The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II

Yes, it has been abominable, my silence since I last heard from you—so kindly and beautifully and touchingly—during those few last flurried and worried days before I left America. They were very difficult, they were very deadly days: I was ill with the heat and the tension and the trouble, and, amid all the things to be done for the wind-up of a year's stay, I allowed myself to defer the great pleasure of answering you, yet the general pain of taking leave of you, to some such supposedly calmer hour as this.... I fled away from my little south coast habitation a very few days after reaching it—by reason of the brassy sky, the shadeless glare and the baked and barren earth, and took refuge among these supposedly dense shades—yet where also all summer no drop of rain has fallen. There is less of a glare nevertheless, and more of the cooling motor-car, and a very vast and beautiful old William and Mary (and older) house of a very interesting and delightful character, which has lately come into possession of an admirable friend of mine, Mrs. Charles Hunter, who tells me that she happily knows you and that you were very kind and helpful to her during a short visit she made a few (or several) years ago to America. It is a splendid old house—and though, in the midst of Epping Forest, it is but a ninety minutes' motor-ride from London, it's as sequestered and woodlanded as if it were much deeper in the country. And there are innumerable other interesting old places about, and such old-world nooks and corners and felicities as make one feel (in the thick of revolution) that anything that "happens"—happens disturbingly—to this wonderful little attaching old England, the ripest fruit of time, can only be a change for the worse. Even the North Shore and its rich wild beauty fades by comparison—even East Gloucester and Cecilia's clamorous little bower make a less exquisite harmony. Nevertheless, I think tenderly even of that bustling desert now—such is the magic of fond association. George James's shelter of me in his seaward fastness during those else insufferable weeks was a mercy I can never forget, and my beautiful day with you from Lynn on and on, to the lovely climax above-mentioned, is a cherished treasure of memory. I water this last sweet withered flower in particular with tears of regret—that we mightn't have had more of them. I hope your month of August has gone gently and reasonably and that you have continued to be able to put it in by the sea. I found the salt breath of that element gave the only savour—or the main one—that my consciousness knew at those bad times; and if you cultivated it duly and cultivated sweet peace, into the bargain, as hard as ever you could, I'll engage that you're better now—and will continue so if you'll only really take your unassailable stand on sweet peace. You will find in the depth of your admirable nature more genius and vocation for it than you have ever let yourself find out—and I hereby give you my blessing on your now splendid exploitation of that hitherto least attended-to of your many gardens. Become rich in indifference—to almost everything but your fondly faithful old

    HENRY JAMES.

To Mrs. Wharton

By "Her" is meant Mrs. Wharton's motor, always referred to by the chauffeur as "she."

    Lamb House, Rye.
    Sept. 27th, 1911.

Dearest Edith,

Alas it is not possible—it is not even for a moment thinkable. I returned, practically, but last night to my long-abandoned home, where every earthly consideration, and every desire of my heart, conspires now to fix me in some sort of recovered peace and stability; I cling to its very doorposts, for which I have yearned for long months, and the idea of going forth again on new and distant and expensive adventure fills me with—let me frankly say—absolute terror and dismay—the desire, the frantic impulse of scared childhood, to plunge my head under the bedclothes and burrow there, not to "let it (i.e. Her!) get me!" In fine I want as little to renew the junketings and squanderings of exile—time, priceless time-squanderings as they are for me now—as I want devoutly much to do something very different, to which I must begin immediately to address myself—and even if my desire were intense indeed there would be gross difficulties for me to overcome. But enough—don't let me pile up the agony of the ungracious—as any failure of response to a magnificent invitation can only be. Let me simply gape all admiringly, from a distance, at the splendour of your own spirit and general resources—or rather let me just simply stay my pen and hide my head (under the bedclothes before-mentioned.) My finest deepest sense of the general matter is that the whole economy of my future (in which I see myself reviving again to certain things, very definite things, that I want to do) absolutely lays an interdict (to which I oh so fondly bow!) on my ever leaving these shores again. And I have no scruple of saying this to you—your beautiful genius being so for great globe-adventures and putting girdles round the earth. Mine is, incomparably, for brooding like the Hen, whom I differ from but by a syllable in designation; and see how little I personally lose by it, since your putting on girdles so quite inevitably involves your passing at a given moment where I can reach forth and grab you a little. Don't despise me for a spiritless worm, only livrez-vous-y yourself … with all pride and power, and unroll the rich record later to your so inevitably deprived (though so basely resigned) and always so faithfully fond old

    HENRY JAMES.

To Mrs. Wilfred Sheridan

    Lamb House, Rye.
    Oct. 2nd, 1911.

Dear incomparable Child!

What is one to do, how is your poor old battered and tattered ex-neighbour above all to demean himself in the glittering presence of such a letter? Yes, I have—through the force of dire accidents—treated you to the most confused and aching void that could pretend to pass for the mere ghost of conversability, and yet you shine upon me still with your own sole light—the absolute dazzle of which very naturally brings tears to my eyes. You are a monster—or almost!—of magnanimity, as well as beauty and ability and (above all, clearly) of felicity, and there is nothing for me, I quite recognise, but to collapse and grovel. Behold me before you worm-like therefore—a pretty ponderous worm, but still capable of the quiver of sensibility and quite inoffensively transportable—whether by motor-car or train, or the local, frugal fly. There is an almost incredible kindness for me in your and Wilfred's being prepared literally to harbour and nourish, to exhibit on your bright scene, publicly and all incongruously, so aged and dingy a parasite; but a real big breezy happiness sometimes begets, I know, a regular wantonness of charity, a fond extravagance of altruism, and I surrender myself to the wild experiment with the very most pious hope that you won't repent of it. You shall not at any point, I promise you, if the effort on my part decently to grace the splendid situation can possibly stave it off. I will bravely come then on Friday 27th—arriving, in the afternoon, by any conveyance that you are so good as to instruct me to adopt. And even as the earthworm might aspire—occasion offering—to mate with the silkworm, I will gladly arrange with dear glossy Howard to present myself if possible in his company. I rejoice in your offering me that cherished company, there is a rare felicity in it: for Howard is the person in all the world who is kindest to me next after you. I shall rejoice to see Wilfred again, and be particularly delighted to see him as my host; our acquaintance began a long time ago, but seemed till now to have been blighted by adversity. This splendidly makes up—and all the good I thought of him is confirmed for me by his thinking so much good of you. It will thrill me likewise to see your bower of bliss—a fester Burg in a distracted world just now, and where I pray that good understandings shall ever hold their own. It mustn't be difficult to be happy with you and by you, dear Clare, and you will see how I, for my permitted part, shall pull it off. I was lately very happy in Scotland—happy for me, and for Scotland!—and it must have been something to do with the fact that (I being in Forfarshire) you were, or were even about to be, though unknown to me, in the neighbouring county. This created an atmosphere—over and above the bonny Scotch; I kind of sniffed your great geniality—from afar; so you see the kind of good you can't help doing me. It's rapture to think that you'll do me yet more—at closer quarters, and I am yours, my dear Clare, all affectionately,

    HENRY JAMES.

To Miss Alice Runnells

H. J.'s nephew William, his brother's second son, had just become engaged to Miss Runnells.

    Lamb House, Rye.
    Oct. 4th, 1911.

My very dear Niece,

I must tell you at once all the pleasure your beautiful and generous letter of the 23rd September has given me. It's a genuine joy to have from you so straight the delightful truth of the whole matter, and I can't thank you enough for talking to me with an exquisite young confidence and treating me as the fond and faithful and intensely participating old uncle that I want to be. It makes me feel—all you say—how right I've been to be glad, and how righter still I shall be to be myself confident. How shall I tell you in return what an interest I am going to take in you—and how I want you to multiply for me the occasions of showing it? You see I take the greatest and tenderest interest in Bill—and you and I feel then exactly together about that. We shall do—always more or less together!—everything we can think of to help him and back him up, and we shall find nothing more interesting and more paying. I expect somehow or other to see a great deal of him—and of you; and count on you to bring him out to me on the very first pretext, and on him to bring you. He is splendidly serious and entier; it's a great thing to be as entier as that. And he has great ability, great possibilities, which will take, and so much reward, all the bringing out and wooing forth and caring and looking out for that we can give them—as faith and affection can do these things; though of a certainty they would go their own way in spite of us—the fine powers would—if, unluckily for us, they didn't appeal to us. I like to think of you working out your ideas—planning all those possibilities together—in the wondrous Chocorua October—where I hope you are staying to the end—and even if intensity at the studio naturally suffers for the time it has only fallen back a little to gather again for the spring. I mean in particular the intensity of which you were the subject and centre, and which must have at first been somewhat hampered by its own very excess. Bill's only danger is in his tendency to be intensely intense—which is a bit of a waste; if one is intense (and it's the only thing for an artist to be) one should be economically, that is carelessly and cynically so: in that way one limits the conditions and tangles of one's problem. But don't give Bill this for a specimen of the way you and I are going to pull him through: we shall do much better yet—only it's past, far past, midnight and the deep hush of the little old sleeping town suggests bed-time rather as the great question for the moment. I have come back to this admirable small corner with great joy and profit—and oh, dear Alice, how earnestly you are awaited here at some not really distant hour by your affectionate old uncle,

    HENRY JAMES.

To Mrs. Frederic Harrison

The "small fiction" sent to Mrs. Harrison was The Outcry.

    Reform Club, Pall Mall, S.W.
    Oct. 19, 1911.

Dear Mrs. Harrison,

I am more touched than I can say by your gentle and generous acknowledgment of the poor little sign of contrition and apology (in the shape of a slight offered beguilement) that referred to my graceless silence after the receipt of a beautiful word of sympathy in a great sorrow months and months ago—I am ashamed to remind you of how many! You now heap coals of fire, as the phrase is, on my head—and I can scarcely bear it, for the pure crushing sense of your goodness. I was in truth, at the time of your other letter, deeply submerged—at once horribly bereft and very ill physically, but I was really almost as much touched by the kindness of which yours was a part as I was either. Only I was unable to do anything at the time in the way of recognition—at the time or for a long while afterwards; and when at last I did begin to emerge—after a very difficult year in America which came to an end only two months ago, my very indebtednesses were paralysing—my long silence required, to my sore sense, so much explanation. However, I have little by little explained—to some friends; though I think not to those I count as closest—for such, one feels, are the best comprehenders, without one's having to tell too much.

I am in town, you see—not at Rye, having gone back there definitely, three weeks ago, to the questionable experiment of taking up my abode there for the season to come. The experiment broke down—I can no longer stand the solitude and confinement, the immobilisation, of that contracted corner in these shortening and darkening weeks and months. These things have the worst effect upon me—and I fled to London pavements, lamplights, shopfronts, taxi's—and friends; amid all of which I have recovered my equilibrium excellently, and shall do so still more. It means definitely for me no more winters at rueful Rye—only summers, though I hope plenty of them. I go down there, however, for bits, to keep my small household together—I can't yet, or till I arrange some frugal footing, bring it up here; and I shall be delighted to profit by one of those occasions to seek your hospitality in a neighbourly way for a couple of nights. I shall be eager for this, and will communicate with you as soon as the opportunity seems to glimmer. Please express to Frederic Harrison my hearty participation, by sympathy and sense, in all the fine things that are now so handsomely happening to him; he is a splendid example and incitement (excitement in fact) for those climbing the great hill—the hill of the long faith and the stout staff—just after him, and who see him so little spent and so erect against the sky at the top. We see you with him, dear Mrs. Harrison, making scarcely less brave a figure—at least to your very faithful old friend,

    HENRY JAMES.

P.S. I have it at heart to mention that my small fiction was written two years ago—in 1909.

To Miss Theodora Bosanquet

On this appeal Miss Bosanquet, H. J.'s amanuensis, secured rooms for him in Lawrence Street, Chelsea.

    105 Pall Mall, S.W.
    October 27th, 1911.

Dear Miss Bosanquet,

Oh if you could only have the real right thing to miraculously propose to me, you and Miss Bradley, when I see you on Tuesday at 4.30! For you see, by this bolting in horror and loathing (but don't repeat those expressions!) from Rye for the winter, my situation suddenly becomes special and difficult; and largely through this, that having got back to work and to a very particular job, the need of expressing myself, of pushing it on, on the old Remingtonese terms, grows daily stronger within me. But I haven't a seat and temple for the Remington and its priestess—can't have here at this club, and on the other hand can't now organize a permanent or regular and continuous footing for the London winter, which means something unfurnished and taking (wasting, now) time and thought. I want a small, very cheap and very clean furnished flat or trio of rooms etc. (like the one we talked of under the King's Cross delusion—only better and with some, a very few, tables and chairs and fireplaces,) that I could hire for 2 or 3—3 or 4—months to drive ahead my job in—the Remington priestess and I converging and meeting there morning by morning—and it being preferably nearer to her than to me; though near tubes and things for both of us! I must keep on this place for food and bed etc.—I have it by the year—till I really have something else by the year—for winter purposes—to supersede it (Lamb House abides, for long summers.) Your researches can have only been for the unfurnished—but look, think, invent! Two or three decent little tabled and chaired and lighted rooms would do. I catch a train till Monday, probably late. But on Tuesday!

    Yours ever,
    HENRY JAMES.

To Mrs. William James

The book on which H. J. was now at work was A Small Boy and Others.

    The Athenaeum, Pall Mall, S.W.
    Nov. 13th, 1911.

Dearest Alice,

I must bless you on the spot for your dear letter of the 22nd—continued on the 31st. I clutch so at everything that concerns and emanates from you all that I kind of pine for the need of it all the while—or at any rate am immensely and positively bettered by every scrap of the dear old Library life that you can manage to waft over to me.... I find, naturally, that I can think of you all, and mingle with you so, ever so much more vividly than I could of old—through the effect of all those weeks and months of last year—which have had at any rate that happy result, that I have the constant image of your days and doings. You must think now very cheerfully and relievedly of mine—because distinctly, yes, dear brave old London is working my cure. The conditions here were what I needed all the while that I was so far away from them—I mean because they are of the kind materially best addressed to helping me to work my way back to an equilibrium.... I shall see how it works—from 10.30 to 1.30 each day—and let you hear more; but it represents the yearning effort really to get, more surely and swiftly now, up to my neck into the book about William and the rest of us. I have written to Harry to ask him for certain of the young, youthful letters (copies of them) which I didn't bring away with me—on the other hand I have found some six or eight very precious ones mixed up with the mass of Father's that I have with me (thrust into Father's envelopes etc.) Of Father's, alas, very few are useable; they are so intensely domestic, private and personal.

November 19th. I find with horror, dearest Alice, that I have inadvertently left this all these days in my portfolio (interrupted where I broke off above,) under the impression that I had finished and posted it. This is dreadful, and I am afraid shows how the beneficent London, for all its beneficence, does interpose, invade and distract, giving one too many things to do and to bear in mind at once. What sickened me is that I have thus kept my letter over a whole wasted week—so far as being in touch with you all is concerned. On the other hand this lapse of time enables me blessedly to confirm, in the light of further experience, whatever of good and hopeful the beginning of the present states to you....

In the third place a most valued letter from Harry has come, accompanying a packet of more of William's letters typed, for which I heartily thank him, and promising me some others yet. I am writing to him in a very few days, and will then tell him how I am entirely at one with him about the kind of use to be made by me of all these early things, the kind of setting they must have, the kind of encompassment that the book, as my book, my play of reminiscence and almost of brotherly autobiography, and filial autobiography not less, must enshrine them in. The book I see and feel will be difficult and unprecedented and perilous—but if I bring it off it will be exquisite and unique; bring it off as I inwardly project it and oh so devoutly desire it. I greatly regret only, also, the almost complete absence of letters from Alice. She clearly destroyed after Father's death all the letters she had written to them—him and Mother—in absence, and this was natural enough. But it leaves a perfect blank—though there are on the other hand all my own intimate memories. Could you see—ask—if Fanny Morse has kept any? that is just possible. She wrote after all so little. I marvel that I have none—during the Cambridge years. But she was so ill that writing was rare for her—very rare. However, I must end this. I hope the Irving St. winter wears a friendly face for you. I think so gratefully and kindly now of the little chintzy parlour—blest refuge. I re-embrace dearest Peg and I do so want some demonstration of what Aleck is doing. It's a pang to hear from you that he "isn't so well physically." What does that sadly mean? I send him all my love and to your mother. Ever your

    HENRY.

To Mrs. Wharton

    Reform Club, Pall Mall, S.W.
    Nov. 19th, 1911.

Dearest Edith,

There are scarce degrees of difference in my constant need of hearing from you, yet when that felicity comes it manages each time to seem pre-eminent and to have assuaged an exceptional hunger. The pleasure and relief, at any rate, three days since, were of the rarest quality—and it's always least discouraging (for the exchange of sentiments) to know that your wings are for the moment folded and your field a bit delimited. I knew you were back in Paris as an informer passing hereby on his way thence again to N.Y. had seen you dining at the Ritz en nombreuse compagnie, "looking awfully handsome and stunningly dressed." And Mary Hunter cesjours-ci had given me earlier and more exotic news of you, yet coloured with a great vividness of sympathy and admiration.... But I feel that it takes a hard assurance to speak to you of "arriving" anywhere—as that implies starting and continuing, and before your great heroic rushes and revolutions I can only gape and sigh and sink back. It requires an association of ease—with the whole heroic question (of the "up and doing" state)—which I don't possess, to presume to suggestionise on the subject of a new advent. Great will be the glory and joy, and the rushing to and fro, when the wide wings are able, marvellously, to show us symptoms of spreading again—and here I am (mainly here this winter) to thrill with the first announcement. London is better for me, during these months, than any other spot of earth, or of pavement; and even here I seem to find I can work—and n'ai pas maintenant d'autre idée. Apropos of which aid to life your remarks about my small latest-born are absolutely to the point. The little creature is absolutely of the irresistible sex of her most intelligent critic—for I don't pretend, like Lady Macbeth, to bring forth men-children only. You speak at your ease, chère Madame, of the interminable and formidable job of my producing à mon âge another Golden Bowl—the most arduous and thankless task I ever set myself. However, on all that il y aurait bien des choses à dire; and meanwhile, I blush to say, the Outcry is on its way to a fifth edition (in these few weeks), whereas it has taken the poor old G.B. eight or nine years to get even into a third. And I should have to go back and live for two continuous years at Lamb House to write it (living on dried herbs and cold water—for "staying power"—meanwhile;) and that would be very bad for me, would probably indeed put an end to me altogether. My own sense is that I don't want, and oughtn't to try, to attack ever again anything longer (save for about 70 or 80 pages more) than the Outcry. That is déjà assez difficile—the "artistic economy" of that inferior little product being a much more calculated and ciphered, much more cunning and (to use your sweet expression) crafty one than that of five G.B.'s. The vague verbosity of the Oxusflood (beau nom!) terrifies me—sates me; whereas the steel structure of the other form makes every parcelle a weighed and related value. Moreover nobody is really doing (or, ce me semble, as I look about, can do) Outcries, while all the world is doing G.B.'s—and vous-même, chère Madame, tout le premier: which gives you really the cat out of the bag! My vanity forbids me (instead of the more sweetly consecrating it) a form in which you run me so close. Seulement alors je compterais bâtir a great many (a great many, entendezvous?) Outcries—and on données autrement rich. About this present one hangs the inferiority, the comparative triviality, of its primal origin. But pardon this flood of professional egotism. I have in any case got back to work—on something that now the more urgently occupies me as the time for me circumstantially to have done it would have been last winter, when I was insuperably unfit for it, and that is extremely special, experimental and as yet occult. I apply myself to my effort every morning at a little repaire in the depths of Chelsea, a couple of little rooms that I have secured for quiet and concentration—to which our blest taxi whirls me from hence every morning at 10 o'clock, and where I meet my amanuensis (of the days of the composition of the G.B.) to whom I gueuler to the best of my power. In said repaire I propose to crouch and me blottir (in the English shade of the word, for so intensely revising an animal, as well) for many, many weeks; so that I fear dearest Edith, your idea of "whirling me away" will have to adapt itself to the sense worn by "away"—as it clearly so gracefully will! For there are senses in which that particle is for me just the most obnoxious little object in the language. Make your fond use of it at any rate by first coming away—away hither....

    Yours all and always,