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Title: The Letters of Henry James (volume I)
Author: James, Henry, 1843-1916
Language: English
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[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
[Illustration]
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 _donnée_ 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 Vendôme, 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 Fezandié,' 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 Théâtre Français. 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 sœur chérie,
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 chère, 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, Hôtel 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 beautés_....
Maman de mon âme, 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._
Hôtel 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 manqué 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
Engländerinnen. 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 Innsbrück--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 Nüremburg, by which place, combined with this, it
seemed a vast pity not to proceed rather than by stupid Stuttgart.
Nüremburg 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 résumé), 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 scène_ 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
_régal_ 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, _très-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 Doré, 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 Montégut, whom I don't like so well as his writing, and
don't forgive for having, à 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 Théo. Gautier among others, who was
his intimate friend. He said nothing new or rare about him, except that
he thought him after the Père 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 écru 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 naïveté 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 Orléans (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 Théâtre
Français 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 naïveté, 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 Théâtre Français! 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, à 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 _dorénavant_ to
consider myself a Sunday _habitué_. 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 Comédie Française, who are here just now, playing with
immense success and supplying the London world with that invaluable
boon, a topic. I mean the whole Comédie 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._
Hôtel 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 Freyschütz done à 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 tôt. 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 fête. 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 _dépasser_ 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 _raffiné_ 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._
Hôtel 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 Château 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 Sévigné'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 Sévigné!
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 soirées! Have your
soirées 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 châteaux 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._
Hôtel 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 écourté! 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 à 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 dû déjà vous remercier de tout le plaisir que vous m'avez fait
en m'envoyant _Sapho_. Je vous suis très-reconnaissant de cette bonne et
amicale pensée, qui s'ajoutera désormais, pour moi, au souvenir du
livre. Je n'avais pas attendu l'arrivée de votre volume pour le
lire--mais cela m'a donné l'occasion de m'y remettre encore et de tirer
un peu au clair les diverses impressions que tant d'admirables pages
m'ont laissées. Je n'essaierai pas de vous rapporter ces impressions
dans leur plénitude--dans la crainte de ne réussir qu'à déformer ma
pensée--tout autant que la vôtre. Un nouveau livre de vous me fait
passer par l'esprit une foule de belles idées, que je vous confierais de
vive voix--et de grand cœur--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 évènement, 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
manière me pénètre plus qu'aucune autre. Je trouve dans _Sapho_
énormément de vérité et de vie. Ce n'est pas du roman, c'est de
l'histoire, et de la plus complète et de la mieux éclairée. Lorsqu'on a
fait un livre aussi solide et aussi sérieux que celui-là, on n'a besoin
d'être rassuré par personne; ce n'est donc que pour m'encourager
moi-même que je constate dans Sapho encore une preuve--à ajouter à
celles que vous avez données--de tout ce que le roman peut accomplir
comme révélation de la vie et du drôle de mélange que nous sommes. La
fille est étudiée avec une patience merveilleuse--c'est un de ces
portraits qui épuisent un type. Je vous avouerai que je trouve le jeune
homme un peu sacrifié--comme étude et comme recherche--sa figure me
paraissant moins éclairée--en comparaison de celle de la femme--qu'il ne
le faudrait pour l'ntérêt moral la valeur tragique. J'aurais voulu que
vous nous eussiez fait voir davantage par où il a passé--en matière
d'expérience plus personnelle et plus intime encore que les coucheries
avec Fanny--en matière de rammollissement de volonté et de relâchement
d'âme. En un mot, le drame ne se passe peut-être pas assez dans l'âme et
dans la conscience de Jean. C'est à mesure que nous touchons à son
caractère même que la situation devient intéressante--et ce caractère,
vous me faites l'effet de l'avoir un peu négligé. Vous me direz que
voilà un jugement bien anglais, et que nous inventons des abstractions,
comme nous disons, afin de nous dispenser de toucher aux grosses
réalités. J'estime pourtant qu'il n'y a rien de plus réel, de plus
positif, de plus à peindre, qu'un caractère; c'est là qu'on trouve bien
la couleur et la forme. Vous l'avez bien prouvé, du reste, dans chacun
de vos livres, et en vous disant que vous avez laissé l'amant de Sapho
un peu trop en blanc, ce n'est qu'avec vous-même que je vous compare.
Mais je ne voulais que vous remercier et répondre à votre envoi. Je vous
souhaite tout le repos qu'il vous faudra pour recommencer encore! Je
garde de cette soirée que j'ai passée chez vous au mois de février une
impression toute colorée. Je vous prie de me rappeler au souvenir
bienveillant de Madame Daudet, je vous serre la main et suis votre bien
dévoué confrère,
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 quatrième. 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 sémillant. 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 émeute, 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 fêtes during most of those weeks--the fêtes of the
completion of the façade of the Duomo--which by the way (the new façade)
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 fêtes 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
pièce_, 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._
Hôtel 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 _agrément_
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 _wüthend_
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 chargé 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 versâ
(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 champêtre,
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 Théâtre Français, 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 Opéra 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._
Hôtel 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 Coppée 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 qualité_--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_.
Hôtel 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._
Hôtel 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 _vécu_....
_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 première 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 _première_, 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. Voilà, ma chère 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'arrachâmes. 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 première. 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 théâtre, 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 prête_, 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 (à
défaut 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
_obsédant_ 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 £5-0-0 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
Scène Anglaise which we haven't. And I secretly dream of supplying the
vile want? Pas même--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
rentrée 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._
Hôtel 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 _inédites_ 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 Mémoires 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-conditionné
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 mœurs 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.
Hôtel 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._
Hôtel 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 Falesà_....
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._
Hôtel 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 à s'aimer d'une également
pure tendresse, tous les deux. Elle, ignorante des choses d'amour
et lisant chaque soir sa bible; elle, destinée à rester inutilement
fraîche et jeune encore pendant quelques printemps pâles comme
celui-ci, puis à vieillir et se faner dans l'enserrement monotone
de ces mêmes rues et de ces mêmes murs. Lui, gâté déjà par les
baisers et les étreintes, ayant le monde pour habitation
changeante, appelé à partir, peut-être demain, pour ne revenir
jamais et laisser son corps aux mers lointaines."
Hôtel 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 donnée, 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'arrière-boutique
dished up. Poor Harland came and spent 2 or 3 hours with me the other
afternoon--at a café-front and on chairs in the Champs-Elysées. 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 écrit--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 Falesà would, fortunately, _not_
have--that of being full of every one I don't know. The beach of Falesà
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 à la guerre comme à 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 même. 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 Prévost 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. Prévost's fetid étude (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
Björnson, prefixed to an English translation of his _Synnövé
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. Björnson 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 près_, 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 Barrès's last volume--"Du
Sang, de la Volupté 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 à peu près. 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 _écœurment_ 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 prélassant 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 vœux très-sincères 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, naïf, 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 naïvely, 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 cœur--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'hôte
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 blasé, 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 à 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 £50! 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 così!--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 distingué 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, là-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 Barrès? If you do, his last thing, Les Déracinés, 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 _métier_. 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 propriété 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 Hyères. 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
tête_. I can do better than that!
But à 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 portée 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--confrère--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 Château
Ypres (the old Rye stronghold) the limitations of Château 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
Bäder, 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 àpropos 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 à conséquence. 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 survécu!" 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 _envisagé_ 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 première 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 bêtise 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: à 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. Voilà. 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 zèle--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,
Hyères.
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 _à même_ 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 Vogüé, 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 supérieur. 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._
Hôtel 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 _Pêcheur 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 prêter
à 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 _conférences_! 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 ça: personne n'y comprend rien: j'en suis
pour mes frais--qui avaient été considérables, très considérables! 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_. Voilà!
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 Crucifié 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, à 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--à 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 Hyères--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.
Voilà.
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 Doña 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 vérité_, 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, _réchauffées_, 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 à peu près, 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 accablé 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, à 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 idée 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 àpropos 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, àpropos 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 _accidenté_ 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. Ça
ne pouvait manquer--ça _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
scène_ (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 Italiänische
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 (à 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 £10 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--là où vous êtes--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
_Bayadère_ 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, _dès 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, "à 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" là-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 _vœu_. 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 _naïveté_; 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 gaieté
de cœur_ 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
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Letters of Henry James (volume I)" ***
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