_To Charles Eliot Norton._
20 Quincy Street,
Cambridge, Mass.
Feb. 7th, 1882.
My dear Charles,
Only a word to thank you very heartily for your little note of
friendship, and to send you a grateful message, as well, from my father
and sister. My mother's death is the greatest change that could befall
us, but our lives are so full of her still that we scarcely yet seem to
have lost her. The long beneficence of her own life remains and
survives.
I shall see you after your return to Shady Hill, as I am to be for a
good while in these regions. I wish to remain near my father, who is
infirm and rather tottering; and I shall settle myself in Boston for the
next four or five months. In other words I shall be constantly in
Cambridge and will often look in at you. I hope you have enjoyed your
pilgrimage.
Ever faithfully yours,
H. JAMES jr.
_To Mrs. John L. Gardner._
The play referred to in this letter is doubtless the dramatic
version of _Daisy Miller_; it remained unacted, but was published
in America in 1883.
3 Bolton St., Piccadilly.
June 5th [1882].
My dear Mrs. Gardner,
A little greeting across the sea! I meant to send it as soon as I
touched the shore; but the huge grey mass of London has interposed. I
experience the need of proving to you that I missed seeing you before I
left America--though I tried one day--the one before I quitted Boston;
but you were still in New York, contributing the harmony of your
presence and the melodies of your toilet, to the din of Wagnerian
fiddles and the crash of Teutonic cymbals. You must have passed me in
the train that last Saturday; but you have never done anything but pass
me--and _depasser_ me; so it doesn't so much matter. That final
interview--that supreme farewell--will however always be one of the most
fascinating incidents of life--the incidents that _didn't_ occur, and
leave me to muse on what they might have done for us. I think with
extraordinary tenderness of those two pretty little evenings when I read
you my play. They make a charming picture--a perfect picture--in my
mind, and the memory of them appeals to all that is most _raffine_ in my
constitution. Drop a tear--a diminutive tear (as _your_ tears must
be--small but beautifully-shaped pearls) upon the fact that my drama is
not after all to be brought out in New York (at least for the
present).... It is possible it may see the light here. I am to read it
to the people of the St. James's Theatre next week. _Please don't speak
of this._ London seems big and black and horrible and delightful--Boston
seems only the last named. You indeed could make it horrible for me if
you chose, and you could also make it big; but I doubt if you could make
it black. It would be a fair and glittering horror, suggestive of
icicles and white fur. I wonder if you are capable of writing me three
words? Let one of them tell me you are well. The second--what you
please! The third that you sometimes bestow a friendly thought upon
yours very faithfully,
H. JAMES jr.
_To Miss Grace Norton._
Hotel du Midi,
Toulouse.
Oct. 17th [1882].
My dear Grace,
You _shall_ have a letter this morning, whatever happens! I am waiting
for the train to Carcassonne, and you will perhaps ask yourself why you
are thus sandwiched between these two mouldy antiquities. It is
precisely because they are mouldy that I invoke your genial presence.
Toulouse is dreary and not interesting, and I am afraid that Carcassonne
will answer to the same description I heard given a couple of weeks ago
by an English lady in Touraine, of the charming Chateau d'Amboise:
"rather curious, you know, but very, very dirty." Therefore my spirit
turns for comfort to what I have known best in life. I got your last
excellent letter an abominable number of weeks ago; and I hereby
propose, as a rule of our future correspondence, that I be graciously
absolved from ever specifying the time that has elapsed since the
arrival of the letter I am supposed to be answering. This custom will
ease me off immensely. Your last, however, is not so remote but that the
scolding you gave me for sending your previous letter to Mrs. Kemble is
fearfully fresh in my mind. My dear Grace, I regret extremely having
irritated you; but I would fain wrestle with you on this subject. I
think you have a false code about the showing of letters--and in calling
it a breach of confidence you surely confound the limits of things. Of
course there is always a particular discretion for the particular case;
but what are letters but talk, and what is the showing them but the
repetition of talk? The same rules that govern that of course govern the
other; but I don't see why they should be more stringent. It is indeed,
I think, of the very essence of a good letter to be shown--it is wasted
if it is kept for _one_. Was not Mme. de Sevigne's last always handed
about to a hundred people--was not Horace Walpole's? What was right for
them is, it seems to me, right for you. However, I make this little
protest simply for the theory's sake, and promise you solemnly that in
practice, in future, you shall be my own exclusive and peculiar Sevigne!
Yet I don't at all insist on being your exclusive Walpole! I have
indeed the sweet security of the conviction that you will never "want,"
as they say (_you_ don't) in Cambridge, to exhibit my epistles. Only I
give you full leave to read them aloud at your soirees! Have your
soirees recommenced by the way? Where are you, my dear Grace, and how
are you? The question about your whereabouts will perhaps make you
smile, if anything in this letter can, as I make no doubt you are
enjoying the gorgeous charm (I speak without irony) of a Cambridge
October. For myself, as you see, I am "doing" the south of France--for
literary purposes, into which I won't pretend to enter, as they are not
of a very elevated character. (I am trying to write some articles about
these regions for an American "illustrated"--_Harper_--but I don't
foresee, as yet, any very brilliant results.) I left England some five
weeks ago, and after a few days in Paris came down into Touraine--for
the sake of the chateaux of the Loire. At the hotel at Tours, where I
spent 12 days, I had the advantage of the society of Mrs. Kemble, and
her daughter Mrs. Wister, with the son of the latter. We made some
excursions together--that is, _minus_ Mrs. K. (a large void,) who was
too infirm to junket about, and then the ladies returned to Paris and I
took my way further afield. Touraine is charming, Chenonceaux, Chambord,
Blois, etc., very interesting, and that episode was on the whole a
success--enlivened too by my exciting company. But the rest of France
(that is those parts I have been through) [is] rather disappointing,
though I suppose when I recite my itinerary you will feel that I ought
to have found a world of picturesqueness--I mean at Bourges, Le Mans,
Angers, Nantes, La Rochelle, Poitiers, etc. The cathedral of Bourges is
worth a long pilgrimage to see; but for the rest France has preserved
the physiognomy of the past much less than England and than Italy.
Besides, when I come into the south, I don't console myself for not
being in the latter country. I don't care for these people, and in fine
I rather hate it. I return to Paris on November 1st, and spend a month
there. Then I return to England for the winter. When I am in that
country I want to get out of it, and when I am out of it I languish for
its heavy air. England is just now in a rather "cocky" mood, and
disposed to carry it high with her little Egyptian victories. It is such
a satisfaction to me to see her again counting for something in Europe
that I would give her _carte blanche_ to go as far as she chooses--or
dares; but at the same time I hope she won't exhibit a vulgar greed. It
has a really dramatic interest for me to see how the great Gladstone
will acquit himself of a situation in which all his high principles will
be subjected to an extraordinary strain. He will be, I suspect, neither
very lofty, nor very base, but will compromise. I don't suppose,
however, you care much about these far-away matters. I hope, my dear
Grace, that your life is taking more and more a possible shape--that
your summer has left you some pleasant memories, and your winter brings
some cheerful hopes. I don't _think_ I shall be so long again--at any
rate my letters are no proof of my sentiments--by which I mean that my
silence is no _dis_proof; for after all I wish to be believed when I
tell you that I am most affectionately yours,
HENRY JAMES jr.
_To William James._
131 Mt. Vernon St.,
Boston.
Dec. 26th, '82.