(1875-1881)
AFTER another uneventful American year at Cambridge (1874-5,) during
which Roderick Hudson was running its course in the _Atlantic Monthly_,
Henry James came to Europe again with the clear intention of staying for
good. His first idea was to settle in Paris. There he would find the
literary world with which he had the strongest affinity, and it does not
seem to have occurred to him at the time to seek a European home
anywhere else. His knowledge of England was still very slight, and he
needed something more substantial to live and work upon than the romance
of Italy. In Paris he settled therefore, in the autumn of 1875, taking
rooms at 29 Rue du Luxembourg. He began to write The American, to
contribute Parisian Letters to the _New York Tribune_, and to frequent
the society of a few of his compatriots. He made the valued acquaintance
of Ivan Turgenev, and through him of the group which surrounded Gustave
Flaubert--Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, Zola
and others. But the letters which follow will shew the kind of doubts
that began to arise after a winter in Paris--doubts of the possibility
of Paris as a place where an American imagination could really take
root and flourish. He found the circle of literature tightly closed to
outside influences; it seemed to exclude all culture but its own after a
fashion that aroused his opposition; he speaks sarcastically on one
occasion of having watched Turgenev and Flaubert seriously discussing
Daudet's _Jack_, while he reflected that none of the three had read, or
knew English enough to read, _Daniel Deronda_. During a summer stay at
Etretat these doubts increased, and when he went back to Paris in the
autumn of 1876 he had already begun to feel the tug of an inclination
towards London. His brother William seems to have given the final
impulse which sent him over, and before the end of the year he was in
London at last.
He took rooms at 3 Bolton Street, just off Piccadilly, and at first
found the change from 'glittering, charming, civilised Paris' rather
rude. But within a few weeks he was deep in London, with doors
unnumbered opening to him and a general welcome for the rising young
novelist from America. Letter after letter was sent home with accounts
of the visits and dinner-parties which were soon his habitual round. He
quickly discovered that this was his appointed home and set himself
deliberately to cultivate it. But his relief at finding a place of which
he could really take possession was entirely compatible with candid
criticism. Letter after letter, too, is filled with caustic reflections
on the minds and manners of the English; and as the following pages
contain not a few of these, so it should here be pointed out that his
correspondence was the only outlet open to these irrepressible
sentiments, and that they must be seen in due proportion with the
perfect courtesy of appreciation that he always shewed to his
well-meaning hosts. He was very much alone in his observing detachment
during these years. 'I wish greatly,' he writes to Miss Norton about
this time, 'you and Charles were here, so that I might have some one to
say the things that are in me too; I mean the things about England and
the English--the feelings, impressions, judgments, emotions of every
kind that are being perpetually generated, and that I can't utter to a
single Briton of them all with the smallest chance of being
understood.... The absence of a sympathetic, compatriotic, intelligent
spirit, like yours, is my greatest deprivation here, and everything is
corked up.'
But whatever the shortcomings of the English might be, London life
closed round him and held him fast. He would break away for an
occasional excursion abroad, or he would carry his work into seaside
lodgings for the end of the summer. Otherwise he clung to London, with
such country visits as sprang naturally from his numerous relations with
the town and were simply an extension of these. During the years covered
by the present section he spent some weeks in Rome towards the end of
1877, three months in Paris in the autumn of 1879, and two in Italy
again, at Florence and Naples, in the following spring. By 1881 he was
sufficiently acclimatised in London to feel the need of escaping from
the 'season,' then so much more organised and exacting an institution
than it has since become; he went to Venice in March and did not return
till July. But these were the only variations from the life of a
'cockney _convaincu_,' as he admitted himself to be. The wonder is that
he found time under such conditions to accomplish the large amount of
work he still put forth year by year. In spite of health that continued
somewhat uncertain, he was able to concentrate upon his writing in the
midst of all distractions. Daisy Miller, The Europeans, Confidence,
Washington Square, and the Portrait of a Lady, all belong to the first
five years of his London life, besides an unbroken stream of shorter
pieces--fiction, picturesque sketches, reviews of books--contributed to
several English and American periodicals. Time slipped by, and he began
to wait upon the right opportunity for a long visit to his own country.
It was not indeed that he felt himself to be losing touch with it; his
appetite for American news was unassuageable, and by means of a
correspondence as copious as ever he jealously preserved and cherished
every possible tie with his old home. But he turned to his own family,
then as always afterwards, with an affection stimulated by his
unfathered state in England. His parents were growing old, his elder
brother (who had married in 1878) was beginning to enjoy and exhibit the
maturity of his genius, and it was more than time for a renewal of
associations on the spot. By the autumn of 1881 he had finished The
Portrait of a Lady, the longest and in every way the most important of
his works hitherto, and he could also feel that his grounding in London,
so to call it, was solid and secure. After six years of absence he then
saw America again.
_To his Father._
29 Rue du Luxembourg.
April 11th [1876].
Dear Father,
...The slender thread of my few personal relations hangs on, without
snapping, but it doesn't grow very stout. You crave chiefly news, I
suppose, about Ivan Sergeitch [Turgenev], whom I have lately seen
several times. I spent a couple of hours with him at his room, some time
since, and I have seen him otherwise at Mme. Viardot's. The latter has
invited me to her musical parties (Thursdays) and to her Sundays _en
famille_. I have been to a couple of the former and (as yet only) one of
the latter. She herself is a most fascinating and interesting woman,
ugly, yet also very handsome or, in the French sense, _tres-belle_. Her
musical parties are rigidly musical and to me, therefore, rigidly
boresome, especially as she herself sings very little. I stood the other
night on my legs for three hours (from 11 till 2) in a suffocating room,
listening to an interminable fiddling, with the only consolation that
Gustave Dore, standing beside me, seemed as bored as myself. But when
Mme. Viardot does sing, it is superb. She sang last time a scene from
Gluck's _Alcestis_, which was the finest piece of musical declamation,
of a grandly tragic sort, that I can conceive. Her Sundays seem rather
dingy and calculated to remind one of Concord 'historical games' etc.
But it was both strange and sweet to see poor Turgenev acting charades
of the most extravagant description, dressed out in old shawls and
masks, going on all fours etc. The charades are their usual Sunday
evening occupation and the good faith with which Turgenev, at his age
and with his glories, can go into them is a striking example of that
spontaneity which Europeans have and we have not. Fancy Longfellow,
Lowell, or Charles Norton doing the like, and every Sunday evening! I am
likewise gorged with music at Mme. de Blocqueville's, where I continue
to meet Emile Montegut, whom I don't like so well as his writing, and
don't forgive for having, a l'avenir, spoiled his writing a little for
me. Calling the other day on Mme. de B. I found with her M. Caro, the
philosopher, a man in the expression of whose mouth you would discover
depths of dishonesty, but a most witty and agreeable personage. I had
also the other day a very pleasant call upon Flaubert, whom I like
personally more and more each time I see him. But I think I easily--more
than easily--see all round him intellectually. There is something
wonderfully simple, honest, kindly, and touchingly inarticulate about
him. He talked of many things, of Theo. Gautier among others, who was
his intimate friend. He said nothing new or rare about him, except that
he thought him after the Pere Hugo the greatest of French poets, much
above Alfred de Musset; but Gautier in his extreme perfection was
unique. And he recited some of his sonnets in a way to make them seem
the most beautiful things in the world. Find in especial (in the volume
I left at home) one called _Les Portraits Ovales_.... I went down to
Chartres the other day and had a charming time--but I won't speak of it
as I have done it in the Tribune. The American papers over here are
_accablants_, and the vulgarity and repulsiveness of the Tribune,
whenever I see it, strikes me so violently that I feel tempted to stop
my letter. But I shall not, though of late there has been a painful
dearth of topics to write about. But soon comes the _Salon_.... I am
very glad indeed that Howells is pleased with my new tale; I am now
actively at work upon it. I am well pleased that the _Atlantic_ has
obtained it. His own novel I have not read, but he is to send it to me.
Your home news has all been duly digested. Tell Willy that I will answer
his most interesting letter specifically; and say to my dearest sister
that if she will tell me which--black or white--she prefers I will send
her gratis a fichu of ecru lace, which I am told is the proper thing for
her to have.
Ever, dearest daddy, your loving son,
H. JAMES jr.
_To W. D. Howells._
The 'story' was _The American_, which began to appear in _The
Atlantic Monthly_ in June, 1876.
29 Rue du Luxembourg, Paris.
May 28th [1876].
Dear Howells,
I have just received (an hour ago) your letter of May 14th. I shall be
very glad to do my best to divide my story so that it will make twelve
numbers, and I think I shall probably succeed. Of course 26 pp. is an
impossible instalment for the magazine. I had no idea the second number
would make so much, though I half expected your remonstrance. I shall
endeavour to give you about 14 pp., and to keep doing it for seven or
eight months more. I sent you the other day a fourth part, a portion of
which, I suppose, you will allot to the fifth.
My heart was touched by your regret that I hadn't given you "a great
deal of my news"--though my reason suggested that I could not have given
you what there was not to give. "La plus belle fille du monde ne peut
donner que ce qu'elle a." I turn out news in very small quantities--it
is impossible to imagine an existence less pervaded with any sort of
_chiaroscuro_. I am turning into an old, and very contented, Parisian: I
feel as if I had struck roots into the Parisian soil, and were likely to
let them grow tangled and tenacious there. It is a very comfortable and
profitable place, on the whole--I mean, especially, on its general and
cosmopolitan side. Of pure Parisianism I see absolutely nothing. The
great merit of the place is that one can arrange one's life here exactly
as one pleases--that there are facilities for every kind of habit and
taste, and that everything is accepted and understood. Paris itself
meanwhile is a sort of painted background which keeps shifting and
changing, and which is always there, to be looked at when you please,
and to be most easily and comfortably ignored when you don't. All this,
if you were only here, you would feel much better than I can tell
you--and you would write some happy piece of your prose about it which
would make me feel it better, afresh. _Ergo_, come--when you can! I
shall probably be here still. Of course every good thing is still better
in spring, and in spite of much mean weather I have been liking Paris
these last weeks more than ever. In fact I have accepted destiny here,
under the vernal influence. If you sometimes read my poor letters in the
_Tribune_, you get a notion of some of the things I see and do. I
suppose also you get some gossip about me from Quincy St. Besides this
there is not a great deal to tell. I have seen a certain number of
people all winter who have helped to pass the time, but I have formed
but one or two relations of permanent value, and which I desire to
perpetuate. I have seen almost nothing of the literary fraternity, and
there are fifty reasons why I should not become intimate with them. I
don't like their wares, and they don't like any others; and besides,
they are not _accueillants_. Turgenev is worth the whole heap of them,
and yet he himself swallows them down in a manner that excites my
extreme wonder. But he is the most loveable of men and takes all things
easily. He is so pure and strong a genius that he doesn't need to be on
the defensive as regards his opinions and enjoyments. The mistakes he
may make don't hurt him. His modesty and naivete are simply infantine. I
gave him some time since the message you sent him, and he bade me to
thank you very kindly and to say that he had the most agreeable memory
of your two books. He has just gone to Russia to bury himself for two or
three months on his estate, and try and finish a long novel he has for
three or four years been working upon. I hope to heaven he may. I
suspect he works little here.
I interrupted this a couple of hours since to go out and pay a visit to
Gustave Flaubert, it being his time of receiving, and his last Sunday in
Paris, and I owing him a farewell. _He_ is a very fine old fellow, and
the most interesting man and strongest artist of his circle. I had him
for an hour alone, and then came in his "following," talking much of
Emile Zola's catastrophe--Zola having just had a serial novel for which
he was handsomely paid interrupted on account of protests from
provincial subscribers against its indecency. The opinion apparently was
that it was a bore, but that it could only do the book good on its
appearance in a volume. Among your tribulations as editor, I take it
that this particular one is not in store for you. On my way down from
Flaubert's I met poor Zola climbing the staircase, looking very pale and
sombre, and I saluted him with the flourish natural to a contributor who
has just been invited to make his novel last longer yet....
Your inquiry "Why I don't go to Spain?" is sublime--is what Philip van
Artevelde says of the Lake of Como, "softly sublime, profusely fair!" I
shall spend my summer in the most tranquil and frugal hole I can unearth
in France, and I have no prospect of travelling for some time to come.
The Waverley Oaks seem strangely far away--yet I remember them well, and
the day we went there. I am sorry I am not to see your novel sooner, but
I applaud your energy in proposing to change it. The printed thing
always seems to me dead and done with. I suppose you will write
something about Philadelphia--I hope so, as otherwise I am afraid I
shall know nothing about it. I salute your wife and children a thousand
times and wish you an easy and happy summer and abundant inspiration.
Yours very faithfully,
H. JAMES, jr.
_To William James._
Etretat,
July 29th [1876].
Dear Wm.
...I have little to tell you of myself. I shall be here till August
15-20, and shall then go and spend the rest of the month with the
Childes, near Orleans (an ugly country, I believe,) and after that try
to devise some frugal scheme for keeping out of Paris till as late as
possible in the autumn. The winter there always begins soon enough. I
am much obliged to you for your literary encouragement and advice--glad
especially you like my novel. I can't judge it. Your remarks on my
French tricks in my letters are doubtless most just, and shall be
heeded. But it's an odd thing that such tricks should grow at a time
when my last layers of resistance to a long-encroaching weariness and
satiety with the French mind and its utterance has fallen from me like a
garment. I have done with 'em, forever, and am turning English all over.
I desire only to feed on English life and the contact of English
minds--I wish greatly I knew some. Easy and smooth-flowing as life is in
Paris, I would throw it over tomorrow for an even very small chance to
plant myself for a while in England. If I had but a single good friend
in London I would go thither. I have got nothing important out of Paris
nor am likely to. My life there makes a much more succulent figure in
your letters, my mention of its thin ingredients as it comes back to me,
than in my own consciousness. A good deal of Boulevard and third-rate
Americanism: few retributive relations otherwise. I know the Theatre
Francais by heart!
Daniel Deronda (Dan'l himself) is indeed a dead, though amiable,
failure. But the book is a large affair; I shall write an article of
some sort about it. All desire is dead within me to produce something on
George Sand; though perhaps I shall, all the same, mercenarily and
mechanically--though only if I am forced. _Please make a point of
mentioning_, by the way, whether a letter of mine, upon her,
exclusively, _did_ appear lately in the Tribune. I don't see the T.
regularly and have missed it. They misprint sadly. I never said, e.g.,
in announcing her death, that she was '_fearfully_ shy': I used no such
vile adverb, but another--I forget which.
I am hoping from day to day for another letter from home, as the period
has come round.... I hope your own plans for the summer will prosper,
and health and happiness be your portion. Give much love to Father, and
to the ladies.
Yours always,
H. JAMES jr.
_To William James._
H. J. had by this time been settled in London for some three
months.
Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall.
March 29th, '77.
Dear Wm.
...London life jogs along with me, pausing every now and then at some
more or less succulent patch of herbage. I was almost ashamed to tell
you through mother that I, unworthy, was seeing a bit of Huxley. I went
to his house again last Sunday evening--a pleasant, easy, no-dress-coat
sort of house (in our old Marlboro' Place, by the way). Huxley is a very
genial, comfortable being--yet with none of the noisy and windy
geniality of some folks here, whom you find with their backs turned when
you are responding to the remarks that they have made you. But of course
my talk with him is mere amiable generalities. These, however, he likes
to cultivate, for recreation's sake, of a Sunday evening. (The
thundering Spencer I have not lately seen here.) Some mornings since, I
breakfasted with Lord Houghton again--he invites me most dotingly.
Present: John Morley, Goldwin Smith (pleasanter than my prejudice
against him,) Henry Cowper, Frederick Wedmore, and a monstrous cleverly,
agreeably talking M.P., Mr. Otway. John Morley has a most agreeable
face, but he hardly opened his mouth. (He is, like so many of the men
who have done much here, very young-looking.) Yesterday I dined with
Lord Houghton--with Gladstone, Tennyson, Dr. Schliemann (the excavator
of old Mycenae, etc.) and half a dozen other men of 'high culture.' I
sat next but one to the Bard and heard most of his talk, which was all
about port wine and tobacco: he seems to know much about them, and can
drink a whole bottle of port at a sitting with no incommodity. He is
very swarthy and scraggy, and strikes one at first as much less handsome
than his photos: but gradually you see that it's a face of genius. He
had I know not what simplicity, speaks with a strange rustic accent and
seemed altogether like a creature of some primordial English stock, a
thousand miles away from American manufacture. Behold me after dinner
conversing affably with Mr. Gladstone--not by my own seeking, but by the
almost importunate affection of Lord H. But I was glad of a chance to
feel the 'personality' of a great political leader--or as G. is now
thought here even, I think, by his partisans, ex-leader. That of
Gladstone is very fascinating--his urbanity extreme--his eye that of a
man of genius--and his apparent self-surrender to what he is talking of,
without a flaw. He made a great impression on me--greater than any one I
have seen here: though 'tis perhaps owing to my naivete, and
unfamiliarity with statesmen....
Did I tell you that I had been to the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race?
But I have paragraphed it in the _Nation_, to which I refer you. It was
for about two minutes a supremely beautiful sight; but for those two
minutes I had to wait a horribly bleak hour and a half, shivering, in
mid-Thames, under the sour March-wind. I can't think of any other
adventures: save that I dined two or three days since at Mrs. Godfrey
Lushington's (they are very nice _blushing_ people) with a parcel of
quiet folk: but next to a divine little Miss Lushington (so pretty
English girls can be!) who told me that she lived in the depths of the
City, at Guy's Hospital, whereof her father is administrator. Guy's
Hospital--of which I have read in all old English novels. So does one
move all the while here on identified ground. This is the eve of Good
Friday, a most lugubrious day here--and all the world (save 4,000,000 or
so) are out of London for the ten days' Easter holiday. I think of
making two or three excursions of a few hours apiece, to places near
London whence I can come back to sleep: Canterbury, Chichester etc. (but
as I shall commemorate them for lucre I won't talk of them thus).
Farewell, dear brother, I won't prattle further.... Encourage Alice to
write to me. My blessings on yourself from your fraternal
H. J. jr.
_To Miss Grace Norton._
3 Bolton St., Piccadilly.
August 7th, 1877.
Dear Grace,
...I feel now more at home in London than anywhere else in the world--so
much so that I am afraid my sense of peculiarities, my appreciation of
people and things, as _London_ people and things, is losing its edge. I
have taken a great fancy to the place; I won't say to the people and
things; and yet these must have a part in it. It makes a very
interesting residence at any rate; not the ideal and absolutely
interesting--but the relative and comparative one. I have, however,
formed no intimacies--not even any close acquaintances. I incline to
believe that I have passed the age when one forms friendships; or that
every one else has. I have seen and talked a little with a considerable
number of people, but I have become familiar with almost none. To tell
the truth, I find myself a good deal more of a cosmopolitan (thanks to
that combination of the continent and the U.S.A. which has formed my
lot) than the average Briton of culture; and to be--to have become by
force of circumstances--a cosmopolitan is of necessity to be a good deal
alone. I don't think that _London_, by itself, does a very great deal
for people--for its residents; and those of them who are not out of the
general social herd are potentially deadly provincial. I have become in
all these years as little provincial as possible. I don't say it from
fatuity and I may say it to you; and yet to be so is, I think, necessary
for forming here many close relations. So my interest in London is
chiefly that of an observer in a place where there is most in the world
to observe. I see no essential reason however why I should not some day
see much more of certain Britons, and think that I very possibly may.
But I doubt if I should ever marry--or want to marry--an English wife!
This is an extremely interesting time here; and indeed that is one
reason why I have not been able to bring myself to go abroad, as I have
been planning all this month to do. I can't give up the morning papers!
I am not one of the outsiders who thinks that the "greatness" of England
is now exploded; but there mingles with my interest in her prospects and
doings in all this horrible Eastern Question a sensible mortification
and sadness. She has not resolutely played a part--even a wrong one. She
has been weak and helpless and (above all) unskilful; she has drifted
and stumbled and not walked like a great nation. One has a feeling that
the affairs of Europe are really going to be settled without her. At any
rate the cynical, brutal, barbarous pro-Turkish attitude of an immense
mass of people here (I am no fanatic for Russia, but I think the Emperor
of R. might have been treated like a gentleman!) has thrown into vivid
relief the most discreditable side of the English character. I don't
think it is the largest side, by any means; but when one comes into
contact with it one is ready to give up the race!
I saw the Lowells and can testify to their apparent good-humour and
prosperity. It was a great pleasure to talk with Lowell; but he is
morbidly Anglophobic; though when an Englishman asked me if he was not I
denied it. I envied him his residence in a land of colour and warmth, of
social freedom and personal picturesqueness; so many absent things here,
where the dusky misery and the famous "hypocrisy" which foreign writers
descant so much upon, seem sometimes to usurp the whole field of vision.
But I shall in all probability go abroad myself by Sept. 1st: go
straight to our blessed Italy. I hope to be a while at Siena, where you
may be sure that I shall think of you....
Yours always, dear Grace, in all tender affection,
H. JAMES jr.
_To Miss Grace Norton_,
Paris, Dec. 15th [1877].
Dear Grace,
I hoped, after getting your letter of October 15th, to write you from
Siena, but I never got there. I only got to Rome (where your letter came
to me,) and in Rome I spent the whole of the seven weeks that I was
able to give to Italy. I have just come back, and am on my way to
London, whither I find I gravitate as toward the place in the world in
which, on the whole, I feel most at home. I went directly to Rome some
seven weeks since, and came directly back; but I spent a few days in
Florence on my way down. Italy was still more her irresistible ineffable
old self than ever, and getting away from Rome was really no joke. In
spite of the "changes"--and they are very perceptible--the old
enchantment of Rome, taking its own good time, steals over you and
possesses you, till it becomes really almost a nuisance and an
importunity. That is, it keeps you from working, from staying indoors,
etc. To do those things in sufficient measure one must live in an ugly
country; and that is why, instead of lingering in that golden climate, I
am going back to poor, smutty, dusky, Philistine London. Florence had
never seemed to me more lovely. Empty, melancholy, bankrupt (as I
believe she is), she is turning into an old sleeping, soundless city,
like Pisa. This sensible sadness, with the glorious weather, gave the
place a great charm. The Bootts were there, staying in a villa at
Bellosguardo, and I spent many hours in their garden, sitting in the
autumn sunshine and staring stupidly at that
never-to-be-enough-appreciated view of the little city and the
mountains....
I have had an autumn of things rather than of people, and have not much
to relate in regard to human nature. Here in Paris, for a few days, I
find I know really too many people--especially as they are for the most
part acquaintances retained for the sake of social decency rather than
of strong sentiment. They consume all my time, so that I can't even go
to the Theatre Francais! In Rome I found the relics and fragments of the
ancient American group, which has been much broken up--or rather broken
down. But neither in its meridian nor in its decline has it had any
very irresistible charms. The chief quality acquired by Americans who
have lived thirty years in Europe seems to me a fierce susceptibility on
the subject of omitted calls.
Public matters here, just now, are more interesting than private--and in
France indeed are as interesting as can be. Parliamentary government is
really being put to the test, and bearing it. The poor foolish old
Marshal has at last succumbed to the liberal majority, and has
apparently no stomach to renew his resistance. Plevna is taken by the
Russians and England is supposed to be dreadfully snubbed. But one is
only snubbed if one feels it, and it remains to be seen how England will
take the Russian success. But one has a feeling now--to me it is a very
painful one--that England will take anything; that over-cautious and
somewhat sordid counsels will always prevail. On the continent,
certainly, her ancient "prestige" is gone; and I almost wish she would
fight in a bad cause, if only to shew that she still can, and that she
is not one vast, money-getting Birmingham. I really think we are
assisting at the political decadence of our mighty mother-land. When so
mealy-mouthed an organ as the _Times_ is correctly held to represent the
sentiment of the majority, this _must_ be. But I must say that even the
"decline" of England seems to me a tremendous and even, almost, an
inspiring spectacle, and if the British Empire is once more to shrink up
into that plethoric little island, the process will be the greatest
drama in history!
This will reach you about Xmas-time, and I imagine you reading it at a
window that looks out upon the snow-laden pines and hemlocks of Shady
Hill. That white winter light that is sent up into a room from the deep
snow is something that one quite loses the memory of here; and yet, as I
think of it now, it is associated in my mind with all kinds of pleasant
and comfortable indoor scenes. I am afraid that, for you, the season
will have no great animation; but you will, I suppose, see a good deal
of infantine exhilaration about you....
_To William James._
8 Bolton St., W.
May 1st, '78.
Dear William,
...There were many interesting allusions in your letter which I should
like to take up one by one. I should like to see the fair Hellenists of
Baltimore; and I greatly regret that, living over here, my person cannot
profit by my American reputation. It is a great loss to have one's
person in one country and one's glory in another, especially when there
are lovely young women in the case. Neither can one's glory, then,
profit by one's person--as I flatter myself, even in your jealous teeth,
that mine might in Baltimore!! Also about my going to Washington and its
being my 'duty,' etc. I think there is much in that; but I can't whisk
about the world quite so actively as you seem to recommend. It would be
great folly for me, a peine established in London and getting a footing
here, to break it all off for the sake of going to spend four or five
months in Washington. I expect to spend many a year in London--I have
submitted myself without reserve to that Londonizing process of which
the effect is to convince you that, having lived here, you may, if need
be, abjure civilization and bury yourself in the country, but may not,
in pursuit of civilization, live in any smaller town. I am still
completely an outsider here, and my only chance for becoming a little
of an insider (in that limited sense in which an American can ever do
so) is to remain here for the present. After that--a couple of years
hence--I shall go home for a year, embrace you all, and see everything
of the country I can, including Washington. Meanwhile, if one will take
what comes, one is by no means cut off from getting impressions here....
I know what I am about, and I have always my eyes on my native land.
I am very glad that Howells's play seemed so pretty, on the stage. Much
of the dialogue, as it read, was certainly charming; but I should have
been afraid of the slimness and un-scenic quality of the plot. For
myself (in answer to your adjuration) it has long been my most earnest
and definite intention to commence at play-writing as soon as I can.
This will be soon, and then I shall astound the world! My inspection of
the French theatre will fructify. I have thoroughly mastered Dumas,
Augier, and Sardou (whom it is greatly lacking to Howells--by the
way--to have studied:) and I know all they know and a great deal more
besides. Seriously speaking, I have a great many ideas on this subject,
and I sometimes feel tempted to retire to some frugal village, for
twelve months, where, my current expenses being inconsiderable, I might
have leisure to work them off. Even if I could only find some manager or
publisher sufficiently devoted to believe in this and make me an
allowance for such a period, I would afterwards make a compact and sign
it with my blood, to reimburse him in thousands. But I shall not have to
come to this, or to depend upon it.
I received a few days since your article on H. Spencer, but I have not
yet had time to read it. I shall very presently attack--I won't say
understand it. Mother speaks to me of your articles in Renouvier's
magazine--and why have you not sent me those? I wish you would do so,
punctually. I met Herbert Spencer the other Sunday at George Eliot's,
whither I had at last bent my steps. G.H. Lewes introduced me to him as
an American; and it seemed to me that at this fact, coupled with my
name, his attention was aroused and he was on the point of asking me if
I were related to you. But something instantly happened to separate me
from him, and soon afterwards he went away. The Leweses were very urbane
and friendly, and I think that I shall have the right _dorenavant_ to
consider myself a Sunday _habitue_. The great G.E. herself is both sweet
and superior, and has a delightful expression in her large, long, pale
equine face. I had my turn at sitting beside her and being conversed
with in a low, but most harmonious tone; and bating a tendency to
_aborder_ only the highest themes I have no fault to find with her....
We expect to hear at any hour that war has broken out; and yet it may
not be. It will be a good deal of a scandal if it does--especially if
the English find themselves fighting side by side with the bloody,
filthy Turks and their own Indian Sepoys. And to think that a clever Jew
should have juggled old England into it! The papers are full of the
Paris exhibition, which opens today; but it leaves me perfectly
incurious. Blessings on all from yours fraternally,
H. JAMES jr.
_To Miss Alice James._
H. J. was at this time contributing a series of articles on English
life and letters to the American _Nation_.
Tillypronie, Aberdeen.
Sept. 15th, 1878.
Dearest Sister,
On this howling stormy Sunday, on a Scotch mountainside, I don't know
what I can do better than give you a little old-world news. I have had
none of yours in some time; but I venture to interpret that as a good
sign and to believe that peace and plenty hovers over Quincy Street. I
shall continue in this happy faith and in the belief that you are gently
putting forth your strength again, until the contrary is proved. Behold
me in Scotland and very well pleased to be here. I am staying with the
Clarks, of whom you have heard me speak and than whom there could not be
a more tenderly hospitable couple. Sir John caresses me like a brother,
and her ladyship supervises me like a mother.... I have been here for
four or five days and I feel that I have done a very good thing in
coming to Scotland. Once you get the hang of it, and apprehend the type,
it is a most beautiful and admirable little country--fit, for
'distinction' etc., to make up a trio with Italy and Greece. There is a
little very good company in the house, including my brilliant friend
Lady Hamilton Gordon, and every day has brought with it some pretty
entertainment. I wish I could relate these episodes in detail; but I
shall probably do a little of it in mercenary print. On the first day I
went to some Highland sports, given by Lord Huntly, and to a sumptuous
lunch, in a coquettish marquee, which formed an episode of the same. The
next day I spent roaming over the moors and hills, in company with a
remarkably nice young fellow staying in the house, Sidney Holland,
grandson of the late Sir Henry (his father married a daughter of Sir
Chas. Trevelyan, sister of my friend Mrs. Dugdale). Nothing can be more
breezy and glorious than a ramble on these purple hills and a lounge in
the sun-warmed heather. The real way to enjoy them is of course supposed
to be with an eye to the grouse and partridges; but this is, happily,
little of a shooting house, though Holland keeps the table--one of the
best in England (or rather in Scotland, which is saying more)--supplied
with game. The next day I took part in a cavalcade across the hills to
see a ruined castle; and in the evening, if you please, stiff and sore
as I was, and am still, with my exploits in the saddle, which had been
sufficiently honourable, I went to a ball fifteen miles distant. The
ball was given by a certain old Mr. Cunliffe Brooks, a great proprietor
hereabouts and possessor of a shooting-lodge with a ball-room; a fact
which sufficiently illustrates the luxury of these Anglo-Scotch
arrangements. At the ball was the famous beauty Mrs. Langtry, who was
staying in the house and who is probably for the moment the most
celebrated woman in England. She is in sooth divinely handsome and it
was 'extremely odd' to see her dancing a Highland reel (which she had
been practising for three days) with young Lord Huntly, who is a very
handsome fellow and who in his kilt and tartan, leaping and hooting and
romping, opposite to this London divinity, offered a vivid reminder of
ancient Caledonian barbarism and of the roughness which lurks in all
British amusements and only wants a pretext to explode. We came home
from our ball (where I took out two young ladies who had gone with us
for a polka apiece) at four a.m., and I found it difficult on that
morning, at breakfast, to comply with that rigid punctuality which is
the custom of the house.... Today our fine weather has come to an end
and we are closely involved in a ferocious wet tornado. But I am glad of
the rest and quiet, and I have just bolted out of the library to escape
the 'morning service,' read by the worthy Nevin, the American Episcopal
chaplain in Rome, who is staying here, to which the dumb and decent
servants are trooping in. I am fast becoming a good enough Englishman to
respect inveterately my own habits and do, wherever I may be, only
exactly what I want. This is the secret of prosperity here--provided of
course one has a certain number of sociable and conformable habits, and
civil inclinations, as a starting-point. After that, the more positive
your idiosyncrasies the more positive the convenience. But it is drawing
toward lunch, and I can't carry my personality quite so far as to be
late for that.
I have said enough, dear sister, to make you see that I continue to see
the world with perhaps even enviable profit. But don't envy me too much;
for the British country-house has at moments, for a cosmopolitanised
American, an insuperable flatness. On the other hand, to do it justice,
there is no doubt of its being one of the ripest fruits of time--and
here in Scotland, where you get the conveniences of Mayfair dovetailed
into the last romanticism of nature--of the highest results of
civilization. Such as it is, at any rate, I shall probably have a little
more of it.... Scotland is decidedly a thing to see and which it would
have been idiocy to have foregone. Did I tell you I was now London
correspondent of the _Nation_? Farewell, dearest child and sister. I
wish I could blow you a little of the salubrity of bonnie Scotland. The
lunch-bell is striking up and I hurry off with comprehensive blessings.
Ever your faithfullest
H. J. jr.
_To William James._
The brief allusion at the end of this letter to two memorable
visits will recall the picture he long afterwards made of them, and
of the lady who inducted him, in _The Middle Years_. The closing
paragraph of _Daisy Miller_, it may be mentioned, gives a glance at
the hero's subsequent history and a hint that he became 'much
interested in a clever foreign lady.' The story about to appear in
the _Cornhill_ was _An International Episode_.
Devonshire Club, St. James's, S.W.
Nov. 14th, '78.
My dear William,
...I was much depressed on reading your letter by your painful
reflections on _The Europeans_; but now, an hour having elapsed, I am
beginning to hold up my head a little; the more so as I think I myself
estimate the book very justly and am aware of its extreme slightness. I
think you take these things too rigidly and unimaginatively--too much as
if an artistic experiment were a piece of conduct, to which one's life
were somehow committed; but I think also that you're quite right in
pronouncing the book 'thin' and empty. I don't at all despair, yet, of
doing something fat. Meanwhile I hope you will continue to give me, when
you can, your free impression of my performances. It is a great thing to
have some one write to one of one's things as if one were a third
person, and you are the only individual who will do this. I don't think
however you are always right, by any means. As for instance in your
objection to the closing paragraph of _Daisy Miller_, which seems to me
queer and narrow, and as regards which I don't seize your point of view.
J'en appelle to the sentiment of any other story-teller whatsoever; I am
sure none such would wish the paragraph away. You may say--'Ah, but
other _readers_ would.' But that is the same; for the teller is but a
more developed reader. I don't trust your judgment altogether (if you
will permit me to say so) about _details_; but I think you are
altogether right in returning always to the importance of subject. I
hold to this, strongly; and if I don't as yet seem to proceed upon it
more, it is because, being 'very artistic,' I have a constant impulse to
try experiments of form, in which I wish to not run the risk of wasting
or gratuitously using big situations. But to these I am coming now. It
is something to have learned how to write, and when I look round me and
see how few people (doing my sort of work) know how (to my sense,) I
don't regret my step-by-step evolution. I don't advise you however to
read the two last things I have written--one a thing in the Dec. and
Jan. _Cornhill_, which I will send home; and the other a piece I am just
sending to Howells. They are each quite in the same manner as _The
Europeans_.
I have written you a letter after all. I am tired and must stop. I went
into the country the other day to stay with a friend a couple of days
(Mrs. Greville) and went with her to lunch with Tennyson, who, after
lunch, read us Locksley Hall. The next day we went to George Eliot's.