_To Mrs. William James._
_Dictated._
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
1st December, 1897.
Dearest Alice,
It's too hideous and horrible, this long time that I have not written
you and that your last beautiful letter, placed, for reminder, well
within sight, has converted all my emotion on the subject into a
constant, chronic blush. The reason has been that I have been driving
very hard for another purpose this inestimable aid to expression, and
that, as I have a greater loathing than ever for the mere manual act, I
haven't, on the one side, seen my way to inflict on you a written
letter, or on the other had the virtue to divert, till I should have
finished my little book, to another stream any of the valued and
expensive industry of my amanuensis. I _have_, at last, finished my
little book--that is _a_ little book, and so have two or three mornings
of breathing-time before I begin another. Le plus clair of this small
interval "I consecrate to thee!"
I am settled in London these several weeks and making the most of that
part of the London year--the mild, quiet, grey stretch from the
mid-October to Christmas--that I always find the pleasantest, with the
single defect of its only not being long enough. We are having,
moreover, a most creditable autumn; no cold to speak of and almost no
rain, and a morning-room window at which, this December 1st, I sit with
my scribe, admitting a radiance as adequate as that in which you must be
actually bathed, and probably more mildly golden. I have no positive
plan save that of just ticking the winter swiftly away on this most
secure basis. There are, however, little doors ajar into a possible
brief absence. I fear I have just closed one of them rather ungraciously
indeed, in pleading a "non possumus" to a most genial invitation from
John Hay to accompany him and his family, shortly after the new year,
upon a run to Egypt and a month up the Nile; he having a boat for that
same--I mean for the Nile part--in which he offers me the said month's
entertainment. It is a very charming opportunity, and I almost blush at
not coming up to the scratch; especially as I shall probably never have
the like again. But it isn't so simple as it sounds; one has on one's
hands the journey to Cairo and back, with whatever seeing and doing by
the way two or three irresistible other things, to which one would feel
one might never again be so near, would amount to. (I mean, of course,
then or never, on the return, Athens, Corfu, Sicily the never-seen,
etc., etc.) It would all "amount" to too much this year, by reason of a
particular little complication--most pleasant in itself, I hasten to
add--that I haven't, all this time, mentioned to you. Don't be scared--I
haven't accepted an "offer." I have only taken, a couple of months ago,
a little old house in the country--for the rest of my days!--on which,
this winter, though it is, for such a commodity, in exceptionally good
condition, I shall have to spend money enough to make me quite
concentrate my resources. The little old house you will at no distant
day, I hope, see for yourself and inhabit and even, I trust, temporarily
and gratuitously possess--for half the fun of it, in the coming years,
will be occasionally to lend it to you. I marked it for my own two years
ago at Rye--so perfectly did it, the first instant I beheld it, offer
the solution of my long-unassuaged desire for a calm retreat between May
and November. It is the very calmest and yet cheerfullest that I could
have dreamed--_in_ the little old, cobble-stoned, grass-grown,
red-roofed town, on the summit of its mildly pyramidal hill and close to
its noble old church--the chimes of which will sound sweet in my goodly
old red-walled garden.
The little place is so rural and tranquil, and yet discreetly animated,
that its being within the town is, for convenience and immediate
accessibility, purely to the good; and the house itself, though modest
and unelaborate, full of a charming little stamp and dignity of its
period (about 1705) without as well as within. The next time I go down
to see to its "doing up," I will try to have a photograph taken of the
pleasant little old-world town-angle into which its nice old red-bricked
front, its high old Georgian doorway and a most delightful little old
architectural garden-house, perched alongside of it on its high brick
garden-wall--into which all these pleasant features together so happily
"compose." Two years ago, after I had lost my heart to it--walking over
from Point Hill to make sheep's eyes at it (the more so that it is
called Lamb House!)--there was no appearance whatever that one could
ever have it; either that its fond proprietor would give it up or that
if he did it would come at all within one's means. So I simply sighed
and renounced; tried to think no more about it; till at last, out of the
blue, a note from the good local ironmonger, to whom I had whispered at
the time my hopeless passion, informed me that by the sudden death of
the owner and the preference (literal) of his son for Klondyke, it might
perhaps drop into my lap. Well, to make a long story short, it _did_
immediately drop and, more miraculous still to say, on terms, for a long
lease, well within one's means--terms quite deliciously moderate. The
result of these is, naturally, that they will "do" nothing to it: but,
on the other hand, it has been so well lived in and taken care of that
the doing--off one's own bat--is reduced mainly to sanitation and
furnishing--which latter includes the peeling off of old papers from
several roomfuls of pleasant old top-to-toe wood panelling. There are
two rooms of complete old oak--one of them a delightful little parlour,
opening by one side into the little vista, church-ward, of the small
old-world street, where not one of the half-dozen wheeled vehicles of
Rye ever passes; and on the other straight into the garden and the
approach, from that quarter, to the garden-house aforesaid, which is
simply the making of a most commodious and picturesque detached study
and workroom. Ten days ago Alfred Parsons, best of men as well as best
of landscape-painters-and-gardeners, went down with me and revealed to
me the most charming possibilities for the treatment of the tiny
out-of-door part--it amounts to about an acre of garden and lawn, all
shut in by the peaceful old red wall aforesaid, on which the most
flourishing old espaliers, apricots, pears, plums and figs, assiduously
grow. It appears that it's a glorious little growing exposure, air, and
soil--and all the things that were still flourishing out of doors
(November 20th) were a joy to behold. There went with me also a good
friend of mine, Edward Warren, a very distingue architect and loyal
spirit, who is taking charge of whatever is to be done. So I hope to get
in, comfortably enough, early in May. In the meantime one must "pick up"
a sufficient quantity of ancient mahogany-and-brass odds and ends--a
task really the more amusing, here, where the resources are great, for
having to be thriftily and cannily performed. The house is really quite
charming enough in its particular character, and as to the stamp of its
period, not to do violence to by rash modernities; and I am developing,
under its influence and its inspiration, the most avid and gluttonous
eye and most infernal watching patience, in respect of lurking
"occasions" in not too-delusive Chippendale and Sheraton. The "King's
Room" will be especially treated with a preoccupation of the comfort and
aesthetic sense of cherished sisters-in-law; King's Room so-called by
reason of George Second having passed a couple of nights there and so
stamped it for ever. (He was forced ashore, at Rye, on a progress
somewhere with some of his ships, by a tempest, and accommodated at Lamb
House as at the place in the town then most consonant with his grandeur.
It would, for that matter, quite correspond to this description still.
Likewise the Mayors of Rye have usually lived there! Or the persons
usually living there have usually _become_ mayors! That was
conspicuously the case with the late handsome old Mr. Bellingham, whose
son is my landlord. So you see the ineluctable dignity in store for me.)
But enough of this swagger. I have been copious to copiously amuse you.
Your beautiful letter, which I have just read over again, is full of
interest about you all; causing me special joy as to what it says of
William's present and prospective easier conditions of work,
relinquishment of laboratory, refusal of outside lectures, etc., and of
the general fine performance, and promise, all round, of the children.
What you say of each makes me want to see that particular one most.... I
had a very great pleasure the other day in a visit, far too short--only
six hours--from dear old Howells, who did me a lot of good in an
illuminating professional (i.e. commercial) way, and came, in fact, at
quite a psychological moment. I hope you may happen to see him soon
enough to get from him also some echo of _me_--such as it may be. But,
my dear Alice, I must be less interminable. Please tell William that I
have two Syracuse "advices," as yet gracelessly unacknowledged--I mean
to him--to thank him for. It's a joy to find these particular months
less barren than they used to be. I embrace you tenderly all round and
am yours very constantly,