_To Arthur Christopher Benson._
The origin of _The Turn of the Screw_ in an anecdote told him by
Archbishop Benson is described in the preface that H. J. wrote for
it when it appeared in the collected edition of his works.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
March 11th, 1898.
My dear Arthur,
I suppose that in the mysterious scheme of providence and fate such an
inspiration as your charming note--out of the blue!--of a couple of days
ago, is intended somehow to make up to me for the terror with which my
earlier--in fact _all_ my past--productions inspire me, and for the
insurmountable aversion I feel to looking at them again or to
considering them in any way. This morbid state of mind is really a
blessing in disguise--for it has for happy consequences that such an
incident as your letter becomes thereby extravagantly pleasant and gives
me a genial glow. All thanks and benedictions--I shake your hand very
hard--or _would_ do so if I could attribute to you anything so palpable,
personal and actual _as_ a hand. Yet I shall never write a sequel to the
_P. of an L._--admire my euphonic indefinite article. It's all too faint
and far away--too ghostly and ghastly--and I have bloodier things _en
tete_. I can do better than that!
But a propos, precisely, of the ghostly and ghastly, I have a little
confession to make to you that has been on my conscience these three
months and that I hope will excite in your generous breast nothing but
tender memories and friendly sympathies.
On one of those two memorable--never to be obliterated--winter nights
that I spent at the sweet Addington, your father, in the drawing-room by
the fire, where we were talking a little, in the spirit of recreation,
of such things, repeated to me the few meagre elements of a small and
gruesome spectral story that had been told _him_ years before and that
he could only give the dimmest account of--partly because he had
forgotten details and partly--and much more--because there had _been_ no
details and no coherency in the tale as he received it, from a person
who also but half knew it. The vaguest essence only was there--some dead
servants and some children. This essence _struck_ me and I made a note
of it (of a most scrappy kind) on going home. There the note remained
till this autumn, when, struck with it afresh, I wrought it into a
fantastic fiction which, first intended to be of the briefest, finally
became a thing of some length and is now being "serialised" in an
American periodical. It will appear late in the spring (chez Heinemann)
in a volume with _one_ other story, and then I will send it to you. In
the meanwhile please think of the _doing_ of the thing on my part as
having sprung from that kind old evening at Addington--quite gruesomely
as my unbridled imagination caused me to see the inevitable development
of the subject. It was all worth mentioning to you. I am very busy and
very decently fit and very much yours, always, my dear Arthur,