_To Mrs. Mahlon Sands._
Hotel de l'Europe,
Dresden.
Dec. 12th [1891].
Dear Mrs. Sands,
Just a word--in answer to your note of sympathy--to say that I am
working through my dreary errand and service here as smoothly as three
stricken women--a mother and two sisters--permit. They are however very
temperate and discreet--and one of the sisters a little person of
extraordinary capacity--who will float them all successfully home.
Wolcott Balestier, the young American friend beside whose grave I stood
with but three or four others here on Thursday, was a very remarkable
creature who had been living in London for some three years--he had an
intimate _business_-relation with literature and was on the way to have
a really artistic and creative one. He had made himself a peculiar
international place--which it would take long to describe, and was full
of capacities, possibilities and really big inventions and ideas. He had
rendered me admirable services, become in a manner a part of my life,
and I was exceedingly attached to him. And now, at 30, he dies--in a
week--in a far-away German hospital--his mother and sisters were in
Paris--of a damnable vicious typhoid, contracted in his London office,
the "picturesqueness" of which he loved, as it was in Dean's Yard,
Westminster, just under the Abbey towers, and in a corner like that of a
peaceful Cathedral close. Many things, many enterprises, interests,
visions, originalities perish with him. Oh, the "ironies of fate," the
ugly tricks, the hideous practical jokes of life! I start for London
some time next week and shall very soon come and see you. I hope all is
well with you.
Yours always,
HENRY JAMES.
_To Mrs. Humphry Ward._
The following was written a few days after the death of Miss Alice
James.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
March 10th [1892].
Dear Mrs. Ward,
Many, many thanks for your friendly remembrance of me--the flowers are
full of spring and life and the universe, as it were, and, besides this,
are very close and charming company to me as I sit scribbling--writing
many notes among other things--in still, indoor days that are grateful
to me. You were one of the very few persons in England who had seen my
sister even a little--and I am very glad of that. She was a rare and
remarkable being, and her death makes a great difference in my
existence. But for her it is only blessed. I hope you are happy in the
good reasons you have for being so--if one _is_ happy strictly
(certainly one isn't the reverse) for "reasons."
Believe me yours always,
HENRY JAMES.
_To Robert Louis Stevenson._
Stevenson, it will be recalled, dedicated _Across the Plains_ to M.
Paul Bourget, as an expression of his delight in that author's
_Sensations d'Italie_, sent him by H. J. Mr. Kipling did not, as it
turned out, pay his projected visit to Samoa, referred to in this
letter.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
March 19th, 1892.
My dear Louis,
I send you to-day by book-post, registered, a little volume of tales
which I lately put forth--most of which however you may have seen in
magazines. Please accept at any rate the modest offering. Accept, too,
my thanks for your sweet and dateless letter which I received a month
ago--the one in which you speak with such charming appreciation and
felicity of Paul Bourget. I echo your admiration--I think the Italian
book one of the most exquisite things of our time. I am in only very
occasional correspondence with him--and have not written since I heard
from you; but I shall have an early chance, now probably, to repeat your
words to him, and they will touch him in a tender place. He is living
much, now, in Italy, and I may go there for May or June--though indeed I
fear it is little probable. Colvin tells me of the volume of some of
your _inedites_ beauties that is on the point of appearing, and the news
is a bright spot in a vulgar world. The vulgarity of literature in these
islands at the present time is not to be said, and I shall clutch at you
as one turns one's ear to music in the clatter of the market-place. Yet,
paradoxical as it may appear, oh Louis, I have still had the refinement
not to read the _Wrecker_ in the periodical page. This is an enlightened
and judicious heroism, and I do as I would be done by. Trust me,
however, to taste you in long draughts as soon as I can hold the book.
Then will I write to you again. You tell me nothing of yourself--so I
have nothing to take up or take hold of, save indeed the cherished
superstition that you enjoy some measure of health and cheer. You are,
however, too far away for my imagination, and were it not for dear
Colvin's friendly magic, which puts in a pin here and there, I shouldn't
be able to catch and arrest at all the opaline iridescence of your
legend. Yet even when he speaks of intending wars and the clash of arms,
it all passes over me like an old-time song. You see how much I need you
close at hand to stand successfully on the tiptoe of emulation. You
fatigue, in short, my credulity, though not my affection. We lately
clubbed together, all, to despatch to you an eye-witness in the person
of the genius or the _genus_, in himself, Rudyard, for the concussion of
whose extraordinary personality with your own we are beginning soon to
strain the listening ear. We devoutly hope that this time he will really
be washed upon your shore. With him goes a new little wife--whose
brother--Wolcott Balestier, lately dead, in much youthful promise and
performance (I don't allude, in saying that, especially to the literary
part of it,) was a very valued young friend of mine.... The main thing
that has lately happened to myself is the death of my dear sister a
fortnight ago--after years of suffering, which, however, had not made
her any less rare and remarkable a person or diminished the effect of
the event (when it should occur) in making an extreme difference in my
life. Of my occupation what shall I tell you? I have of late years left
London less and less--but I am thinking sooner or later (in a near
present) of making a long foreign, though not distant, absence. I am
busy with the _short_--I have forsworn the long. I hammer at the horrid
little theatrical problem, with delays and intermissions, but, horrible
to relate, no failure of purpose. I shall soon publish another small
story-book which I will incontinently send you. I have done many brief
fictions within the last year.... The good little Thomas Hardy has
scored a great success with _Tess of the d'Urbervilles_, which is
chock-full of faults and falsity and yet has a singular beauty and
charm....
What we most talk of here, however, is the day when it may be believed
that you will come to meet us on some attainable southern shore. We will
_all_ go to the Mediterranean for you--let that not nail you to Samoa. I
send every greeting to your play-fellows--your fellow-phantoms. The
wife-phantom knows my sentiments. The ghost of a mother has my heartiest
regard. The long Lloyd-spectre laughs an eerie laugh, doubtless, at my
[word illegible] embrace. Yet I feel, my dear Louis, that I _do_ hold
you just long enough to press you to the heart of your very faithful old
friend,