A copy of H. J.'s letter of thanks was sent to each of the
subscribers to the birthday present. He eventually preferred that
their names should be given in a postscript to his letter, which
follows in its final form.
#/
_Dictated._
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
April 21st, 1913.
*/
/*
My dear blest Percy!
*/
I enclose you herewith a sort of provisional apology for a Form of
Thanks! Read it and tell me on Wednesday, when I count on you at 1.45,
whether you think it will do--as being on the one hand not too pompous
or important and on the other not too free and easy. I have tried to
steer a middle way between hysterical emotion and marble immortality! To
any emendation you suggest I will give the eagerest ear, though I have
really considered and pondered my expression not a little, studying the
pro's and con's as to each _tour_. However, we will earnestly speak of
it. The question of exactly where and how my addresses had best figure
when the thing is reduced to print you will perhaps have your idea
about. For it must seem to you, as it certainly does to me, that their
names must in common decency be all drawn out again.... But you will
pronounce when we meet--heaven speed the hour!
Yours, my dear Percy, more than ever constantly,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
P.S. It seems to me that the little arrangement that really almost
_imposes_ itself would be that the Printed Thing should begin with my
date and address and my Dear Friends All; and that the full list,
taking even three complete pages or whatever, should then and there draw
itself out; after which, as a fresh paragraph, the body of my little
text should begin. Anything else affects me as _more_ awkward; and I
seem to see you in full agreement with me as to the absolute necessity
that every Signer, without exception, shall be addressed.
_To two hundred and seventy Friends._
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
April 21st, 1913.
*/
/*
Dear Friends All,
*/
Let me acknowledge with boundless pleasure the singularly generous and
beautiful letter, signed by your great and dazzling array and reinforced
by a correspondingly bright material gage, which reached me on my recent
birthday, April 15th. It has moved me as brave gifts and benedictions
can only do when they come as signal surprises. I seem to wake up to an
air of breathing good will the full sweetness of which I had never yet
tasted; though I ask myself now, as a second thought, how the large
kindness and hospitality in which I have so long and so consciously
lived among you could fail to act itself out according to its genial
nature and by some inspired application. The perfect grace with which it
has embraced the just-past occasion for its happy thought affects me, I
ask you to believe, with an emotion too deep for stammering words. I was
drawn to London long years ago as by the sense, felt from still earlier,
of all the interest and association I should find here, and I now see
how my faith was to sink deeper foundations than I could presume ever to
measure--how my justification was both stoutly to grow and wisely to
wait. It is so wonderful indeed to me as I count up your numerous and
various, your dear and distinguished friendly names, taking in all they
recall and represent, that I permit myself to feel at once highly
successful and extremely proud. I had never in the least understood that
I was the one or signified that I was the other, but you have made a
great difference. You tell me together, making one rich tone of your
many voices, almost the whole story of my social experience, which I
have reached the right point for living over again, with all manner of
old times and places renewed, old wonderments and pleasures reappeased
and recaptured--so that there is scarce one of your ranged company but
makes good the particular connection, quickens the excellent relation,
lights some happy train and flushes with some individual colour. I pay
you my very best respects while I receive from your two hundred and
fifty pair of hands, and more, the admirable, the inestimable bowl, and
while I engage to sit, with every accommodation to the so markedly
indicated "one of you," my illustrious friend Sargent. With every
accommodation, I say, but with this one condition that you yourselves,
in your strength and goodness, remain guardians of the result of his
labour--even as I remain all faithfully and gratefully yours,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
P.S. And let me say over your names.
[There follows the list of the two hundred and seventy subscribers to
the birthday gift.]
_To Mrs. G. W. Prothero._
/#
Mr. and Mrs. Prothero, already at Rye, had suggested that H. J.
should go to Lamb House for Whitsuntide.
#/
_Dictated._
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
April 30th, 1913.
*/
/*
Best of Friends Both!
*/
Oh it is a dream of delight, but I should have to climb a perpendicular
mountain first. Your accents are all but irresistible, and your company
divinely desirable, but if you knew how thoroughly, and for such
innumerable good reasons, I am seated here till I am able to leave for a
real and workable absence, you would do my poor plea of impossibility
justice. I have just conversed with Joan and Kidd, conversed so affably,
not to say lovingly, in the luminous kitchen, which somehow let in a
derisive glare upon every cranny and crevice of the infatuated scheme.
With this fierce light there mingled the respectful jeers of the two
ladies themselves, which rose to a mocking (though still deeply
deferential) climax for the picture of their polishing off, or dragging
violently out of bed, the so dormant and tucked-in house in the ideal
couple of hours. Before their attitude I lowered my lance--easily
understanding moreover that their round of London gaieties is still so
fresh and spiced a cup to them that to feel it removed from their lips
even for a moment is almost more than they can bear. And then the coarse
and brutal truth is, further that I am oh so utterly well fixed here for
the moment and so void of physical agility for any kind of somersault. A
little while back, while the Birthday raged, I did just look about me
for an off-corner; but now there has been a drop and, the best calm of
Whitsuntide descending on the scene here, I feel it would be a kind of
lapse of logic to hurry off to where the social wave, hurrying ahead of
me, would be breaking on a holiday strand. I _am_ so abjectly, so
ignobly fond of not "travelling." To keep up not doing it is in itself
for me the most thrilling of adventures. And I am working so well
(unberufen!) with my admirable Secretary; I shouldn't really dare to ask
her to join our little caravan, raising it to the number of five, for a
fresh tuning-up again. And on the other hand I mayn't now abandon what I
am fatuously pleased to call my work for a single precious hour. Forgive
my beastly rudeness. I will write more in a day or two. Do loll in the
garden yourselves to your very fill; do cultivate George's geniality; do
steal any volume or set of volumes out of the house that you may like;
and do still think gently of your poor ponderous and thereby, don't you
see? so permanent, old friend,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To William James, junior._
_Dictated._
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
June 18th, 1913.
*/
/*
Dearest Bill,
*/
I suppose myself to be trying to-day to get off a brief response both to
Harry and to dear Peg (whom I owe, much rather, volumes of
acknowledgment to;) but I put in first these few words to you and
Alice--for the quite wrong reason that the couple of notes just received
from you are those that have last come. This is because I feel as if I
had worried you a good bit more than helped over the so interesting
name-question of the Babe. It wasn't so much an attempted solution, at
all, that I the other week hastily rushed into, but only a word or two
that I felt I absolutely had to utter, for my own relief, by way of
warning against our reembarking, any of us, on a fresh and possibly
interminable career of the tiresome and graceless "Junior." You see I
myself suffered from that tag to help out my identity for forty years,
greatly disliking it all the while, and with my dislike never in the
least understood or my state pitied; and I felt I couldn't be dumb if
there was any danger of your Boy's being started unguardedly and _de
gaiete de coeur_ on a like long course; so probably and desirably
_very_ very long in his case, given your youth and "prominence," in
short your immortal duration. It seemed to me I ought to do _something_
to conjure away the danger, though I couldn't go into the matter of
exactly _what_, at all, as if we were only, and most delightfully,
talking it over at our leisure and face to face--face to face with the
Babe, I mean; as I wish to goodness we were! The different modes of
evasion or attenuation, in that American world where designations are so
bare and variations, of the accruing or "social" kind, so few, are
difficult to go into this distance; and in short all that I meant at all
by my attack was just a Hint! I feel so for poor dear Harry's carrying
of _his_ tag--and as if I myself were directly responsible for it!
However, no more of that.
To this machinery the complications arising from the socially so fierce
London June inevitably (and in fact mercifully) drive me; for I feel the
assault, the attack on one's time and one's strength, even in my so
simplified and disqualified state; which it is my one great effort not
to allow to be knocked about. However, I of course do succeed in
simplifying and in guarding myself enormously; one can't but succeed
when the question is so vital as it has now become with me. Which is
really but a preface to telling you how much the most interesting thing
in the matter has been, during the last three weeks, my regular sittings
for my portrait to Sargent; which have numbered now some seven or eight,
I forget which, and with but a couple more to come. So the thing is, I
make out, very nearly finished, and the head apparently (as I much hope)
to have almost nothing more done to it. It is, I infer, a very great
success; a number of the competent and intelligent have seen it, and so
pronounce it in the strongest terms.... In short it seems likely to be
one of S.'s very fine things. One is almost full-face, with one's left
arm over the corner of one's chair-back and the hand brought round so
that the thumb is caught in the arm-hole of one's waistcoat, and said
hand therefore, with the fingers a bit folded, entirely visible and
"treated." Of course I'm sitting a little askance in the chair. The
canvas comes down to just where my watch-chain (such as it is, poor
thing!) is hung across the waistcoat: which latter, in itself, is found
to be splendidly (poor thing though it also be) and most interestingly
treated. Sargent _can_ make such things so interesting--such things as
my coat-lappet and shoulder and sleeve too! But what is most
interesting, every one is agreed, is the mouth--than which even he has
never painted a more living and, as I am told, "expressive"! In fact I
can quite see that myself; and really, I seem to feel, the thing will be
all that can at the best (the best with such a subject!) have been
expected of it. I only wish you and Alice had assisted at some of the
sittings--as Sargent likes animated, sympathetic, beautiful, talkative
friends to do, in order to correct by their presence too lugubrious
expressions. I take for granted I shall before long have a photograph to
send you, and then you will be able partially to judge for yourselves.
I grieve over your somewhat sorry account of your own winter record of
work, though I allow in it for your habitual extravagance of blackness.
Evidently the real meaning of it is that you are getting so _fort_ all
the while that you kick every rung of your ladder away from under you,
by mere uncontrollable force, as you mount and mount. But the rungs, I
trust, are all the while being carefully picked up, far below, and
treasured; this being Alice's, to say nothing of anybody else's, natural
care and duty. Give all my love to her and to the beautiful nursing
scrap! I want to say thirty things more to her, but my saying power is
too finite a quantity. I gather that this will find you happily, and I
trust very conveniently and workably, settled at Chocorua--where may the
summer be blest to you, and the thermometer low, and the motor-runs
many! Now I really have to get at Harry! But do send this in any case on
to Irving Street, for the sake of the report of the picture. I want them
to have the good news of it without delay.
/*
Yours both all affectionately,
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Miss Rhoda Broughton._
_Dictated._
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
June 25th, 1913.
*/
/*
My dear Rhoda,
*/
I reply to your quite acclaimed letter--if there can be an acclamation
of _one_!--by this mechanic aid for the simple reason that, much
handicapped as to the free brandish of arm and hand nowadays, I find
that the letters thus helped out do get written, whereas those I am too
shy or too fearsome or too ceremonious to think anything but my poor
scratch of a pen good enough for simply don't come into existence at
all. It greatly touches me at any rate to get news of you by your own
undiscouraged hand; and it kind of cheers me up about you generally,
during your exile from this blest town (which you see _I_ continue to
bless), that you appear to be in some degree "on the go," and capable of
the brave exploit of a country visit. With a Brother to offer you a
garden-riot of roses, however, I don't wonder, but the more rejoice,
that you were inspired and have been sustained.
Yes, thank you, dear F. Prothero was veracious about the Portrait, as
she is about everything: it is now finished, _paracheve_ (I sat for the
last time a couple of days ago;) and is nothing less evidently, than a
very fine thing indeed, Sargent at his very best and poor H. J. not at
his worst; in short a living breathing likeness and a masterpiece of
painting. I am really quite ashamed to admire it so much and so
loudly--it's so much as if I were calling attention to my own fine
points. I don't, alas, exhibit a "point" in it, but am all large and
luscious rotundity--by which you may see how true a thing it is. And I
am sorry to have ceased to sit, in spite of the repeated big holes it
made in my precious mornings: J. S. S. being so genial and delightful a
_nature de grand maitre_ to have to do with, and his beautiful high cool
studio, opening upon a balcony that overhangs a charming Chelsea green
garden, adding a charm to everything. He liked always a friend or two to
be in to break the spell of a settled gloom in my countenance by their
prattle; though you will doubtless think this effect but little achieved
when I tell you that, having myself found the thing, as it grew, more
and more like Sir Joshua's Dr. Johnson, and said so, a perceptive
friend reinforced me a couple of sittings later by breaking out
irrepressibly with the same judgment....
I am sticking on in London, you see, and have got distinctly better with
the lapse of the weeks. In fact dear old Town, taken on the absolutely
simplified and restricted terms in which I insist on taking it (as
compared with all the ancient storm and stress), is distinctly good for
me, and the weather keeping cool--absit omen!--I am not in a hurry to
flee. I shall go to Rye, none the less, within a fortnight. I have just
heard with distress that dear Norris has come and gone without making me
a sign (I learn by telephone from his club that he left yesterday.) This
has of course been "consideration," but damn _such_ consideration. My
imagination, soaring over the interval, hangs fondly about the time,
next autumn, when you will be, D.V., restored to Cadogan Gardens. I am
impatient for my return hither before I have so much as really prepared
to go. May the months meanwhile lie light on you! Yours, my dear Rhoda,
all faithfully,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Mrs. Alfred Sutro._
/#
H. J. had been with Mrs. Sutro to a performance of Henry
Bernstein's play, _Le Secret_, with Mme. Simone in the principal
part.
#/
_Dictated._
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
June 25th, 1913.
*/
/*
Dear Mrs. Sutro,
*/
Yes, what a sad history of struggles against fate the recital of our
whole failure to achieve yesterday in Tite Street does make! It was a
sorry business my not having been able to wire you on Saturday, but it
wasn't till the Sunday sitting that the change to the Tuesday from the
probable Wednesday (through the latter's having become impossible,
unexpectedly, to Sargent) was settled. And yesterday was the last, the
real last time--it terminated even at 12.30. Any touch more would be
simply detrimental, and the hand, to my sense, is now all admirably
there. But you must see it some day when you are naturally in town--I
can easily arrange for that. I shall be there, I seem to make out, for a
considerable number of days yet: Mrs. Wharton comes over from Paris on
the 30th for a week, however, and, I apprehend, will catch me up in
_her_ relentless Car (pardon any apparent invidious comparison!) for
most of the time she is here. That at least is her present programme,
but _souvent femme varie_, and that lady not least. I am addressing you,
you see, after this mechanic fashion, without apology, for the excellent
reason that during these forenoon hours it is my so much the most
_expeditif_ way....
Almost more than missing the seance (to which, by the way, Hedworth
Williamson came in just at the last with Mrs. Hunter) do I miss talking
with you of Le Secret last night and of the wondrous demoniac little
Simone; though of the play, and of Bernstein's extraordinary theatric
art themselves more than anything else. I think our friend the Critic
said beautifully right things about them in yesterday's Times--but it
would be so interesting to have the matter out in more of its aspects
too.... What most remains with one, in brief, is that the play somehow
represents a Case merely, as distinguished, so to speak, from a
Situation; the Case being always a thing rather void of connections with
and into life at large, and the Situation, dramatically speaking, being
largely of interest just by _having_ those. Thereby it is that Le
Secret leaves one nothing to apply, by reflection, and by way of
illustration, to one's sense of life in general, but is just a barren
little instance, little limited monstrosity, as curious and vivid as you
like, but with no moral or morality, good old word, at all involved in
it, or projected out of it as an interest. Hence the so _unfertilised_
state in which the mutual relations are left! Thereby it's only
theatrically, as distinguished from dramatically, interesting, I think;
even if it be after that fashion more so, more just theatrically
valuable, than anything else of Bernstein's. For _him_ it may count as
almost superior! And beautifully done, all round, yes--save in the
matter of the fat blonde whose after all pretty recent lapse one has to
take so comfortably and sympathetically for granted. However, if she had
been more sylph-like and more pleasing she wouldn't seem to have been
paying for her past at the rate demanded; and if she had been any way
different, in short, would have appeared to know, and to have previously
known, too much what she was about to be pathetic enough, victim enough.
What a pull the French do get for their drama-form, their straight swift
course, by being able to postulate such ladies, for interest, sympathy,
edification even, with such a fine absence of what we call explaining!
But this is all now: I must post it on the jump. Do try to put in a few
hours in town at some time or other before I go; and believe me yours
all faithfully,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Hugh Walpole._
/*
Lamb House, Rye,
Aug: 21: 13.
*/