P.S. I send this to C.F. as you may have shifted. How delightful your
picture of the little time-beating boy! What a family!
_To W. D. Howells._
_The Sense of the Past_, the first chapters of which were written
at this time, was presently laid aside and not continued until the
autumn of 1914. The other projected "tale of terror," referred to
in this letter, was never carried out; there seems to be no
indication of its subject.
Lamb House, Rye.
29th June, 1900.
My dear Howells,
I can't emulate your wonderful little cursive type on your delicate
little sheets--the combination of which seems to suggest that you
dictate, at so much an hour, to an Annisquam fairy; but I will do what I
can and make out to be intelligible to you even, over the joy it is,
ever and always, to hear from you. You say that had you not been writing
me the particular thing you were, you fear you wouldn't have been
writing at all; but it is a compliment I can better. I really believe
that if I weren't writing you this, on my side, I _should_ be writing
you something else. For I've been, of late, reading you again as
continuously as possible--the worst I mean by which is as continuously
as the book-sellers consent: and the result of "Ragged Lady," the
"Silver Journey," the "Pursuit of the Piano" and two or three other
things (none wrested from your inexorable hand, but paid for from scant
earnings) has been, ever so many times over, an impulse of reaction, of
an intensely cordial sort, directly _at_ you--all, alas, spending
itself, for sad and sore want of you, in the heavy air of this alien
clime and the solitude, here, of my unlettered life. I wrote to you to
Kittery Point--I think it was--something like a year ago, and my chief
occupation since then has been listening for the postman's knock. But
let me quickly add that I understand overwhelmingly well what you say of
the impossibility for you, at this time of day, of letters. God knows
they _are_ impossible--the great fatal, incurable, unpumpable leak of
one's poor sinking bark. Non ragioniam di lor--I understand all about
it; and it only adds to the pleasure with which, even on its personal
side, I greet your present communication.
This communication, let me, without a shred of coyness, instantly
declare, much interests and engages me--to the degree even that I think
I find myself prepared to post you on the spot a round, or a square,
Rather! I won't go through any simpering as to the goodness of your
"having thought of me"--nor even through any frank gaping (though there
might be, for my admiration and awe, plenty of that!) over the wonder of
your multiform activity and dauntlessly universal life. Basta that I
will write anything in life that anyone asks me in decency--and a
fortiori that you so gracefully ask. I can only feel it to be enough for
me that you have a hand in the affair, that you are giving a book
yourself and engaging yourself otherwise, and that I am in short in your
company. What I understand is that my little novel shall be of fifty
thousand (50,000) words, neither more, I take it, nor less; and that I
shall receive the sum mentioned in the prospectus "down," in advance of
royalties, on such delivery. (I shall probably in point of fact, in my
financial humility, prefer, when the time comes, to avail myself of the
alternative right mentioned in the prospectus--that of taking, instead
of a royalty, for the two years "lease," the larger sum formed by the
so-much-a-word aggregation. But that I shall be clear about when the
work is done; I only glance at this now as probable.) It so happens that
I can get at the book, I think, almost immediately and do it within the
next three or four months. You will therefore, unless you hear from me a
short time hence to the contrary, probably receive it well before
December. As for the absoluteness of the "order," I am willing to take
it as, practically, sufficiently absolute. If you shouldn't like it,
there is something else, definite enough, that I can do with it. What,
however, concerns me more than anything else is to take care that you
_shall_ like it. I tell myself that I am not afraid!
I brood with mingled elation and depression on your ingenious, your
really inspired, suggestion that I shall give you a ghost, and that my
ghost shall be "international." I say inspired because, singularly
enough, I set to work some months ago at an international ghost, and on
just this scale, 50,000 words; entertaining for a little the highest
hopes of him. He was to have been wonderful and beautiful; he was to
have been called (perhaps too metaphysically) "The Sense of the Past";
and he was to have been supplied to a certain Mr ---- who was then
approaching me--had then approached me.... The outstretched arm,
however, alas, was drawn in again, or lopped off, or otherwise paralysed
and negatived, and I was left with my little project--intrinsically, I
hasten to add, and most damnably difficult--on my hands.... It is very
possible, however, it is indeed most probable, that I should have broken
down in the attempt to do him this particular thing, and this particular
thing (divine, sublime, if I _could_ do it) is not, I think, what I
shall now attempt to nurse myself into a fallacious faith that I shall
be able to pull off for Howells and Clarke. The damnable _difficulty_ is
the reason; I have rarely been beaten by a subject, but I felt myself,
after upwards of a month's work, destined to be beaten by that one. This
will sufficiently hint to you how awfully good it is. But it would take
too long for me to tell you here, more vividly, just how and why; it
would, as well, to tell you, still more subtly and irresistibly, why
it's difficult. There it lies, and probably will always lie.
I'm not even sure that the international ghost is what will most bear
being worried out--though, again, in another particular, the
circumstances, combining with your coincident thought, seemed pointed by
the finger of providence. What ---- wanted was two Tales--both tales of
"terror" and making another duplex book like the "Two Magics."
Accordingly I had had (dreadful deed!) to puzzle out more or less a
second, a different piece of impudence of the same general type. But I
had only, when the project collapsed, caught hold of the tip of the tail
of this other monster--whom I now mention because his tail seemed to
show him as necessarily still more interesting than No. 1. If I can at
all recapture _him_, or anything like him, I will do my best to sit down
to him and "mount" him with due neatness. In short, I will do what I
can. If I can't be terrible, I shall nevertheless still try to be
international. The difficulties are that it's difficult to be terrible
save in the short piece and international save in the long. But trust
me. I add little more. This by itself will begin by alarming you as a
precipitate instalment of my responsive fury. I rejoice to think of you
as basking on your Indian shore. _This_ shore is as little Indian as
possible, and we have hitherto--for the season--had to combat every form
of inclemency. To-day, however, is so charming that, frankly, I wish you
were all planted in a row in the little old garden into which I look as
I write to you. Old as it is (a couple of hundred years) it wouldn't be
too old even for Mildred. But these thoughts undermine. The "country
scenes" in your books make me homesick for New England smells and even
sounds. Annisquam, for instance, is a smell as well as a sound. May it
continue sweet to you! Charles Norton and Sally were with me lately for
a day or two, and you were one of the first persons mentioned between
us. You were _the_ person mentioned most tenderly. It was strange and
pleasant and sad, and all sorts of other things, to see Charles again
after so many years. I found him utterly unchanged and remarkably young.
But I found myself, _with_ him, Methusalesque and alien! I shall write
you again when my subject condenses. I embrace you all and am yours, my
dear Howells, always,