_To W. E. Norris._
The "American outbreak" was the trouble over the question of the
Venezuelan frontier. The articles in the _Times_ by the late G. W.
Smalley (correspondent for the journal in New York) did much, in H.
J.'s view, to preserve the relations between England and the United
States during this difficult time.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
Feb. 4th [1896].
My dear Norris,
Your letter is as good as the chair by your study-table (betwixt it, as
it were, and the tea-stand) used to be; and as that luxurious piece of
furniture shall (D.V.) be again. Your news, your hand, your voice
sprinkle me--most refreshingly--with the deep calm of Torquay. It is in
short in every way good to hear from you, so that, behold, for your
sweet sake, I perpetrate that intensest of my favourite immoralities--I
snatch the epistolary, the disinterested pen before (at 10 a.m.)
squaring my poor old shoulders over the painful instrument that I fondly
try to believe to be lucrative. It _isn't_--but one must keep up the
foolish fable to the end. I am having in these difficult conditions a
very decent winter. It is mild, and it isn't wet--not here and now; and
it is--for me--thanks to more than Machiavellian cunning, more
dinnerless than it has, really, ever been. My fireside really knows me
on some evenings. I forsake it too often--but a little less and less. So
you bloom and smack your lips, while I shrivel and tighten my waistband.
In spite of my gain of private quiet I have suffered acutely by my loss
of public. The American outbreak has darkened all my sky--and made me
feel, among many other things, how long I have lived away from my native
land, how long I _shall_ (D.V.!) live away from it and how little I
understand it today. The explosion of jingoism there is the result of
all sorts of more or less domestic and internal conditions--and what is
most indicated, on the whole, as coming out of it, is a vast new split
or cleavage in American national feeling--politics and parties--a split
almost, roughly speaking, between the West and the East. There are
really two civilisations there side by side--in one yoke; or rather one
civilisation and a barbarism. All the expressions of feeling _I_ have
received from the U.S. (since this hideous row) have been, intensely, of
course, from the former. It is, on the whole, the stronger force; but
only on condition of its fighting hard. But I think it _will_ fight
hard. Meanwhile, the whole thing sickens me. That unfortunately,
however, is not a reason for its not being obviously there. It's there
all the while. But let it not be any more _here_: I mean in this
scribblement. My admiration of Smalley is boundless, and my appreciation
and comfort and gratitude. He has really _done_ something--and will do
more--for peace and decency.
I went yesterday to Leighton's funeral--a wonderful and slightly curious
public demonstration--the streets all cleared and lined with police, the
day magnificent (his characteristic good fortune to the end;) and St.
Paul's very fine to the eye and crammed with the _whole_ London
world.... The music was fine and severe, but I thought wanting in volume
and force--thin and meagre for the vast space. But what do I know?
No, my dear Norris, I _don't_ go abroad--I go on May 1st into the depths
(somewhere) of old England. A response to that proposal I spoke to you
of (from Rome) is utterly impossible to me now.... I've two novels to
write before I can _dream_ of anything else; and to go abroad is to
plunge into the fiery furnace of people. So either Devonshire or some
other place will be my six months' lot. I must take a house, this
time--a small and cheap one--and I must (deride me not) be somewhere
where I can, without disaster, bicycle. Also I must be a little nearer
town than last year. I'm afraid these things rather menace Torquay. But
it's soon to say--I must wait. I shall decide in April--or by
mid-March--only. Meanwhile things will clear up. I'm intensely, thank
heaven, busy. I will, I think, send you the little magazine tale over
which (I mean over whose number of words--infinite and awful) I
struggled so, in Sept. and Oct. last, under your pitying eye and with
your sane and helpful advice. It comes in to me this a.m.
...I hope your daughter is laying up treasure corporeal in Ireland. I
like _your_ dinners--even I mean in the houses of the other hill-people;
and I beg you to feel yourself clung to for ever by yours irrepressibly,