6, Vienna_; an address that I recommend your taking a note of; and I
have also made the reflection that the fury, or whatever, that Edinburgh
inspires you with ought, you know, to do the very opposite of drying up
the founts of your genius in writing to me--since you say your letter
would have been other (as it truly might have been longer) didn't you
suffer so from all that surrounds you. That's the very _most_ juvenile
logic possible--and the juvenility of it (which yet in a manner touches
me) is why I call you retrogressive--by way of a long stroke of
endearment. _There_ was exactly an admirable matter for you to write me
_about_--a matter as to which you are strongly and abundantly feeling;
and in a relation which lives on communication as ours surely should,
and would (save for starving,) such occasions fertilise. However, of
course the terms are easy on which you extract communication from me,
and always have been, and always will be--so that there's doubtless a
point of view from which your reservations (another fine word) are quite
right. I'm glad at any rate that you've been reading Balzac (whose
"romantic" side _is_ rot!) and a great contemporary of your own even in
his unconsidered trifles. _I've_ just been reading Compton Mackenzie's
_Sinister Street_ and finding in it an unexpected amount of talent and
life. Really a very interesting and remarkable performance, I think, in
spite of a considerable, or large, element of waste and
irresponsibility--_selection_ isn't in him--and at one and the same time
so extremely young (he too) and so confoundingly mature. It has the
feature of improving so as it goes on, and disposes me much to read, if
I can, its immediate predecessor. You must tell me again what you know
of him (I've forgotten what you _did_ tell me, more or less,) but in
your own good time. I think--I mean I blindly feel--I should be _with_
you about Auld Reekie--which somehow hasn't a right to be so handsome.
But I long for illustrations--at your own good time. We have emerged
from a very clear and quiet Xmas--quiet for _me_, save for rather a
large assault of correspondence. It weighs on me still, so this is what
I call--and you will too--very brief.... I wish you the very decentest
New Year that ever was. Yours, dearest boy, all affectionately,
/*
H. J.
*/
_To Compton Mackenzie._
/#
It will be recalled that Edward Compton, Mr. Mackenzie's father,
had played the part of Christopher Newman in H.J.'s play _The
American_, produced in 1891.
#/
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
Jan. 21, 1914.
*/
/*
My dear "Monty Compton!"--
*/
For that was, I think, as I first heard you named--by a worthy old
actress of your father's company who, when we were rehearsing The
American in some touring town to which I had gone for the purpose,
showed me with touching elation a story-book she had provided for you on
the occasion of your birthday. That story-book, weighted with my
blessing on it, evidently sealed your vocation--for the sharpness of my
sense that you are really a prey to the vocation was what, after reading
you, I was moved to emphasise to Pinker. I am glad he let you know of
this, and it gives me great pleasure that you have written to me--the
only abatement of which is learning from you that you are in such
prolonged exile on grounds of health. May that dizzying sun of Capri
cook every peccant humour out of you. As to this untowardness I mean,
frankly, to inquire of your Mother--whom I am already in communication
with on the subject of going to see her to talk about you! For that, my
dear young man, I feel as a need: with the force that I find and so much
admire in your talent your _genesis_ becomes, like the rest of it,
interesting and remarkable to me; you are so rare a case of the _kind_
of reaction from the theatre--and from so _much_ theatre--and the
reaction in itself is rare--as seldom taking place; and when it does it
is mostly, I think, away from the arts altogether--it is violent and
utter. But your pushing straight through the door into literature and
then closing it so tight behind you and putting the key in your pocket,
as it were--that strikes me as unusual and brilliant! However, it isn't
to go into all that that I snatch these too few minutes, but to thank
you for having so much arrested my attention, as by the effect of
Carnival and Sinister Street, on what I confess I am for the most part
(as a consequence of some thankless experiments) none too easily
beguiled by, a striking exhibition by a member of the generation to
which you belong. When I wrote to Pinker I had only read S.S., but I
have now taken down Carnival in persistent short draughts--which is how
I took S.S. and is how I take anything I take at all; and I have given
myself still further up to the pleasure, quite to the emotion, of
intercourse with a young talent that really moves one to hold it to an
account. Yours strikes me as very living and real and sincere, making me
care for it--to anxiety--care above all for what shall become of it. You
ought, you know, to do only some very fine and ripe things, really solid
and serious and charming ones; but your dangers are almost as many as
your aspects, and as I am a mere monster of _appreciation_ when I
read--by which I mean of the critical passion--I would fain lay an
earnest and communicative hand on you and hypnotize or otherwise bedevil
you into proceeding as I feel you most _ought_ to, you know. The great
point is that I would so fain personally see you--that we may talk; and
I do very much wish that you _had_ given me a chance at one of those
moments when you tell me you inclined to it, and then held off. You are
so intelligent, and it's a blessing--whereby I prefigure it as a luxury
to have a go at you. I am to be in town till the end of June--I
_hibernate_ no more at Rye; and if you were only to turn up a little
before that it would be excellent. Otherwise you must indeed come to me
there. I wish you all profit of all your experience, some of it lately,
I fear, rather harsh, and all experience of your genius--which I also
wish myself. I _think_ of Sinister Street II, and am yours most truly,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To William Roughead, W.S._
/#
Mr. Roughead had sent H. J. his edition of the trial of Mary
Blandy, the notable murderess, who was hung in 1752 for poisoning
her father.
#/
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
January 29th, 1914.
*/
/*
Dear Mr. Roughead,
*/
I devoured the tender Blandy in a single feast; I thank you most kindly
for having anticipated so handsomely my appetite; and I highly
appreciate the terms in general, and the concluding ones in particular,
in which you serve her up. You tell the story with excellent art and
animation, and it's quite a gem of a story in its way, History herself
having put it together as with the best compositional method, a strong
sense for sequences and the proper march, order and _time_. The only
thing is that, as always, one wants to know _more_, more than the mere
evidence supplies--and wants it even when as in this case one feels that
the people concerned were after all of so dire a simplicity, so
primitive a state of soul and sense, that the exhibition they make tells
or expresses about all there was of them. Dear Mary must have consisted
but of two or three pieces, one of which was a strong and simple carnal
affinity, as it were, with the stinking little Cranstoun. Yet, also, one
would like to get a glimpse of how an apparently normal young woman of
her class, at that period, could have viewed such a creature in such a
light. The light would throw itself on the Taste, the sense of
proportion, of the time. However, dear Mary was a clear barbarian,
simply. Enfin!--as one must always wind up these matters by exhaling. I
continue to have escaped a further sense of ---- and as I think I
have told you I cultivate the exquisite art of ignorance. Yet not of
Blandy, Pritchard and Co.--_there_, perversely, I am all for knowledge.
Do continue to feed in me that languishing need, and believe me all
faithfully yours,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Mrs. Wharton._
/#
The two novels referred to in the following are M. Marcel Proust's
_Du Cote de chez Swann_ and M. Abel Bonnard's _La Vie et l'Amour_.
#/
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
February 25th, 1914.
*/
/*
Dearest Edith,
*/
The nearest I have come to receipt or possession of the interesting
volumes you have so generously in mind is to have had _Bernstein's_
assurance, when I met him here some time since, that _he_ would give
himself the delight of sending me the Proust production, which he
learned from me that I hadn't seen. I tried to dissuade him from this
excess, but nothing would serve--he was too yearningly bent upon it, and
we parted with his asseveration that I might absolutely count on this
tribute both to poor Proust's charms and to my own. But depuis lors--!
he has evidently been less "en train" than he was so good as to find
_me_. So that I shall indeed be "very pleased" to receive the "Swann"
and the "Vie et l'Amour" from you at your entire convenience. It is
indeed beautiful of you to think of these little deeds of kindness,
little words of love (or is it the other way round?) What I want above
all to thank you for, however, is your so brave backing in the matter of
my disgarnished gums. That I am doing right is already unmistakeable. It
won't make me "well"; nothing will do that, nor do I complain of the
muffled miracle; but it will make me mind less being ill--in short it
will make me better. As I say, it has already done so, even with my
sacrifice for the present imperfect--for I am "keeping on" no less than
eight pure pearls, in front seats, till I can deal with them in some
less exposed and exposing conditions. Meanwhile tons of implanted and
domesticated gold &c (one's caps and crowns and bridges being _most_
anathema to Des Voeux, who regards them as so much installed metallic
poison) have, with everything they fondly clung to, been, less visibly,
eradicated; and it is enough, as I say, to have made a marked difference
in my felt state. That is the point, for the time--and I spare you
further details....
/*
Yours de coeur,
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Dr. J. William White._
_Dictated._
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
March 2nd, 1914.
*/
/*
My dear J. William,
*/
I won't pretend it isn't an aid and comfort to me to be able to thank
you for your so brilliant and interesting overflow from Sumatra in this
mean way--since from the point of view of such a life as you are
leading nothing I could possibly do in my poor sphere and state would
seem less mean than anything else, and I therefore might as well get the
good of being legible. I am such a votary and victim of the single
impression and the imperceptible adventure, picked up by accident and
cherished, as it were, in secret, that your scale of operation and
sensation would be for me the most choking, the most fatal of
programmes, and I should simply go ashore at Sumatra and refuse ever to
fall into line again. But that is simply my contemptible capacity, which
doesn't want a little of five million things, but only requires [much]
of three or four; as to which _then_, I confess, my requirements are
inordinate. But I am so glad, for the world and for themselves, above
all for you and Letitia, that many great persons, and especially you
two, are constructed on nobler lines, with stouter organs and longer
breaths, to say nothing of purses, that I don't in the least mind your
doing such things if _you_ don't; and most positively and richly enjoy
sitting under the warm and fragrant spray of the enumeration of them.
Keep it up therefore, and don't let me hear of your daring to skip a
single page, or dodge a single prescription, of the programme and the
dose!...
I am signing, with J. S. S., three hundred very fine photographs of the
Portrait, ever so much finer still, that he did of me last summer, and
which I think you know about--in order that they be sent to my friends,
of whom you are not the least; so that you will find one in Rittenhouse
Square on your return thither, if with the extraordinarily dissipated
life you lead you do really get back. With it will wait on you probably
this, which I hope won't be sent either to meet or to follow you; I
really can't even to the extent of a letter personally participate in
your dissipation while it's at its worst. How embarrassed poor Letitia
must truly be, if she but dared to confess it, at finding herself so
associated; for that is not _her_ nature; _my_ life here, had she but
consented to share it, would be so much more congruous with _that_! I
don't quite gather when you expect to reach these shores--since my brain
reels at the thought of your re-embarking for them after you reach your
own at the climax of your orgy. I realise all that these passions are
capable of leading you on to, and therefore shall not be surprised if
you do pursue them without a break--shall in fact even be delighted to
think I may see you gloriously approach by just sitting right here at
this window, which commands so the prospect. But goodbye, dear good
friends; gather your roses while ye may and _don't_ neglect this
blighted modest old bud, your affectionate friend,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Henry Adams._
/#
The book sent to Mr. Adams was _Notes of a Son and Brother_, now
just published.
#/
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
March 21, 1914.
*/
/*
My dear Henry,
*/
I have your melancholy outpouring of the 7th, and I know not how better
to acknowledge it than by the full recognition of its unmitigated
blackness. _Of course_ we are lone survivors, of course the past that
was our lives is at the bottom of an abyss--if the abyss _has_ any
bottom; of course, too, there's no use talking unless one particularly
_wants_ to. But the purpose, almost, of my printed divagations was to
show you that one _can_, strange to say, still want to--or at least can
behave as if one did. Behold me therefore so behaving--and apparently
capable of continuing to do so. I still find my consciousness
interesting--under _cultivation_ of the interest. Cultivate it _with_
me, dear Henry--that's what I hoped to make you do--to cultivate yours
for all that it has in common with mine. _Why_ mine yields an interest I
don't know that I can tell you, but I don't challenge or quarrel with
it--I encourage it with a ghastly grin. You see I still, in presence of
life (or of what you deny to be such,) have reactions--as many as
possible--and the book I sent you is a proof of them. It's, I suppose,
because I am that queer monster, the artist, an obstinate finality, an
inexhaustible sensibility. Hence the reactions--appearances, memories,
many things, go on playing upon it with consequences that I note and
"enjoy" (grim word!) noting. It all takes doing--and I _do_. I believe I
shall do yet again--it is still an act of life. But you perform them
still yourself--and I don't know what keeps me from calling your letter
a charming one! There we are, and it's a blessing that you understand--I
admit indeed alone--your all-faithful
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Mrs. William James._
/#
"Minnie" is of course Mary Temple, the young cousin of old days
commemorated in the last chapter of _Notes of a Son and Brother_.
#/
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
March 29th, 1914.
*/
/*
Dearest Alice,
*/
This is a Saturday a.m., but several days have come and gone since there
came to me your dear and beautiful letter of March 14th (considerably
about my "Notes,") and though the American post closes early I must get
off some word of recognition to you, however brief I have scramblingly
to make it. I hoped of course you would find in the book something of
what I difficultly tried to put there--and you have indeed, you have
found all, and I rejoice, because it was in talk with you in that
terrible winter of 1910-11 that the impulse to the whole attempt came to
me. Glad you will be to know that the thing appears to be quite
extraordinarily appreciated, absolutely acclaimed, here--scarcely any
difficulties being felt as to "parts that are best," unless it be that
the early passage and the final chapter about dear Minnie seem the
great, the beautiful "success" of the whole. What I have been able to do
for _her_ after all the long years--judged by this test of expressed
admiration--strikes me as a wondrous stroke of fate and beneficence of
time: I seem really to have (her letters and ---- 's and your
admirable committal of them to me aiding) made her emerge and live on,
endowed her with a kind dim sweet immortality that places and keeps
her--and I couldn't be at all sure that I was doing it; I was so anxious
and worried as to my really getting the effect in the right way--with
tact and taste and without overstrain....
I am counting the weeks till Peg swims into view again--so delightful
will it be to have her near and easily to commune with her, and above
all to get from her all that detail of the state of the case about you
all that I so constantly yearn for and that only talk can give. The one
shade on the picture is my fear that she will find the poor old Uncle
much more handicapped about _socially_ ministering to them (two young
women with large social appetites) than she is perhaps prepared to find
me. And yet after all she probably does take in that I have had to cut
my connections with society entirely. Complications and efforts with
people floor me, anginally, _on the spot_, and my state is that of
living every hour and at every minute on my guard. So I am anything but
the centre of an attractive circle--I am cut down to the barest
inevitabilities, and occupied really more than in any other way now in
simply saving my life. However, the blest child was witness of my
condition last summer, my letters have probably sufficiently reflected
it since--and I am really on a _better_ plane than when she was last
with me. To have her with me is a true support and joy, and I somehow
feel that with her admirable capacity to be interested in the near and
the characteristic, whatever these may be, she will have lots of
pleasant and informing experience and contact in spite of my inability
to "take her out" or to entertain company for her at home. She knows
this and she comes in all her indulgence and charity and generosity--for
the sake of the sweet good she can herself do _me_. And I rejoice that
she has Margaret P. with her--who will help and solidify and enrich the
whole scene. No. 3 will be all satisfactorily ready for them, and I have
no real fear but that they will find it a true bower of ease. The omens
and auspices seem to me all of the best.
The political atmosphere here is charged to explosion as it has never
been--what is to happen no man knows; but this only makes it a more
thrilling and spectacular world. The tension has never been so
great--but it will, for the time at least, ease down. The dread of
violence is shared all round. I am finishing this rather tiredly by
night--I couldn't get it off and have alas missed a post. But all love.
/*
Your affectionate
H. J.
*/
_To Arthur Christopher Benson._
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
April 21st, 1914.
*/
/*
My dear Arthur,
*/
What a delightful thing this still more interesting _extension_ of our
fortunate talk! I can't help being glad that you had second thoughts
(though your first affected me as good enough, quite, to need no better
ones,) since the result has been your rich and genial letter. The only
thing is that if your first thoughts were to torment (or whatever)
yourself, these supersessive rather torment _me_--by their suggestion
that there's still more to say yet--than you do say: as when you remark
that you ought either to have told me nothing about ---- or to have
told me all. "All" is precisely what I should have liked to have from
you--all in fact about everything!--and what a pity we can't appoint
another tea-hour for my making up that loss. You clearly live in these
years so much more in the current of life than I do that no one of your
impressions would have failed of a lively interest for me--and the more
we had been able to talk of ---- and his current, and even
of ---- and his, the more I should have felt your basis of
friendship in everything and the generosity of your relation to them. I
don't think we see anything, about our friends, unless we see all--so
far as in us lies; and there is surely no care we can so take for them
as to turn our mind upon them liberally. Don't turn yours too much upon
yourself for having done so. The virtue of that "ruder jostle" that you
speak of so happily is exactly that it shakes out more aspects and
involves more impressions, and that in fine you young people are
together in a way that makes vivid realities spring from it--I having
cognisance, in my ancient isolation, I well know, but of the more or
less edited, revised, not to say expurgated, creature. It's
inevitable--that is--for ancient isolation; but you're in the thick of
history and the air of it was all about you, and the records of it in
the precious casket that I saw you give in charge to the porter. So with
that, oh man of action, perpetually breaking out and bristling with
performances and seeing (and feeling) things on the field, I don't know
what you mean by the image of the toys given you to play with in a
corner--charming as the image is. It's the _corner_ I contest--you're in
the middle of the market-place, and I alter the figure to that of the
brilliant juggler acquitting himself to the admiration of the widest
circle amid a whirl of objects projected so fast that they can scarce be
recognised, but that as they fly round your head one somehow guesses to
be _books_, and one of which in fact now and again hits that of your
gaping and dazzled and all-faithful old spectator and friend,
/*
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Mrs. Humphry Ward._
/#
The following is one of a large number of letters written in answer
to condolences on the subject of the mutilation of his portrait, at
this time hanging at the Royal Academy, by a militant
"suffragette": who had apparently selected it for attack as being
the most notable and valuable canvas in the exhibition.
#/
_Dictated_.
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
May 6th, 1914.
*/
/*
Dear and Illustrious Friend,
*/
I blush to acknowledge by this rude method the kindness that has
expressed itself on your part in your admirable heroic hand. But figure
me as a poor thing additionally impaired by the tomahawk of the savage,
and then further see me as breasting a wondrous high tide of postal
condolence in this doubly-damaged state. I am fairly driven to machinery
for expedition's sake. And let me say at once that I gather the sense of
the experts to be that my wounds are really curable--such rare secrets
for restoration can now be brought to bear! They are to be tried at any
rate upon Sargent's admirable work, and I am taking the view that they
_must_ be effective. As for our discomfort from _ces dames_, that is
another affair--and which leaves me much at a loss. Surely indeed the
good ladies who claim as a virtue for their sex that they can look an
artistic possession of that quality and rarity well in the face only to
be moved bloodily to smash it, make a strange appeal to the confidence
of the country in the _kind_ of character they shall bring to the
transaction of our affairs. Valuable to us that species of intelligence!
Precious to us that degree of sensibility! But I have just made these
reflections in very much these terms in a note to dear Anne Ritchie.
Postal pressure induces conversational thrift! However, I do indeed hope
to come to see you on Thursday, either a bit early or a bit late, and
shall then throw all thrift to the winds and be splendidly extravagant!
I dare say I shall make bold to bring with me my young niece (my brother
William's only daughter,) who is spending a couple of months near me
here; and possibly too a young relative of her own who is with her. Till
very soon then at the worst.
/*
Yours all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
*/
_To Thomas Sergeant Perry._
_Dictated._
/*
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
May 17th, 1914.
*/
/*
My dear Thomas,
*/