_To Mrs. Humphry Ward._
It will be understood that Mrs. Ward had consulted H. J. on certain
details, relating in particular to the American background of one
of the characters in her forthcoming novel _Eleanor_, the scene of
which was partly laid at Castel Gandolfo.
Lamb House, Rye.
Sunday. [July 1899].
Dear Mrs. Ward,
I return the proofs of _Eleanor_, in a separate cover from this, and as
I think it wise to _register_ them I must wait till to-morrow a.m. to do
that, and this, therefore, will reach you first. Let me immediately say
that I don't light (and I've read carefully every word, and many two or
three times, as Mr. Bellasis would say--and is Mr. B., by the way,
naturally--as it were--H. J.???!!! on any peccant particular spots in
the aspect of Lucy F. that the American reader would challenge. I do
think he, or she, may be likely, at first, to think her more English
than American--to say, I mean: "Why, this isn't _us_--it's English
'Dissent.'" For it's well--generally--to keep in mind how very different
a thing that is (socially, aesthetically &c.) from the American free
(and easy) multitudinous churches, that, practically, in any community,
are like so many (almost) clubs or Philharmonics or amateur theatrical
companies. I _don't_ quite think the however obscure American girl I
gather you to conceive would have any shockability about Rome, the Pope,
St. Peter's, kneeling, or anything of that sort--least of all any girl
whose concatenations _could_, by any possibility of social handing-on,
land her in the milieu you present at Albano. She would probably be
either a Unitarian or "Orthodox" (which is, I believe, "Congregational,"
though in New England always called "Orthodox") and in either case as
Emersonized, Hawthornized, J. A. Symondsized, and as "frantic" to _feel_
the Papacy &c, as one could well represent her. And this, I mean, even
were she of any provincial New England circle whatever that one could
conceive as ramifying, however indirectly, into Villa Barb. This
particularly were her father a college professor. In that case I should
say "The bad clothes &c, oh yes; as much as you like. The beauty &c,
_scarcely_. The offishness to Rome--as a spectator &c.--almost not at
all." All this, roughly and hastily speaking. But there is no false note
of surface, beyond this, I think, that you need be uneasy about at all.
Had I looked over your shoulder I should have said: "_Specify_,
localise, a little more--give her a _definite_ Massachusetts, or Maine,
or whatever, habitation--imagine a country-college-town--invent, if need
be, a name, and stick to that." This for smallish, but appreciable
reasons that I haven't space to develop--but after all not imperative.
For the rest the chapters you send me are, as a beginning, to my vision
very charming and interesting and pleasing--full of promise of strong
elements--as your beginnings always are.
And may I say (as I _can_ read nothing, if I read it at all, save in the
light of how one would _one's self_ proceed in tackling the same
_data_!) just two other things? One is that I think your material
suffers a little from the fact that the reader feels you approach your
subject too _immediately_, show him its elements, the cards in your
hand, too bang off from the first page--so that a wait to begin to guess
_what and whom the thing is going to be about_ doesn't impose itself:
the ante-chamber or two and the crooked corridor before he is already in
the Presence. The other is that you don't give him a positive sense of
dealing with your subject from its logical centre. This centre I
gathered to be, from what you told me in Rome (and one gathers it also
from the title,) the consciousness of Eleanor--to which all the rest
(Manisty, Lucy, the whole phantasmagoria and drama) is presented by
life. I should have urged you: "Make that consciousness full, rich,
universally prehensile and _stick_ to it--don't shift--and don't shift
_arbitrarily_--how, otherwise, do you get your unity of subject or keep
up your reader's sense of it?" To which, if you say: How then do I get
_Lucy's_ consciousness, I impudently retort: "By that magnificent and
masterly _indirectness_ which means the _only_ dramatic straightness and
intensity. You get it, in other words, by Eleanor." "And how does
Eleanor get it?" "By _Everything_! By Lucy, by Manisty, by every pulse
of the action in which she is engaged and of which she is the
fullest--an exquisite--register. Go behind _her_--miles and miles; don't
go behind the others, or the subject--_i.e._ the unity of
impression--goes to smash." But I am going too far--and this is more
than you will have bargained for. On these matters there is far too much
to say. This makes me all the more sorry that, in answer to your kind
invitation for the last of this month, I greatly fear I can't leave home
for several weeks to come. I am in hideous backwardness with duties that
after a long idleness (six full months!) have awaited me here--and I am
cultivating "a unity of impression!" In _October_ with joy.
Your history of your journey from V.B., your anxieties, complications,
horrid tension and tribulation, draws hot tears from my eyes. I blush
for the bleak inn at the bare Simplon. I only meant it for rude,
recovered health. Poor Miss Gertrude--heroine partout et toujours--and
so privately, modestly, exquisitely. Give her, please, all my present
benediction. And forgive my horrid, fatigued hieroglyphics. Do let me
have more of "Eleanor"--to re-write! And believe me, dear Mrs. Ward,
ever constantly yours,