The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II

Mr. Bruce Porter had written from San Francisco, describing the earthquake of the preceding spring.

    Lamb House, Rye.
    February 19th, 1907.

My dear Bruce Porter,

I have had from you a very noble and beautiful letter, which has given me exceeding great joy, and which I have only not sooner thanked you for—well, by reason of many interruptions and preoccupations—mainly those resulting from my being in London (the hourly importunate) when it came to me; at which seasons, and during which sojourns, I always put off as much correspondence as possible till I get back to this comparative peace. (I returned here, but three days since.) How shall I tell you, at any rate, today, how your letter touches and even, as it were, relieves me? I had felt like such a Backward Brute in writing mine, but now in communication with your treasures of indulgence and generosity, I feel only your admirable virtue and the high price I set upon your friendship. So I thank you, all tenderly, and assure you that you have poured balm on much of my anxiety, not to say on my shame. Your account of those unimaginable weeks of your great crisis are of a thrilling and uplifting interest—and yet everything remains unimaginable to me—as to the sense of your whole actual situation; and the lurid newspapers, on all this, do nothing but darken and distract my vision. I hope you are living in less of a pandemonium than they, basest afflictions of our afflicted age, give you out to be—but verily the bridge of comprehension is strained and shaky and impassable between this little old-world russet shore and your vertiginous cosmic coast. Let me cling therefore to you, dear Bruce Porter, personally, as to the friend of those three or four all but fabulous antediluvian days, and keep my hands on you tight, till, by gentle insistent pressure, I have made you yield to that delightful possibility of your perhaps at some nearish day presenting yourself here. You speak of it as a discussable thing—it's the cream of your letter. Let me just say once for all you shall have the very eagerest and intensest welcome. Heaven therefore speed the day. I go to the continent for a few weeks—eight or ten, probably at most—a fortnight hence; but return after that to be here in the most continuous fashion for months and months to come—all summer and autumn. You are vividly interesting too on the subject of Fanny Stevenson and her situation—and your picture is filled out a little by my hearing of her as in a rather obscure and inaccessible town "somewhere on the Riviera"; communicating with a friend or two in London in an elusive and deprecative fashion—withholding her address so as not to be overtaken or met with (apparently.) Poor lady, poor barbarous and merely instinctive lady—ah, what a tangled web we weave! I probably shall fail of seeing her, and yet, with a sneaking kindness for her that I have, shall be sorry wholly to lose her. She won't, I surmise, come to England. But if I see you here I shall repine at nothing. Do manage to be sustained for the gallant pilgrimage—and do let it count a little, for that, that I am here, my dear Bruce Porter, ever so clingingly and constantly yours,

    HENRY JAMES.

To Miss Grace Norton

    Lamb House, Rye.
    March 5th, 1907.

Dearest Grace,

Hideous as is really the time that has elapsed since I last held any communication with you (on that torrid July 3d, p.m., in Kirkland St.—I won't name the year!) it has seemed to me extraordinarily brief and has in fact passed like a flash! Measured by the calendar it's incredible—measured by my sense of the way the months whizz by (more and more like the telegraph-posts at the window of the train,) it has been a simple good "run" from the eve of my leaving America to the present moment. I came straight back here—to a great monotony and regularity and tranquillity of life (on the whole,) and haven't had really (and shouldn't have, didn't I begin to count!) any of the conscious desolation of having drifted away from you. However, beginning to count makes it another and rather horrible matter—or would make it so if you and I ever counted (in the dreary way of "times" of writing,) or ever had, or ever will. At the same time I yearn to hear from you, and it may increase my chance of that boon if I tell you with all urgency how much I do. On that side, though you, through your habitual magnanimity, won't "mind" my long silence unduly, I mind it myself, with this very first word of my breaking it. Because I'm talking with you now again, and that brings back so many, too many things; and to do so seems the pleasantest and dearest and most natural thing in the world. I leave this place tomorrow for Paris—that is sleep at Dover—but an hour and a half hence—and go farther the next day; which is the first time I've stirred (except for an occasional week in London) since I last stirred out of sight of you. I've been for a long time under the promise of going over to see William's Bill, who is working tooth and nail, to every appearance, at Julian's studio— …If I can I shall dash down to Italy—to Florence and Venice—for a short spell before restoration—to this domicile—the last time, I daresay, that I shall ever brave the distinctly enfeebled spell (as I last felt it to be—seven years ago) of those places; so utterly the prey of the Barbarian now that if you still ever yearn for them take an easy comfort and thank your stars that you knew them in the less blighted and dishonoured time. It is very singular to me, living here (in this comparatively old-world corner which has nothing else but its own little immemorial blots and vulgarisms—besides all its great merits) to find myself plunged into the strain of the rankest and most promiscuous actuality as soon as, crossing to the Continent, I direct myself to the shrines of a superior antiquity. One is so out of the stream here that one almost wholly forgets it—and then it is incongruously the most sacred pilgrimages that most vociferously remind one—because (to put it as gracefully as possible) most cosmopolitanly. "Left to myself" I really think I should scarce ever budge from here again—unless to go back to the U.S., which, honestly, I should like almost as much as I should (in some connections—the "travelling" above all) dread it. But the dread wouldn't be the same dread of the American-Anglican and German Italy. These will strike you as cheerful sentiments for the eve of a pleasure-trip abroad, and I shall feel better when I've started; but even so the travel-impulse (which I've had almost no opportunity in my life really to gratify) is extinct as from inanition (and personal antiquity!) and above all, more and more, the only way I care to travel is by reading. To stay at home and read is more and more my ideal—and it's one that you have beautifully realized. I think it was the sense of all that it has so admirably done for you that confirmed me while I was with you in my high estimation of it. Great, every way, dear Grace, and all-exemplary, I thought the dignity and coherency and benignity of your life—long after beholding it as it has taken me (by the tiresome calendar again!) to make you this declaration. I at any rate have the greatest satisfaction in the thought—the fireside vision—of your still and always nobly leading it. I don't know, and how should I? much about you in detail—but I think I have a kind of instinct of how the side-brush of the things that I do get in a general way a reverberation of touches and affects you, and as in one way or another there seems to have been plenty of the stress and strain and pain of life on the circumference (and even some of it at the centre, as it were) of your circle, I've not been without feeling (and responding to,) I boldly say, some of your vibrations. I hope at least the most acute of them have proceeded from causes presenting for you—well, what shall I say?—an interest!! Even the most worrying businesses often have one—but there are sides of them that we could discover in talk over the fire but that I don't appeal to you lucidly to portray to me. Besides, I can imagine them exquisitely—as well as where they fail of that beguilement, and believe me, therefore, I am living with you, as I write, quite as much as if I made out—as I used to—by your pharos-looking lamplight through your ample and lucid window-pane, that you were sitting "in," as they say here, and were thereupon planning an immediate invasion. I have given intense ear to every breath of indication about Charles and his condition, and in particular to the appearance that, so far as I understand, he has been presiding and dignifying, as he alone remains to have done, the Longfellow centenary—a symptom, as it has seemed to me, of very handsome vitality....

I have been very busy all these last months in raising my Productions for a (severely-sifted) Collective and Definitive Edition—of which I even spoke to you, I think, when I saw you last, as it was then more or less definitely planned. Then hitches and halts supervened—the whole matter being complicated by the variety and the conflict of my scattered publishers, till at last the thing is on the right basis (in the two countries—for it has all had to be brought about by quite separate arts here and in America,) and a "handsome"—I hope really handsome and not too cheap—in fact sufficiently dear—array will be the result—owing much to close amendment (and even "rewriting") of the four earliest novels and to illuminatory classification, collocation, juxtaposition and separation through the whole series. The work on the earlier novels has involved much labour—to the best effect for the vile things, I'm convinced; but the real tussle is in writing the Prefaces (to each vol. or book,) which are to be long—very long!—and loquacious—and competent perhaps to pousser à la vente. The Edition is to be of 23 vols. and there are to be some 15 Prefaces (as some of the books are in two,) and twenty-three lovely frontispieces—all of which I have this winter very ingeniously called into being; so that they at least only await "process" reproduction. The prefaces, as I say, are difficult to do—but I have found them of a jolly interest; and though I am not going to let you read one of the fictions themselves over I shall expect you to read all the said Introductions. Thus, my dear Grace, do I—not at all artlessly—prattle to you; artfully, on the contrary, toward casting some spell of chatter on yourself.... Meanwhile the Irving Street echoes that have come to me have been of the din of voices and the affluence of strangers and the conflict of nationalities and the rush of everything. I don't quite distinguish you in the thick of it, but I suppose Shady Hill has had its share. Will you give my tender love there when you next go? Will you kindly keep a little in the dark for the present my fond chatter about my poor Edition? Above all, dearest Grace, will you believe me, through thick and thin, your ever devoted old friend,

    HENRY JAMES.

To William James, junior

    Grand Hotel, Pau.
    March 26, 1907.

Dearest Bill,

This is just a word to tell you that your poor old far-flying Uncle is safe and sound and greatly enjoying [himself], so far, after étapes consisting of Bois, Poictiers, and Bordeaux, with wonderful minor stops, déjeuners and other impressions in between. We got here last night—into the balmiest, tepidest, dustiest south, and stay three days or so, for excursions, going probably after today's luncheon to Lourdes and back. This large, smooth old France is wonderful (wisely seen, as we are seeing it,) and I know it already much more infinitely well. The motor is a magical marvel—discreetly and honourably used, as we are using it—and my hosts are full of amenity, sympathy, appreciation, etc. (as well as of wondrous other servanted and avant-courier'd arts of travel,) so that we are an excellent combination and most happy family—including our most admirable American chauffeur from Lee, Mass., whose native Yankee saneness and intelligence (projected into these unprecedented conditions) makes me as proud of him as he is of his Panhard car. On Thursday or Friday (at furthest) we turn "her" head to Paris—but of course with other stops and impressions—though none, I think, of more than one night. Don't dream of troubling to write—I will write again as we draw nearer. I hope these efflorescent days (if you have them) don't turn your stomach too much against the thick taste of the Julian broth. I already long to see you again.

    Ever your affectionate
    HENRY JAMES.

To Howard Sturgis

The plan of approaching Italy through South Germany and Austria was not carried out. He presently went straight from Paris to Rome.

    58 Rue de Varenne, Paris.
    April 13th, 1907.

Dearest Howard,

I find your beautiful tragic wail on my return from a wondrous, miraculous motor tour of three weeks and a day with these admirable friends of ours, who so serve one up all the luxuries of the season and all the ripe fruits of time that one's overloaded plate will hold. We got back from—from everywhere, literally—last night; and in presence of a table groaning under arrears and calendars and other stationery I can but, as it were, fold you in my arms. You talk of sad and fearful things … and I don't know what to say to you (at least in this poor inky, scratchy way.) What I should like to be able to say is that I will come down to Rome and see you even now; but this alas is not in my power without my altering all sorts of other pressing arrangements and combinations already made. I do hope to go to Rome for a little—a very little—stay later; but not before the middle or 20th of May; a time—a generally emptier, quieter time—I greatly prefer there to any other. It is of extreme importance to me to be (to remain) in Paris till May 1st—I haven't been here for years and shall probably never once again be here (or "come abroad" once again, like you) for the rest of my natural life. Ergo I am taking what there is of it for me—I can't afford, as it were, not to. And I have made my plans (if they hold) for approaching Italy by South Germany, Vienna, Trieste, Venice &c.—all of which will bring me to Rome by the 20th of May about, when, I fear, you will well nigh—or certainly—have cleared out altogether. From Rome and Florence … I shall return straight home—where at least, then, I must infallibly see you. Or shall you pass through this place—homeward—before May 1st? The gentlest of lionesses bids me tell you what a tenderest welcome you would have from them. Hold up your heart, meanwhile, and remember, for God's sake, that there is a point beyond which the follies and infirmities of our friends and our proches have no right to ravage and wreck our own independence of soul. That quantity is too precious a contribution to the saving human sum of good, of lucidity, and we are responsible for the entretien of it. So keep yours, shake yours, up—well up—my dearest friend, and to this end believe in your admirable human use. To be "crushed" is to be of no use; and I for one insist that you shall be of some, and the most delightful, to me. Feel everything, tant que vous voudrez—but then soar superior and don't leave tatters of your precious person on every bush that happens to bristle with all the avidities and egotisms. We shall judge it all sanely and taste it all wisely and talk of it all (even) thrillingly—and profitably—yet; and I depend on your keeping that appointment with me. This is all, dearest Howard, now. I almost blush to break through your obsessions to the point of saying that my three weeks of really seeing this large incomparable France in our friend's chariot of fire has been almost the time of my life. It's the old travelling-carriage way glorified and raised to the 100th power. Will you very kindly say to Maud Story for me, with my love, that I am coming to Rome very nearly all to see her. I bless your companions and am your tout dévoué

    HENRY JAMES.

To Howard Sturgis

From Rome H. J. went to Cernitoio, Mr. Edward Boit's villa near Vallombrosa.

    Hôtel de Russie, Rome.
    May 29th, 1907.

Dearest Howard,

I've been disgustingly silent in spite of your so good prompt, blessed letter—but the waters of Rome have been closing over my head, for I have, each day, a good part of each, something urgent and imperative to do, "for myself," as it were—and everything the hours and the "people" bring forth has to be crowded into too scant a margin; with a consequent sensation of breathlessness that ill consorts alike with my figure, my years and my inclinations. I am "sitting for my bust," into the bargain—to Hendrik Andersen (it will be, I think, better than some other such work of his,) and that makes practically a great hole of two hours and a half in the day—without which, in truth (the promise to hold out to the end of the ordeal,) I should already have broken away from this now very highly-developed heat and dust and glare. My days "abroad" are violently shrinking—I am long since due at home; and my yearning for a damp grey temperate clime hourly develops. However, I didn't mean to pour forth this plaintive flood—but rather to take a fine healthy jolly tone over the fact of your own so happily achieved (I trust) liberation from the Roman yoke and your probable inhalation at this moment of the fresh air of the summits and of the tonic influence of admirable friends. Need I say that I number poor dear deafened Rhoda's Florentine contact as among the stimulating?—since it surely must take more than deafness, must take utter and cataclysmal dumbness—and I'm not sure even that would get the better of her practical acuity—to make her fall from the tonic. But I'm very sorry—I mean for her I trust temporary trouble—and if I but knew where she is—which you don't mention—and when departing, or how long staying, would reach her if I might. I cherish the thought of getting off Tuesday at very latest—if I return intact from a long motor-day that awaits me at the hands of the Filippo Filippis on Saturday—as I believe. I drove with Mrs. Mason out yesterday afternoon to the Abbotts' villa—that is a very charming late afternoon tea-garden, and they told me you are soon to have them at Cernitoio. Expansive (not to say expensive) and illimitable you! All this time I don't tell you—tell Mildred Seymour—a tenth of the comfort I am deriving amid continued tension from the sense that her (and your bow is for the time unstrung and hung up for the Vallombrosa pines to let the mountain-breeze loosely play with it.... I expect to be here till Tuesday a.m.—but I see I've said so. You shall then, and so shall Edward Boit (to whom and his girls I send tanti saluti, as well as to brave and beneficent Mr. William) have further news of yours, my dear Howard, ever affectionately,

    HENRY JAMES.

To Madame Wagnière

The name of this correspondent recalls a meeting at Florence, described in an early letter (vol. i, p. 28). Madame Wagnière (born Huntington) was now living in Switzerland.

    Palazzo Barbaro,
    Venice.
    June 23rd, 1907.

Dear Laura Wagnière,

I have waited since getting your good note to have the right moment and right light for casting the right sort of longing lingering look on the little house with the "Giardinetto" on the Canal Grande, to the right of Guggenheim as you face Guggenheim. I hung about it yesterday afternoon in the gondola with Mrs. Curtis, and we both thought it very charming and desirable, only that she has (perhaps a little vaguely) heard it spoken of as "damp" which I confess it looks to me just a trifle. However, this may be the vainest of calumnies. It does look expensive and also a trifle contracted, and is at present clearly occupied and with no outward trace of being to let about it at all. For myself, in this paradise of great household spaces (I mean Venice generally), I kind of feel that even the bribe of the Canal Grande and a giardinetto together wouldn't quite reconcile me to the purgatory of a very small, really (and not merely relatively) small house.... Mrs. Curtis is eloquent on the sacrifices one must make (to a high rent here) if one must have, for "smartness," the "Canal Grande" at any price. She makes me feel afresh what I've always felt, that what I should probably do with my own available ninepence would be to put up with some large marble halls in some comparatively modest or remote locality, especially della parte di fondamenta nuova, etc.; that is, so I got there air and breeze and light and pulizia and a dozen other conveniences! In fine, the place you covet is no doubt a dear little "fancy" place; but as to the question of "coming to Venice" if one can, I have but a single passionate emotion, a thousand times Yes! It would be for me, I feel, in certain circumstances (were I free, with a hundred other facts of my life different,) the solution of all my questions, and the consolation of my declining years. Never has the whole place seemed to me sweeter, dearer, diviner. It leaves everything else out in the cold. I wish I could dream of coming to me mettre dans mes meubles (except that my meubles would look so awful here!) beside you. I presume to enter into it with a yearning sympathy. Happy you to be able even to discuss it....

This place and this large cool upper floor of the Barbaro, with all the space practically to myself, and draughts and scirocco airs playing over me indecently undressed, is more than ever delicious and unique.... The breath of the lagoon still plays up, but I mingle too much of another fluid with my ink, and I have no more clothes to take off.... I greet affectionately, yes affectionately, kind Henry, and the exquisite gold-haired maiden, and I am, dear Laura Wagnière, your very faithful old friend,

    HENRY JAMES.

To Mrs. Wharton

The Vicomte Robert d'Humières, poet and essayist, fell in action in France, April 26, 1915.

    Lamb House, Rye.
    August 11th, 1907.

My dear Edith and my dear Edward,

The d'Humières have just been lunching with me, and that has so reknotted the silver cord that stretched so tense from the first days of last March to the first of those of May—wasn't it?—that I feel it a folly in addition to a shame not yet to have written to you (as I have been daily and hourly yearning to do) ever since my return from Italy about a month ago. You flung me the handkerchief, Edith, just at that time—literally cast it at my feet: it met me, exactly, bounding—rebounding—from my hall-table as I recrossed my threshold after my long absence; which fact makes this tardy response, I am well aware, all the more graceless. And then came the charming little picture-card of the poor Lamb House hack grinding out his patient prose under your light lash and dear Walter B.'s—which should have accelerated my production to the point of its breaking in waves at your feet: and yet it's only to-night that my overburdened spirit—pushing its way, ever since my return, through the accumulations and arrears, in every sort, of absence—puts pen to paper for your especial benefit—if benefit it be. The charming d'Humières both, as I say, touring—training—in England, through horrid wind and weather, with a bonne grace and a wit and a Parisianism worthy of a better cause, amiably lunched with me a couple of days since on their way from town to Folkestone, and so back to Plassac (don't you like "Plassac," down in our dear old Gascony?) the seat of M. de Dampierre—to whom, à ce qu'il paraît, that day at luncheon we were all exquisitely sympathetic! Well, it threw back the bridge across the gulfs and the months, even to the very spot where the great nobly-clanging glass door used to open to the arrested, the engulfing and disgorging car—for we sat in my little garden here and talked about you galore and kind of made plans (wild vain dreams, though I didn't let them see it!) for our all somehow being together again.... But oh, I should like to remount the stream of time much further back than their passage here—if it weren't (as it somehow always is when I get at urgent letters) ever so much past midnight. It was only with my final return hither that my deep draught of riotous living came to an end, and as the cup had originally been held to my lips all by your hands I somehow felt in presence of your interest and sympathy up to the very last, and as if you absolutely should have been avertie from day to day—I did the matter that justice at least. Too much of the story has by this time dropped out; but there are bits I wish I could save for you.... But I must break off—it's 1.15 a.m.!

Aug. 12th. I wrote you last from Rome, I think—didn't I? but it was after that that I heard of your having had at the last awful delays and complications, awful strike-botherations, over your sailing. I knew nothing of them at the time.... I can only hope that the horrid memory of it has been brushed and blown away for you by the wind of your American kilometres. I remained in Rome—for myself—a goodish while after last writing you, and there were charming moments, faint reverberations of the old-time refrains—with a happy tendency of the superfluous, the incongruous crew to take its departure as the summer came on; yet I feel that I shouldn't care if I never saw the perverted place again, were it not for the memory of four or five adorable occasions—charming chances—enjoyed by the bounty of the Filippis.... My point is that they carried me in their wondrous car (he drove it himself all the way from Paris via Macerata, and with four or five more picked-up inmates!) first to two or three adorable Roman excursions—to Fiumicino, e.g., where we crossed the Tiber on a medieval raft and then had tea—out of a Piccadilly tea-basket—on the cool sea-sand, and for a divine day to Subiaco, the unutterable, where I had never been; and then, second down to Naples (where we spent two days) and back; going by the mountains (the valleys really) and Monte Cassino, and returning by the sea—i.e. by Gaeta, Terracina, the Pontine Marshes and the Castelli—quite an ineffable experience. This brought home to me with an intimacy and a penetration unprecedented how incomparably the old coquine of an Italy is the most beautiful country in the world—of a beauty (and an interest and complexity of beauty) so far beyond any other that none other is worth talking about. The day we came down from Posilipo in the early June morning (getting out of Naples and round about by that end—the road from Capua on, coming, is archi-damnable) is a memory of splendour and style and heroic elegance I never shall lose—and never shall renew! No—you will come in for it and Cook will picture it up, bless him, repeatedly—but I have drunk and turned the glass upside down—or rather I have placed it under my heel and smashed it—and the Gipsy life with it!—for ever. (Apropos of smashes, two or three days after we had crossed the level crossing of Caianello, near Caserta, seven Neapolitan "smarts" were all killed dead—and this by no coming of the train, but simply by furious reckless driving and a deviation, a slip, that dashed them against a rock and made an instant end. The Italian driving is crapulous, and the roads mostly not good enough.) But I mustn't expatiate. I wish I were younger. But for that matter the "State Line" would do me well enough this evening—for it's again the stroke of midnight. If it weren't I would tell you more. Yes, I wish I were to be seated with you to-morrow—catching the breeze-borne "burr" from under Cook's fine nose! How is Gross, dear woman, and how are Mitou and Nicette—whom I missed so at Monte Cassino? I spent four days—out from Florence—at Ned Boit's wondrous—really quite divine "eyrie" of Cernitoio, over against Vallombrosa, a dream of Tuscan loveliness and a really admirable séjour.... I spent at the last two divine weeks in Venice—at the Barbaro. I don't care, frankly, if I never see the vulgarized Rome or Florence again, but Venice never seemed to me more loveable—though the vaporetto rages. They keep their cars at Mestre! and I am devotedly yours both,

    HENRY JAMES.

To Miss Gwenllian Palgrave

    Lamb House, Rye.
    Aug. 27, 1907.

My dear Gwenllian Palgrave,