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 a 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.
*/
[Illustration: PAGE OF "THE AMERICAN" (ORIGINAL VERSION) AS REVISED BY
HENRY JAMES, 1906]
_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 etapes
consisting of Bois, Poictiers, and Bordeaux, with wonderful minor stops,
dejeuners 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 devoue
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Howard Sturgis._
/#
From Rome H. J. went to Cernitoio, Mr. Edward Boit's villa near
Vallombrosa.
#/
/*
Hotel 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 Wagniere._
/#
The name of this correspondent recalls a meeting at Florence,
described in an early letter (vol. i, p. 28). Madame Wagniere (born
Huntington) was now living in Switzerland.
#/
/*
Palazzo Barbaro,
Venice.
June 23rd, 1907.
*/
/*
Dear Laura Wagniere,
*/
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 Wagniere, your very faithful
old friend,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Mrs. Wharton._
/#
The Vicomte Robert d'Humieres, 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'Humieres 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'Humieres 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, a ce qu'il
parait, 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 sejour.... 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,
*/
It is quite horrid for me to have to tell you (and after a little delay
caused by a glut of correspondence, at once, and a pressure of other
occupations) that your gentle appeal, on your friend's behalf, in the
matter of the "favourite quotation," finds me utterly helpless and
embarrassed. The perverse collectress proposes, I fear, to collect the
impossible! I haven't _a_ favourite quotation--absolutely not: any more
than I have _a_ favourite day in the year, a favourite letter in the
alphabet or a favourite wave in the sea! And the collectress, in
general, has ever found me dark and dumb and odious, and I am too aged
and obstinate and brutal to change! Such is the sorry tale I have to ask
you all patiently to hear. I wish you were, or had been, coming over to
see me from Canterbury--instead of labouring in that barren vineyard of
other friendship. Do come without fail the next time you are there; and
believe me your--and your sister's--very faithful even if very
flowerless and leafless well-wisher from long ago,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To William James._
/*
Lamb House, Rye.
October 17th, 1907.
*/
/*
Dearest William,
*/