_To H. G. Wells._
The only two "effusions," of the kind described in this letter,
that have survived are the preliminary schemes for the unfinished
novels, _The Ivory Tower_ and _The Sense of the Past_, published
with them in 1917.
Lamb House, Rye.
November 15th, 1902.
My dear Wells,
It is too horribly long that I have neglected an interesting (for I
can't say an interested) inquiry of yours--in your last note; and
neglected it precisely _because_ the acknowledgment involved had to be
an explanation. I have somehow, for the last month, not felt capable of
explanations, it being my infirmity that when "finishing a book" (and
that seems my chronic condition) my poor enfeebled cerebration becomes
incapable of the least extra effort, however slight and simple. My
correspondence then shrinks and shrinks--only the least explicit of my
letters get themselves approximately written. And somehow it has seemed
highly explicit to tell you that (in reply to your suggestive last)
those wondrous and copious preliminary statements (of my fictions that
are to be) don't really exist in any form in which they can be imparted.
I think I know to whom you allude as having seen their semblance--and
indeed their very substance; but in two exceptional (as it were) cases.
In these cases what was seen was the statement drawn up on the basis of
the serialization of the work--drawn up in one case with extreme detail
and at extreme length (in 20,000 words!) Pinker saw that: it referred to
a long novel, afterwards (this more than a year) written and finished,
but not yet, to my great inconvenience, published; but it went more
than two years ago to America, to the Harpers, and there remained and
has probably been destroyed. Were it here I would with pleasure transmit
it to you; for, though I say it who should not, it _was_, the statement,
full and vivid, I think, as a statement could be, of a subject as worked
out. Then Conrad saw a shorter one of the _Wings of the D._--also well
enough in its way, but only half as long and proportionately less
developed. _That_ had been prepared so that the book might be serialized
in another American periodical, but this wholly failed (what secrets and
shames I reveal to you!) and the thing (the book) was then written, the
subject treated, on a more free and independent scale. But _that_
synopsis too has been destroyed; it was returned from the U.S., but I
had then no occasion to preserve it. And evidently no fiction of mine
can or _will_ now be serialized; certainly I shall not again draw up
detailed and explicit plans for unconvinced and ungracious editors; so
that I fear I shall have nothing of that sort to show. A plan for
_myself_, as copious and developed as possible, I always do draw
up--that is the two documents I speak of were based upon, and extracted
from, such a preliminary _private_ outpouring. But this latter
voluminous effusion is, ever, so extremely familiar, confidential and
intimate--in the form of an interminable garrulous letter addressed to
my own fond fancy--that, though I always for easy reference, have it
carefully typed, it isn't a thing I would willingly expose to any eye
but my own. And even _then_, sometimes, I shrink! So there it is. I am
greatly touched by your respectful curiosity, but I haven't, you see,
anything coherent to produce. Let me promise however that if I ever do,
within any calculable time, address a manifesto to the dim editorial
mind, you shall certainly have the benefit of a copy. Candour compels me
to add that that consummation has now become unlikely. It is too
wantonly expensive a treat to them. In the first place they will none of
me, and in the second the relief, and greater intellectual dignity, so
to speak, of working on one's own scale, one's own line of continuity
and in one's own absolutely independent _tone_, is too precious to me to
be again forfeited. Pardon my too many words. I only add that I hope the
domestic heaven bends blue above you.
Yours, my dear Wells, always,
HENRY JAMES.
_To Mrs. Frank Mathews._
Lamb House, Rye.
November 18th, 1902.
My dear Mary,
You have made me a most beautiful and interesting present, and I thank
you heartily for the lavish liberality and trouble of the same. It
arrived this a.m. swathed like a mummy of the Pharaohs, and is a
monument to the care and skill of every one concerned. The photographer
has _retouched_ the impression rather too freely, especially the eyes
(if one could but keep their hands off!) but the image has a pleasing
ghostliness, as out of the far past, and affects me pathetically as if
it were of the dead--of one who died young and innocent. Well, so he
did, and I can speak of him or admire him, poor charming slightly
mawkish youth, quite as I would another. I remember (it now all comes
back to me) when (and where) I was so taken: at the age of _20_, though
I look younger, and at a time when I had had an accident (an injury to
my back,) and was rather sick and sorry. I look rather as if I wanted
propping up. But you have propped me up, now, handsomely for all time,
and I feel that I shall go down so to the remotest posterity. There is a
great Titian, you know, at the Louvre--_l'homme au gant_; but I, in my
gloved gentleness, shall run him close. All thanks again, then: you have
renewed my youth for me and diverted my antiquity and I really, as they
say, fancy myself, and am yours, my dear Mary, very constantly,