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 (_ex_citement 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 _un_furnished--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 idee. 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, chere Madame, of the interminable and formidable job
of my producing a mon age another Golden Bowl--the most arduous and
thankless task I ever set myself. However, on all that il y aurait bien
des choses a 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 deja 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-meme, chere 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 batir a great many (a great many, entendezvous?)
Outcries--and on donnees 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,
HENRY JAMES.
*/
P.S. This was begun five days ago--and was raggedly and ruthlessly
broken off--had to be--and I didn't mark the place this Sunday a.m.
where I took it up again--on page 6th. But I put only today's date--as I
didn't put the other day's at the time.
_To W. E. Norris._
/*
Lamb House, Rye.
January 5th, 1912.
*/
/*
My dear Norris,
*/