensable man! How I feel with magnificent +Mrs Tony--for if you're such an "A no. 1" guardian-angel to my house, +what are you to your own? The only thing is that I was going to write to +you of two or three other things and this stupid little accident has +smoked them all out. I've lent this really most amiable little old house +to Jonathan Sturges while I'm away--and he's to come as soon as he can. +He has been wretched, as you know, with poisonous influenza, but I went +up to town to see him a few days since, and he seemed really mending. He +was here a long time in the autumn and the early winter and our +conversation hung and hovered about you. Good night--it's 2.45 and all's +well. I _must_ turn in. I grovel before your wife--and take endless +liberties with your son--and am yours--after all this--more than +ever--much as _that_ was-- + +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. _Tuesday night._ This, my dear Tony, is a sorrier postscript than I +expected. I had just--on Sunday night, in the small hours--signed my +name as above when my fond delusion of the cessation of my scare dropped +from me and I became aware that I had, really, a fire "on." The rest was +sad--and I can't detail it--but I've got off wondrous easy. We got the +brave pumpers with creditable promptitude--they were thoroughly up to +the mark--above all without trop de zele--and the damage is limited +wholly to one side of two rooms--especially the room I was writing to +you in so blandly. The pumpers were here till 5--and I slept not till +the following (last) night. Still more, therefore, I repeat, it was you +preserved me. _Finishing_ my letter to you kept me on the spot and being +on the spot was all. If I had had my head under the bed-clothes I +wouldn't--_couldn't_ have sniffed till two or three hours later, when +headway would have been gained--and headway would have doubled, +quadrupled damage, and perhaps even deprived you of this missive--and +its author--altogether. Aussi je vous embrasse--and am your startled but +re-quieted and fully insured H. J. + +P.P.S. But look out for insidious _under_-fireplace-and-hearth tricks +and traps in old houses! + +P.S. Will you very kindly tell Frank Millet that I think of him with +pride and joy and want so excruciatingly to see him and turn him on, +that if I were stopping at home these next months I should extend toward +him a long persuasive, somehow ingeniously alluring arm. + + + + +_To Edward Warren._ + +(Telegram.) + + +(Rye, 9.38 a.m., Feb. 27, 1899.) + +Am asking very great favour of your coming down for inside of day or for +night if possible house took fire last night but only Green Room and +Dining Room affected hot hearth in former igniting old beam beneath with +tiresome consequences but excellent local brigade's help am now helpless +in face of reconstructions of injured portions and will bless you +mightily if you come departure of course put off Henry James. + + + + +_To William James._ + + +Le Plantier, +Costebelle, +Hyeres. + +April 22nd, 1899. + +Dearest William, + +I greatly appreciate the lucidity and liberality of your so interesting +letter of the 19th, telling me of your views and prospects for next +summer &c--of all of which I am now able to make the most intimate +profit. I enter fully into your reasons for wanting to put in the summer +quietly and concentratedly in Cambridge--so much that with work +unfinished and a spacious house and library of your "very own" to +contain you, I ask myself how you can be expected to do anything less. +Only it all seems to mean that I shall see you all but scantly and +remotely. However, I shall wring from it when the time comes every +concession that can be snatched, and shall meanwhile watch your signs +and symptoms with my biggest opera-glass (the beautiful one, one of the +treasures of my life: que je vous dois.) + +Nothing you tell me gives me greater pleasure than what you say of the +arrangements made for Harry and Billy in the forest primeval and the +vision of their drawing therefrom experiences of a sort that I too +miserably lacked (poor Father!) in my own too casual youth. What I most +of all feel, and in the light of it conjure you to keep doing for them, +is their being _a meme_ to contract local saturations and attachments in +respect to their _own_ great and glorious country, to learn, and strike +roots into, its infinite beauty, as I suppose, and variety. Then they +won't, as I do now, have to assimilate, but half-heartedly, the alien +splendours--inferior ones too, as I believe--of the indigestible midi of +Bourget and the Vicomte Melchior de Voguee, kindest of hosts and most +brilliant of _commensaux_ as I am in the act of finding both these +personages. The beauty here is, after my long stop at home, admirable +and exquisite; but make the boys, none the less, stick fast and sink up +to their necks in everything their _own_ countries and climates can give +de pareil et de superieur. Its being that "own" will double their _use_ +of it.... This little estate (two houses--near together--in a 25-acre +walled "parc" of dense pine and cedar, along a terraced mountain-side, +with exquisite views inland and to the sea) is a precious and enviable +acquisition. The walks are innumerable, the pleasant "wildness" of the +land (universally accessible) only another form of sweetness, and the +light, the air, the noble, graceful lines &c, all of the first order. +It's classic--Claude--Virgil.... + +I expect to get to Genoa on the 4th or 5th April, and there to make up +my mind as to how I can best spend the following eight weeks, in Italy, +in evasion and seclusion. Unhappily I _must_ go to Rome, and Rome is +infernal. But I shall make short work of it. My nostalgia for Lamb House +is already such as to make me capable de tout. _Never_ again will I +leave it. I don't take you up on the Philippines--I admire you and agree +with you too much. You have an admirable eloquence. But the age is _all_ +to the vulgar!... Farewell with a wide embrace. + +Ever your +HENRY. + + + + +_To Howard Sturgis._ + + +Hotel de l'Europe, Rome. +May 19, 1899. + +My dear Howard, + +It's a great pleasure to hear from you in this far country--though I +greatly wish it weren't from the bed of anguish--or at any rate of +delicacy: if delicacy may be connected, that is, with anything so +indelicate as a bed! But I'm very glad to gather that it's the couch of +convalescence. Only, if you have a Back, for heaven's sake take care of +it. When I was about your age--in 1862!--I did a bad damage (by a strain +subsequently--through crazy juvenility--neglected) to mine; the +consequence of which is that, in spite of retarded attention, and years, +really, of recumbency, later, I've been saddled with it for life, and +that even now, my dear Howard, I verily write you _with_ it. I even +wrote _The Awkward Age_ with it: therefore look sharp! I wanted +especially to send you that volume--as an "acknowledgment" of princely +hospitalities received, and formed the intention of so doing even in the +too scant moments we stood face to face among the Rembrandts. That's +right--_be_ one of the few! I greatly applaud the tact with which you +tell me that scarce a human being will understand a word, or an +intention, or an artistic element or glimmer of any sort, of my book. I +tell _myself_--and the "reviews" tell me--such truths in much cruder +fashion. But it's an old, old story--and if I "minded" now as much as I +once did, I should be well beneath the sod. Face to face I should be +able to say a bit how I saw--and why I _so_ saw--my subject. But that +will keep. + +I'm here in a warmish, quietish, emptyish, pleasantish (but not +maddeningly so,) altered and cockneyfied and scraped and all but +annihilated Rome. I return to England some time next month (to the +country--Lamb House, Rye--now my constant address--only.) ... However, +this is only to greet and warn you--and to be, my dear Howard, your +affectionate old friend, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Humphry Ward._ + + The allusions at the end of this letter are to the visit paid by H. + J. to Mr. and Mrs. Humphry Ward at the Villa Barberini, Castel + Gandolfo, during his stay in Italy. Mrs. Ward has described the + excursion to Nemi, "the strawberries and Aristodemo," in _A + Writer's Recollections_, pp. 327-9. + + +Lamb House, Rye. +July 10th, 1899. + +Dear Mrs. Ward, + +I have a very bad conscience and a very heavy heart about my failure to +communicate with you again before you left Rome--for I heard +(afterwards--_much_ afterwards) that you had had final trouble and +inconvenience--that Miss Gertrude, brave being, tempted providence--by +her very bravery--to renew its assaults--and that illness and +complications encumbered your last steps. On the subject of all this I +ought long since to have condoled with you, in default of having +condoled at the time--yet lo, I have shamefully waited for the ignoble +facility of my own table and inkstand, to which, after too prolonged a +separation, I have but just been restored. I got home--from Turin--but +three days ago--and very, very cool and green and wholesome (though only +comparatively, I admit) does this little insular nook appear. After I +last saw you I too was caught up, if not cast down, by the +Fates--whirled, by irresistible Marion Crawfords--off to Sorrento, +Capri, Naples--all of which had not been in the least in my +programme--thence, afterwards, to live in heat and hurry and +inconvenient submission and compromise--till Florence, in its turn, made +a long arm and pocketed me (oh, so stuffily!) till but a few days ago. +All this time I've been the slave of others--and I return to a perfect +mountain of unforwarded (by a rash and delusive policy) postal matter. +But I bore through the mountain straight at Stocks--or even, according +to an intimation you gave me, at Grosvenor Place. I heartily hope all +the crumples and stains of travel have by this time been washed and +smoothed away--and that you have nothing but romantic recollections and +regrets. I pray Miss Ward be wholly at her ease again and that, somehow +or other, you may have woven a big piece of your tapestry. I should say, +frankly, "Mayn't I come down and _see_?--or hear?" were it not that I +return to fearful arrears myself, and restored to this small temple of +application, from which I've so long been absent, feel absolutely +obliged to sit tight for several weeks to come. Later in the summer, if +you'll let me, I _shall_ ask for an invitation. If all this while I've +not sent you _The Awkward Age_ it has been because I thought it not fair +to make any such appeal to your attention while you were preoccupied and +worried. Perhaps--absolutely, in fact--I wanted the book to reach you at +a moment when the coast might be comparatively clear. Possibly it isn't +clear even now. At all events I am writing to Heinemann to-day to +despatch to you the volume. But _please_ don't look at it till all the +elements of leisure--margin--peace of mind--lend themselves. And don't +answer _this_. You have far other business in hand. + +My four months in Italy did more for me, I imagine, than I shall yet +awhile know. One must draw on them a little to find out. Doubtless you +are drawing hard on yours. For me (I am clear about that) the Nemi Lake, +and the walk down and up (the latter perhaps most,) and the strawberries +and Aristodemo were the cream. It will be a joy to have it all out again +with you and to hear of your other adventures. I hope Miss Dorothy and +Miss Janet (please tell them) are finding London, if you _are_ still +there, _come si deve_. Yours and theirs and Humphry's, dear Mrs. Ward, +very constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Humphry Ward._ + + It will be understood that Mrs. Ward had consulted H. J. on certain + details, relating in particular to the American background of one + of the characters in her forthcoming novel _Eleanor_, the scene of + which was partly laid at Castel Gandolfo. + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Sunday. [July 1899]. + +Dear Mrs. Ward, + +I return the proofs of _Eleanor_, in a separate cover from this, and as +I think it wise to _register_ them I must wait till to-morrow a.m. to do +that, and this, therefore, will reach you first. Let me immediately say +that I don't light (and I've read carefully every word, and many two or +three times, as Mr. Bellasis would say--and is Mr. B., by the way, +naturally--as it were--H. J.???!!! on any peccant particular spots in +the aspect of Lucy F. that the American reader would challenge. I do +think he, or she, may be likely, at first, to think her more English +than American--to say, I mean: "Why, this isn't _us_--it's English +'Dissent.'" For it's well--generally--to keep in mind how very different +a thing that is (socially, aesthetically &c.) from the American free +(and easy) multitudinous churches, that, practically, in any community, +are like so many (almost) clubs or Philharmonics or amateur theatrical +companies. I _don't_ quite think the however obscure American girl I +gather you to conceive would have any shockability about Rome, the Pope, +St. Peter's, kneeling, or anything of that sort--least of all any girl +whose concatenations _could_, by any possibility of social handing-on, +land her in the milieu you present at Albano. She would probably be +either a Unitarian or "Orthodox" (which is, I believe, "Congregational," +though in New England always called "Orthodox") and in either case as +Emersonized, Hawthornized, J. A. Symondsized, and as "frantic" to _feel_ +the Papacy &c, as one could well represent her. And this, I mean, even +were she of any provincial New England circle whatever that one could +conceive as ramifying, however indirectly, into Villa Barb. This +particularly were her father a college professor. In that case I should +say "The bad clothes &c, oh yes; as much as you like. The beauty &c, +_scarcely_. The offishness to Rome--as a spectator &c.--almost not at +all." All this, roughly and hastily speaking. But there is no false note +of surface, beyond this, I think, that you need be uneasy about at all. +Had I looked over your shoulder I should have said: "_Specify_, +localise, a little more--give her a _definite_ Massachusetts, or Maine, +or whatever, habitation--imagine a country-college-town--invent, if need +be, a name, and stick to that." This for smallish, but appreciable +reasons that I haven't space to develop--but after all not imperative. +For the rest the chapters you send me are, as a beginning, to my vision +very charming and interesting and pleasing--full of promise of strong +elements--as your beginnings always are. + +And may I say (as I _can_ read nothing, if I read it at all, save in the +light of how one would _one's self_ proceed in tackling the same +_data_!) just two other things? One is that I think your material +suffers a little from the fact that the reader feels you approach your +subject too _immediately_, show him its elements, the cards in your +hand, too bang off from the first page--so that a wait to begin to guess +_what and whom the thing is going to be about_ doesn't impose itself: +the ante-chamber or two and the crooked corridor before he is already in +the Presence. The other is that you don't give him a positive sense of +dealing with your subject from its logical centre. This centre I +gathered to be, from what you told me in Rome (and one gathers it also +from the title,) the consciousness of Eleanor--to which all the rest +(Manisty, Lucy, the whole phantasmagoria and drama) is presented by +life. I should have urged you: "Make that consciousness full, rich, +universally prehensile and _stick_ to it--don't shift--and don't shift +_arbitrarily_--how, otherwise, do you get your unity of subject or keep +up your reader's sense of it?" To which, if you say: How then do I get +_Lucy's_ consciousness, I impudently retort: "By that magnificent and +masterly _indirectness_ which means the _only_ dramatic straightness and +intensity. You get it, in other words, by Eleanor." "And how does +Eleanor get it?" "By _Everything_! By Lucy, by Manisty, by every pulse +of the action in which she is engaged and of which she is the +fullest--an exquisite--register. Go behind _her_--miles and miles; don't +go behind the others, or the subject--_i.e._ the unity of +impression--goes to smash." But I am going too far--and this is more +than you will have bargained for. On these matters there is far too much +to say. This makes me all the more sorry that, in answer to your kind +invitation for the last of this month, I greatly fear I can't leave home +for several weeks to come. I am in hideous backwardness with duties that +after a long idleness (six full months!) have awaited me here--and I am +cultivating "a unity of impression!" In _October_ with joy. + +Your history of your journey from V.B., your anxieties, complications, +horrid tension and tribulation, draws hot tears from my eyes. I blush +for the bleak inn at the bare Simplon. I only meant it for rude, +recovered health. Poor Miss Gertrude--heroine partout et toujours--and +so privately, modestly, exquisitely. Give her, please, all my present +benediction. And forgive my horrid, fatigued hieroglyphics. Do let me +have more of "Eleanor"--to re-write! And believe me, dear Mrs. Ward, +ever constantly yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + +_P.S._ I've on reflection determined that as a _registered_ letter may +not, perhaps, reach Stocks till Tuesday a.m. and you wish to despatch +for Wednesday's steamer, it is my "higher duty" to send the proofs off +in ordinary form, apart from this, but to-night. May it be for the best! + +H. J. + + + + +_To Mrs. Humphry Ward._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +July 26th, 1899. + +Dear Mrs. Ward, + +I beg you not to believe that if you elicit a reply from me--to your so +interesting letter just received--you do so at any cost to any extreme +or uncomfortable pressure that I'm just now under. I am always behind +with everything--and it's no worse than usual. Besides I shall be very +brief.[A] But I must say two or three words--not only because these are +the noblest speculations that can engage the human mind, but because--to +a degree that distresses me--you labour under two or three mistakes as +to what, the other day, I at all wanted to express. I don't myself, for +that matter, recognise what you mean by any "old difference" between us +on _any_ score--and least of all when you appear to glance at it as an +opinion of mine (if I understand you, that is,) as to there being but +_one general_ "hard and fast rule of _presentation_." I protest that I +have never had with you any difference--consciously--on any such point, +and rather resent, frankly, your attributing to me a judgment so +imbecile. I hold that there are five million such "rules" (or as many as +there are subjects in all the world--I fear the subjects are _not_ +5,000,000!) only each of them imposed, artistically, by the particular +case--involved in the writer's responsibility to it; and each +_then_--and then only--"hard and fast" with an immitigable hardness and +fastness. I don't see, _without_ this latter condition, where any work +of art, any artistic _question_ is, or any artistic probity. Of course, +a 1000 times, there are as many magnificent and imperative cases as you +like of presenting a thing by "going behind" as many forms of +consciousness as you like--all Dickens, Balzac, Thackeray, Tolstoi (save +when they use the autobiographic dodge,) are huge illustrations of it. +But they are illustrations of extreme and calculated selection, or +singleness, too, whenever that has been, by the case, imposed on them. +My own immortal works, for that matter, if I may make bold, are +recognizable instances of all the variation. I "go behind" right and +left in "The Princess Casamassima," "The Bostonians," "The Tragic +Muse," just as I do the same but singly in "The American" and "Maisie," +and just as I do it consistently _never at all_ (save for a false and +limited _appearance_, here and there, of doing it a _little_, which I +haven't time to explain) in "The Awkward Age." So far from not seeing +what you mean in _Pecheur d'Islande_, I see it as a most beautiful +example--a crystal-clear one. It's a picture of a _relation_ (a _single_ +relation) and that relation isn't given at all unless given on both +sides, because, practically, there are no other relations to make +_other_ feet for the situation to walk withal. The logic jumps at the +eyes. Therefore acquit me, please, _please_, of anything so abject as +putting forward anything at once specific and _a priori_. "Then why," I +hear you ask, "do you pronounce for _my book_ a priori?" Only because of +a mistake, doubtless, for which I do here humble penance--that of +assuming too precipitately, and with the freedom of an inevitably +too-foreshortened letter, that I was dealing with it _a +posteriori_!--and _that_ on the evidence of only those few pages and of +a somewhat confused recollection of what, in Rome, you told me of your +elements. Or rather--more correctly--I was giving way to my irresistible +need of wondering how, _given_ the subject, one could best work one's +self into the presence of it. And, lo and behold, the subject isn't (of +course, in so scant a show and brief a piece) "given" at all--I have +doubtless simply, with violence and mutilation, _stolen_ it. It is of +the nature of that violence that I'm a wretched person to _read_ a +novel--I begin so quickly and concomitantly, _for myself_, to write it +rather--even before I know clearly what it's about! The novel I can +_only_ read, I can't read at all! And I had, to be just with me, one +attenuation--I thought I gathered from the pages already absorbed that +your _parti pris_ as to your process with "Eleanor" was already +defined--and defined as "dramatic"--and that was a kind of _lead_: the +people all, as it were, phenomenal to a particular imagination (hers) +and that imagination, with all its contents, phenomenal to the reader. +I, in fine, just rudely and egotistically thrust forward the beastly way +_I_ should have done it. But there is too much to say about these +things--and I am writing too much--and yet haven't said half I want +to--_and_, above all, there _being_ so much, it is doubtless better not +to attempt to say pen in hand what one can say but so partially. And yet +I _must_ still add one or two things more. What I said above about the +"rule" of presentation being, in each case, hard and fast, _that_ I will +go to the stake and burn with slow fire for--the slowest that will burn +at all. I hold the artist must (infinitely!) know how he is doing it, or +he is not doing it at all. I hold he must have a perception of the +interests of his subject that grasps him as in a vise, and that (the +subject being of course formulated in his mind) he sees _as_ sharply the +way that most presents it, and presents most of it, as against the ways +that comparatively give it away. And he must there choose and stick and +be consistent--and that is the hard-and-fastness and the vise. I am +afraid I _do_ differ with you if you mean that the picture can get any +_objective_ unity from any other source than that; can get it from, +e.g., the "personality of the author." From the personality of the +author (which, however enchanting, is a thing for the reader only, and +not for the author himself, without humiliating abdications, to my +sense, to count in at all) it can get nothing but a unity of execution +and of tone. There is no short cut for the subject, in other words, out +of the process, which, having made out most what it (the subject) is, +_treats_ it most, handles it, in that relation, with the most consistent +economy. May I say, to exonerate myself a little, that when, e.g., I +see you make Lucy "phenomenal" to Eleanor (one has to express it briefly +and somehow,) I find myself supposing completely that you "know how +you're doing it," and enjoy, as critic, the sweet peace that comes with +that sense. But I haven't the sense that you "know how you're doing it" +when, at the point you've reached, I see you make Lucy phenomenal, even +for one attempted stroke, to the little secretary of embassy. And the +reason of this is that Eleanor counts as presented, and thereby _is_ +something to go behind. The secretary _doesn't_ count as presented (and +isn't he moreover engaged, at the very moment--_your_ moment--in being +phenomenal himself, to Lucy?) and is therefore, practically, _nothing_ +to go behind. The promiscuous shiftings of standpoint and centre of +Tolstoi and Balzac for instance (which come, to my eye, from their being +not so much big dramatists as big _painters_--as Loti is a painter,) are +the inevitable result of the _quantity of presenting_ their genius +launches them in. With the complexity they pile up they _can_ get no +clearness without trying again and again for new centres. And they don't +_always_ get it. However, I don't mean to say they don't get enough. And +I hasten to add that you have--I wholly recognise--every right to reply +to me: "Cease your intolerable chatter and dry up your preposterous +deluge. If you will have the decent civility to _wait_, you will see +that _I_ 'present' also--_anch' io!_--enough for _every_ freedom I use +with it!"--_And with my full assent to that, and my profuse_ prostration +in the dust for this extravagant discourse, with all faith, gratitude, +appreciation and affection, I _do_ cease, dear Mrs. Ward, I dry up! and +am yours most breathlessly, + +HENRY JAMES. + +[A] Later!!!! Latest. Don't rejoin!--_don't!_ + + + + +_To Mrs. A. F. de Navarro._ + + The "priceless volume" was an album belonging to Mrs. de Navarro + (Miss Mary Anderson), in which she had asked H. J. to inscribe some + words. His contribution, given below, recalls a memory of Miss + Anderson before she left the stage. + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Oct. 13: 1899. + +Dearest, greatest lady, + +I've filled a page, with my horrid hieroglyphics, in the priceless +volume--and my characters are the more unsightly for having to be +squeezed in--for I found that to point my little moral I had to take +more than 20 words. Forgive their sad futility. I hope I understood you +right--that I was to do it _opposite_ Watts--I obeyed your law to what I +supposed to be the letter. If I'm not quite correct, I can assure you +that it will be the only time I shall ever break it! Yours and Tony's +very constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. The volume goes by _to-morrow_ a.m.'s post; tenderly and stoutly +wrapped, violently sealed, convulsively corded and rigorously +registered. Bon voyage! + + + + +THE GOLDEN DREAM. + +A LITTLE TALE. + + +It was in the days of his golden dreams that he first saw her, and she +immediately became one of them--made them glow with a new rosy fire. The +first night, on leaving the theatre in his breathless ecstasy, he could +scarce compose himself to go home: he wandered over the town, murmuring +to himself "I want, oh I want to write something for her!" He went again +and again to see her--he was always there, and after each occasion, and +even as the months and years rolled by, kept repeating to himself, and +even to others, what he _did_ want to. Now one of these others was his +great friend, who irritated and probably jealous, coldly and cynically +replied: "You may want to, but you won't. No, you will never write +anything." + +"I will!" he vehemently insisted. And he added in presumptuous +confidence: "Just wait till she asks me!" And so they kept it up, and he +said _that_ too often for the G.F., who, exasperated, ended by +retorting: + +"She never will!" + +"Well, you see if she doesn't!" + +"You must think--" said the G.F. scathingly. + +"Well, what?" + +"Why, that she thinks you're somebody." + +"She'll find out in time that I _am_. _Then_ she'll ask me." + +"Ask _who_ you are?" + +"No"--with majesty. "To write something." + +"Then I shall be sorry for her. Because you won't." + +"Why not?" + +"Because you _can't_!" + +"Oh!" But the months and years revolved and at last his dream came true; +also it befell that, just at the same moment, the G.F. reappeared; to +whom he broke out ecstatically: "I told you so! She _has_ found out! She +_has_ asked me." + +The G.F. was imperturbable. "What's the use? You can't." + +"You'll see if I can't!" And he sat down and tried. Oh, he tried +long--he tried hard. But the G.F. was right. It was too late. He +couldn't. + +HENRY JAMES. + +Lamb House, Rye. Oct. 13, 1899. + + + + +_To Sidney Colvin._ + + + The following refers to R. L. Stevenson's _Letters to his Family + and Friends_, edited by Sir Sidney Colvin. H. J.'s article appeared + in the _North American Review_, January 1900, and was afterwards + reprinted in _Notes on Novelists_. + +Lamb House, Rye. +Wednesday night. + +[October 1899.] + +My dear Colvin, + +Many things hindered my quietly and immediately reabsorbing the +continuity of the two gathered volumes, and I have delayed till this the +acknowledgment of your letter (sent a few days after them,) I having +already written (hadn't I?) before the letter arrived. I have spent much +of the last two days with them--beautifully and sadly enough. I think +you need have no doubt as to the impression the constituted book will +make--it will be one of extraordinarily rare, particular and individual +beauty. I want to write about it really critically, if I can--i.e. +intelligently and interpretatively--but I sigh before the difficulty. +Still, I shall probably try. One thing it seems to me I foresee--i.e. a +demand for _more_ letters. There _are_ more publishable?--aren't there? +But you will tell me of this. How extraordinarily fine the long (almost +last of all) one to his cousin Bob! If there were only more _de cette +force_! But there couldn't be. "I _think_ I think" the impression more +_equal_ than you do--indeed some of the early ones better than the +earlier ones after expatriation. But the whole series reek with charm +and hum with genius. It will serve as a _high_ memorial--by which I mean +as a large (comprehensive) one. Remember that I shall be delighted to +see you on the 18th. I _may_ be alone--or Jon Sturges may be here. +Probably nessun' altro. Please communicate your decision as to this at +your convenience. If not _then_, then on one of the next Saturdays, I +hope! + +What horridly overdarkening S. African news! One must sit close--but for +too long. + +Yours ever, +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. Re-reading your letter makes me feel I haven't perhaps answered +enough your query about early vol. I. I don't, however, see what you +need be uneasy about. The young flame of life and agitation of genius in +them flickers and heaves only to make one regret whatever (more) is +_not_ there: _never_ to make one feel your discretion has anywhere been +at fault. I'm not sure I don't think it has erred a little on the side +of over-suppression. One has the vague sense of omissions and +truncations--one _smells_ the things unprinted. However, that doubtless +had to be. But I don't see _any_ mistake you have made. With less, there +would have been no history--and one wants what made, what makes for his +history. It _all_ does--and so would more. But you have given nothing +that valuably doesn't. Be at peace. + +H. J. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + This refers to a suggestion that Stevenson's body should be removed + from his place of burial, on the mountain-top above Vailima, and + brought home. + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Sunday [Nov. 12, 1899]. + +My dear Gosse, + +I wholly agree with you as to any motion toward the preposterous and +unseemly deportation from their noble resting-place of those illustrious +and helpless ashes. I find myself, somehow, unable to think of Louis in +these days (much more to speak of him) without an emotion akin to tears; +and such blatant busybody ineptitude causes the cup to overflow and +sickens as well as enrages. But nothing but cheap newspaperism will come +of it--it has in it the power, fortunately, to drop, utterly and +abysmally, if not _touched_--if decently ignored. Don't write a +protest--don't write _anything_: simply _hush_! The _lurid_ asininity of +the hour! + +...I will write you about your best train Saturday--which heaven speed! +It will probably be the 3.23 from Charing Cross--better, really, than +the (new) 5.15 from St. Paul's. I find S. Africa a nightmare and need +cheering. Arrive therefore primed for that office. + +Ever yours, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Miss Henrietta Reubell._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Sunday midnight. + +[Nov. 12th, 1899.] + +Dear Miss Reubell, + +I have had great pleasure of your last good letter and this is a word of +fairly prompt reconnaissance. Your bewilderment over _The Awkward Age_ +doesn't on the whole surprise me--for that ingenious volume appears to +have excited little _but_ bewilderment--except indeed, _here_, +thick-witted denunciation. A work of art that one has to _explain_ fails +in so far, I suppose, of its mission. I suppose I must at any rate +mention that I had in view a certain special social (highly "modern" and +actual) London group and type and tone, which seemed to me to se preter +a merveille to an ironic--lightly and simply ironic!--treatment, and +that clever people at least would know who, in general, and what, one +meant. But here, at least, it appears there are very few clever people! +One must point with finger-posts--one must label with _pancartes_--one +must explain with _conferences_! The _form_, doubtless, of my picture is +against it--a form all dramatic and scenic--of presented episodes, +architecturally combined and each making a piece of the building; with +no going behind, no _telling about_ the figures save by their own +appearance and action and with explanations reduced to the explanation +of everything by all the other things _in_ the picture. Mais il parait +qu'il ne faut pas faire comme ca: personne n'y comprend rien: j'en suis +pour mes frais--qui avaient ete considerables, tres considerables! Yet I +seem to make out you were interested--and that consoles me. I think Mrs. +Brook the best thing I've ever done--and Nanda also much _done_. Voila! +Mitchy marries Aggie by a calculation--in consequence of a state of +mind--delicate and deep, but that I meant to show on his part as highly +conceivable. It's absolute to him that N. will never have him--and she +_appeals_ to him for another girl, whom she sees him as "saving" (from +things--realities she sees). If he does it (and she shows how she values +him by wanting it) it is still a way of getting and keeping near her--of +making for _her_, to him, a tie of gratitude. She becomes, as it were, +to him, responsible for his happiness--they can't (_especially if the +marriage goes ill_) _not_ be--given the girl that Nanda is--more, rather +than less, together. And the _finale_ of the picture _justifies_ him: it +leaves Nanda, precisely, with his case on her hands. Far-fetched? Well, +I daresay: but so are diamonds and pearls and the beautiful Reubell +turquoises! So I scribble to you, to be sociable, by my loud-ticking +clock, in this sleeping little town, at my usual more than midnight +hour. + +...Well, also, I'm like you--I like growing (that is I like, for many +reasons, _being_) old: 56! But I don't like growing _older_. I quite +love my present age and the compensations, simplifications, freedom, +independences, memories, advantages of it. But I don't keep it long +enough--it passes too quickly. But it mustn't pass _all_ (good as that +is) in writing to _you_! There is nothing I shall like more to dream of +than to be convoyed by you to the expositionist Kraals of the Savages +and the haunts of the cannibals. I surrender myself to you de +confiance--in vision and hope--for that purpose. Jonathan Sturges lives, +year in, year out, at Long's Hotel, Bond St., and promises to come down +here and see me, but never does. He knows hordes of people, every one +extraordinarily likes him, and he has tea-parties for pretty ladies: one +at a time. Alas, he is three quarters of the time ill; but his little +spirit is colossal. Sargent grows in weight, honour and interest--to +_my_ view. He does one fine thing after another--and his crucifixion +(that is big Crucifie with Adam and Eve under each arm of cross catching +drops of blood) for Boston Library is a most noble, grave and admirable +thing. But it's already to-morrow and I am yours always, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To H. G. Wells._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +November 20th, 1899. + +My dear H. G. Wells, + +You reduce me to mere gelatinous grovel. And the worst of it is that you +know so well how. You, with a magnanimity already so marked as to be +dazzling, sent me last summer a beautiful and discouraging volume which +I never mastered the right combination of minutes and terms to thank you +for as it deserved--and then, perfectly aware that this shameful +consciousness had practically converted me to quivering pulp, you let +fly the shaft that has finished me in the fashion to which I now so +distressfully testify. It is really most kind and charming of you, and +the incident will figure largely in all your eventual biographies: yet +it is almost more than I can bear. Seriously, I am extremely touched by +your great humanity in the face of my atrocious bad manners. I think the +reason _why_ I didn't write to thank you for the magnificent romance of +three or four months ago was that I simply dreaded a new occasion for +still more purple perjury on the subject of coming over to see you! I +_was_--I _am_!--coming: and yet I couldn't--and I _can't_--say it +without steeping myself afresh in apparent falsehood, to the eyes. It is +a weird tale of the _acharnement_ of fate against an innocent action--I +mean the history of my now immemorial failure: which I must not attempt +to tell you thus and now, but reserve for your convinced (from the +moment it isn't averted) ear on the day, and at the very hour and +moment, that failure is converted to victory. I AM coming. I was lately +extremely sorry to hear that you have been somewhat unwell again--unless +it be a gross exaggeration. Heaven send that same. I AM coming. I thank +you very cordially for the two beautiful books. The new tales I have +already absorbed and, to the best of my powers, assimilated. You fill me +with wonder and admiration. I think you have too great an unawareness of +difficulty--and (for instance) that the four big towns and nice blue +foods and belching news-trumpets, etc., will be the _least_ of the +differences in the days to come.--But it's unfair to say that without +saying a deal more: which I can't, and [which] isn't worth it--and is +besides irrelevant and ungracious. Your spirit is huge, your fascination +irresistible, your resources infinite. _That_ is much more to the point. +And I AM coming. I heartily hope that if you _have_ been incommoded it +is already over, and for a corrigible cause. I AM coming. Recall me, +please, kindly to Mrs. Wells, and believe me (I AM coming,) very truly +(_and_ veraciously) yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Charles Eliot Norton._ + + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +* _Please read postscript first._ +24 November 1899. + +My dear Charles, + +I heartily welcomed your typed letter of a couple of months ago, both +for very obvious and for respectable subsidiary reasons. I am almost +altogether reduced--I would much rather say promoted--to type myself, +and to communicate with a friend who is in the same predicament only +adds to the luxury of the business. I was never intended by nature to +write--much less to be, without anguish, read; and I have recognised +that perfectly patent law late in the day only, when I might so much +better have recognised it early. It would have made a great difference +in my life--made me a much more successful person. But "the New England +conscience" interposed; suggesting that the sense of being so +conveniently assisted could only proceed, somehow, from the abyss. So I +floundered and fumbled and failed, through long years for the mere want +of the small dose of cynical courage required for recognising frankly my +congenital inaptitude. Another proof, or presumption, surely, of the +immortality of the soul. It takes one whole life--for some persons, at +least, _dont je suis_--to learn how to live at all; which is absurd if +there is not to be another in which to apply the lesson. I feel that in +_my_ next career I shall start, in this particular at least, from the +first, straight. Thank heaven I don't write such a hand as you! Then +where would my conscience be? + +You wrote me from Ashfield, and I can give you more than country for +country, as I am still, thank heaven, out of town--which is more and +more my predominant and natural state. I am only reacting, I suppose, +against many, many long years of London, which has ended by giving me a +deep sense of the quantity of "cry" in all that life compared to the +almost total absence of "wool." By which I mean, simply, that +acquaintances and relations there have a way of seeming at last to end +in smoke--while having consumed a great deal of fuel and taken a great +deal of time. I dare say I shall some day re-establish the balance, and +I have kept my habitation there, though I let it whenever I can; but at +present I am as conscious of the advantage of the Sussex winter as of +that of the Sussex summer. But I've just returned from three days in +London, mainly taken up with seeing my brother William as to whom your +letter contained an anxious inquiry to which I ought before this to have +done justice. The difficulty has been, these three months, that he has +been working, with the most approved medical and "special" aid, for a +change of condition, which one hoped would have been apparent by now--so +that one might have good news to give. I am sorry to say the change +remains, as yet, but imperfectly apparent--though I dare say it has, +within the last month, really begun. His German cure--Nauheim--was a +great disappointment; but he is at present in the hands of the best +London man, who professes himself entirely content with results actually +reached. The misfortune is that the regimen and treatment--the "last +new" one--are superficially depressing and weakening even when they are +doing the right work; and from that, now, I take William to be +suffering. Ci vuol pazienza! He will probably spend the winter in +England, whatever happens. Only, alas, his Edinburgh lectures are +indefinitely postponed--and other renouncements, of an unenlivening +sort, have had, as indispensable precautions and prudences, to follow. +They have placed their little girl very happily at school, near Windsor; +they are in convenient occupation, at present, of my London apartment; +and luckily the autumn has been, as London autumns go, quite +cheerfully--distinguishably--crepuscular. I am two hours and a half from +town; which is far enough, thank heaven, not to be near, and yet near +enough, from the point of view of shillings, invasions and other +complications, not to be far; they have been with me for a while, and I +am looking for them again for longer. William is able, fortunately, more +or less to read, and strikes me as so richly prepared, by an immense +quantity of this--to speak of that feature alone--for the Edinburgh +lectures--that the pity of the frustration comes home the more. A truce, +however, to this darksome picture--which may very well yet improve. + +I went, a month ago, during a day or two in town, down to Rottingdean to +lunch with the Kiplings (those Brighton trains are wondrous!) but +failed, to my regret, to see Lady Burne-Jones, their immediate neighbor, +as of course you know; who was perversely, though most accidentally, +from home. But they told me--and it was the first I knew--of her big +project of publishing the dear beautiful man's correspondence: copious, +it appears, in a degree of which I had not a conception. Living, in +London, near him, though not seeing him, thanks to the same odious +London, half so often as I desired, I seldom heard from him on paper, +and hadn't, at all, in short, the measure of his being, as the K.'s +assured me he proves to have been, a "great letter-writer." + + +(28th Nov.) + +I was interrupted, my dear Charles, the other day: difficulties then +multiplied, and I only now catch on again. I see, on reading over your +letter, that you are quite _au courant_ of Lady B. J.'s plan; and I of +course easily take in that she must have asked you, as one of his +closest correspondents, for valuable material. Yet I don't know that I +wholly echo your deprecation of these givings to the world. The best +letters seem to me the most delightful of all written things--and those +that are not the best the most negligible. If a correspondence, in other +words, has not the real charm, I wouldn't have it published even +privately; if it has, on the other hand, I would give it all the glory +of the greatest literature. B. J.'s, I should say, must have it (the +real charm)--since he did, as appears, surrender to it. Is this not so? +At all events we shall indubitably see.... As for B. J., I miss him not +less, but more, as year adds itself to year; and the hole he has left in +the London horizon, the eclipse of the West Kensington oasis, is a thing +much to help one to turn one's back on town: and this in spite of the +fact that his work, alas, had long ceased to interest me, with its +element of painful, niggling embroidery--the stitch-by-stitch process +that had come at last to beg the _painter_ question altogether. Even the +poetry--the kind of it--that he tried for appeared to me to have +wandered away from the real thing; and yet the being himself grew only +more loveable, natural and wise. Too late, too late! I gather, a propos +of him, that you have read Mackail's Morris; which seems to me quite +beautifully and artistically done--wonderful to say for a contemporary +English biography. It is really composed, the effect really produced--an +effect not altogether, I think, happy, or even endurable, as regards +Morris himself--for whom the formula strikes me as being--being at least +largely--that he was a boisterous, boyish, British man of action and +practical faculty, launched indeed by his imagination, but really +floundering and romping and roaring through the arts, both literary and +plastic, very much as a bull through a china-shop. I felt much moved, +after reading the book, to try to write, with the aid of some of my own +recollections and impressions, something possibly vivid about it; but we +are in a moment of such excruciating vulgarity that nothing worth doing +about anything or anyone seems to be wanted or welcomed anywhere. The +great little Rudyard--a propos of Rottingdean--struck me as quite on his +feet again, and very sane and sound and happy. Yet I am afraid you'll +think me a very disgusted person if I show my reserves, again, over +_his_ recent incarnations. I can't swallow his loud, brazen patriotic +verse--an exploitation of the patriotic idea, for that matter, which +seems to me not really much other than the exploitation of the name of +one's mother or one's wife. Two or three times a century--yes; but not +every month. He is, however, such an embodied little talent, so +economically constructed for all use and no waste, that he will get +again upon a good road--leading _not_ into mere multitudinous noise. His +talent I think quite diabolically great; and this in spite--here I am at +it again!--of the misguided, the unfortunate "Stalky." Stalky gives him +away, aesthetically, as a man in his really now, as regards our roaring +race, bardic condition, should not have allowed himself to be given. +That is not a thing, however, that, in our paradise of criticism, +appears to occur to so much as three persons, and meanwhile the sale, I +believe, is tremendous. Basta, basta. + +We are living, of course, under the very black shadow of S. Africa, +where the nut is proving a terribly hard one to crack, and where, alas, +things will probably be worse before they are better. One ranges one's +self, on the whole, to the belief not only that they _will_ be better, +but that they really had to be taken in hand to be made so; they +wouldn't and couldn't do at all as they were. But the job is immense, +complicated as it is by distance, transport, and many preliminary +illusions and stupidities; friends moreover, right and left, have their +young barbarians in the thick of it and are living so, from day to day, +in suspense and darkness that, in certain cases, their images fairly +haunt one. It reminds me strangely of some of the far-away phases and +feelings of _our_ big, dim war. What tremendously ancient history that +now seems!--But I am launching at you, my dear Charles, a composition of +magnitude--when I meant only to encumber you with a good, affectionate +note. I have presently to take on myself a care that may make you smile; +nothing less than to proceed, a few moments hence, to Dover, to meet our +celebrated friend (I think she can't _not_ be yours) Mrs. Jack Gardner, +who arrives from Brussels, charged with the spoils of the Flemish +school, and kindly pays me a fleeting visit on her way up to town. I +must rush off, help her to disembark, see all her Van Eycks and Rubenses +through the Customs and bring her hither, where three water-colours and +four photographs of the "Rye school" will let her down easily. My little +backwater is just off the highway from London to the Continent. I am +really quite near Dover, and it's absurd how also quite near Italy that +makes me feel. To get there without the interposition of the lumbering +London, or even, if need be, of the bristling Paris, seems so to +simplify the matter to the mind. And yet, I grieve to say that, in a +residence here of a year and a half, I have only been to patria nostra +once.... Good-bye, my dear Charles--I must catch my train. Fortunately I +am but three minutes from the station. Fortunately, also, you are not to +associate with this fact anything grimy or noisy or otherwise +suggestive of fever and fret. At Rye even the railway is quaint--or at +least its neighbours are. + +Yours always affectionately, +HENRY JAMES. + + +January 13, 1900. + +P.S. This should be a prescript rather than a postscript, my dear +Charles, to prepare you properly for the monstrosity of my having +dictated a letter to you so long ago and then kept it over unposted into +the next century--if next century it be! (They are fighting like cats +and dogs here as to where in our speck of time we are.) There has been a +method in my madness--my delay has not quite been, not wholly been, an +accident; though there _was_ at first that intervention. What happened +was that I had to dash off and catch a train before I had time to read +this over and enclose it; and that on the close of that adventure, which +lasted a couple of days and was full of distractions, I had in a still +more belated and precipitate way to rush up to London. These sheets, +meanwhile, languished in an unfrequented drawer into which, after +hurrying off, I had at random thrust them; and there they remained till +my return from London--which was not for nearly a fortnight. When I came +back here I brought down William and his wife, the former, at the time, +so off his balance as to give me almost nothing but _him_ to think +about; and it thereby befell that some days more elapsed before I +rediscovered my letter. Reading it over then, I had the feeling that it +gave a somewhat unduly emphasised account of W.; whereupon I said to +myself: "Since it has waited so long, I will keep it a while longer; so +as to be able to tell better things." That is just, then, what I have +done; and I am very glad, in consequence, to be able to tell them. Only +I am again (it seems a fate!--giving you a strangely false impression of +my normally quiet life) on the point of catching a train. I go with W. +and A., a short time hence, on--again!--to Dover--a very small and +convenient journey from this--to see them so far on their way to the +pursuit, for the rest of the winter, of southern sunshine. They will +cross the Channel to-morrow or next day and proceed as they find +convenient to Hyeres--which, as he himself has written to you, you +doubtless already know. I do, at any rate, feel much more at ease about +him now. The sight of the good he can get even by sitting for a chance +hour or two, all muffled and hot-watered, in such sun, pale and hindered +sun, as a poor little English garden can give him in midwinter, quite +makes me feel that a real climate, the real thing, will do much toward +making him over. He needs it--though differently--even as a consumptive +does. And moreover he has become, these last weeks, much more fit to go +find it. Q.E.D. But this _shall_ be posted. Yours more than ever before, + +H. J. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +January 1st, 1900. + +My dear Gosse, + +I much welcome your note and feel the need of exonerations--as to my own +notelessness. It was very good of you, staggering on this gruesome +threshold and meeting only new burdens, I fear (of correspondence,) as +its most immediate demonstration, to find a moment to waggle me so much +as a little finger. I was painfully conscious of my long silence--after +a charming book from you, never properly acknowledged, etc.; but I have +been living with very few odd moments or off-hours of leisure, and my +neglect of every one and everything is now past reparation. The presence +with me of my brother, sister-in-law and little niece has, with a +particular pressure of work, walled me in and condemned my +communications. My brother, for whom this snug and secure little nook +appears to have been soothing and sustaining, is better than when he +came, and I am proportionately less depressed; but I still go on tiptoe +and live from day to day. However, that way one does go on. They go, +probably, by the middle of the month, to the South of France--and a +right climate, a _real_ one, has presumably much to give him.... + +I never thanked you--en connaissance de cause--for M. Hewlett's Italian +_Novelle_: of so brilliant a cleverness and so much more developed a one +than his former book. They are wonderful for "go" and grace and general +ability, and would almost make me like the _genre_, if anything could. +But I so hunger and thirst, in this deluge of cheap romanticism and +chromolithographic archaics (babyish, puppyish, as evocation, all, it +seems to me,) for a note, a gleam of reflection of the life _we_ live, +of artistic or plastic intelligence of it, something one can say yes or +no to, as discrimination, perception, observation, rendering--that I am +really not a judge of the particular commodity at all: I am out of +patience with it and have it _par-dessus les oreilles_. What I don't +doubt of is the agility with which Hewlett does it. But oh Italy--the +Italy _of_ Italy! Basta! + +May the glowering year clear its dark face for all of us before it has +done with us!... Vale. Good-night. + +Yours always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Everard Cotes._ + + This refers to Mrs. Cotes's novel, _His Honor and a Lady_, and to a + suggestion that its manner in some way resembled his own. + + +Lamb House, Rye. +January 26th, 1900. + +Dear Mrs. Cotes, + +I grovel in the dust--so ashamed am I to have made no response to your +so generous bounty and to have left you unthanked and unhonoured. And +all the while I was (at once) so admiring your consummately clever book, +and so blushing to the heels and groaning to the skies over the daily +paralysis of my daily intention to make you some at least (if not +adequate) commonly courteous and approximately intelligible sign. And I +have absolutely no valid, no sound, excuse to make but that _I am like +that_!--I mean I am an abandonedly bad writer of letters and +acknowledger of kindnesses. I throw myself simply on my confirmed (in +old age) hatred of the unremunerated pen--from which one would think I +have a remunerated one! + +Your book is extraordinarily keen and delicate and able. How can I tell +if it's "like me"? I don't know what "me" is like. I can't _see_ my own +tricks and arts, my own effect, from outside at all. I can only say that +if it _is_ like me, then I'm much more of a _gros monsieur_ than I ever +dreamed. We are neither of us dying of simplicity or common addition; +that's all I can make out; and we are both very intelligent and +observant and conscious that a work of art must make some small effort +to _be_ one; must sacrifice somehow and somewhere to the exquisite, or +be an asininity altogether. So we open the door to the Devil +himself--who is nothing but the sense of beauty, of mystery, of +relations, of appearances, of abysses of the whole--_and_ of EXPRESSION! +That's _all_ he is; and if he is our common parent I'm delighted to +welcome you as a sister and to be your brother. One or two things my +acute critical intelligence murmured to me as I read. I think your drama +lacks a little, _line_--bony structure and palpable, as it were, tense +cord--on which to string the pearls of detail. It's the frequent fault +of women's work--and _I_ like a rope (the rope of the _direction and +march of the subject_, the action) pulled, like a taut cable between a +steamer and a tug, from beginning to end. It lapses and lapses along a +trifle too liquidly--and is too _much_ conceived (I think) in +dialogue--I mean considering that it isn't conceived like a play. +Another reflection the Western idiot makes is that he is a little +tormented by the modern mixture (maddening medley of our cosmopolite +age) of your India (vast, pre-conceived and absently-present,) and your +subject not of Indian essence. The two things--elements--don't somehow +illustrate each other, and are juxtaposed only by the terrible +globe-shrinkage. But that's not _your_ fault--it's mine that I suffer +from it. Go on and go on--you are full of talent; of the sense of life +and the instinct of presentation; of wit and perception and resource. +Voila. + +It would be much more to the point to _talk_ of these things with you, +and some day, again, this must indeed be. But just now I am talking with +few--wintering, for many good reasons, in the excessive tranquillity of +this tiny, inarticulate country town, in which I have a house really +adapted to but the balmier half of the year. And there is nothing +cheerful to talk of. South Africa darkens all our sky here, and I gloom +and brood and have craven questions of "Finis Britanniae?" in solitude. +Your Indian vision at least keeps _that_ abjectness away from you. But +good-night. It's past midnight; my little heavy-headed and heavy-hearted +city sleeps; the stillness ministers to fresh flights of the morbid +fancy; and I am yours, dear Mrs. Cotes, most constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To A. F. de Navarro._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +April 1st, 1900. + +My dear brave Don Tony and dear beautiful Dona Mary: (not that Tony +isn't beautiful too or that Mary isn't brave!) You are awfully +exclusive; you won't be written to if you can help it--or if _I_ can; +but wonderful as you individually and conjoinedly are, you must still +taste of the common cup--you must recognise that, after all, you are, +humanly, _exposed_--! Well, _this_ is all, at the worst, you are exposed +to: to my only scribbling at you, a little, for the pride of the thought +of you. A fellow has feelings, hang it--and the feelings _will_ +overflow. I am a very sentient and affectionate, albeit out-of-the-way +and out-of-the-fashion person. I _like_ to add with my own clumsy +fingers a small knot to the silken cord that, for the starved romance of +my life, does, by God's blessing, happen to unite me to two or three of +my really decorative contemporaries. Besides, if you _will_ write such +enchanting letters! The communication that (a few days ago in London) +reached [me] from each of you, makes up for many grey things. Many +things _are_ grey, in a _blafard_ English March and moist English +club-chambers: (tell me not of the pains of Provence!) Without our +gifted Jon. close at hand I should have parted forever with my sense of +colour. However, I don't want simply to thank you for all the present, +the past and the future--I want also to say, right distinctly, that if +you _can_ conveniently send me a copy of _L'Aiglon_ you'll stick the +biggest feather yet in your cap of grace. I believe the book isn't yet +out--so I shall be as patient as I am attached. You couldn't do a more +charming thing--and nobody _but_ you could do as charming a one.--I hold +you both fast and am your fond and faithful old friend, + +HENRY JAMES. + +P.S. I send this to C.F. as you may have shifted. How delightful your +picture of the little time-beating boy! What a family! + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + _The Sense of the Past_, the first chapters of which were written + at this time, was presently laid aside and not continued until the + autumn of 1914. The other projected "tale of terror," referred to + in this letter, was never carried out; there seems to be no + indication of its subject. + + +Lamb House, Rye. +29th June, 1900. + +My dear Howells, + +I can't emulate your wonderful little cursive type on your delicate +little sheets--the combination of which seems to suggest that you +dictate, at so much an hour, to an Annisquam fairy; but I will do what I +can and make out to be intelligible to you even, over the joy it is, +ever and always, to hear from you. You say that had you not been writing +me the particular thing you were, you fear you wouldn't have been +writing at all; but it is a compliment I can better. I really believe +that if I weren't writing you this, on my side, I _should_ be writing +you something else. For I've been, of late, reading you again as +continuously as possible--the worst I mean by which is as continuously +as the book-sellers consent: and the result of "Ragged Lady," the +"Silver Journey," the "Pursuit of the Piano" and two or three other +things (none wrested from your inexorable hand, but paid for from scant +earnings) has been, ever so many times over, an impulse of reaction, of +an intensely cordial sort, directly _at_ you--all, alas, spending +itself, for sad and sore want of you, in the heavy air of this alien +clime and the solitude, here, of my unlettered life. I wrote to you to +Kittery Point--I think it was--something like a year ago, and my chief +occupation since then has been listening for the postman's knock. But +let me quickly add that I understand overwhelmingly well what you say of +the impossibility for you, at this time of day, of letters. God knows +they _are_ impossible--the great fatal, incurable, unpumpable leak of +one's poor sinking bark. Non ragioniam di lor--I understand all about +it; and it only adds to the pleasure with which, even on its personal +side, I greet your present communication. + +This communication, let me, without a shred of coyness, instantly +declare, much interests and engages me--to the degree even that I think +I find myself prepared to post you on the spot a round, or a square, +Rather! I won't go through any simpering as to the goodness of your +"having thought of me"--nor even through any frank gaping (though there +might be, for my admiration and awe, plenty of that!) over the wonder of +your multiform activity and dauntlessly universal life. Basta that I +will write anything in life that anyone asks me in decency--and a +fortiori that you so gracefully ask. I can only feel it to be enough for +me that you have a hand in the affair, that you are giving a book +yourself and engaging yourself otherwise, and that I am in short in your +company. What I understand is that my little novel shall be of fifty +thousand (50,000) words, neither more, I take it, nor less; and that I +shall receive the sum mentioned in the prospectus "down," in advance of +royalties, on such delivery. (I shall probably in point of fact, in my +financial humility, prefer, when the time comes, to avail myself of the +alternative right mentioned in the prospectus--that of taking, instead +of a royalty, for the two years "lease," the larger sum formed by the +so-much-a-word aggregation. But that I shall be clear about when the +work is done; I only glance at this now as probable.) It so happens that +I can get at the book, I think, almost immediately and do it within the +next three or four months. You will therefore, unless you hear from me a +short time hence to the contrary, probably receive it well before +December. As for the absoluteness of the "order," I am willing to take +it as, practically, sufficiently absolute. If you shouldn't like it, +there is something else, definite enough, that I can do with it. What, +however, concerns me more than anything else is to take care that you +_shall_ like it. I tell myself that I am not afraid! + +I brood with mingled elation and depression on your ingenious, your +really inspired, suggestion that I shall give you a ghost, and that my +ghost shall be "international." I say inspired because, singularly +enough, I set to work some months ago at an international ghost, and on +just this scale, 50,000 words; entertaining for a little the highest +hopes of him. He was to have been wonderful and beautiful; he was to +have been called (perhaps too metaphysically) "The Sense of the Past"; +and he was to have been supplied to a certain Mr ---- who was then +approaching me--had then approached me.... The outstretched arm, +however, alas, was drawn in again, or lopped off, or otherwise paralysed +and negatived, and I was left with my little project--intrinsically, I +hasten to add, and most damnably difficult--on my hands.... It is very +possible, however, it is indeed most probable, that I should have broken +down in the attempt to do him this particular thing, and this particular +thing (divine, sublime, if I _could_ do it) is not, I think, what I +shall now attempt to nurse myself into a fallacious faith that I shall +be able to pull off for Howells and Clarke. The damnable _difficulty_ is +the reason; I have rarely been beaten by a subject, but I felt myself, +after upwards of a month's work, destined to be beaten by that one. This +will sufficiently hint to you how awfully good it is. But it would take +too long for me to tell you here, more vividly, just how and why; it +would, as well, to tell you, still more subtly and irresistibly, why +it's difficult. There it lies, and probably will always lie. + +I'm not even sure that the international ghost is what will most bear +being worried out--though, again, in another particular, the +circumstances, combining with your coincident thought, seemed pointed by +the finger of providence. What ---- wanted was two Tales--both tales of +"terror" and making another duplex book like the "Two Magics." +Accordingly I had had (dreadful deed!) to puzzle out more or less a +second, a different piece of impudence of the same general type. But I +had only, when the project collapsed, caught hold of the tip of the tail +of this other monster--whom I now mention because his tail seemed to +show him as necessarily still more interesting than No. 1. If I can at +all recapture _him_, or anything like him, I will do my best to sit down +to him and "mount" him with due neatness. In short, I will do what I +can. If I can't be terrible, I shall nevertheless still try to be +international. The difficulties are that it's difficult to be terrible +save in the short piece and international save in the long. But trust +me. I add little more. This by itself will begin by alarming you as a +precipitate instalment of my responsive fury. I rejoice to think of you +as basking on your Indian shore. _This_ shore is as little Indian as +possible, and we have hitherto--for the season--had to combat every form +of inclemency. To-day, however, is so charming that, frankly, I wish you +were all planted in a row in the little old garden into which I look as +I write to you. Old as it is (a couple of hundred years) it wouldn't be +too old even for Mildred. But these thoughts undermine. The "country +scenes" in your books make me homesick for New England smells and even +sounds. Annisquam, for instance, is a smell as well as a sound. May it +continue sweet to you! Charles Norton and Sally were with me lately for +a day or two, and you were one of the first persons mentioned between +us. You were _the_ person mentioned most tenderly. It was strange and +pleasant and sad, and all sorts of other things, to see Charles again +after so many years. I found him utterly unchanged and remarkably young. +But I found myself, _with_ him, Methusalesque and alien! I shall write +you again when my subject condenses. I embrace you all and am yours, my +dear Howells, always, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + The book already begun, and now "the greatest obsession of all," is + evidently _The Ambassadors_. + + +_Dictated. +Read P.S. (Aug. 14th) first!_ + +Lamb House, Rye, +August 9, 1900. + +My dear Howells, + +I duly received and much pondered your second letter, charming and +vivid, from Annisquam; the one, I mean, in reply to mine dispatched +immediately on the receipt of your first. If I haven't since its arrival +written to you, this is because, precisely, I needed to work out my +question somewhat further first. My impulse was immediately to say that +I wanted to do my little stuff at any rate, and was willing therefore to +take any attendant risk, however, measured as the little stuff would be, +at the worst, a thing I should see my way to dispose of in another +manner. But the problem of the little stuff itself intrinsically worried +me--to the extent, I mean, of my not feeling thoroughly sure I might +make of it what I wanted and above all what your conditions of space +required. The thing was therefore to try and satisfy myself +practically--by threshing out my subject to as near an approach to +certainty as possible. This I have been doing with much intensity--but +with the result, I am sorry to say, of being still in the air. Let the +present accordingly pass for a provisional communication--not to leave +your last encompassed with too much silence. Lending myself as much as +possible to your suggestion of a little "tale of terror" that should be +also international, I took straight up again the idea I spoke to you of +having already, some months ago, tackled and, for various reasons, laid +aside. I have been attacking it again with intensity and on the basis of +a simplification that would make it easier, and have done for it, thus, +110 pages of type. The upshot of this, alas, however, is that though +this second start is, if I--or if _you_--like, magnificent, it seriously +confronts me with the element of _length_; showing me, I fear, but too +vividly, that, do what I will for compression, I shall not be able to +squeeze my subject into 50,000 words. It will make, even if it doesn't, +for difficulty, still beat me, 70,000 or 80,000--dreadful to say; and +that faces me as an excessive addition to the ingredient of "risk" we +speak of. On the other hand I am not sure that I can hope to substitute +for this particular affair _another_ affair of "terror" which will be +expressible in the 50,000; and that for an especial reason. This reason +is that, above all when one has done the thing, already, as I have +rather repeatedly, it is not easy to concoct a "ghost" of any freshness. +The want of ease is extremely marked, moreover, if the thing is to be +done on a certain scale of length. One might still toss off a spook or +two more if it were a question only of the "short-story" dimension; but +prolongation and extension constitute a strain which the merely +apparitional--discounted, also, as by my past dealings with it--doesn't +do enough to mitigate. The beauty of this notion of "The Sense of the +Past," of which I have again, as I tell you, been astride, is precisely +that it involves without the stale effect of the mere bloated bugaboo, +the presentation, for folk both in and out of the book, of such a sense +of gruesome malaise as can only--success being assumed--make the +fortune, in the "literary world," of every one concerned. I haven't, in +it, really (that is save in one very partial preliminary and expository +connection,) to make anything, or anybody, "appear" to anyone: what the +case involves is, awfully interestingly and thrillingly, that the +"central figure," the subject of the experience, has the terror of a +particular ground for feeling and fearing that _he himself_ is, or may +at any moment become, a producer, an object, of this (for you and me) +state of panic on the part of others. He lives in an air of _malaise_ as +to the malaise he may, woefully, more or less fatally, find himself +creating--and that, roughly speaking, is the essence of what I have +seen. It is less gross, much less _banal_ and exploded, than the dear +old familiar bugaboo; produces, I think, for the reader, an almost equal +funk--or at any rate an equal suspense and unrest; and carries with it, +as I have "fixed" it, a more truly curious and interesting +drama--especially a more human one. _But_, as I say, there are the +necessities of space, as to which I have a dread of deluding myself only +to find that by trying to blink them I shall be grossly "sold," or by +giving way to them shall positively spoil my form for your purpose. The +hitch is that the thing involves a devil of a sort of prologue or +preliminary action--interesting itself and indispensable for +lucidity--which impinges too considerably (for brevity) on the core of +the subject. My one chance is yet, I admit, to try to attack the same +(the subject) from still another quarter, at still another angle, that I +make out as a possible one and which may keep it squeezable and short. +If this experiment fails, I fear I shall have to "chuck" the +supernatural and the high fantastic. I have just finished, as it +happens, a fine flight (of eighty thousand words) _into_ the high +fantastic, which has rather depleted me, or at any rate affected me as +discharging my obligations in that quarter. But I believe I mentioned to +you in my last "The Sacred Fount"--this has been "sold" to Methuen here, +and by this time, probably, to somebody else in the U.S.--but, alas, +not to be serialized (as to which indeed it is inapt)--as to the title +of which kindly preserve silence. The _vraie verite_, the fundamental +truth lurking behind all the rest, is furthermore, no doubt, that +preoccupied with half a dozen things of the altogether human order now +fermenting in my brain, I don't care for "terror" (terror, that is, +without "pity") so much as I otherwise might. This would seem to make it +simple for me to say to you: "Hang it, if I can't pull off my Monster on +_any_ terms, I'll just do for you a neat little _human_--and not the +less international--fifty-thousander consummately addressed to your more +cheerful department; do for you, in other words, an admirable short +novel of manners, thrilling too in its degree, but definitely ignoring +the bugaboo." Well, this I _don't_ positively despair of still +sufficiently overtaking myself to be able to think of. _That_ card one +has always, thank God, up one's sleeve, and the production of it is only +a question of a little shake of the arm. At the same time, here, to be +frank--and above all, you will say, in this communication, to be +interminable--that alternative is just a trifle compromised by the fact +that I've two or three things begun ever so beautifully in such a key +(and only awaiting the rush of the avid bidder!)--each affecting me with +its particular obsession, and one, the most started, affecting me with +the greatest obsession, for the time (till I can do it, work it off, get +it out of the way and fall with still-accumulated intensity upon the +_others_,) of all. But alas, if I don't say, bang off, that _this_ is +then the thing I will risk for you, it is because "this," like its +companions, isn't, any way I can fix it, workable as a fifty-thousander. +The scheme to which I am _now_ alluding is lovely--human, dramatic, +international, exquisitely "pure," exquisitely everything; only +absolutely condemned, from the germ up, to be workable in not less than +100,000 words. If 100,000 were what you had asked me for, I would fall +back upon it ("terror" failing) like a flash; and even send you, without +delay, a detailed Scenario of it that I drew up a year ago; beginning +then--a year ago--to _do_ the thing--immediately afterwards; and then +again pausing for reasons extraneous and economic.... It really +constitutes, at any rate, the work I intimately want actually to be +getting on with; and--if you are not overdone with the profusion of my +confidence--I dare say I best put my case by declaring that, if you +don't in another month or two hear from me either as a Terrorist or as a +Cheerful Internationalist, it will be that intrinsic difficulties will +in each case have mastered me; the difficulty in the one having been to +keep my Terror down by _any_ ingenuity to the 50,000; and the difficulty +in the _other_ form of Cheer than the above-mentioned obsessive +hundred-thousander. I only wish you wanted _him_. But I have now in all +probability a decent outlet for him. + +Forgive my pouring into your lap this torrent of mingled uncertainties +and superfluities. The latter indeed they are properly not, if only as +showing you how our question does occupy me. I shall write you +again--however vividly I see you wince at the prospect of it. I have it +at heart not to fail to let you know how my alternatives settle +themselves. Please believe meanwhile in my very hearty thanks for your +intimation of what you might perhaps, your own quandary straightening +out, see your way to do for me. It is a kind of intimation that I find, +I confess, even at the worst, dazzling. All this, however, trips up my +response to your charming picture of your whereabouts and present +conditions--still discernible, in spite of the chill of years and +absence, to my eye, and eke to my ear, of memory. We have had here a +torrid, but not a wholly horrid, July; but are making it up with a brave +August, so far as we have got, of fires and floods and storms and +overcoats. Through everything, none the less, my purpose holds--my +genius, I may even say, absolutely thrives--and I am unbrokenly yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + +14th August. + +P.S. The hand of Providence guided me, after finishing the preceding, to +which the present is postscriptal, to keep it over a few days instead of +posting it directly: so possible I thought it that I might have +something more definite to add--and I was a little nervous about the way +I had left our question. Behold then I _have_ then to add that I have +just received your letter of August 4--which so simplifies our situation +that this accompanying stuff becomes almost superfluous. But I have let +it go for the sake of the interest, the almost top-heavy mass of +response that it embodies. Let us put it then that all is for the moment +for the best in this worst of possible worlds; all the more that had I +not just now been writing you exactly as I am, I should probably--and +thanks, precisely, to the lapse of days--be stammering to you the +ungraceful truth that, after I wrote you, my tale of terror did, as I +was so more than half fearing, give way beneath me. It _has_, in short, +broken down for the present. I am laying it away on the shelf for the +sake of something that _is_ in it, but that I am now too embarrassed and +preoccupied to devote more time to pulling out. I really shouldn't +wonder if it be not still, in time and place, to make the world sit up; +but the curtain is dropped for the present. All thanks for your full and +prompt statement of how the scene has shifted for you. There is no harm +done, and I don't regard the three weeks spent on my renewed wrestle as +wasted--I have, within three or four days, rebounded from them with such +relief, vaulting into another saddle and counting, D.V., on a straighter +run. I have _two_ begun novels: which will give me plenty to do for the +present--they being of the type of the "serious" which I am too +delighted to see you speak of as lifting again ... its downtrodden head. +I mean, at any rate, I assure you, to lift _mine_! Your extremely, +touchingly kind offer to find moments of your precious time for +"handling" something I might send you is altogether too momentous for me +to let me fail of feeling almost ashamed that I haven't something--the +ghost or t'other stuff--in form, already, to enable me to respond to +your generosity "as meant." But heaven only knows what may happen yet! +For the moment, I must peg away at what I have in hand--biggish stuff, I +fear, in bulk and possible unserialisability, to saddle you withal. But +thanks, thanks thanks. Delighted to hear of one of your cold waves--the +newspapers here invidiously mentioning none but your hot. We have them +all, moreover, _rechauffees_, as soon as you have done with them; and we +are just sitting down to one now. I dictate you this in my shirtsleeves +and in a draught which fails of strength--chilling none of the pulses of +yours gratefully and affectionately, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. E. Norris._ + + +Lamb House, Rye, +September 26th, 1900. + +My dear Norris, + +Charming and "gracious" your letter, and welcome sign of your +restoration in more senses than one. Though I see you, alas, nowadays, +at such intervals, I feel this extremely individual little island to be +appreciably less its characteristic self when you are away from it, and +sensibly more so, and breathing the breath of relief, when it gets you +back and plumps you down with a fond "There!" on your high hilltop, a +beacon-like depository of traditions no one else so admirably embodies. +Your invitation to come and share for a few days your paradise with you +finds me, I am very sorry to say, in a hindered and helpless moment. I +am obliged to recognise the stern fact that I _can't_ leave home just +now. I have had a complicated and quite overwhelmed summer--agreeably, +interestingly, anxiously and worriedly, even; but inevitably and +logically--waves of family history, a real deluge, having rolled over my +bowed head and left me, as to the question of work, production, time, +ease and other matters, quite high and dry. I went on Saturday last to +Dover to see my sister-in-law off to the Continent--and as she took a +night boat had to stop there over Sunday, at the too-familiar (and too +other things) Lord Warden; after which I came back to bury (yes, bury!) +my precious, my admirable little Peter, whom I think you had met. (He +passed away on Sunday at St. Leonard's, fondly attended by the local +"canine specialist"--after three days of dreadful little dysentery.) +Thus is constituted the first moment of my being by myself for about +four months. It may last none too long, and is, already, to be tempered +by the palpable presence of Gosse from Saturday p.m. to Monday next. +So, with arrears untold, in every direction, with preoccupations but +just temporarily arranged, I feel that I absolutely _must_ sit close for +a good many weeks to come; in fact till the New Year--after which I +depart. I don't quite know what becomes of me then, but I don't, +distinctly, for a third year, hibernate here. My London rooms are as +probably as sordidly let for 1901 (though not to a certainty,) and it +will (my wretched fate--not _fat_--_fate_) depend more or less upon +that. My brother, ill, but thank God, better, wants me to come to Egypt +with him and his wife for 12 weeks--his health demanding it, but he only +going if I will accompany him. So the pistol is at my head. Will it +bring me down? I've a positive terror of it. The alternatives are Rome +(of which I've a still greater terror than of Egypt, for it's an equal +complication and less reward,) or De Vere Gardens, or a more squalid +perch in town if De V.G. are closed to me. The latter, the last-named, +doom is what I really want. If I should, clingingly, clutchingly, stick +to these shores, I might _then_, were it agreeable to you, be able to +put in three days of Underbank, which I've never seen in its tragic +winter mood. But these things are in the lap of the gods. + + +_Later, same night._ + +I broke off this a.m. to go over to Lydd, where I've had, all summer, a +friend in camp, and promised to pay him a visit. My amanuensis, who has +been taking at the Paris exhibition a week of joy refused to his +employer (and indeed wholly undesired by him--did your "slow" return +from Marienbad partly consist of the same?) comes back to-morrow, and my +friend's battalion departs on Saturday--so it was my one chance to +redeem my perpetually falsified vow. I went by train and bicycled +back--in the teeth of a gale now fully developed here and howling in my +old chimneys; which sounds the knell of this (to do it justice) +incomparable September. I don't quite know what Drury Lane military +drama effects I had counted on--but I trundled home with the depressed +sense of something that hadn't wholly come off (in the way of a romantic +appeal,) a dusty, scrubby plain in which dirty, baby soldiers pigged +about with nothing particular to do. However, I've performed my promise, +and I sit down to a pile of correspondence that, for many days past, has +refused visibly to shrink.... You excite, with your Scandinavian and +Austrian holidays and junketings, the envious amaze of poor motionless +and shillingless me. I've been thinking of appealing to your +"Suffrages," but I more and more feel that I could never afford you. My +watering place is Hastings, and my round tour is rounded by the +afternoon. But good-night; my servant has just deposited by my side the +glass of boiling water which constitutes his nightly admonition that +it's "high time" I went to bed--and constitutes my own inexpensive +emulation of Marienbad and Copenhagen--where I am sure Gosse drinks the +most exotic things. Please say to Miss Effie that I doubly regret having +to be deaf to any kind urgency of hers, and that I hope she will find +means to include me in some prayer for the conversion of the benighted. +But my hot water is cooling, and it takes me so long to let it gouge its +inward course that I will be first yours, my dear Norris, always--though +I'm afraid you will say always impracticably-- + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To A. F. de Navarro._ + + + "The Place of the Thirty Peacocks" was H. J.'s name for the old + moated house of Groombridge Place, near Tunbridge Wells, which he + had visited some years before with Mr. de Navarro. + +Lamb House, Rye. +November 13, 1900. + +Dear and exquisite Tony, + +I would deal death, or a peu pres, to the man who should have said that +I would have delayed these too many days to acknowledge your beautiful +little letter from--or about--the Place of the Thirty Peacocks. Yet he, +low wretch, would have been, after all, in the secrets of Fate; he would +have foreseen me a good deal accable with arrears, interruptions, a +deluge of proofsheets, a complexity of duties and distractions; he would +have heard in advance my ineffectual groans and even have pitied my +baffled efforts. These things have eventuated to-night in the +irresistible desire to chat with you by the fire before turning in. The +fire burns low, and the clock marks midnight: everything but the +quantity of combustion reminds me of those small nocturnal hours, two +years ago, when I was communing with you thus and the fire _didn't_ burn +low. You saved my life then, and my house, and all that was mine; and +for aught I know you are now saving us all again--from some other deadly +element. To-night it's _water_--or the absense of it; I don't quite +understand which. Something has happened to my water supply, through a +pulling-up of the street, though it doesn't yet quite appear whether I'm +to perish by thirst or by submersion. Here I sit as usual, at any rate, +holding on to you--also as usual--while the clock ticks in the +stillness.--I can't tell you how happily inspired I feel it to have been +of you to remember our erstwhile pilgrimage to the Maeterlinck house and +moat and peacocks and ladies--for that's how--as a moated Maeterlinck +matter--the whole impression of our old visit, yours and mine and Miss +Reubell's comes back to me. I rejoice that they are still _en place_, +and how glad they must have been to see _you_! Willingly would I too +taste again the sweet old impression--which your letter charmingly +expresses. But I seem to travel, to peregrinate, less and less--and I am +reduced to living on my past accumulations. I wish they were larger. But +I make the most of them. They include very closely you and _Mrs._ You. +To _them_ I do seem reduced with you. What with our so far separated +country settlements and present absence of a London common centre (save +the Bond St. corner of which J. S. is the pivot!) memories and sighs, +echoes and ghosts are our terms of intercourse. You oughtn't, you know, +to have driven in stakes in your merciless Midland. This southern shore, +twinkling and twittering, with a semi-foreign light, a kind of familiar +_wink_ in the air, would have favoured your health, your spirits, and +heaven knows your being here would have favoured mine. I breakfast all +these weeks, mostly, with my window open to the garden and a flood of +sunshine pouring in. It's really meridional. It would--Rye would--remind +you of Granada--more or less. But I hope, after Xmas, to be in town for +three or four months. You will surely pass and repass there. When I, at +intervals, go up, on some practical urgency, for three or four hours, I +always see the abysmal Jon. He usually has some news of you to give; and +when he hasn't it's not for want of--on my part--solemn invocation. +However, I must now solemnly invoke slumber. Good-night--good-morning. I +bless your house, its glorious mistress and its innocent heir. + +Yours always and ever, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. E. Norris._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +December 23rd, 1900. + +My dear Norris, + +I greatly desire that this shall not fail to convey you my sentiments on +this solemn Xmas morn; so I sit here planning and plotting, and making +well-meant _pattes de mouche_, to that genial end. A white sea-fog +closes us in (in which I've walked healthily, with my young niece, out +to the links--with the sense of being less of a golfist than ever;) the +clock ticks and the fire crackles during the period between tea and +dinner; the young niece aforesaid (my only companion this season of +mirth, with her parents abroad and a scant snatch of school holidays to +spend with me) sits near me immersed in _Redgauntlet_; so the moment +seems to lend itself to my letting off this signal in such a manner as +_may_, even in these troublous times (when my nerves are all gone and I +feel as if _anything_ shall easily happen,) catch your indulgent eye. I +feel as if I hadn't caught your eye, for all its indulgence, for a long +and weary time, and I daresay you won't gainsay my confession. May the +red glow of the Yuletide log diffuse itself at Underbank (with plenty of +fenders and fireguards and raking out at night,) in a good old jovial +manner. I think of you all on the Lincombes, &c, in these months, as a +very high-feeding, champagne-quaffing, orchid-arranging society; and my +gaze wanders a little wistfully toward you--away from my plain broth and +barley-water. I in fact, some three weeks ago, fled from that Spartan +diet up to town, hoping to be in the mood to remain there till Easter, +and the experience is still going on, with this week here inserted as a +picturesque parenthesis. I asked my young niece in the glow of last +August not to fail to spend her Xmas with me, as I then expected to be, +Promethean-like, on my rock; and I've returned to my rock not to leave +her in the lurch. And I find a niece does temper solitude.... + +London, at all events, seems to me, after long expatriation, rather +thrilling--all the more that I have the thrill, the quite anxious throb, +of a new little habitation--which makes, alas, the third that I am +actually master of! I've taken (with 34 De Vere Gardens still on my +hands, but blessedly let for another year to come, and _then_ to be +wriggled out of with heaven's help) a permanent room at a club (Reform,) +which seems to solve the problem of town on easy terms. They are let by +the year only, and one waits one's turn long--(for years;) but when mine +the other day came round I went it blind instead of letting it pass. One +has to furnish and do all one's self--but the results, and conditions, +generally, repay. My cell is spacious, southern, looking over Carlton +Gardens: and tranquil, utterly, and singularly well-serviced; and I find +I can work there--there being ample margin for a type-writer and its +priest, or even priestess. It all hung by _that_--but I think I am not +deceived; so I bear up. And the next time you come to perch at a +neighbouring establishment, I shall sweep down on you from my eyrie. +It's astonishing how remote, cumbrous and expensive it makes 34 De Vere +Gardens seem. Worse luck that that millstone still dangles gracefully +from my neck!... + +I've now dined, and re-established my niece with the second volume of +_Redgauntlet_--besides plying her, at dessert, with delicacies brought +down, a son intention, from Fortnum & Mason; and thus with a good +conscience I prepare to close this and to sally forth into the sea-fog +to post it with my own hand--if it's to reach you at any congruous +moment. I yesterday dismissed a servant at an hour's notice--the house +of the Lamb scarce knew itself and felt like that of the Wolf--so that, +with reduced resources, I make myself generally useful. Besides, at +little, huddled, neighbourly Rye, even a white December sea-fog is a +cosy and convenient thing. + +So good night and all blessings on your tropic home. May your table +groan with the memorials of friendship, and may Miss Effie's midnight +masses not make her late for breakfast and _her_ share of them--which is +a little even in these poor words from yours, my dear Norris, always, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To A. F. de Navarro._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +December 29th, 1900. + +Dear and splendid Tony! + +They are all admirable and exquisite--for I seem to have received so +much from you that "all" is the only indication comprehensive enough. I +came down from ten days in town the other day to find _L'Aiglon_, and +within three or four the beautiful little pocket-diary has added itself +to that obligation. Dear and splendid Tony, let me not even (scarcely) +_speak_ of my obligations. That way lies prostration, the sense of deep +unworthyness (wrongly spelled--to show how unworthi I _am_:) the memory +and vision of a little library of Bond St. booklets that collectors +(toward the end of 1901) will cut each others' throats for: and what do +I know besides? I am more touched than I can say, in short, by your +fidelity in every particular. _L'Aiglon_, now that we at last have the +glittering text, has been a joy to me, of the finest kind, here by the +Xmas fireside. I haven't seen the thing done--and I don't hugely want +to: I so represent it to myself as I go. The talent, the effect, the +art, the mastery, the brilliancy, are all prodigious. The man really has +talent like an attack of smallpox--I mean it rages with as purple an +intensity, and might almost (one vainly feels as one reads) be +contagious. You have given me, by your admirable consideration, an +exquisite pleasure. I wish we could talk of these things: but we are +like the buckets in the well.... Make me a preliminary sign the first +time you pass. For the present good-night. My Xmas letters are still +mainly unwritten and they are many and much. I greet you and Mrs. Tony +very constantly: I wish you a big slice of the new century: and I am +yours ever so gratefully, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To the Viscountess Wolseley._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Dec. 29, 1900. + +Dearest Lady Wolseley, + +This is a very faint and meagre little word, addressed to you late of a +terrifically windy winter's night by an old friend who doesn't happen[B] +to be in very good physical case (only for the moment, thank goodness, +probably!) and yet who doesn't want the New Year to edge an hour nearer +before he has made you Both--made you all Three--a sign of affectionate +remembrance amounting to tenderness pure and simple. I wish there were a +benediction I could call down on your house and your associated life in +sufficiently immediate and visible form: you would then see it flutter +into your midst and perch upon your table even while you read these +lines. I have thought of you constantly these past weeks, and have only +not written to you from the fear of appearing to assume that your +retirement has been to you woeful or in any degree heart-breaking. I +couldn't congratulate you positively, on the event, and yet I hated to +_condole_, in the case of people so gallant and distinguished. So I have +been hovering about you in thought like an anxious mother armed, in the +evening air, with a shawl or extra wrap, for a pair of belated but +high-spirited children liable to feel a chill, but not quite venturing +to approach the young people and clap the article on their shoulders. I +have remained in short with my warm shawl on my hands, but if I were +near you I should clap it straight on your shoulders at the first +symptom of a shiver, and wrap it close round and tuck it thoroughly in. +Forgive this feeble image of the confirmed devotion I hold at your +service. To see you will be a joy and a relief--the next time I go up to +town: I mean if it so befalls that you are then in residence at the +Palace. I do go up on the 31st--Monday next--to stay till Easter: where +my address is 105 _Pall Mall, S. W._, and if you _should_ be at Hampton +Court the least sign from you would bring me begging for a cup of tea. I +hope, meanwhile, with all my heart, that these weeks spent in looking, +after so many years, Comparative Leisure in the face, have had somewhat +the effect of mitigating the austerity of that countenance. There are +opportunities always lurking in it--the opportunity, heaven-sent, in +Lord Wolseley's case--as I venture to think of it--of sitting down +again to the engaging Marlborough. But here I am talking as if you +wouldn't know what to do! Whatever you do, or don't, please believe, +both of you, in the great personal affection that prompts this and that +calls toward you, to the threshold of the New Year, every pleasant +possibility and all ease and honour and, so far as you will consent to +it, rest. + +Yours, dear Lady Wolseley, always and ever, and more than ever, + +HENRY JAMES. + +[B] This to attenuate his feebleness of hand! + + + + +_To William James._ + + + The news had just arrived of the death of F. W. H. Myers at Rome, + where William James was spending the winter. + +Reform Club, Pall Mall, S. W. +Jan. 24, 1901. + +My dear William, + +A laggard in response you and Alice will indeed feel that I have become. +I've had for three or four days your so interesting and relieving letter +dictated to Alice at the hour of poor Myers's death, and though it +greatly eased me off (as to my fears that the whole thing would have +worn you out,) yet till this moment my hand has been stayed. I wrote you +very briefly, moreover, as soon as the papers here gave the news. +Blessed seems it to have been that everything round about Myers was so +sane and comfortable; the reasonableness and serenity of his wife and +children etc., not to speak of his own high philosophy, which it must +have been fine to see in operation. But I hope the sequel hasn't been +prolonged, and have been supposing that, by the necessary quick +departure of his "party," you will have been left independent again and +not too exhausted. We here, on our side, have been gathering close +round the poor old dying and dead Queen, and are plunged in universal +mourning tokens--which accounts for my black-edged paper. It has really +been, the event, most moving, interesting and picturesque. I have felt +_more_ moved, much, than I should have expected (such is _community_ of +sentiment,) and one has realized all sorts of things about the brave old +woman's beneficent duration and holding-together virtue. The thing has +been journalistically overdone, of course--greatly; but the people have +appeared to advantage--serious and sincere and decent--_really_ caring. +Meanwhile the drama of the accession, new reign, &c., has its lively +spectacular interest--even with the P. of W. for hero. I dined last +night in company with some Privy Councillors who had met him +ceremonially, in the a.m., and they said (John Morley in particular +said) that he made a very good impression. Speriamo! + +I find London answering very well, but with so much more crowdedness on +one's hours and minutes than in the country that I shall be glad indeed +when the end comes. Meanwhile, however, work proceeds.... The war has +_doubled_ the income tax here; it is hideous. + +Ever tenderly your +HENRY. + + + + +_To Miss Muir Mackenzie._ + + + Miss Muir Mackenzie, during a recent visit to Rye, had been + nominated "Hereditary Grand Governess" of the garden of Lamb House, + and is addressed accordingly. + +Lamb House, Rye. +June 15th, 1901. + +Dear Grand Governess, + +You are grand indeed, and no mistake, and we are bathed in gratitude for +what you have done for us, and, in general, for all your comfort, +support and illumination. We cling to you; we will walk but by your +wisdom and live in your light; we cherish and inscribe on our precious +records every word that drops from you, and we have begun by taking up +your delightful tobacco-leaves with pious and reverent hands and +consigning them to the lap of earth (in the big vague blank +unimaginative border with the lupines, etc.) exactly in the manner you +prescribe; where they have already done wonders toward peopling its +desolation. It is really most kind and beneficent of you to have taken +this charming trouble for us. We acted, further, instantaneously on your +hint in respect to the poor formal fuchsias--sitting up in their hot +stuffy drawing-room with never so much as a curtain to draw over their +windows. We haled them forth on the spot, everyone, and we clapped them +(in thoughtful clusters) straight into the same capacious refuge or +omnium gatherum. Then, while the fury and the frenzy were upon us, we +did the same by the senseless stores of geranium (my poor little +22/-a-week-gardener's idee fixe!)--we enriched the boundless receptacle +with _them_ as well--in consequence of which it looks now quite sociable +and civilised. Your touch is magical, in short, and your influence +infinite. The little basket went immediately to its address, and George +Gammon (!!) my 22-shillinger, permitted himself much appreciation of +your humour on the little tin soldiers. That regiment, I see, will be +more sparingly recruited in future. The total effect of all this, and of +your discreet and benevolent glance at my ineffective economy, is to +make me feel it fifty times a pity, a shame, a crime, that, as John +Gilpin said to his wife "you should dine at Edmonton, and I should dine +at Ware!"--that you should bloom at Effingham and I should fade at Rye! +Your real place is _here_--where I would instantly ask your leave to +farm myself out to you. I want to _be_ farmed; I am utterly unfit to +farm myself; and I do it, all round, for (seeing, alas, what it is) not +nearly little enough money. Therefore you ought to be over the wall and +"march" with me, as you say in Scotland. However, even as it is, your +mere "look round" makes for salvation. I am, I rejoice to say, clothed +and in my right mind--compared with what I was when you left me; and so +shall go on, I trust, for a year and a day. I have been alone--but next +week bristles with possibilities--two men at the beginning, two women +(postponed--the Americans) in the middle--and madness, possibly, at the +end. I shall have to move over to Winchelsea! But while my reason abides +I shall not cease to thank you for your truly generous and ministering +visit and for everything that is yours. Which _I_ am, very faithfully +and gratefully, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + + Strether's outburst to little Bilham, in Book V. of _The + Ambassadors_, during their colloquy in the Parisian garden, + represents the germ from which the novel sprang, and which H. J. + owed, as he here tells, to Mr. Howells. The development of the + subject from this origin is described in the preface afterwards + written for the book. + +Lamb House, Rye. +August 10th, 1901. + +My dear Howells, + +Ever since receiving and reading your elegant volume of short tales--the +arrival of which from you was affecting and delightful to me--I've meant +to write to you, but the wish has struggled in vain with the daily +distractions of a tolerably busy summer. I should blush, however, if the +season were to melt away without my greeting and thanking you. I read +your book with joy and found in it recalls from far far away--stray +echoes and scents as from another, the American, the prehistoric +existence. The thing that most took me was that entitled A Difficult +Case, which I found beautiful and admirable, ever so true and ever so +_done_. But I fear I more, almost, than anything else, lost myself in +mere envy of your freedom to do, and, speaking vulgarly, to place, +things of that particular and so agreeable dimension--I mean the +dimension of most of the stories in the volume. It is sternly enjoined +upon one here (where an agent-man does what he can for me) that +everything--every hundred--above 6 or 7 thousand words is fatal to +"placing"; so that I do them of that length, with great care, art and +time (much reboiling,) and then, even then, can scarcely get them worked +off--published even when they've been accepted.... So that (though I +don't know why I inflict on you these sordid groans--except that I +haven't any one else to inflict them on--and the mere affront--of being +unused so inordinately long--is almost intolerable) I don't feel incited +in that direction. Fortunately, however, I am otherwise immersed. I +lately finished a tolerably long novel, and I've written a third of +another--with still another begun and two or three more subjects +awaiting me thereafter like carriages drawn up at the door and horses +champing their bits. And apropos of the first named of these, which is +in the hands of the Harpers, I have it on my conscience to let you know +that the idea of the fiction in question had its earliest origin in a +circumstance mentioned to me--years ago--in respect to no less a person +than yourself. At Torquay, once, our young friend Jon. Sturges came down +to spend some days near me, and, lately from Paris, repeated to me five +words you had said to him one day on his meeting you during a call at +Whistler's. I thought the words charming--you have probably quite +forgotten them; and the whole incident suggestive--so far as it was an +incident; and, more than this, they presently caused me to see in them +the faint vague germ, the mere point of the _start_, of a subject. I +noted them, to that end, as I note everything; and years afterwards +(that is three or four) the subject sprang at me, one day, out of my +notebook. I don't know if it be good; at any rate it has been treated, +now, for whatever it is; and my point is that it had long before--it had +in the very act of striking me as a germ--got away from _you_ or from +anything like you! had become impersonal and independent. Nevertheless +your initials figure in my little note; and if you hadn't said the five +words to Jonathan he wouldn't have had them (most sympathetically and +interestingly) to relate, and I shouldn't have had them to work in my +imagination. The moral is that you are responsible for the whole +business. But I've had it, since the book was finished, much at heart to +tell you so. May you carry the burden bravely!--I hope you are on some +thymy promontory and that the winds of heaven blow upon you all--perhaps +in that simplified scene that you wrote to me from, with so gleaming a +New England evocation, last year. The summer has been wondrous again in +these islands--four or five months, from April 1st, of almost merciless +fine weather--a rainlessness absolute and without precedent. It has made +my hermitage, as a retreat, a blessing, and I have been able, thank +goodness, to work without breaks--other than those of prospective +readers' hearts.--It almost broke mine, the other day, by the way, to go +down into the New Forest (where he has taken a house) to see Godkin, +dear old stricken friend. He gave me, in a manner, news of you--told me +he had seen you lately.... I am lone here just now with my sweet niece +Peggy, but my brother and his wife are presently to be with me again for +fifteen days before sailing (31st) for the U.S. He is immensely better +in health, but he must take in sail hand over hand at home to remain so. +Stia bene, caro amico, anche Lei (my Lei is my joke!) Tell Mrs. Howells +and Mildred that I yearn toward them tenderly. + +Yours always and ever, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Sept. 16th [1901]. + +My dear Gosse, + +I hurl this after you, there, for good luck, like the outworn shoe of +ancient usage. Even a very, very old shoe will take you properly over +Venice. I wrote a week ago to Mrs. Curtis about you, and you will +doubtless hear from her, beckoningly, in respect to the ever-so-amiable +Barbaro: an impression well worth your having. For the rest I commit you +both, paternally, to Brown, to whose friendly memory I beg you to recall +me. I wish I could assist at some of your raptures. _Go to see the +Tintoretto Crucifixion at San Cossiano_--or never more be officer of +mine. And, apropos of master-pieces, read a thing called _Venice_ in a +thing called _Portraits of Places_ by a thing called H. J., if you can +get the book: I'm not sure if it's in Tauchnitz, but Mrs. Curtis may +have the same. Brown certainly won't, though J. A. Symonds, in the only +communication I ever got from him, told me he thought it the best image +of V. he had ever seen made. This is the first time in my life, I +believe, by the way, I ever indulged in any such--in _any_ fatuous +reference to a fruit of my pen. So there may be something in it. Drink +deep, both of you, and come home remorselessly intoxicated, and reeking +of the purple vine, to your poor old attached abstainer, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Miss Jessie Allen._ + + + The "hideous American episode" was the recent assassination of + President McKinley, on which Mr. Roosevelt succeeded to the + Presidency. The "heavenly mansion" was the Palazzo Barbaro + (referred to in the preceding letter to Mr. Gosse), where H. J. had + stayed in company with Miss Allen. + +Lamb House, Rye. +September 19th, 1901. + +Dear bountiful and beautiful lady! + +It is equally impossible to respond to you adequately and not to respond +to you somehow. You flash your many-coloured lantern, over my small grey +surface, from every corner of these islands, and I sit blinking, gaping, +clapping my hands, at the purple and orange tints to such a tune that +I've scarce presence of mind left for an articulate "Thank you." How you +keep it up, and how exactly you lead the life that, long years ago, when +I was young, I used to believe a very, very few fantastically happy +mortals on earth _could_ lead, and could survive the bliss of +leading--the waltz-like, rhythmic rotation from great country-house to +great country-house, to the sound of perpetual music and the acclamation +of the "house-parties" that gather to await you. You are the dream come +true--you really do it, and I get the side-wind of the fairy-tale--which +is more than I can really quite believe of myself--such a +living--almost--_near_ the rose! You make me feel near, at any rate, +when you write me so kindly about the hideous American episode--almost +the worst feature of which is that I don't either like or trust the new +President, a dangerous and ominous Jingo--of whom the most hopeful thing +to say is that he may be rationalized by this sudden real +responsibility. _Speriamo_, as we used to say in the golden age, in the +heavenly mansion, along with the ministering angel, long, long ago. And +all thanks meanwhile for your sympathetic thought. It must indeed--the +base _success_ of the act--cause a sinking of the heart among the +potentates in circulation. One wonders, for instance, just now, who is +most nervous, the poor little Tsar for himself or M. Loubet for him. Let +us thank our stars that we are not travelling stars, I not even a +Loubet, nor you a Loubette, and that though we have many annoyances we +are probably not marked for the dagger of the assassin. + +_20th, p.m._ I had to break off last night, and I resume--perhaps a +trifle precariously at this midnight hour of what is just no longer +Friday, but about to be Saturday. I have seen, as it were, my two +guests, and my tardy servants, to bed, and I put in again this illegible +little talk with (poor) you! It has been a more convivial 24 hours than +my general scheme of life often permits.... Such are the modest annals +of Lamb House--or rather its daily and nightly chronicle. But don't let +it depress you--for everything passes, and I bow my head to the +whirlwind. But I hate the care of even a tiny and twopenny house and +wish I could farm out the same. If some one would only undertake it--and +the backgarden--at so much a year I would close with the offer and ask +no questions. I may still have to try Whiteley. But I shall try a winter +in town first. I blush for my meagreness of response to all your social +lights and shadows, your rich record of adventures.... But it's now--as +usual over my letters--tomorrow a.m. (I mean 1 a.m.) and I am, dear Miss +Allen, very undecipherably but constantly yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. W. K. Clifford._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Wednesday night. +[Oct. 3, 1901.] + +Dearest Lucy C. + +I have waited to welcome you, to thank you for your dear and brilliant +Vienna letter, because you stayed my hand (therein) from writing--for +want of an address; and because I've believed that not till now (if even +now) would you be disengaged from the tangled skein of your adventures. +And even at this hour (of loud-ticking midnight stillness,) I don't +pretend to do more than greet you affectionately on the threshold of +home; promise you a better equivalent (for your so interesting, so +envy-squeezing, so vivid record of adventure) at some very near date; +and, above all, renew my jubilation at your having made so good and +brave a thing of it all--especially as _full_ and unstinted a one as you +desired. Never mind the money, I handsomely say--you will get it all +back and much more--in the refreshment and renewal and general +intellectual ventilation your six weeks will have been to you. I'm sure +the effect will go far--I want details so much that I wish I were to see +you soon--but, alas, I don't quite see when. I'm just emerging from a +domestic cyclone that has, in one way and another, cost me so much time, +that, pressed as I am with a woefully backward book, I can only for the +present hug my writing-table with convulsive knees. The figure doesn't +fit--but the postponement of all joy, alas, does. My two old +man-and-wife servants (who had been with me sixteen years) were, a few +days ago, shot into space (thank heaven at last!) by a whirlwind of but +48 hours duration; and though the absolute rupture came and went in +that time, the horrid accompaniments and upheaved neighbourhoods have +represented a woeful interruption. But it's over, and I have plunged +again (and am living, blissfully, for the present, with a house-maid and +a charwoman, and immensely enjoying my simplified state and my relief +from what I see now was a long nightmare). + +I read your play in the Nineteenth Century, as you invited me, but I +can't _write_ of it now beyond saying that I was greatly struck by the +care and finish you had given it. If I must tell you categorically, +however, I don't think it a scenic subject _at all_; I think it bears +all the mark of a subject selected for a tale and done as a play as an +after-thought. I don't see, that is, what the scenic form does, or _can_ +do, for it, that the narrative couldn't do better--or what it, in turn, +does for the scenic form. The inwardness is a kind of inwardness that +doesn't become an outwardness--effectively--theatrically; and the part +played in the whole by the painting of the portrait seems to me the kind +of thing for which the play is a non-conductor. And here I am _douching_ +you on your doorstep with cold water. We must _talk_, we must colloquise +and compare and _renew_ the first moment we can, and I am all the while +and ever your affectionate old friend, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Miss Muir Mackenzie._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Wednesday night. [Oct. 17, 1901]. + +Dear Miss Muir Mackenzie, + +One almost infallibly begins--at least the perpetually criminal _I_ +do--with the assurance that one has, from long since, been on the +point--! And it remains eternally true; which makes no difference, +however, in your being bored to hear it. Besides, if I _had_ been +writing a month ago I shouldn't, perhaps, be writing now; and that I +_am_ writing now is a present joy to me--which I would barter for none +other, no mere luxury of conscience. I haven't, for weeks, strolled +through my now blighted and stricken _jardinet_ without reverting +gratefully in thought to you as its titular directress; without wishing, +at once, that it were more worthy of you, and recognising, recalling +your hand and mind, in most of its least humiliating features. Your kind +visit, so scantly honoured, so meagrely recorded (I mean by +commemorative tablet, or other permanent demonstration,) lives again in +some of the faded phenomena of the scene--and the blush revives which +the sense of how poor a host I was caused even then to visit my cheek. I +want you in particular to know what a joy and pride your great proud and +pink tobacco-present has proved. It has overlorded the confused and +miscellaneous border in which your masterly eye recognised its +imperative--not to say imperial--place, and it has reduced by its mere +personal success all the incoherence around it to comparative +insignificance. What a bliss, what a daily excitement, all summer, to +see it grow by leaps and bounds and to feel it happy and hearty--as much +as it could be in its strange exile and inferior company. It has all +prospered--though some a little smothered by more vulgar neighbours; and +the tallest of the brotherhood are still as handsome as ever, with a +particular shade of watered wine-colour in the flower that I much +delight in. And yet--niny that I am!--I don't know what to do with them +for next year. My gardener opines that we leave them, as your perennial +monument, just as they are. But I have vague glimmerings of conviction +that we cut them down to a mere small protrusion above ground--and we +probably both are fully wrong. Or do we extract precious seed and plant +afresh? Forgive my feeble (I repeat) flounderings. I feel as the dunce +of an infant school trying to babble Greek to Professor Jebb (or +suchlike.) I am none the less hoping that the garden will be less +dreadful and casual next year. We've ordered 105 roses--also divers +lilies--and made other vague dashes. Oh, you should be in controlling +permanence! Actually we are painfully preparing to become bulbous and +parti-coloured. One _must_ occupy the gardener. The grapes have been bad +(bless their preposterous little pretensions!) but the figs +unprecedently numerous. And so on, and so on. And it has been for me a +rather feverish and _accidente_ summer; I mean through the constant +presence of family till a month ago, and through a prolonged domestic +upheaval ever since. I sit amid the ruins of a once happy household, +clutching a charwoman with one hand, and a knife-boy--from +Lilliput--with the other. A man and his wife, who had lived with me for +long, long years, and were (in spite of growing infirmities and the +darker and darker shadow of approaching doom) the mainstay of my +existence, were sacrificed to the just gods three or four weeks ago, and +I've picnicked (for very relief) ever since--making futile attempts at +reconstruction for which I have had no time, and yet which have consumed +so much of it that none has been left, as I began by hinting, for +correspondence. I've been up to London over it, and haunted Hastings, +and wired to friends, and almost appealed to the Grand Governess--only +deterred by the fear of hearing from her that it isn't her province. Yet +I did wonder if I couldn't lawfully work it in under kitchen-garden. No +matter; my fate closes round me again, and the first thing I think of +now when I wake up in the morning is that a "cook-housekeeper" in a +Gorringe (?) costume (?) is to arrive next week. I tremble at her. If +the worst comes to the worst I _shall_ make you responsible. I walked +over to Winchelsea this afternoon and returned, in darkness and wet, by +the far-off station and the merciful train--always re-weaving the legend +of your wet exile there. It blows, it rains, it rages to-night--for the +first time here for six months. I hope you haven't had again to eat +overmuch the bread of banishment. I haven't asked you for your +news--have only jabbered my own; but I believe you not unaware that this +is but a subtler art for extracting from you the whole of your +herbaceous (and other) history. May it have been mild and merciful. +Good-night--or, as usual, good-morning--I am going to bed, but it has +been for some time to-morrow. Yours, dear Miss Muir Mackenzie, very +gratefully and faithfully, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Edmund Gosse._ + + + The reference in the following is to W. E. Henley's provocative + article in the _Pall Mall Magazine_ on Mr. Graham Balfour's + recently published Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. + +Lamb House, Rye. +November 20th, 1901. + +My dear Gosse, + +I have been very sorry to hear from you of renewed upsets on quitting +these walls--the same fate having, I remember, overtaken you most of the +other times you've been here. I trust it isn't the infection of the +walls themselves, nor of the _re_fection (so scant last time) enjoyed +within them. Is it some baleful effluence of your host? He will try and +exercise next time some potent counter-charm--and meanwhile he rejoices +that your devil is cast out. + +All thanks for your so vivid news of the overflow of Henley's gall. Ca +ne pouvait manquer--ca _devait_ venir. I have sent for the article and +will write you when I've read it. I gather from you that it's really +rather a striking and lurid--and so far interesting case--of long +discomfortable jealousy and ranklement turned at last to posthumous (as +it were!) malignity, and making the man do, coram publico, his ugly act, +risking the dishonour for the assuagement. That _is_, on the part of a +favourite of the press etc., a remarkable "psychologic" incident--or +perhaps I'm talking in the air, from not having read the thing. I dare +say, moreover, at all events, that H. _did_ very seriously--I mean +sincerely--deplore all the graces that had crept into Louis's +writing--all the more that they had helped it so to be loved: he +honestly thinks that L. should have written like--well, like who but +Henley's self? But the whole business illustrates how life takes upon +itself to give us more true and consistent examples of human +unpleasantness than expectation could suggest--makes a given man, I +mean, live up to his ugliness. This one's whole attitude in respect to +these recent amiable commemorations of Louis--the having (I, +"self-conscious and alone") nothing to do with them, contained +singularly the promise of some positive aggression. I have, however, +this a.m., a letter from Graham Balfour (in answer to one I had written +him on reading his book,) in which, speaking of Henley's paper, he says +it's less bad than he expected. He apparently feared more. It's since +you were here, by the way, that I've read his record, in which, as to +its second volume, I found a good deal of fresh interest and charm. It +seems to me, the whole thing, very neatly and tactfully done for an +amateur, a non-expert. _But_, I see now that a really curious thing has +happened, a "case" occurred much more interesting than the _cas_ Henley. +Insistent publicity, so to speak, has done its work (I only knew it was +_doing_ it, but G. B.'s book's a settler,) and Louis, _qua_ artist, is +now, definitely, the victim thereof. That is, he has _superseded_, +personally, his books, and this last re-placement of himself so _en +scene_ (so largely by his own aid, too) has _killed_ the literary +baggage. Out of no mystery now do they issue, the creations in +question--and they couldn't afford to lose it. Louis himself never +understood that; he too publicly caressed and accounted for them--but I +needn't insist on what I mean. As I _see_ it, at all events, it's a +strange little evolution and all taking place here, quite compactly, +under one's nose. + +I don't come up to town, alas, for more than a few necessary hours, till +I've finished my book, and that will be when God pleases. I pray for +early in January. But then I shall stay as long as ever I can. All +thanks for your news of Norris, to whom I shall write. I envy your +Venetian newses--but I myself have written for some. I rain good wishes +on your house and am yours always, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To H. G. Wells._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +January 20th, 1902. + +My dear Wells, + +Don't, I beseech you, measure the interest I've taken in your brilliant +book (that is in the prior of the recent pair of them,) and don't +measure any other decency or humanity of mine (in relation to anything +that is yours,) by my late abominable and aggravated silence. You most +handsomely sent me _Anticipations_ when the volume appeared, and I was +not able immediately to read it; I was bothered and preoccupied with +many things, wished for a free mind and an attuned ear for it, so let it +wait till the right hour, knowing that neither you nor I would lose by +the process. The right hour came, and I gave myself up--utterly, +admirably up--to the charm; but the charm, on its side, left me so +spent, as it were, with saturation, that I had scarce pulled myself +round before the complications of Xmas set in, and the New Year's +flood--in respect to correspondence--was upon me; which I've been till +now buffeting and breasting. And then I was ashamed--and I'm ashamed +still. That is the penalty of vice--one's shame disqualifies one for the +company of virtue. Yet, all this latter time, I've taken the greatest +pleasure in my still throbbing and responding sense of the book. + +I found it then, I assure you, extraordinarily and unceasingly +interesting. It's not that I haven't--hadn't--reserves and reactions, +but that the great source of interest never failed: which great source +was simply H. G. W. himself. You, really, come beautifully out of your +adventure, come out of it immensely augmented and extended, like a +belligerent who has annexed half-a-kingdom, with drums and trumpets and +banners all sounding and flying. And this is because the thing, in our +deadly day, is such a charming exhibition of complete freedom of mind. +That's what I enjoyed in it--your intellectual disencumberedness; very +interesting to behold as the direct fruit of training and observation. A +gallant show altogether--and a gallant temper and a gallant tone. For +the rest, you will be tired of hearing that, for vaticination, you, to +excess, simplify. Besides, the phrophet (see how I recklessly spell him, +to do him the greater honour!) _must_--I can't imagine a subtilizing +prophet. At any rate I don't make you a reproach of simplifying, for if +you hadn't I shouldn't have been able to understand you. But on the +other hand I think your reader asks himself too much "Where is _life_ in +all this, life as I feel it and know it?" Subject of your speculations +as it is, it is nevertheless too much left out. That comes partly from +your fortunate youth--it's a more limited mystery for you than for the +Methuselah who now addresses you. There's less of it with you to provide +for, and it's less a perturber of your reckoning. There are for instance +more kinds of people, I think, in the world--more irreducible +kinds--than your categories meet. However, your categories do you, none +the less, great honour, the greatest, worked out as they are; and I +quite agree that, as before hinted, if one wants more life, there is Mr. +Lewisham himself, of Spade House, exhaling it from every pore and in the +centre of the picture. That is the great thing: he _makes_, Mr. Lewisham +does, your heroic red-covered romance. It had to have a hero--and it has +an irresistible one. Such is my criticism. I can't go further. I can't +take you up in detail. I am under the charm. My world _is_, somehow, +other; but I can't produce it. Besides, I don't want to. You can, and +do, produce yours--so you've a right to talk. Finally, moreover, your +book is full of truth and wit and sanity--that's where I mean you come +out so well. I go to London next week for three months; but on my +return, in May, I should like well to see you. What a season you must +have had, with philosophy, poetry and the banker! I had a saddish letter +from Gissing--but rumours of better things for him (I mean reviving +powers) have come to me, I don't quite know how, since. Conrad haunts +Winchelsea, and Winchelsea (in discretion) haunts Rye. So foot it up, +and accept, at near one o'clock in the morning, the cordial good-night +and general benediction of yours, my dear Wells, more than ever, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Percy Lubbock._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +March 9th, 1902. + +My dear Percy Lubbock, + +I've been very uncivilly silent, but I've also been still more dismally +hindered--I mean ever since receiving your good note of Feb. 22d. It +found me wearily, drearily ill, in bed; such had been my state ever +since Jan. 29th, and it ceased to be my state only ten days ago--since +when I have sat feebly staring at a mountain of unanswered letters. I +did go to London, Jan. 27th, but was immediately stricken, and scrambled +back here to be more commodiously prostrate. I've had to stay and +recuperate. But I am infinitely better--only universally behind. Still, +it isn't too late, I hope, to tell you it would have given me extreme +pleasure to see you in town had everything been different. Also that I +congratulate you with all my heart on the great event of your young, +your first, your never to be surpassed or effaced, prime Italiaenische +Reise. It's a great event (_the_ revelation) at any time of life, but +it's altogether immeasurable at _your_ lucky one. Yet there are things +to be said too. As that there would be no use whatever in my having +"told you what to do." There wouldn't be the remotest chance of your +doing it. The place, the time, the aspect, the colour of the light and +the inclination of Percy Lubbock, will already be making for you their +own law, or, better still, causing you to live generally lawless and +promiscuous. _Be_ promiscuous and incoherent and intelligent, absorbent, +happy: it's your great chance. Be further glad of every Italian vocable +you take to your heart, and help me to hope that our meeting over it all +is only moderately put off--when you'll have ever so interesting things +to tell to yours most truly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Gaillard T. Lapsley._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +June 22nd, 1902. + +My dear, dear Boy! + +The penalty of shameful turpitude is that even reparation and contrition +are made almost impossible by the dimensions of the abyss that separates +the criminal from virtue. Or, more simply, the amount of explanation (of +my baseness) that I have felt myself saddled with toward you, has long +operated as a further and a fatal deterrent in respect to writing to you +at all. The burden of my shame has in short piled up my silence, and to +break that hideous spell I must now cast explanations to the winds--ere +they crush me altogether. I've had a rather blighted and broken +winter--a good deal of somewhat ominous unwellness, now happily (D.V.) +over-past. Under the effect of it _all_ my correspondence has gone to +pieces, and though I've managed to write two books I've done so mainly +by an economy of _moyens_ that has forbidden my answering even a note or +two. I've thought of you, dreamed of you, followed you, admired you, in +fine tenderly loved you: done everything accordingly but treat you +decently. But I'm all right in the long, the very long run, and your +admirably interesting and charming letter of ever so many months ago has +never ceased to be a joy and pride to me. Those emotions have just been +immeasureably quickened by something told me by my brave little cousin +Bay Emmet (the paintress)--viz. her having lately met you in New York +and heard on your lips words (a mon adresse) not of resentment or scorn, +but of divine magnanimity and gentleness. You appear to have spoken to +her "as if you still liked me," and I like you so much for that that the +vibration has started these stammering accents. I really write you these +words not from my peaceful hermitage by the southern sea, but from the +depths of the meretricious metropolis, which I've never known so +detestable as at this most tawdry of crises, and from which I hope to +escape in a day or two, utterly dodging the insane crush of the +Coronation. The place is vilely disfigured by league-long hoardings (for +spectators at L10 0. 0. a head,) and cheap and awful decorations, and +the dear old Abbey in particular smothered into the likeness of the +Earl's Court Exhibition--not to be distinguished from the Westminster +Aquarium, in fact, opposite. And then the crowds, the gregarious, gaping +millions, are appalling, and I fly, in fine, back to the Southern +Sea--on the shore of which I've spent almost all my time for almost a +year past. I've lately been dabbling a little, for compensation, in +town; but I find small doses of London now go further, for my +organisation, than they used. + +B. Emmet tells me that you still sit aloft in California and I permit +myself to rejoice in it, in spite of some of the lurid lights projected +by your so vivid letter over the composition of that _milieu_. You tell +me things of awful suggestion--and in respect to which I would give +anything for more talk with you and more chance for question and answer. + +_June 26th._ The foregoing, my dear Boy, though dated here, was written +in London--which means that in the confusion and distraction, the +present chaotic crash of things there, it was also interrupted. I had +been there for a snatch of but three or four days, and I rushed back +here, in horror and dismay (24 hours since), just _before_ the poor +King's collapse set the seal on the general gregarious madness. I had +"chucked" the Coronation, thank heaven, before the Coronation chucked +_me_, and this little russet and green corner, as so often before, has +been breathing balm and peace to me after the huge bear-garden. The +latter beggars description at the present moment--and must now do so +doubly while reeling under the smash of everything. I feel like a man +who has jumped, safe, from an express-train before a collision--and to +make really sure of my _not_ having broken my neck I take up again this +distempered scrawl to you. But I won't talk of all this dreary +pandemonium here--dreary _whatever_ the issue of the poor King's +illness; inasmuch as, either way, it can only mean more gregarious +madness, more league-long hoarding, more blocks of traffic and deluges +of dust and tons of newspaper verbiage. Amen! + +What I didn't begin to say to you the other day was how interesting and +awful I found your picture of your seat of learning. I rejoice with all +my heart that it has attached you, for just "the likes of you" are what +must make a difference (by influence, by example, by civilization, by +revelation) in the strange mixture--or absence of mixture--of its +elements. I gather from you that its air is _all_ female, so to speak, +and that in this buoyant medium you triumphantly float. It must be very +wonderful and fearful and indescribable, all of it, lifelike indeed +though your sketch appears to me. I wish immensely I could see you, so +that we could get nearer, together, to everything. You come out most +summers--is there no chance of your doing so this year? I seem to infer +the sad contrary, from my little cousin's not having told me that you +mentioned anything of the sort to her. I have the sense of having seen +you odiously little last year--a blighted and distracted season. As I +read over at present your generous letter I feel a special horror and +dismay at having failed so long and so abominably to give you the +promised word of introduction to Fanny Stevenson. I enclose one +herewith--but I must tell you that I feel myself to be launching it +rather into the dark. That is, I have a fear that she is rather +changed--or rather exaggerated--with time, illness etc.--and that you +may find her somewhat aged, queer, eccentric etc. And I'm not sure I'm +possessed of her address. Only remember this--that _she_ (with all +deference to her) was never the person to have seen, it was R. L. S. +himself. But good-night. I haven't half responded to you, nor met +you--in your charming details; yet I _am_, none the less, my dear +Lapsley, very affectionately yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Cadwalader Jones._ + + + Mrs. Jones, it will be understood, had sent him two of the books of + her sister-in-law, Mrs. Wharton. + +Lamb House, Rye. +August 20th, 1902. + +_Dictated._ + +Dear and bountiful Lady, + +My failure, during these few days, to thank you for everything has not +come from a want of appreciation of _anything_--or from a want of +gratitude, or lively remembrance, or fond hope; or, in short, from +anything but a quite calculating and canny view that I shall perhaps +come in, during your present episode, with a slightly greater effect of +direct support and encouragement than if I had come during the fever of +your late short interval in London. It seems to be "borne in" to me that +you may be feeling--la ou vous etes--a little lone and lorn, a little +alien and exotic; so that the voice of the compatriot, counsellor and +moderator, may fall upon your ears with an approach to sweetness. I am +sure, all the same, that you are in a situation of great and refreshing +novelty and of general picturesque interest. At your leisure you will +give me news of it, and I wish you meanwhile, as the best advice, to +drain it to the dregs and leave no element of it untasted. + +_My_ situation has, en attendant, been made picturesque by the +successive arrivals of your different mementoes, each one of which has +done its little part to assuage my solitude and relieve my gloom. +Putting them in their order, Mrs. Wharton comes in an easy first; the +unspeakable Postum follows handsomely, and Protoplasm--by which I mean +Plasmon--pants far behind. How shall I thank you properly for these +prompt and valued missives? Postum _does_ taste like a ferociously mild +coffee--a coffee reduced to second childhood, the prattle of senility. I +hasten to add, however, that it accords thereby but the better with my +enfeebled powers of assimilation, and that I am taking it regular and +blessing your name for it. It interposes a little ease after the long +and unattenuated grimness of cocoa. Since Jackson was able to provide it +with so little delay, I feel I may count on him for blessed renewals. +But I shall never count on any one again for Plasmon, which is gruesome +and medicinal, or at all events an "acquired taste," which the rest of +my life will not be long enough to acquire. + +Mrs. Wharton is another affair, and I take to her very kindly as regards +her diabolical little cleverness, the quantity of intention and +intelligence in her style, and her sharp eye for an interesting _kind_ +of subject. I had read neither of these two volumes, and though the +"Valley" is, for significance of ability, several pegs above either, I +have extracted food for criticism from both. As criticism, in the nobler +sense of the word, is for me enjoyment, I've in other words much liked +them. Only they've made me again, as I hinted to you other things had, +want to get hold of the little lady and pump the pure essence of my +wisdom and experience into her. She _must_ be tethered in native +pastures, even if it reduces her to a back-yard in New York. If a work +of imagination, of fiction, interests me at all (and very few, alas, +do!) I always want to write it over in my own way, handle the subject +from my own sense of it. _That_ I always find a pleasure in, and I found +it extremely in the "Vanished Hand"--over which I should have liked, at +several points, to contend with her. But I can't speak more highly for +any book, or at least for my interest in any. I take liberties with the +greatest. + +But you will say that in ticking out this amount of Remingtonese at you +I am taking a great liberty with _you_; or rather, of course, I know you +won't, since you gave me kind leave--for which I shamelessly bless +you.... Good-bye with innumerable good wishes. Please tell Miss Beatrix +that these are addressed equally to her, as in fact my whole letter is, +and that my liveliest interest attends her on her path. + +Yours and hers always affectionately, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +Sept. 12th, 1902. + +_Dictated._ + +My dear Howells, + +An inscrutable and untoward fate condemns me to strange +delinquencies--though it is no doubt the weakness of my nature as well +as the strength of the said treacherous principle that the "undone +vast," in my existence, lords it chronically and shamelessly over the +"petty done." It strikes me indeed both _as_ vast, and yet in a +monstrous way as petty too, that I should have joyed so in "_The +Kentons_," which you sent me, ever so kindly, more weeks ago than it +would be decent in me to count--should have eaten and drunk and dreamed +and thought of them as I did, should have sunk into them, in short, so +that they closed over my head like living waters and kept me down, down +in subaqueous prostration, and all the while should have remained, so +far as _you_ are concerned, brutishly and ungratefully dumb. I haven't +been otherwise dumb, I assure you--that is so far as they themselves are +concerned: there was a time when I talked of nothing and nobody else, +and I have scarcely even now come to the end of it. I think in fact it +is _because_ I have been so busy vaunting and proclaiming them, up and +down the more or less populated avenues of my life, that I have had no +time left for anything else. The avenue on which you live, worse luck, +is perversely out of my beat. Why, however, do I talk thus? I know too +well how _you_ know too well that letters, in the writing life, are the +last things that get themselves written. You see the way that this one +tries to manage it--which at least is better than no way. All the while, +at any rate, the impression of the book remains, and I have infinitely +pleased myself, even in my shame, with thinking of the pleasure that +must have come to yourself from so acclaimed and attested a +demonstration of the freshness, within you still, of the spirit of +evocation. Delightful, in one's golden afternoon, and after many days +and many parturitions, to put forth thus a young, strong, living flower. +You have done nothing more true and complete, more thoroughly +homogeneous and hanging-together, without the faintest ghost of a false +note or a weak touch--all as sharply ciphered-up and tapped-out as the +"proof" of a prize scholar's sum on a slate. It is in short miraculously +felt and beautifully done, and the aged--by which I mean the +richly-matured--sposi _as_ done as if sposi were a new and fresh idea to +you. Of all your sposi they are, I think, the most penetrated and most +penetrating. I took in short true comfort in the whole manifestation, +the only bitterness in the cup being that it made me feel old. _I_ shall +never again so renew myself. But I want to hear from you that it has +really--the sense and the cheer of having done it--set you spinning +again with a quickened hum. When you mentioned to me, I think in your +last letter, that you had done the Kentons, you mentioned at the same +time the quasi-completion of something else. It is this thing I now +want--won't it soon be coming due?--and if you will magnanimously send +it to me I promise you to have, for it, better manners. Meanwhile, let +me add, I have directed the Scribners to send you a thing of my own, too +long-winded and minute a thing, but well-meaning, just put forth under +the name of _The Wings of the Dove_. + +I hope the summer's end finds you still out of the streets, and that it +has all been a comfortable chapter. I hear of it from my brother as the +Great Cool Time, which makes for me a pleasant image, since I generally +seem to sear my eyeballs, from June to September, when I steal a glance, +across the sea, at the bright American picture. Here, of course, we have +been as grey and cold, as "braced" and rheumatic and uncomfortable as +you please. But that has little charm of novelty--though (not to +blaspheme) we _have_, since I've been living here, occasionally +perspired. I live here, as you see, still, and am by this time, like the +dyer's hand, subdued to what I work in, or at least try to economise in. +It is pleasant enough, for five or six months of the year, for me to +wish immensely that some crowning stroke of fortune may still take the +form of driving you over to see me before I fall to pieces. Apropos of +which I am forgetting what has been half my reason--no, not half--for +writing to you. Many weeks ago there began to be blown about the +world--from what fountain of lies proceeding I know not--a rumour that +you were staying with me here, a rumour flaunting its little hour as +large as life in some of the London papers. It brought me many notes of +inquiry, invitations to you, and other tributes to your glory--damn it! +(I don't mean damn your glory, but damn the wanton and worrying rumour). +Among other things it brought me a fattish letter addressed to you and +which I have been so beastly procrastinating as not to forward you till +now, when I post it with this. Its aspect somehow denotes insignificance +and impertinence, and I haven't wanted to do it, as a part of the so +grossly newspaperistic impudence, too much honour; besides, verily, the +intention day after day of writing you at the same time. Well, there it +all is. You will think my letter as long as my book. So I add only my +benediction, as ever, on your house, beginning with Mrs. Howells, going +straight through, and ramifying as far as you permit me. + +Yours, my dear Howells, always and ever, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To H. G. Wells._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +September 23rd, 1902. + +My dear Wells, + +All's well that ends well and everything is to hand. I thank you +heartily for the same, and I have read the _Two Men_, dangling +breathlessly at the tail of their tub while in the air and plying them +with indiscreet questions while out of it. It is, the whole thing, +stupendous, but do you know what the main effect of it was on my cheeky +consciousness? To make me sigh, on some such occasion, to _collaborate_ +with you, to intervene in the interest of--well, I scarce know what to +call it: I must wait to find the right name when we meet. You can so +easily avenge yourself by collaborating with _me_! Our mixture would, I +think, be effective. I hope you are thinking of doing Mars--in some +detail. Let me in _there_, at the right moment--or in other words at an +early stage. I really shall, opportunity serving, venture to try to say +two or three things to you about the Two Men--or rather not so much +about them as about the cave of conceptions whence they issue. All I can +say now however is that the volume _goes_ like a bounding ball, that it +is 12.30 a.m., and that I am goodnightfully yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Cadwalader Jones._ + + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +October 23d, 1902. + +Dear Mrs. Cadwalader, + +Both your liberal letters have reached me, and have given me, as the +missives of retreating friends never fail to do, an almost sinister +sense of the rate at which the rest of the world goes, moves, rushes, +voyages, railroads, passing from me through a hundred emotions and +adventures, and pulling up in strange habitats, while I sit in this +grassy corner artlessly thinking that the days are few and the +opportunities small (quite big enough for the likes of _me_ though the +latter be even here.) All of which means of course simply that you take +away my breath. But that was on the cards and it's not worth +mentioning. Your best news for me is of your being, for complete +convalescence, in the superlative hands you describe--to which I hope +you are already doing infinite credit. I kind of make you out, "down +there," I mean in the pretty, very pretty, as it used to be, New York +Autumn, and in the Washington Squareish region trodden by the steps of +my childhood, and I wonder if you ever kick the October leaves as you +walk in Fifth Avenue, as I can to this hour feel myself, hear myself, +positively _smell_ myself doing. But perhaps there are no leaves and no +trees now in Fifth Avenue--nothing but patriotic arches, Astor hotels +and Vanderbilt palaces. (My secretary was on the point of writing the +great name "aster"--which I think the most delightful irony of fate! +they are so flowerlike a race!) The October leaves are at any rate +gathering about me here--and that I have watched them fall, and lighted +my fire and trimmed my lamp, is about the only thing that has happened +to me--though I _should_ count in a visit from a delightful nephew, who +has just been with me for a fortnight, and left me for Geneva, where he +spends the winter. + +I assisted dimly, through your discreet page, at your visit to Mrs. +Wharton, whose Lenox house must be a love, and I wish I could have been +less remotely concerned. In the way of those I know I hope you have by +this time, on your own side, gathered in John La Farge, and are not +allowing him to feel anything but that he is well and happy--except, +also, that I very affectionately remember him.... + +But I am not thanking you, all this time, for the interesting remarks +about the book I had last placed in your hands (The Wings of the Dove), +which you so heroically flung upon paper even on the heaving deep--a +feat to _me_ very prodigious. I won't say your criticism was eminent +for the time and place--I'll say, frankly, that it was eminent in +itself, and all full of suggestion. The fact is, however, that one is so +aware one's self, even to satiety, of the rights and wrongs of these +matters--especially of the wrongs--that freshness of mind almost fails +for discriminations, however benevolent, of others. Such is the price of +having written many books and lived many years. The thing in question +is, by a complicated accident which it would take too long to describe +to you, too inordinately drawn out, and too inordinately rubbed in. The +centre, moreover, isn't in the middle, or the middle, rather, isn't in +the centre, but ever so much too near the end, so that what was to come +after it is truncated. The book, in fine, has too big a head for its +body. I am trying, all the while, to write one with the opposite +disproportion--the body too big for its head. So I shall perhaps do if I +live to 150. Don't therefore undermine me by general remarks. And +dictating, please, has moreover nothing to do with it. The value of that +process for me is in its help to do over and over, for which it is +extremely adapted, and which is the only way I can do at all. It soon +enough, accordingly, becomes, _intellectually_, absolutely identical +with the act of writing--or has become so, after five years now, with +me; so that the difference is only material and illusory--only the +difference, that is, that I walk up and down: which is so much to the +good.--But I must stop walking now. I stand quite still to send my +hearty benediction to Miss Beatrix and I am yours and hers very +constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To H. G. Wells._ + + + The only two "effusions," of the kind described in this letter, + that have survived are the preliminary schemes for the unfinished + novels, _The Ivory Tower_ and _The Sense of the Past_, published + with them in 1917. + +Lamb House, Rye. +November 15th, 1902. + +My dear Wells, + +It is too horribly long that I have neglected an interesting (for I +can't say an interested) inquiry of yours--in your last note; and +neglected it precisely _because_ the acknowledgment involved had to be +an explanation. I have somehow, for the last month, not felt capable of +explanations, it being my infirmity that when "finishing a book" (and +that seems my chronic condition) my poor enfeebled cerebration becomes +incapable of the least extra effort, however slight and simple. My +correspondence then shrinks and shrinks--only the least explicit of my +letters get themselves approximately written. And somehow it has seemed +highly explicit to tell you that (in reply to your suggestive last) +those wondrous and copious preliminary statements (of my fictions that +are to be) don't really exist in any form in which they can be imparted. +I think I know to whom you allude as having seen their semblance--and +indeed their very substance; but in two exceptional (as it were) cases. +In these cases what was seen was the statement drawn up on the basis of +the serialization of the work--drawn up in one case with extreme detail +and at extreme length (in 20,000 words!) Pinker saw that: it referred to +a long novel, afterwards (this more than a year) written and finished, +but not yet, to my great inconvenience, published; but it went more +than two years ago to America, to the Harpers, and there remained and +has probably been destroyed. Were it here I would with pleasure transmit +it to you; for, though I say it who should not, it _was_, the statement, +full and vivid, I think, as a statement could be, of a subject as worked +out. Then Conrad saw a shorter one of the _Wings of the D._--also well +enough in its way, but only half as long and proportionately less +developed. _That_ had been prepared so that the book might be serialized +in another American periodical, but this wholly failed (what secrets and +shames I reveal to you!) and the thing (the book) was then written, the +subject treated, on a more free and independent scale. But _that_ +synopsis too has been destroyed; it was returned from the U.S., but I +had then no occasion to preserve it. And evidently no fiction of mine +can or _will_ now be serialized; certainly I shall not again draw up +detailed and explicit plans for unconvinced and ungracious editors; so +that I fear I shall have nothing of that sort to show. A plan for +_myself_, as copious and developed as possible, I always do draw +up--that is the two documents I speak of were based upon, and extracted +from, such a preliminary _private_ outpouring. But this latter +voluminous effusion is, ever, so extremely familiar, confidential and +intimate--in the form of an interminable garrulous letter addressed to +my own fond fancy--that, though I always for easy reference, have it +carefully typed, it isn't a thing I would willingly expose to any eye +but my own. And even _then_, sometimes, I shrink! So there it is. I am +greatly touched by your respectful curiosity, but I haven't, you see, +anything coherent to produce. Let me promise however that if I ever do, +within any calculable time, address a manifesto to the dim editorial +mind, you shall certainly have the benefit of a copy. Candour compels me +to add that that consummation has now become unlikely. It is too +wantonly expensive a treat to them. In the first place they will none of +me, and in the second the relief, and greater intellectual dignity, so +to speak, of working on one's own scale, one's own line of continuity +and in one's own absolutely independent _tone_, is too precious to me to +be again forfeited. Pardon my too many words. I only add that I hope the +domestic heaven bends blue above you. + +Yours, my dear Wells, always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Frank Mathews._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +November 18th, 1902. + +My dear Mary, + +You have made me a most beautiful and interesting present, and I thank +you heartily for the lavish liberality and trouble of the same. It +arrived this a.m. swathed like a mummy of the Pharaohs, and is a +monument to the care and skill of every one concerned. The photographer +has _retouched_ the impression rather too freely, especially the eyes +(if one could but keep their hands off!) but the image has a pleasing +ghostliness, as out of the far past, and affects me pathetically as if +it were of the dead--of one who died young and innocent. Well, so he +did, and I can speak of him or admire him, poor charming slightly +mawkish youth, quite as I would another. I remember (it now all comes +back to me) when (and where) I was so taken: at the age of _20_, though +I look younger, and at a time when I had had an accident (an injury to +my back,) and was rather sick and sorry. I look rather as if I wanted +propping up. But you have propped me up, now, handsomely for all time, +and I feel that I shall go down so to the remotest posterity. There is a +great Titian, you know, at the Louvre--_l'homme au gant_; but I, in my +gloved gentleness, shall run him close. All thanks again, then: you have +renewed my youth for me and diverted my antiquity and I really, as they +say, fancy myself, and am yours, my dear Mary, very constantly, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +December 11th, 1902. + +My dear Howells, + +Nothing more delightful, or that has touched me more closely, even to +the spring of tears, has befallen me for years, literally, than to +receive your beautiful letter of Nov. 30th, so largely and liberally +anent _The W. of the D._ Every word of it goes to my heart and to +"thank" you for it seems a mere grimace. The same post brought me a +letter from dear John Hay, so that my measure has been full. I haven't +known anything about the American "notices," heaven save the mark! any +more than about those here (which I am told, however, have been +remarkably genial;) so that I have _not_ had the sense of confrontation +with a public more than usually childish--I mean had it in any special +way. I confess, however, that that is my chronic sense--the more than +usual childishness of publics: and it is (has been,) in my mind, long +since discounted, and my work definitely insists upon being independent +of such phantasms and on unfolding itself wholly from its own "innards." +Of course, in our conditions, doing anything decent is pure +disinterested, unsupported, unrewarded heroism; but that's in the day's +work. The _faculty of attention_ has utterly vanished from the general +anglo-saxon mind, extinguished at its source by the big blatant +_Bayadere_ of Journalism, of the newspaper and the _picture_ (above all) +magazine; who keeps screaming "Look at _me_, _I_ am the thing, and I +only, the thing that will keep you in relation with me _all the time_ +without your having to attend _one minute_ of the time." If you are +moved to write anything anywhere about the _W. of the D._ do say +something of that--it so awfully wants saying. But we live in a lovely +age for literature or for any art but the mere visual. Illustrations, +loud simplifications and _grossissements_, the big building (good for +John,) the "mounted" play, the prose that is careful to be in the tone +of, and with the distinction of a newspaper or bill-poster +advertisement--these, and these only, meseems, "stand a chance." But why +do I talk of such chances? I am melted at your reading _en famille The +Sacred Fount_, which you will, I fear, have found chaff in the mouth and +which is one of several things of mine, in these last years, that have +paid the penalty of having been conceived only as the "short story" that +(alone, apparently) I could hope to work off somewhere (which I mainly +failed of,) and then _grew_ by a rank force of its own into something of +which the idea had, modestly, never been to be a book. That is +essentially the case with the _S. F._, planned, like The Spoils of +Poynton, What Maisie Knew, The Turn of the Screw, and various others, as +a story of the "8 to 10 thousand words"!! and then having accepted its +bookish necessity or destiny in consequence of becoming already, at the +start, 20,000, accepted it ruefully and blushingly, moreover, since, +_given the tenuity of the idea_, the larger quantity of treatment hadn't +been aimed at. I remember how I would have "chucked" _The Sacred Fount_ +at the 15th thousand word, if in the first place I could have afforded +to "waste" 15,000, and if in the second I were not always ridden by a +superstitious terror of not finishing, for finishing's and for the +precedent's sake, what I have begun. I am a fair coward about +_dropping_, and the book in question, I fear, is, more than anything +else, a monument to that superstition. When, if it meets my eye, I say +to myself, "You know you might not have finished it," I make the remark +not in natural reproach, but, I confess, in craven relief. + +But why am I thus grossly expatiative on the airy carpet of the bridal +altar? I spread it beneath Pilla's feet with affectionate jubilation and +gratification and stretch it out further, in the same spirit, beneath +yours and her mother's. I wish her and you, and the florally-minded +young man (he _must_ be a good 'un,) all joy in the connection. If he +stops short of gathering samphire it's a beautiful trade, and I trust he +will soon come back to claim the redemption of the maiden's vows. Please +say to her from me that I bless her--_hard_. + +Your visit to Cambridge makes me yearn a little, and your watching over +it with C. N. and your sitting in it with Grace. Did the ghost of other +walks (I'm told Fresh Pond is no longer a Pond, or no longer Fresh, only +stale, or something) ever brush you with the hem of its soft shroud? +Haven't you lately published some volume of Literary Essays or Portraits +(_since_ the Heroines of Fiction) and won't you, munificently, send me +either that _or_ the Heroines--neither of which have sprung up in my +here so rustic path? I will send you in partial payment another book of +mine to be published on February 27th. + +Good-night, with renewed benedictions on your house and your spirit. + +Yours always and ever, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Madame Paul Bourget._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +January 5th, 1903. + +Dear Madame Paul, + +Very welcome, very delightful, to me your kind New Year's message, and +meeting a solicitude (for news of you both) which was as a shadow across +my (not very glowing indeed) Christmas hearth. Your note finds me still +incorrigibly rustic; I have been spending here the most solitary +Christmas-tide of my life (absolutely solitary) and I have not, for long +months, been further from home than for an occasional day or two in +London. I go there on the 10th to remain till May; but I am sorry to say +I see little hope of my being able to peregrinate to far Provence--all +benignant though your invitation be. We must meet--_some_ time!--again +in the loved _Italy_; but I blush, almost, to say it, when I have to say +at the same time that my present prospect of that bliss is of the +smallest. I long unspeakably to go back there--before I descend into the +dark deep tomb--for a _long_ visit (of upwards of a year); yet it proves +more difficult for me than it ought, or than it looks, and, in short, I +oughtn't to speak of it again save to announce it as definite. +Unfortunately I also want to return for a succession of months to the +land of my birth--also in anticipation of the tomb; and the one doesn't +help the other. Europe has ceased to be romantic to me, and my own +country, in the evening of my days, has become so; but this senile +passion too is perhaps condemned to remain platonic.--Bourget's +benevolence continues to shine on me, his generosity to descend, in the +form of heavenly-blue volumes, the grave smile of my dull library +shelves, for which I blush that I make so meagre returns. I shall send +you a volume in February, but it will have no such _grande allure_; +though the best thing in it will be a little story of which you gave me +long ago, at Torquay, the motive, and which I will mark. I congratulate +you on not being absentees from your high-walled--or much-walled--Eden, +and I hope it means a happy distillation for Bourget and much health and +peace for both of you. May you have a mild and merciful year! Deserve it +by continuing to have patience tous les deux with your very faithful +(and very inky) old friend, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Mrs. Waldo Story._ + + + The book to which the following refers is of course _William + Wetmore Story and his Friends_, published in 1903. + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +Jan. 6th, 1903. + +Dear Mrs. Waldo, + +Let my first word be to ask you to pardon this vulgar machinery and this +portentous legibility: the fruit of dictation, in the first place (now +made absolutely necessary to me;) and the fruit, in the second place, of +the fact that, pegging away as I am at present, in your interest and +Waldo's (and with the end of our business now, I am happy to say, well +in sight), I so live, as it were, from day to day and from hour to hour, +by the aid of this mechanism, that it is an effort to me to break with +it even for my correspondence. I had promised myself to write you so +that you should receive my letter on the very Capo d'Anno; and if I had +_then_ overcome my scruple as to launching at you a dictated thing, you +would some time ere this have been in possession of my news. I have +delayed till now because I was every day hoping to catch the right +moment to address you a page or two of my own proper hieroglyphics. But +one's Christmas-tide burden (of writing) here is heavy; I didn't snatch +the moment; and _this_ is a brave precaution lest it should again elude +me; which, in the interest of lucidity, please again forgive. + +So much as that about a minor matter. The more important one is that, as +you will both be glad to know, I have (in spite of a most damnable +interruption of several weeks, this autumn, a detested compulsion to +attend, for the time, to something else) got on so straight with the +Book that three quarters of it are practically written, and four or five +weeks more will see me, I calculate, at the end of the matter.... All +the material I received from you has been of course highly +useful--indispensable; yet, none the less, all of it put together was +not material for a Biography pure and simple. The subject itself didn't +lend itself to _that_, in the strict sense of the word: and I had to +make out, for myself, what my material _did_ lend itself to. I _have_, I +think, made out successfully and happily; if I haven't, at any rate, it +has not been for want of a great expenditure of zeal, pains, taste +(though I say it who shouldn't!) and talent! But the Book will, without +doubt, be an agreeable and, in a literary sense, really artistic and +honourable one. I shall not have made you all so patiently, amiably, +admirably wait so long for nothing.... I have looked at the picture, as +it were, given me by all your material, _as_ a picture--the image or +evocation, charming, heterogeneous, and a little ghostly, of a great +cluster of people, a society practically extinct, with Mr. and Mrs. +Story, naturally, all along, the centre, the pretext, so to speak, and +the _point d'appui_. This course was the only one open to me--it was +imposed with absolute logic. The Book was not makeable at all unless I +used the letters of other people, and the letters of other people were +useable with effect only so far as I could more or less evoke and +present the other people.... + +But I am writing you at hideous length--and crowding out all space for +matters more personal to ourselves. When once the Book is out I shall +want, I shall need, exceedingly, to see you all; and I don't think that, +unless some morbid madness settles on me, I shall fear to. But that is +arrangeable and shall be arranged.... My blessing on all of you. + +Yours, dear Mrs. Waldo, most faithfully, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. D. Howells._ + + + _The Ambassadors_ began at length to appear in the _North American + Review_, January 1903, where it ran throughout the year. + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +Jan. 8th, 1903. + +My dear Howells, + +Let me beg you first of all not to be disconcerted by this chill +legibility. I want to write to you _to-day_, immediately, your +delightful letter of Dec. 29th having arrived this morning, and I can +only manage it by dictation as I am, in consequence of some obscure +indiscretion of diet yesterday, temporarily sick, sorry, and seedy; so +that I can only loll, rather listless (but already better of my poison), +in an armchair. My feelings don't permit me to wait to tell you that the +communication I have just had from you surpasses for pure unadulterated +charm any communication I have _ever_ received. I am really quite +overcome and weakened by your recital of the generous way in which you +threw yourself into the scale of the arrangement, touching my so long +unserialized serial, which is manifestly so excellent a thing for me. I +had begun to despair of anything, when, abruptly, this brightens the +view. For I _like_, extremely, the place the N.A.R. makes for my novel; +it meets quite my ideal in respect to that isolation and relief one has +always fondly conceived as the proper _due_ of one's productions, and +yet never, amid the promiscuous petticoats and other low company of the +usual magazine table-of-contents, seen them in the remotest degree +attended with. One had dreamed, in private fatuity, that one would +really be the better for "standing out" a little; but one had, to one's +own sense, never really "stood" at all, but simply lain very flat, for +the petticoats and all the foolish feet aforesaid to trample over with +the best conscience in the world. Charming to me also is the idea of +your own beneficent paper in the same quarter--the complete detachment +of which, however, from the current fiction itself I equally apprehend +and applaud: just as I see how the (not-to-be-qualified) editorial mind +would indulge one of its most characteristic impulses by suggesting a +connection. Never mind suggestions--and how you echo one of the most +sacred laws of my own effort toward wisdom in not caring to know the +source of _that_ one! I care to know nothing but that your relation to +my stuff, as it stands, gives me clear joy. Within a couple of days, +moreover, your three glorious volumes of illustrated prose have arrived +to enrich my existence, adorn my house and inflame my expectations. With +many things pressing upon me at this moment as preliminary to winding-up +here and betaking myself, till early in the summer, to London, my more +penetrative attention has not yet been free for them; but I am gathering +for the swoop. Please meanwhile be tenderly thanked for the massive and +magnificent character of the gift. What a glorious quantity of work it +brings home to me that you do! I feel like a hurdy-gurdy man listening +outside a cathedral to the volume of sound poured forth there by the +enthroned organist.... But good-night, my dear Howells, with every +feebly-breathed, but forcibly-felt good wish of yours always and ever, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To William James._ + + + The special business that H. J. hints at in connexion with his + projected visit to America was to be the arrangement for a + collected edition of his works, a scheme that was now beginning to + take shape. With regard to another allusion in this letter, it may + be said that the threatened destruction of the old cottages, a few + yards from Lamb House, was averted. + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +May 24th, 1903. + +Dearest William, + +How much I feel in arrears with you let this gross machinery +testify--which I shamelessly use to help to haul myself into line. +However, you have most beneficently, from of old, given me free licence +for it. Other benefits, unacknowledged as yet, have I continued to +receive from you: I think I've been silent even since _before_ your so +cheering (about yourself) letter from Ashville, followed, a few days +before I left town (which I did five days ago), by your still more +interesting and important one (of May 3d) in answer to mine dealing (so +tentatively!) with the question of my making plans, so far as +complicatedly and remotely possible, for going over to you for 6 or 8 +months. There is--and there _was_ when I wrote--no conceivability of my +doing this for a year at least to come--before August 1904, at nearest; +but it kind of eases my mind to thresh the idea out sufficiently to have +a direction to _tend_ to meanwhile, and an aim to work at. It is in fact +a practical necessity for me, _des maintenant_, to know whether or no I +absolutely want to go if, and when, I _can_: such a difference in many +ways (more than I need undertake to explain) do the prospect of going +and the prospect of _not_ going make. Luckily, for myself, I do already +(as I feel) quite adequately remain convinced that I _shall_ want to +whenever I can: that is [if] I don't put it off for much _more_ than a +year--after which period I certainly shall _lose_ the impulse to return +to my birth-place under the mere blight of incipient senile decay. If I +go at all I must go before I'm too old, and, above all, before I mind +being older. You are very dissuasive--even more than I expected; but I +think it comes from your understanding even less than I expected the +motives, considerations, advisabilities etc., that have gradually, +cumulatively, and under much study of the question, much carefully +invoked _light_ on it, been acting upon me. I won't undertake just now +to tell you what all these reasons are, and how they show to me--for +there is still plenty of time to do that. Only I _may_ even at present +say that I don't despair of bringing you round in the interval (if what +is beyond the interval _can_ realise itself) to a better perception of +my situation. It is, roughly--and you will perhaps think too +cryptically--speaking, a situation for which 6 or 8 months in my native +land shine before me as a very possible and profitable remedy: and I +don't speak _not_ by book. Simply and supinely to shrink--on mere +grounds of general fear and encouraged shockability--has to me all the +air of giving up, chucking away without a struggle, the one chance that +remains to me in life of anything that can be called a _movement_: my +one little ewe-lamb of possible exotic experience, such experience as +may convert itself, through the senses, through observation, imagination +and reflection now at their maturity, into vivid and solid _material_, +into a general renovation of one's too monotonised grab-bag. You speak +of the whole matter rather, it seems to me, "a votre aise"; you make, +comparatively, and have always made, so many movements; you have +travelled and gone to and fro--always comparatively!--so often and so +much. I have practically never travelled at all--having never been +economically able to; I've only gone, for short periods, a few times--so +much fewer than I've wanted--to Italy: never anywhere else that I've +seen every one about me here (who is, or was, anyone) perpetually making +for. These visions I've had, one by one, all to give up--Spain, Greece, +Sicily, any glimpse of the East, or in fact of anything; even to the +extent of rummaging about in France; even to the extent of trudging +about, a little, in Switzerland. Counting out my few dips into Italy, +there has been no time at which _any_ "abroad" was financially +convenient or possible. And now, more and more, all such adventures +present themselves in the light of mere agreeable _luxuries_, expensive +and supererogatory, inasmuch as not resolving themselves into new +material or assimilating with my little acquired stock, my accumulated +capital of (for convenience) "international" items and properties. +There's nothing to be done by me, any more, in the way of writing, _de +chic_, little worthless, superficial, _poncif_ articles about Spain, +Greece, or Egypt. They are the sort of thing that doesn't work in at all +to what now most interests me: which is human Anglo-Saxonism, with the +American extension, or opportunity for it, so far as it may be given me +still to work the same. If I _shouldn't_, in other words, bring off +going to the U.S., it would simply mean giving up, for the remainder of +my days, all chance of such experience as is represented by interesting +"travel"--and which in this special case of my own would be much more +than so represented (granting the travel to be American.) I should +settle down to a mere mean oscillation from here to London and from +London here--with nothing (to speak of) left, more, to happen to me in +life in the way of (the poetry of) motion. That spreads before me as for +mind, imagination, special, "professional" labour, a thin, starved, +lonely, defeated, beaten, prospect: in comparison with which your own +circumgyrations have been as the adventures of Marco Polo or H.M. +Stanley. I _should_ like to think of going once or twice more again, for +a sufficient number of months, to Italy, where I know my ground +sufficiently to be able to plan for such quiet work there as might be +needfully involved. But the day is past when I can "write" stories about +Italy with a mind otherwise pre-occupied. My native land, which time, +absence and change have, in a funny sort of way, made almost as romantic +to me as "Europe," in dreams or in my earlier time here, used to be--the +actual bristling (as fearfully bristling as you like) U.S.A. have the +merit and the precious property that they meet and fit into my +("creative") preoccupations; and that the period there which should +represent the poetry of motion, the one big taste of travel not +supremely missed, would carry with it also possibilities of the prose of +_production_ (that is of the production of prose) such as no other mere +bought, paid for, sceptically and half-heartedly worried-through +adventure, by land or sea, would be able to give me. My primary idea in +the matter is absolutely economic--and on a basis that I can't make +clear to you now, though I probably shall be able to later on if you +demand it: that is if you also are accessible to the impression of my +having _any_ "professional standing" la-bas big enough to be improved +on. I am not thinking (I'm sure) vaguely or blindly (but recognising +direct intimations) when I take for granted some such Chance as my +personal presence there _would_ conduce to improve: I don't mean by its +beauty or brilliancy, but simply by the benefit of my managing for once +in my life not to fail to be on the spot. Your allusion to an American +[agent] as all sufficient for any purpose I could entertain doesn't, for +me, begin to cover the ground--which is antecedent to that altogether. +It isn't in the least a question of my trying to make old copy-rights +pay better or look into arrangements actually existing; it's a +question--well, of too much more than I can go into the detail of now +(or, much rather, into the general and comprehensive truth of); or even +than I can ever do, so long as I only have from you Doubt. What you say +of the Eggs (!!!), of the Vocalisation, of the Shocks in general, and of +everything else, is utterly beside the mark--it being absolutely _for_ +all that class of phenomena, and every other class, that I nurse my +infatuation. I want to see them, I want to see everything. I want to see +the Country (scarcely a bit New York and Boston, but intensely the +Middle and Far West and California and the South)--in _cadres_ as +complete, and immeasurably more mature than those of the celebrated +Taine when he went, early in the sixties, to Italy for six weeks, in +order to write his big book. Moreover, besides the general +"professional" I have thus a conception of, have really in definite +view, there hangs before me a very special other probability--which, +however, I must ask you to take on trust, if you can, as it would be a +mistake for me to bruit it at all abroad as yet. To make anything of +this last-mentioned business I must be on the spot--I mean not only to +carry the business out, of course, but to arrange in advance its +indispensable basis. It would be the last of follies for me to attempt +to do that from here--I should simply spoil my chance. So you see what +it all comes to, roughly stated--that the 6 or 8 months in question are +all I have to look to unless I give up the prospect of ever stirring +again. They are the only "stir" I shall ever be able to afford, because, +though they will cost something, cost even a good bit, they will bring +in a great deal more, in proportion, than they will cost. Anything else +(other than a mere repeated and too aridly Anglo-American winter in +Florence, perhaps, say) would almost only cost. But enough of all +this--I am saying, _have_ said, much more than I meant to say at the +present date. Let it, at any rate, simmer in your mind, if your mind +has any room for it, and take _time_, above all, if there is any danger +of your still replying adversely. Let me add this word more, however, +that I mention August 1904 very advisedly. If I want (and it's half the +battle) to go to the West and South, and even, dreamably, to Mexico, I +[could not] do these things during that part of the summer during which +(besides feeling, I fear, very ill from the heat) I should simply have +to sit still. On the other hand I should like immensely not to fail of +coming in for the _whole_ American autumn, and like hugely, in especial, +to arrive in time for the last three or four weeks of your stay in +Chocorua--which I suppose I should do if I quitted this by _about_ +mid-August. Then I should have the music of _toute la lyre_, coming away +after, say, three or four Spring weeks at Washington, the next April or +May. But I _must_ stop. These castles in Spain all hang by the thread of +my finding myself in fact economically able, 14 months hence, to _face_ +the music. If I am not, the whole thing must drop. All I can do +meanwhile is to try and arrange that I _shall_ be. I am scared, +rather--well in advance--by the vision of American expenses. But the +"special" possibility that shines before me has the virtue of covering +(potentially) all that. One thing is very certain--I shall not be able +to hoard by "staying" with people. This will be impossible to me (though +I _will_, assuredly, by a rich and rare exception, dedicate to you and +Alice as many days as you will take me in for, whether in country or +town.) Basta! + +I talk of your having room in mind, but you must be having at the +present moment little enough for anything save your Emerson speech, +which you are perhaps now, for all I know, in the very act of +delivering. This morning's Times has, in its American despatch, an +account of the beginning, either imminent or actual, of the +Commemoration--and I suppose your speech is to be uttered at Concord. +Would to God I could sit there entranced by your accents--side by side, +I suppose, with the genial Bob! May you be floated grandly over your +cataract--by which I don't mean have any manner of fall, but only be a +Niagara of eloquence, all continuously, whether above or below the +rapids. You will send me, I devoutly hope, some report of the whole +thing. It affects me much even at this distance and in this so grossly +alien air--this overt dedication of dear old Emerson to his immortality. +I hope all the attendant circumstances will be graceful and beautiful. I +came back hither as I believe I have mentioned, some six days ago, after +some 18 weeks in London, which went, this time, very well, and were very +easy, on my present extremely convenient basis, to manage. The Spring +here, till within a week, has been backward and blighted; but Summer has +arrived at last with a beautiful jump, and Rye is quite adorable in its +outbreak of greenery and blossom. I never saw it more lovely than +yesterday, a supreme summer (early summer) Sunday. The dear little charm +of the place at such times consoles me for the sordid vandalisms that +are rapidly disfiguring and that I fear will soon quite destroy it. +Another scare for me just now is the threatened destruction of the two +little charmingly-antique silver-grey cottages on the right of the +little vista that stretches from my door to the church--the two that you +may remember just beyond my garden wall, and in one of which my gardener +has lately been living. They will be replaced, if destroyed, by a pair +of hideous cheap modern workingman's cottages--a horrid inhuman stab at +the very heart of old Rye. There is a chance it may be still +averted--but only just a bare chance. One would buy them, in a moment, +to save them and to save one's little prospect; but one is, naturally, +quite helpless for that, and the price asked is impudently outrageous, +quite of the blackmailing order. On the other hand, let me add, I'm +gradually consoling myself now for having been blackmailed in respect to +purchase of the neighbouring garden I wrote you of. Now that I have got +it and feel the value of the protection, my greater peace seems almost +worth the imposition. This, however, is all my news--except that I have +just acquired by purchase a very beautiful and valuable little Dachshund +pup of the "red" species, who has been promising to be the joy of my +life up to a few hours since--when he began to develop a mysterious and +increasing tumification of one side of his face, about which I must +immediately have advice. The things my dogs have, and the worries I have +in consequence! I already see this one settled beneath monumental +alabaster in the little cemetery in the angle of my garden, where he +will make the fifth. I have heard, most happily, from Billy at Marburg. +He seems to fall everywhere blessedly on his feet. But you will know as +much, and more, about him than I. I am already notching off the days +till I hope to have him here in August. I count on his then staying +through September. But good-bye, with every fond _voeu_. I delight in +the news of Aleck's free wild life--and also of Peggy's (which the +accounts of her festivities, feathers and frills, in a manner reproduce +for me.) Tender love to Alice. I embrace you all and am always yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Miss Violet Hunt._ + + +_Dictated._ + +Lamb House, Rye. +Aug. 26th, 1903. + +Dear Violet Hunt, + +I am very backward with you, being in receipt of more than one +unanswered communication. Please set this down to many things; not least +my having, ever since you were here, been carrying on uninterruptedly a +small but crowded hotel.... I have still, all the same, to thank you for +the photographs of the admirable little niece, one of which, the one +with the hat, I retain, sending the other back to you if not by this +very post, then, at least, by the very next. Both are very pleasing, but +no photograph does much more than rather civilly extinguish the life and +bloom (so exquisite a thing) in a happy child's face. Also came the +Shakespeare-book back with your accompanying letter--for which also +thanks, but to which I can't now pretend to reply. You rebound lightly, +I judge, from any pressure exerted on you by the author--but _I_ don't +rebound: I am "a sort of" haunted by the conviction that the divine +William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practised on a +patient world. The more I turn him round and round the more he so +affects me. But that is all--I am not pretending to treat the question +or to carry it any further. It bristles with difficulties, and I can +only express my general sense by saying that I find it _almost_ as +impossible to conceive that Bacon wrote the plays as to conceive that +the man from Stratford, as we know the man from Stratford, did. + +For the rest, I have been trying to sit tight and get on with work that +has been much retarded, these two months, and much interrupted and +blighted.... I hope you will be able to give me, when we next meet, as +good an account of _your_ adventures and emotions. I have taken again +the liberty of this machinery with you, for having broken in your great +amiability I don't want to waste my advantage. Wherever you are _buon +divertimento_! I really hope for you that you are in town, which has +resources and defences against this execrable August that the bare bosom +of Nature, as we mainly know it here, sadly lacks. + +Believe me yours always, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To W. E. Norris._ + + +Lamb House, Rye. +September 17th, 1903. + +My dear Norris, + +Your letter from the unpronounceable Japanese steamer is magnificent--so +magnificent, so appreciated and so _felt_, that it really almost has an +effect contrary to the case it incidentally urges--the effect of +undermining my due disposition to write to you! Your adventures by land +and sea, your commerce with the great globe, your grand imperial and +cosmic life, hover before me on your admirable page to make me ask what +you can possibly want of the small beer of any chronicle of mine. My +"beer," always, to my sense, of the smallest, sinks to positively +ignoble dregs in the presence of your splendid record--of which I think +also I am even moved to a certain humiliated jealousy. "All this and +heaven too?"--all this and letters from Lamb House, Rye, into the +bargain? That slightly sore sense has in fact been at the bottom of my +failure to write to you altogether--that and a wholly blank mind as to +where to address, catch or otherwise waylay you. Frankly, _really_, I +seemed to imagine you out of tune (very naturally and inevitably) with +_our_ dull lives and only saying to yourself that you would have quite +enough of them on getting back to them and finding them creep along as +tamely as ever. Let me hasten to add that I now rejoice to learn that +you have actually missed the sound of my voice, the scratch of my poor +pen, and I "sit down" as promptly, almost, as you enjoin, to prepare a +message which shall overtake you, or meet you somewhere. May it not have +failed of this before we (you sternly, I guiltily) are confronted! Your +appeal, scented with all the spices of the East and the airs of the +Antipodes, arrived in fact four or five days ago, and would have had my +more instant attention if the world, in these days, the small world of +my tiny point on the globe, were not inconveniently and oppressively +with me, making great holes in my all too precious, my all too hoarded +and shrunken treasure of Time. We have had an execrable, an infamous +summer of rain--endless rain and wild wintry tempest (the very worst of +my long lifetime;) but it has not in the least stayed the circulation of +my country-people (in particular,) and I have been running a small +crammed and wholly unlucrative hotel for their benefit, without +interruption, ever since I returned here from London the middle of May. +As I have to run it, socially and personally speaking, all unaided and +alone, I am always in the breach, and my fond dream of this place as a +little sheltered hermitage is exposed to rude shocks. I am just now, in +short, receiving a fresh shock every day, and the end is so far from +being in sight that the rest of this month and the replete form of +October loom before me as truly formidable. This once comparatively +quiet corner has, it is impossible to doubt, quite changed its +convenient little character since I first knew and adopted it, and has +become, for the portion of the year for which I most so prized it, a +vulgarly bustling rendezvous of indiscreet and inferior people. (I don't +so qualify my own visitors, poor dears--but the total effect of these +harried and haunted months, whereof the former golden air has been +turned to tinkling brass. It all makes me glad I am old, and thereby +soon to take leave of a world in which one is driven, unoffending, from +pillar to post.) You see I don't pretend to take up _your_ wondrous tale +or to treat you to responsive echoes and ejaculations. It will be +delightful to do so when we meet again and I can ask you face to face +the thousand questions that your story calls to my lips. Let me even now +and thus, however, congratulate you with all my heart on such a fine +bellyful of raw (and other) material as your so varied and populated +experience must have provided you withal. You have had to ingurgitate a +bigger dose of salt water than I should personally care for, and I don't +directly wish that _any_ of your opportunities should have been mine--so +wholly, with the lack of means to move, has the appetite for movement +abandoned my aged carcass. But I applaud and enjoy the sight of these +high energies in those who are capable and worthy of them, and +distinctly like to think that there are quasi-contemporaries of longer +wind (and purse,) and of stouter heart than mine--though I _am_ planning +at last to go to the U.S. (for the first time for 21 years) next summer, +and remain there some 6 or 8 months. (But there is time to talk of +this.).. Your letter is full of interesting things that I can, however, +send back to you no echo of--since if I do I shall still be writing it +when you get back, and you will come and look at it over my shoulder. +Interesting above all your hints of your convictions or impressions or +whatever, about the great colonial question and the great Joseph's +probable misadventure--as to which I find it utterly impossible to have +a competent opinion. I have nothing but an obscure and superstitious +sense that this country's "fiscal" attitude and faith has for the last +half century been _superior_ and distinguished, and that the change +proposed to her reeks, probably, with political and economical +vulgarity. But that way, just now, madness lies--you will find plenty of +it when you get back. As to the probable date of that event you give me +no hint, but I look forward to your return with an eager appetite for +your high exotic flavour, which please do everything further possible, +meanwhile, to intensify: unless indeed the final effort of everything +shall have been (as I shrewdly suspect) to make you more brutally +British. You will even then, anyway, be an exceedingly welcome +reappearance to yours always and ever, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Howard Sturgis._ + + + The proof-sheets in question were those of Mr. Sturgis's + forthcoming novel, _Belchamber_. + +Lamb House, Rye. +November 8th, 1903. + +My dear Howard, + +I send you back the blooming proofs with my thanks and with no marks or +comments at all. In the first place there are none, of the marginal +kind, to make, and in the second place it is too late to make them if +there were. The thing goes on very solidly and smoothly, interesting and +amusing as it moves, very well written, well felt, well composed, well +written perhaps in particular. I am a bad person, really, to expose +"fictitious work" to--I, as a battered producer and "technician" myself, +have long since inevitably ceased to read with _naivete_; I can only +read critically, constructively, reconstructively, writing the thing +over (if I can swallow it at all) _my_ way, and looking at it, so to +speak, from within. But even thus I "pass" your book very--tenderly! +There is only one thing that, as a matter of detail, I am moved to +say--which is that I feel you have a great deal increased your +difficulty by screwing up the "social position" of all your people so +very high. When a man is an English Marquis, even a lame one, there are +whole masses of Marquisate things and items, a multitude of inherent +detail in his existence, which it isn't open to the painter _de gaiete +de coeur_ not to make some picture of. And yet if I mention this +because it is _the_ place where people will challenge you, and to +suggest to you therefore to expect it--if I do so I am probably after +all quite wrong. No one notices or understands _any_thing, and no one +will make a single intelligent or intelligible observation about your +work. They will make plenty of others. What I applaud is your sticking +to the real line and centre of your theme--the consciousness and view of +Sainty himself, and your dealing with things, with the whole +fantasmagoria, as presented to him only, not otherwise going behind +them. + +And also I applaud, dearest Howard, your expression of attachment to him +who holds this pen (and passes it at this moment over very dirty paper:) +for he is extremely accessible to such demonstrations and touched by +them--more than ever in his lonely (more than) maturity. Keep it up as +hard as possible; continue to pass your hand into my arm and believe +that I always like greatly to feel it. We are two who can communicate +freely. + +I send you back also Temple Bar, in which I have found your paper a +moving and charming thing, waking up the pathetic ghost only too +effectually. The ancient years and images that I too more or less +remember swarm up and vaguely moan round about one like Banshees or +other mystic and melancholy presences. It's _all_ a little mystic and +melancholy to me here when I am quite alone, as I more particularly am +after "grand" company has come and gone. You are essentially grand +company, and felt as such--and the subsidence is proportionally flat. +But I took a long walk with Max this grey still Sabbath afternoon--have +indeed taken one each day, and am possessed of means, thank goodness, to +make the desert (of being quite to myself) blossom like the rose. + +Good-night--it's 12.30, the clock ticks loud and Max snoozes audibly in +the armchair I lately vacated.... Yours, my dear Howard always and ever, + +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Henry Adams._ + + + Henry Adams, the well-known American historian, was a friend of + long standing. The following refers to H. J.'s recently published + _W. W. Story and his Friends_. + +Lamb House, Rye. +November 19, 1903. + +My dear Adams, + +I am so happy at hearing from you _at all_ that the sense of the +particular occasion of my doing so is almost submerged and smothered. +You did bravely well to write--make a note of the act, for your future +career, as belonging to a class of impulses to be precipitately obeyed, +and, if possible, even tenderly nursed. Yet it has been interesting, +exceedingly, in the narrower sense, as well as delightful in the larger, +to have your letter, with its ingenious expression of the effects on you +of poor _W. W. S._--with whom, and the whole business of whom, there is +(yes, I can see!) a kind of _inevitableness_ in my having made you +squirm--or whatever is the proper name for the sensation engendered in +you! Very curious, and even rather terrible, this so far-reaching action +of a little biographical vividness--which did indeed, in a manner, begin +with me, myself, even as I put the stuff together--though putting me to +conclusions less grim, as I may call them, than in your case. The truth +is that _any_ retraced story of bourgeois lives (lives other than great +lives of "action"--_et encore!_) throws a chill upon the scene, the +time, the subject, the small mapped-out facts, and if you find "great +men thin" it isn't really so much their fault (and least of all yours) +as that the art of the biographer--devilish art!--is somehow practically +_thinning_. It simplifies even while seeking to enrich--and even the +Immortal are so helpless and passive in death. The proof is that I +wanted to invest dull old Boston with a mellow, a golden glow--and that +for those who know, like yourself, I only make it bleak--and weak! +Luckily those who know are indeed but three or four--and they won't, I +hope, too promiscuously tell.... + +Yours, my dear Adams, always and ever, +HENRY JAMES. + + + + +_To Sir George O. Trevelyan._ + + + The second part of Sir George Trevelyan's _American Revolution_ had + just appeared at this time. + +Lamb House, Rye. +Nov. 25th, 1903. + +Dear Sir George, + +I should be a poor creature if I had read your two last volumes without +feeling the liveliest desire to write to you. That is the desire you +must have kindled indeed in more quarters than you will care to reckon +with; but even this reflection doesn't stay my pen, save to make me +parenthise that I should be absolutely distressed to receive from you +any acknowledgment of these few lines. + +This new instalment of your admirable book has held me so tight, from +chapter to chapter, that it is as if I were hanging back from mere force +of appreciation, and yet I found myself, as I read, vibrating +responsively, in so many different ways, that my emotions carried me at +the same time all over the place. You of course know far better than I +how you have dealt with your material; but I doubt whether you know what +a work of civilization you are perpetrating internationally by the very +fact of your producing so exquisite a work of art. The American, the +Englishman, the artist, and the critic in me--to say nothing of the +friend!--all drink you down in a deep draught, each in turn feeling that +he is more deeply concerned. But it is of course, as with the other +volume, the book's being so richly and authoritatively English, so +validly true, and yet so projected as it were into the American +consciousness, that will help to build the bridge across the Atlantic; +and I think it is the mystery of this large fusion, carried out in so +many ways, that makes the thing so distinguished a work of art; yet who +shall say, so familiarly--when a thing is such a work of art--I mean who +shall say how it has, by a thousand roads, got itself made so? + +It is this literary temperament of your work, this beautiful quality of +composition, and feeling of the presentation, grasping reality all the +while, and controlling and playing with the detail, it is this in our +chattering and slobbering day that gives me the sense of the ampler +tread and deeper voice of the man--in fact of his speaking in his own +voice at all, or moving with his own step. You will make my own country +people touch as with reverence the hem of his garment; but I think that +I most envy you your having such a method at all--your being able to see +so many facts and yet to see them each, imaged and related and lighted, +as a painter sees the objects, together, that are before his canvas. +They become, I mean, so amusingly concrete and individual for you; but +that is just the inscrutable luxury of your book; and you bring home +further, to me, at least, who had never so fully felt it, what a +difficult and precarious, and even might-not-have been, Revolution it +was, altogether, as a Revolution. Wasn't it as nearly as possible not +being that, whatever else it might have been? The Tail might in time +have taken to wagging the dog if the Tail could only, as seemed so easy, +have been left on! But I didn't mean to embark on these reflections. I +only wanted really to make you feel a little responsible for my being, +through living with you this succession of placid country evenings, far +from the London ravage, extravagantly agitated. But take your +responsibility philosophically; recall me to the kind consideration of +Lady Trevelyan, and believe me very constantly yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +things that are in me to=>things that are in me too + +I wish you you could send me anything=>I wish you could send me anything + +my atrocious had manners=>my atrocious bad manners + +convenience and immediate accessibilty=>convenience and immediate +accessibility + +itself is the rufuge from the vulgarity=>itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity + +discharging my obligagations=>discharging my obligations + +it up as as hard as possible=>it up as hard as possible + + + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +things that are in me to=>things that are in me too + +I wish you you could send me anything=>I wish you could send me anything + +my atrocious had manners=>my atrocious bad manners + +convenience and immediate accessibilty=>convenience and immediate +accessibility + +itself is the rufuge from the vulgarity=>itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity + +discharging my obligagations=>discharging my obligations + +it up as as hard as possible=>it up as hard as possible + + + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +things that are in me to=>things that are in me too + +I wish you you could send me anything=>I wish you could send me anything + +my atrocious had manners=>my atrocious bad manners + +convenience and immediate accessibilty=>convenience and immediate +accessibility + +itself is the rufuge from the vulgarity=>itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity + +discharging my obligagations=>discharging my obligations + +it up as as hard as possible=>it up as hard as possible + + + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +things that are in me to=>things that are in me too + +I wish you you could send me anything=>I wish you could send me anything + +my atrocious had manners=>my atrocious bad manners + +convenience and immediate accessibilty=>convenience and immediate +accessibility + +itself is the rufuge from the vulgarity=>itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity + +discharging my obligagations=>discharging my obligations + +it up as as hard as possible=>it up as hard as possible + + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +things that are in me to=>things that are in me too + +I wish you you could send me anything=>I wish you could send me anything + +my atrocious had manners=>my atrocious bad manners + +convenience and immediate accessibilty=>convenience and immediate +accessibility + +itself is the rufuge from the vulgarity=>itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity + +discharging my obligagations=>discharging my obligations + +it up as as hard as possible=>it up as hard as possible + + + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +things that are in me to=>things that are in me too + +I wish you you could send me anything=>I wish you could send me anything + +my atrocious had manners=>my atrocious bad manners + +convenience and immediate accessibilty=>convenience and immediate +accessibility + +itself is the rufuge from the vulgarity=>itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity + +discharging my obligagations=>discharging my obligations + +it up as as hard as possible=>it up as hard as possible + + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +things that are in me to=>things that are in me too + +I wish you you could send me anything=>I wish you could send me anything + +my atrocious had manners=>my atrocious bad manners + +convenience and immediate accessibilty=>convenience and immediate +accessibility + +itself is the rufuge from the vulgarity=>itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity + +discharging my obligagations=>discharging my obligations + +it up as as hard as possible=>it up as hard as possible + + + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +things that are in me to=>things that are in me too + +I wish you you could send me anything=>I wish you could send me anything + +my atrocious had manners=>my atrocious bad manners + +convenience and immediate accessibilty=>convenience and immediate +accessibility + +itself is the rufuge from the vulgarity=>itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity + +discharging my obligagations=>discharging my obligations + +it up as as hard as possible=>it up as hard as possible + + + + * * * * * + +The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext +transcriber: + +things that are in me to=>things that are in me too + +I wish you you could send me anything=>I wish you could send me anything + +my atrocious had manners=>my atrocious bad manners + +convenience and immediate accessibilty=>convenience and immediate +accessibility + +itself is the rufuge from the vulgarity=>itself is the refuge from the +vulgarity + +discharging my obligagations=>discharging my obligations + +it up as as hard as possible=>it up as hard as possible + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Henry James (volume I), by +Henry James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF HENRY JAMES I/II *** + +***** This file should be named 38776.txt or 38776.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/7/7/38776/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made at The Internet +Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a 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