The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II

I yearn unutterably to get on far enough to begin to plan to come up to town for a while. I have of late reacted intensely against this exile from some of the resources of civilization in winter—and deliriously dream of some future footing in London again (other than my club) for the space of time between Xmas or so and June. What is the rent of a house—unfurnished of course (a little good inside one)—in your Terrace?—and are there any with 2 or 3 servants' bedrooms?

Don't answer this absurdity now—but wait till we go and look at 2 or 3 together! Such is the recuperative yearning of your enfeebled but not beaten—you can see by this scrawl—old

    H. J.

To Mrs. Bigelow

    Lamb House, Rye.
    April 19th, 1910.

My dear Edith,

I have been much touched by your solicitude, but till now absolutely too "bad" to write—to do anything but helplessly, yearningly languish and suffer and surrender. I have had a perfect Hell of a Time—since just after Xmas—nearly 15 long weeks of dismal, dreary, interminable illness (with occasional slight pickings-up followed by black relapses.) But the tide, thank the Powers, has at last definitely turned and I am on the way to getting not only better, but, as I believe, creepily and abjectly well. I sent my Nurse (my second) flying the other day, after ten deadly weeks of her, and her predecessor's, aggressive presence and policy, and the mere relief from that overdone discipline has done wonders for me. I must have patience, much, yet—but my face is toward the light, which shows, beautifully, that I look ten years older, with my bonny tresses ten degrees whiter (like Marie Antoinette's in the Conciergerie.) However if I've lost all my beauty and (by my expenses) most of my money, I rejoice I've kept my friends, and I shall come and show you that appreciation yet. I am so delighted that you and the Daughterling had your go at Italy—even though I was feeling so pre-eminently un-Italian. The worst of that Paradise is indeed that one returns but to Purgatories at the best. Have a little patience yet with your still struggling but all clinging

    HENRY JAMES.

To W. E. Norris

    Hill Hall,
    Theydon Bois,
    Epping.
    May 22nd, 1910.

My dear Norris,

Forgive a very brief letter and a very sad one, in which I must explain long and complicated things in a very few words. I have had a dismal—the most dismal and interminable illness; going on these five months nearly, since Christmas—and of which the end is not yet; and of which all this later stage has been (these ten or twelve weeks) a development of nervous conditions (agitation, trepidation, black melancholia and weakness) of a—the most—formidable and distressing kind. My brother and sister-in-law most blessedly came on to me from America several weeks ago; without them I had—should have—quite gone under; and a week ago, under extreme medical urgency as to change of air, scene, food, everything, I came here with my sister-in-law—to some most kind friends and a beautiful place—as a very arduous experiment. But I'm too ill to be here really, and shall crawl home as soon as possible. I'm afraid I can't see you in London—I can plan nor do nothing; and can only ask you, in my weakness, depression and helplessness, to pardon this doleful story from your affectionate and afflicted old

    HENRY JAMES.

To Mrs. Wharton

    Bittongs Hotel Hohenzollern,
    Bad Nauheim.
    June 10th, 1910.

Dearest Edith,

Your kindest note met me here on my arrival with my sister last evening. We are infinitely touched by the generous expression of it, but there had been, and could be, no question for us of Paris—formidable at best (that is in general) as a place of rapid transit. I had, to my sorrow, a baddish drop on coming back from high Epping Forest (that is "Theydon Mount") to poor little flat and stale and illness-haunted Rye—and I felt, my Dr. strongly urging, safety to be in a prompt escape by the straightest way (Calais, Brussels, Cologne, and Frankfort,) to this place of thick woods, groves, springs and general Kurort soothingness, where my brother had been for a fortnight waiting us alone. Here I am then and having made the journey, in great heat, far better than I feared. Slowly but definitely I am emerging—yet with nervous possibilities still too latent, too in ambush, for me to do anything but cling for as much longer as possible to my Brother and sister. I am wholly unfit to be alone—in spite of amelioration. That (being alone) I can't even as yet think of—and yet feel that I must for many months to come have none of the complications of society. In fine, to break to you the monstrous truth, I have taken my passage with them to America by the Canadian Pacific Steamer line ("short sea") on August 12th—to spend the winter in America. I must break with everything—of the last couple of years in England—and am trying if possible to let Lamb House for the winter—also am giving up my London perch. When I come back I must have a better. There are the grim facts—but now that I have accepted them I see hope and reason in them. I feel that the completeness of the change là-bas will help me more than anything else can—and the amount of corners I have already turned (though my nervous spectre still again and again scares me) is a kind of earnest of the rest of the process. I cling to my companions even as a frightened cry-baby to his nurse and protector—but of all that it is depressing, almost degrading to speak. This place is insipid, yet soothing—very bosky and sedative and admirably arranged, à l'allemande—but with excessive and depressing heat just now, and a toneless air at the best. The admirable ombrages and walks and pacifying pitch of life make up, however, for much. We shall be here for three weeks longer (I seem to entrevoir) and then try for something Swiss and tonic. We must be in England by Aug. 1st.

And now I simply fear to challenge you on your own complications. I can bear tragedies so little. Tout se rattache so à the thing—the central depression. And yet I want so to know—and I think of you with infinite tenderness, participation—and such a large and helpless devotion. Well, we must hold on tight and we shall come out again face to face—wiser than ever before (if that's any advantage!) This address, I foresee, will find me for the next 15 days—and we might be worse abrités. Germany has become comfortable. Note that much as I yearn to you, I don't nag you with categorical (even though in Germany) questions.... Ever your unspeakable, dearest Edith,

    HENRY JAMES.

To Mrs. Wharton

    Lamb House, Rye.
    July 29th, 1910.

Dearest Edith,

It's intense joy to hear from you, and when I think that the last news I gave you of myself was at Nauheim (it seems to me), with the nightmare of Switzerland that followed—"Munich and the Tyrol etc.," which I believe I then hinted at to you, proved the vainest crazy dream of but a moment—I feel what the strain and stress of the sequel that awaited me really became. That dire ordeal (attempted Nach-Kurs for my poor brother at low Swiss altitudes, Constance, Zurich, Lucerne, Geneva, &c.) terminated however a fortnight ago—or more—and after a bad week in London we are here waiting to sail on Aug. 12th. I am definitely much better, and on the road to be well; a great gain has come to me, in spite of everything, during the last ten days in particular. I say in spite of everything, for my dear brother's condition, already so bad on leaving the treacherous and disastrous Nauheim, has gone steadily on to worse—he is painfully ill, weak and down, and the anxiety of it, with our voyage in view, is a great tension to me in my still quite struggling upward state. But I stand and hold my ground none the less, and we have really brought him on since we left London. But the dismalness of it all—and of the sudden death, a fortnight ago, of our younger brother in the U.S. by heart-failure in his sleep—a painless, peaceful, enviable end to a stormy and unhappy career—makes our common situation, all these months back and now, fairly tragic and miserable. However, I am convinced that his getting home, if it can be securely done, will do much for William—and I am myself now on a much "higher plane" than I expected a very few weeks since to be. I kind of want, uncannily, to go to America too—apart from several absolutely imperative reasons for it. I rejoice unspeakably in the vision of seeing you … here—or even in London or at Windsor—one of these very next days....

    Ever your all-affectionate, dear Edith,
    HENRY JAMES.

To Bruce Porter

The "bêtises" were certain Baconian clues to the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, which Mr. Bruce Porter had come from America to investigate.

    Lamb House, Rye.
    [August 1910.]

My dear—very!—Bruce,

I rejoice to hear from you even though it entails the irritation (I brutally showed you, in town, my accessibility to that) of your misguided search for a sensation. You renew my harmless rage—for I hate to see you associated (with my firm affection for you) with the most provincial bêtises, and to have come so far to do it—to be it (given over to a, to the Bêtise!) in a fine finished old England with which one can have so much better relations, and so many of them—it would make me blush, or bleed, for you, could anything you do cause me a really deep discomfort. But nothing can—I too tenderly look the other way. So there we are. Besides you have had your measles—and, though you might have been better employed, go in peace—be measly no more. At any rate I grossly want you to know that I am really ever so much better than when we were together in London. I go on quite as well as I could decently hope. It's an ineffable blessing. It's horrible somehow that those brief moments shall have been all our meeting here, and that a desert wider than the sea shall separate us over there; but this is a part of that perversity in life which long ago gave me the ultimate ache, and I cherish the memory of our scant London luck. My brother, too, has taken a much better turn—and we sail on the 12th definitely. So rejoice with me and believe me, my dear Bruce, all affectionately yours,

    HENRY JAMES.

To Miss Grace Norton

    Chocorua, New Hampshire.
    August 26, 1910.

Dearest Grace,

I am deeply touched by your tender note—and all the more that we have need of tenderness, in a special degree, here now. We arrived, William and Alice and I, in this strange, sad, rude spot, a week ago to-night—after a most trying journey from Quebec (though after a most beautiful, quick, in itself auspicious voyage too,) but with William critically, mortally ill and with our anxiety and tension now (he has rapidly got so much worse) a real anguish.... Alice is terribly exhausted and spent—but the rest she will be able to take must presently increase, and Harry, who, after leaving us at Quebec, started with a friend on a much-needed holiday in the New Brunswick woods (for shooting and fishing), was wired to yesterday to come back to us at once. So I give you, dear Grace, our dismal chronicle of suspense and pain. My own fears are the blackest, and at the prospect of losing my wonderful beloved brother out of the world in which, from as far back as in dimmest childhood, I have so yearningly always counted on him, I feel nothing but the abject weakness of grief and even terror; but I forgive myself "weakness"—my emergence from the long and grim ordeal of my own peculiarly dismal and trying illness isn't yet absolutely complete enough to make me wholly firm on my feet. But my slowly recuperative process goes on despite all shakes and shocks, while dear William's, in the full climax of his intrinsic powers and intellectual ambitions, meets this tragic, cruel arrest. However, dear Grace, I won't further wail to you in my nervous soreness and sorrow—still, in spite of so much revival, more or less under the shadow as I am of the miserable, damnable year that began for me last Christmas-time and for which I had been spoiling for two years before. I will only wait to see you—with all the tenderness of our long, unbroken friendship and all the host of our common initiations. I have come for a long stay—though when we shall be able to plan for a resumption of life in Irving Street is of course insoluble as yet. Then, at all events, with what eagerness your threshold will be crossed by your faithfullest old

    HENRY JAMES.

P.S. It's to-day blessedly cooler here—and I hope you also have the reprieve!

P.S. I open my letter of three hours since to add that William passed unconsciously away an hour ago—without apparent pain or struggle. Think of us, dear Grace, think of us!

To Thomas Sergeant Perry

    Chocorua, N.H.
    Sept. 2nd, 1910.

My dear old Thomas,

I sit heavily stricken and in darkness—for from far back in dimmest childhood he had been my ideal Elder Brother, and I still, through all the years, saw in him, even as a small timorous boy yet, my protector, my backer, my authority and my pride. His extinction changes the face of life for me—besides the mere missing of his inexhaustible company and personality, originality, the whole unspeakably vivid and beautiful presence of him. And his noble intellectual vitality was still but at its climax—he had two or three ardent purposes and plans. He had cast them away, however, at the end—I mean that, dreadfully suffering, he wanted only to die. Alice and I had a bitter pilgrimage with him from far off—he sank here, on his threshold; and then it went horribly fast. I cling for the present to them—and so try to stay here through this month. After that I shall be with them in Cambridge for several more—we shall cleave more together. I should like to come and see you for a couple of days much, but it would have to be after the 20th, or even October 1st, I think; and I fear you may not then be still in villeggiatura. If so I will come. You knew him—among those living now—from furthest back with me. Yours and Lilla's all faithfully,

    HENRY JAMES.

To Mrs. Wharton

    Chocorua, N.H.
    Sept. 9th, 1910.