"literary and artistic," the technical, side of the matter--the fact
that in doing this book I am led, by the very process and action of my
idiosyncrasy, on and on into more evocation and ramification of old
images and connections, more intellectual and moral autobiography
(though all closely and, as I feel it, exquisitely associated and
involved,) than I shall quite know what to do with--to do with, that is,
in this book (I shall doubtless be able to use rejected or suppressed
parts in some other way.) It's my more and more (or long since
established) difficulty always, that I have to project and _do_ a great
deal in order to choose from that, after the fact, what is most
designated and supremely urgent. That is a costly way of working, as
regards time, material etc.--at least in the short run. In the long run,
and "by and large," it, I think, abundantly justifies itself. That is
really all I meant to convey to you and to your mother through Bill--as
a kind of precaution and forewarning--for your inevitable sense of my
"slowness." Of course too I have had pulls up and breaks, sometimes
disheartening ones, through the recurrence of bad physical
conditions--and am still liable, strictly speaking, to these. But the
main thing to say about these, once for all, is that they tend steadily,
and most helpfully, to diminish, both in intensity and in duration, and
that I have really now reached the point at which the successful effort
to work really helps me physically--to say nothing of course of (a
thousand times) morally. It remains true that I do worry about the
money-question--by nature and fate (since I was born worrying, though
myself much more than others!)--and that this is largely the result of
these last years of lapse of productive work while my expenses have gone
more or less (while I was with you all in America less!) ruthlessly on.
But of this it's also to be cheeringly said that I have only to be
successfully and continuously at work for a period of about ten days for
it all to fall into the background altogether (all the worry,) and be
replaced by the bravest confidence of calculation. So much for _that_!
And now, for the moment--for this post at least, I must pull up. Well of
course do I understand that with your big new preoccupations and duties
close at hand you mayn't dream of a move in this direction, and I should
be horrified at seeming to exert the least pressure toward your even
repining at it. More still than the delight of seeing you will be that
of knowing that you are getting into close quarters with your new job. I
repeat that you have no idea of the good this will do me!--as to which I
sit between your Mother and Peg, clasping a hand of each, while we watch
your every movement and gloat, ecstatically, over you. Oh, give my love
so aboundingly to them, and to your grandmother, on it all!
Yours, dearest Harry, more affectionately than ever,
/*
H. J.
*/
_To R. W. Chapman._
/#
Mrs. Brookenham is of course the mother of the young heroine of
_The Awkward Age_.
#/
/*
Lamb House, Rye.
July 17th, 1912.
*/
/*
Dear Mr. Chapman,
*/
I very earnestly beg you not to take as the measure of the pleasure
given me by your letter the inordinate delay of this acknowledgment.
That admirable communication, reaching me at the climax of the London
June, found me in a great tangle of difficulties over the command of my
time and general conduct of my correspondence and other obligations; so
that after a vain invocation of a better promptness where you were
concerned, I took heart from the fact that I was soon to be at peace
down here, and that hence I should be able to address you at my ease. I
have in fact been here but a few days, and my slight further delay has
but risen from the fact that I brought down with me so _many_ letters to
answer!--though none of them, let me say, begins to affect me with the
beauty and interest of yours.
I am in truth greatly touched, deeply moved by it. What is one to say or
do in presence of an expression so generous and so penetrating? I can
only listen very hard, as it were, taking it all in with bowed head and
clasped hands, not to say moist eyes even, and feel that--well, that the
whole thing _has_ been after all worth while then. But one is simply in
the _hands_ of such a reader and appreciator as you--one yields even
assentingly, gratefully and irresponsibly to the current of your story
and consistency of your case. I feel that I really don't know much--as
to what your various particulars imply--save that you are delightful,
are dazzling, and that you must be beautifully right as to any view that
you take of anything. Let me say, for all, that if you think so, so it
must be; for clearly you see and understand and discriminate--while one
is at the end of time one's self so very vague about many things and
only conscious of one's general virtuous intentions and considerably
strenuous effort. What one has done has been conditioned and related and
involved--so to say, fatalised--every element and effort jammed up
against some other necessity or yawning over some consequent void--and
with anything good in one's achievement or fine in one's faculty
conscious all the while of having to _pay_ by this and that and the
other corresponding dereliction or weakness. You let me off, however, as
handsomely as you draw me on, and I see you as absolutely right about
everything and want only to square with yours _my_ impression: that is
to say any but that of my being "dim" in respect to some of the aspects,
possibly, of Mrs. Brookenham--which I don't think I am: I really think I
could stand a stiff cross-examination on that lady. But this is a
detail, and I can meet you only in a large and fond pre-submission on
the various points you make. I greatly wish our contact at Oxford the
other day had been less hampered and reduced--so that it was impossible,
in the event, altogether, to get within hail of you at Oriel. But I have
promised the kind President of Magdalen another visit, and then I shall
insist on being free to come and see you if you will let me. I cherish
your letter and our brief talk meanwhile as charmingly-coloured lights
in the total of that shining occasion. What power to irradiate has
Oxford at its best!--and as it was, the other week, so greatly at that
best. I _think_ the gruesome little errors of text you once so devotedly
noted for me in some of my original volumes don't for the most part
survive in the collective edition--but though a strenuous I am a
constitutionally fallible proof-reader, and I am almost afraid to assure
myself. However, I must more or less face it, and I am yours, dear Mr.
Chapman, all gratefully and faithfully,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Hugh Walpole._
/*
Lamb House, Rye.
Aug. 14th, 1912.
*/
...I rejoice that you wander to such good purpose--by which I mean
nothing more exemplary that that you apparently live in the light of
curiosity and cheer. I'm very glad for you that these gentle passions
have the succulent scene of Munich to pasture in. I haven't been there
for long years--was never there but once at all, but haven't forgotten
how genial and sympathetic I found it. Drink deep of every impression
and have a lot to tell me when the prodigal returns. I love travellers'
tales--especially when I love the traveller; therefore have plenty to
thrill me and to confirm that passion withal. I travel no further than
this, and never shall again; but it serves my lean purposes, or most of
them, and I'm thankful to be able to do so much and to feel even these
quiet and wholesome little facts about me. We're having in this rude
climate a summer of particularly bad and brutal manners--so far the
sweetness of the matter fails; but I get out in the lulls of the tempest
(it does nothing but rain and rage,) and when I'm within, my mind still
to me a kingdom is, however dismembered and shrunken. I haven't seen a
creature to talk of _you_ with--but I see on these terms very few
creatures indeed; none worth speaking of, still less worth talking to.
Clearly _you_ move still in the human maze--but I like to think of you
there; may it be long before you find the clue to the exit. You say
nothing of any return to _these_ platitudes, so I suppose you are to be
still a good while on the war-path; but when you are ready to smoke the
pipe of peace come and ask _me_ for a light. It's good for you to have
read Taine's English Lit.; he lacks saturation, lacks _waste_ of
acquaintance, but sees with a magnificent objectivity, reacts with an
energy to match, expresses with a splendid amplitude, and has just the
critical value, I think, of being so off, so _far_ (given such an
intellectual reach,) and judging and feeling in so different an air.
It's charming to me to hear that _The Ambassadors_ have again engaged
and still beguile you; it is probably a very _packed_ production, with a
good deal of one thing within another; I remember sitting on it, when I
wrote it, with that intending weight and presence with which you
probably often sit in these days on your trunk to make the lid close and
_all_ your trousers and boots go in. I remember putting in a good deal
about Chad and Strether, or Strether and Chad, rather; and am not sure
that I quite understand what in that connection you miss--I mean in the
way of what _could_ be there. The whole thing is of course, to
intensity, a picture of relations--and among them is, though not on the
first line, the relation of Strether to Chad. The relation of Chad to
Strether is a limited and according to my method only implied and
indicated thing, sufficiently there; but Strether's to Chad consists
above all in a charmed and yearning and wondering sense, a dimly envious
sense, of all Chad's young living and easily-taken _other_ relations;
other not only than the one to him, but than the one to Mme de Vionnet
and whoever else; this very sense, and the sense of Chad, generally, is
a part, a large part, of poor dear Strether's discipline, development,
adventure and general history. All of it that is of my subject seems to
me given--given by dramatic projection, as all the rest is given: how
can you say I do anything so foul and abject as to "state"? You deserve
that I should condemn you to read the book over once again! However,
instead of this I only impose that you come down to me, on your return,
for a couple of days--when we can talk better. I hold you to the heart
of your truest old
/*
H. J.
*/
_To Edmund Gosse._
/#
With regard to the "dread effulgence of their Lordships" it will be
remembered that Mr. Gosse was at this time Librarian of the House
of Lords. The allusion at the end is to Mr. Gosse's article on
Swinburne in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, further dealt
with in the next letter.
#/
_Dictated._
/*
Lamb House, Rye.
7th October, 1912.
*/
/*
My dear Gosse,
*/
Forgive this cold-blooded machinery--for I have been of late a stricken
man, and still am not on my legs; though judging it a bit urgent to
briefly communicate with you on a small practical matter. I have had
quite a Devil of a summer, a very bad and damnable July and August,
through a renewal of an ailment that I had regarded as a good deal
subdued, but that descended upon me in force just after I last saw you
and then absolutely raged for many weeks. (I allude to a most deplorable
tendency to chronic pectoral, or, more specifically, anginal, pain;
which, however, I finally, about a month ago, got more or less the
better of, in a considerably reassuring way.) I was but beginning to
profit by this comparative reprieve when I was smitten with a violent
attack of the atrocious affection known as "Shingles"--my impression of
the nature of which had been vague and inconsiderate, but to the now
grim shade of which I take off my hat in the very abjection of respect.
It has been a very horrible visitation, but I am getting better; only I
am still in bed and have to appeal to you in this graceless mechanical
way. My appeal bears on a tiny and trivial circumstance, the fact that I
have practically concluded an agreement for a Flat which I saw and liked
and seemed to find within my powers before leaving town (No. 21 Carlyle
Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W.) and which I am looking to for a more
convenient and secure basis of regularly wintering in London, for the
possibly brief remainder of my days, than any I have for a long time
had. I want, in response to a letter just received from the proprietors
of the same, to floor that apparently rather benighted and stupid body,
who are restless over the question of a "social reference" (in addition
to my reference to my Bankers), by a regular knock-down production of
the most eminent and exalted tie I can produce; whereby I have given
them your distinguished name as that of a voucher for my
respectability--as distinguished from my solvency; for which latter I
don't hint that you shall, however dimly, engage! So I have it on my
conscience, you see, to let you know of the liberty I have thus taken
with you; this on the chance of their really applying to you (which some
final saving sense of their being rather silly may indeed keep them from
doing.) If they do, kindly, very kindly, abound in my sense to the
extent of intimating to them that not to know me famed for my
respectability is scarcely to be respectable themselves! That is all I
am able to trouble you with now. I am as yet a poor thing, more even the
doctor's than mine own; but shall come round presently and shall then be
able to give you a better account of myself. There is no question of my
getting into the Flat in question till some time in January; I don't get
possession till Dec. 25th, but this preliminary has had to be settled.
Don't be burdened to write; I know your cares are on the eve of
beginning again, and how heavy they may presently be. I have only
wanted to create for our ironic intelligence the harmless pleasure of
letting loose a little, in a roundabout way, upon the platitude of the
City and West End Properties Limited, the dread effulgence of their
Lordships; the latter being the light and you the transparent lantern
that my shaky hand holds up. More, as I say, when that hand is less
shaky. I hope all your intimate news is good, and am only waiting for
the new vol. of the Dictionary with your Swinburne, which a word from
Sidney Lee has assured me is of maximum value. All faithful greeting.
/*
Yours always,
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Edmund Gosse._
_Dictated._
/*
Lamb House, Rye.
October 10th, 1912.
*/
/*
My dear Gosse,
*/
Your good letter of this morning helps to console and sustain. One
really needs any lift one can get after this odious experience. I am
emerging, but it is slow, and I feel much ravaged and bedimmed.
Fortunately these days have an intrinsic beauty--of the rarest and
charmingest here; and I try to fling myself on the breast of Nature
(though I don't mean by that fling myself and my poor blisters and scars
on the dew-sprinkled lawn) and forget, imperfectly, that precious hours
and days tumble unrestrained into the large round, the deep dark, the
ever open, hole of sacrifice. I am almost afraid my silly lessors of the
Chelsea Flat _won't_ apply to you for a character of me if they haven't
done so by now; afraid because the idea of a backhander from you,
reaching them straight, would so gratify my sense of harmless sport. It
was only a question of a word in case they _should_ appeal; kindly don't
dream of any such if they let the question rest (in spite indeed of
their having intimated that they would thoroughly thresh it out.)
I received with pleasure the small Swinburne--of so chaste and charming
a form; the perusal of which lubricated yesterday two or three rough
hours. Your composition bristles with items and authenticities even as a
tight little cushion with individual pins; and, I take it, is everything
that such a contribution to such a cause should be but for the not quite
ample enough (for my appetite) conclusive estimate or appraisement. I
know how little, far too little, to my sense, that element has figured
in those pages in general; but I should have liked to see you, in spite
of this, formulate and resume a little more the creature's character and
genius, the aspect and effect of his general performance. You will say I
have a morbid hankering for what a Dictionary doesn't undertake, what a
Sidney Lee perhaps even doesn't offer space for. I admit that I talk at
my ease--so far as ease is in my line just now. Very charming and happy
Lord Redesdale's contribution--showing, afresh, how _everything_ about
such a being as S. becomes and remains interesting. Prettily does
Redesdale write--and prettily will ---- have winced; if indeed the
pretty even in that form, or the wincing in any, could be conceived of
him.
I have received within a day or two dear old George Meredith's Letters;
and, though I haven't been able yet very much to go into them, I catch
their emanation of something so admirable and, on the whole, so baffled
and tragic. We must have more talk of them--and also of Wells' book,
with which however I am having extreme difficulty. I am not so much
struck with its hardness as with its weakness and looseness, the utter
going by the board of any real self-respect of composition and of
expression.... What lacerates me perhaps most of all in the Meredith
volumes is the meanness and poorness of editing--the absence of any
attempt to project the Image (of character, temper, quantity and quality
of mind, general size and sort of personality) that such a subject cries
aloud for; to the shame of our purblind criticism. For such a Vividness
to go a-begging!-- ... When one thinks of what Vividness would in
France, in such a case, have leaped to its feet in commemorative and
critical response! But there is too much to say, and I am able, in this
minor key, to say too little. We must be at it again. I was afraid your
wife was having another stretch of the dark valley to tread--I had heard
of your brother-in-law's illness. May peace somehow come! I re-greet and
regret you all, and am all faithfully yours,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Edmund Gosse._
_Dictated._
/*
Lamb House, Rye.
October 11th, 1912.
*/
/*
My dear Gosse,
*/
Let me thank you again, on this lame basis though I still be, for the
charming form of your news of your having helped me with my fastidious
friends of the Flat. Clearly, they were to be hurled to their doom; for
the proof of your having, with your potent finger, pressed the merciless
spring, arrives this morning in the form of a quite obsequious request
that I will conclude our transaction by a signature. This I am doing,
and I am meanwhile lost in fond consideration of the so susceptible spot
(susceptible to profanation) that I shall have reached only after such
purgations. I thank you most kindly for settling the matter.
Very interesting your note--in the matter of George Meredith. Yes, I
spent much of yesterday reading the Letters, and quite agree with your
judgment of them on the score of their rather marked non-illustration of
his intellectual wealth. They make one, it seems to me, enormously
_like_ him--but that one had always done; and the series to Morley, and
in a minor degree to Maxse, contain a certain number of rare and fine
things, many beautiful felicities of wit and vision. But the whole
aesthetic range, understanding that in a big sense, strikes me as meagre
and short; he clearly lived even less than one had the sense of his
doing in the world of art--in that whole divine preoccupation, that
whole intimate restlessness of projection and perception. And this is
the more striking that he appears to have been far more communicative
and overflowing on the whole ground of what he was doing in prose or
verse than I had at all supposed; to have lived and wrought with all
those doors more open and publicly slamming and creaking on their
hinges, as it were, than had consorted with one's sense, and with the
whole legend, of his intellectual solitude. His whole case is full of
anomalies, however, and these volumes illustrate it even by the light
they throw on a certain poorness of range in most of his correspondents.
Save for Morley (et encore!) most of them figure here as folk too little
a la hauteur--! though, of course, a man, even of his distinction, can
live and deal but with those who are within his radius. He was
_starved_, to my vision, in many ways--and that makes him but the more
nobly pathetic. In fine the whole moral side of him throws out some
splendidly clear lights--while the "artist," the secondary Shakespeare,
remains curiously dim. Your missing any letters to me rests on a
misconception of my very limited, even though extremely delightful to
me, active intercourse with him. I had with him no sense of reciprocity;
he remained for me always a charming, a quite splendid and rather
strange, Exhibition, so content itself to _be_ one, all genially and
glitteringly, but all exclusively, that I simply sat before him till the
curtain fell, and then came again when I felt I should find it up. But I
never _rang_ it up, never felt any charge on me to challenge him by
invitation or letter. But one or two notes from him did I find when Will
Meredith wrote to me; and these, though perfectly charming and kind, I
have preferred to keep unventilated. However, I am little enough
observing that same discretion to _you_--! I slowly mend, but it's
absurd how far I feel I've to come back from. Sore and strained has the
horrid business left me. But nevertheless I hope, and in fact almost
propose.
/*
Yours all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Edmund Gosse._
/#
_The Morning Post_ article was a review by Mr. Gosse of the
_Letters of George Meredith_.
#/
_Dictated._
Lamb House, Rye.
October 13th, 1912. */
/*
My dear Gosse,
*/
This is quite a feverish flurry of correspondence--but please don't for
a moment feel the present to entail on you the least further charge: I
only want to protest against your imputation of sarcasm to my figure of
the pin-cushion and the pins--and this all genially: that image having
represented to myself the highest possible tribute to your biographic
_facture_. What I particularly meant was that probably no such tense
satin slope had ever before grown, within the same number of square
inches, so dense a little forest of discriminated upright stems! There
you are, and I hear with immense satisfaction of the prospect of another
crop yet--this time, I infer, on larger ground and with beautiful alleys
and avenues and vistas piercing the plantation.