The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II
TextTo Miss Grace Norton
Dictated.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.Feb. 6th, 1913.
Dearest old friend!
Don't shudder, I beg you, at the sight of this grim legibility—even when you compare it with your own exquisite mastery of legibility without grimness! Let me down easily, in view of the long, the oh so much too long, ordeal that has pressed on me, and that has so hampered and hindered and harrowed me, that almost any sort of making shift to project my sentiments to a distance is a sort of victory won, or patch of ground wrested, from darkness and the devil! I am slowly slowly getting better of an interminable complicated siege of pain and distress; but it has left me with arrears of every sort piled up around me like the wild fragments of some convulsion of Nature, and I pick my way, or grope it, or even feebly and fatally fail of it, as I best can. There are things that help, withal, and one of these has been to receive your all-benignant little letter of two days ago. I needn't reaffirm to you at this time of day that all your long patiences and fidelities, all your generosities and gallantries of always rallying yet again, are always more beautiful to me than I ever seem to have managed punctually enough to help you, if need be, to feel—especially as of any such urgent "help" there need be no question now! You have had enough news of me from over your way, I infer, pretty dismal though it may have been, for me not to want fatuously to dose you with it (I mean given its bitter quality) further or at first hand; therefore let me rather convey to you at first hand that I am getting into distinctly less pitiful case.... I have been too complicated a sufferer for it to clear at every point at the same time; but the general sense is ever so much better—and I am going to ask of your charity to let Alice, over the way, see these yearning pages, for her better reassurance—even if I have after a fashion managed, just of late, to reassure her more directly. I want her to have all the testimony I can treat her, and, by the same token, my dear Grace, treat you to.
Your little letter breathes all your characteristic courage and philosophy—while, I confess, at the same time, it fills out—or rather perhaps, more exactly, further removes the veil from—my in its very nature vivid enough picture of your fairly august state of lone Cambridge survivorship. I admired you on that state at closer quarters winter before last—even though my testimony to my so doing was at that time, from poor physical interferences, hampered and awkward; but History is so interesting when one is able to follow with closeness a particular attaching strain of it that my imagination, my intention, my affection and fidelity, hang and hover about your own particular noble exhibition of it as intelligently (yes, my dear Grace, as intelligently, nothing less, I insist) as you could possibly desire or put up with! Your letter fills in again for me a passage or two of detail—so that I feel myself the more possessed and qualified.... What I mean is above all that even this imperfect snatch of talk with you is dear and blest to me, and that if by hook or by crook, and through whatever densities of medium and distance, I draw out a little the sense of relation with you, it will have been better than utter frustration. I look out here, while I thus communicate, from a bit of the old-time stretch of riverside Chelsea, my first far-away glimpse or sense of which has, like so many of my first London glimpses and senses (my very first of all, I mean,) a never-lost association with you and yours, or at least with yours and thereby with you: which means my having come here first of all, one day of the early spring of 1869, with Charles and Susan, they having in their kindness brought me to call with them on the great (if great!) and strange and more or less sinister D. G. Rossetti, whom Charles was in good relation with, difficult as that appeared already then to have become for most people, and my impression of whom on the occasion, with everything else of it, I have always closely retained. Part of it was just this impression of the really interesting and delightful old Thames-side Chelsea, over the admirable water-view of which these windows now hang—quite as if I had then secretly vowed to myself that some window of mine some day should. The River is more pompously embanked (making an admirable walk all the way to Westminster, of the most salutary value to me when I can at the soberest of paces attempt it;) but the sense of it all goes back, as I say, to my fond participation in that prehistoric Queen's Gate Terrace Winter. However, I am drenching you with numbered pages—I ask no credit for the number!—and I almost sit with you while you read them; not exactly watching for a glow of rapture on your face, but still, on the whole, seeing you take them, without a frown, for a good intention and a stopgap for something better. You tell me almost nothing of yourself, but all my sympathy and fidelity wait on you (sympathy always can come in somewhere!) and I am yours, my dear Grace, always all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To Mrs. Henry White
Dictated.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.Feb. 23rd, 1913.
My dear old Friend,
Let this mechanic form and vulgar legibility notify you a little at the start that I am in rather a hampered and hindered state, and that that must plead both for my delay in acknowledging your dear faithful letter of the New Year time, and for my at last having to make the best of this too impersonal art.... I won't go into the history of my woes—all the more that I really hope I have shuffled the worst of them off. Even in this most recent form they have been part and parcel of the grave illness that overtook me as long ago as at the New Year, 1910, and with a very imperfect recovery from which I was struggling during those weary American months of winter-before-last when we planned so in vain that I should come to you in Washington. I have deeply regretted, ever since, my failure of that pleasure—all the more that I don't see it now as conceivably again within my reach. I am restored to this soil, for whatever may remain to me of my mortal career. The grand swing across the globe, which you and Harry will again nobly accomplish—again and yet again—now simply mocks at my weakness and my reduced resources. Besides, I am but too thankful to have a refuge in which continuously to crouch. Please fix well in your mind that continuity—as making it easy for you some day to find me here. The continuity is broken simply by my reverting to the country for the summer and autumn—a mere change from the blue bed to the brown, and then from the brown back again to this Thames-side perch, which I call the blue. I hang here, for six months, straight over the River and find it delightful and interesting, at once ever so quiet and ever so animated. The River has a quantity of picturesque and dramatic life and motion that one had never appreciated till one had thrown oneself on it de confiance. But it's another London, this old Chelsea of simplifications and sacrifices, from the world in which I so like to feel that I for so long lived more or less with you. I feel somehow as much away from that now as you and Harry must feel amid your new Washington horizons—and it has of itself, for that matter, gone to pieces under the sweep of the big broom of Time, which has scattered it without ceremony. A few vague and altered relics of it occasionally dangle for a moment before me. I was going to say "cross my path"—but I haven't now such a thing as a path, or it goes such a very few steps. I try meanwhile to project myself in imagination into your Washington existence—and, besides your own allusions to it, a passing visit a few days since from Walter Berry helped me a little to fix the shining vision. W. B. had been, I gathered, but a day or two near you, and wasn't in possession of many particulars. Beyond this, too, though you shine to me you shine a bit fearfully—for I can't rid myself (in a world of Chelsea limits and fashions) of a sense of the formidable, the somehow—at least for the likes of me!—difficult and bristling and glaring, side of the American conditions. However, you of course lightly ride the whirlwind—or at any rate have only as much or as little of the storms as you will, and can pick out of it only such musical thunder-rolls and most purely playful forked lightnings as suit you best. What I mean is that here, after a fashion, a certain part of the work of discrimination and selection and primary clearing of the ground is already done for one, in a manner that enables one to begin, for one's self, further on or higher up; whereas over there I seemed to see myself, speaking only from my own experience, often beginning so "low down," just in that way of sifting and selecting, that all one's time went to it and one was spent before arriving at any very charming altitude. This you will find obscure, but study it well—though strictly in private, so as not to give me away as a sniffy critic. Heaven knows I indulge in the most remorseless habits of criticism here—even if I make no great public use of them, through the increasing privacy and antiquity of my life. I kind of wonder about the bearing of the queer Democratic régime that seems as yet so obscurely to loom upon any latent possibilities (that might have been) on Harry's and your "career"—just as I wonder what unutterable queerness may not, as a feature of the whole conundrum, "representatively" speaking, before long cause us all here to sit up and stare: one or two such startling rumours about the matter, I trust groundless, having already had something of that effect. But we must all wait, mustn't we? and I do indeed envy you both your so interesting opportunity for doing so, in a front box at the comedy, or tragedy, the fine old American show, that is, whatever turn it takes: it will all give you, these next months, so much to look at and talk about and expertly appreciate. Lord, how I wish I were in a state or situation to be dining with you to-night! I am dying, really, to see your House—which means alas that I shall die without doing so. No glimmer of a view of the new Presidential family as a White House group has come my way—so that I sit in darkness there as all around, and feel you can but say that it serves me right not to have managed my life better—especially with your grand example! Amen, amen!…
I rejoice to hear of your having had your grand-children with you, though you speak, bewilderingly, as if they had leaped across the globe in happy exemption from parents—or a parent. However, nothing does surprise me now—almost any kind of globe-leaping affects me, in my trou, as natural, possible, nay probable! I pat Harry ever so affectionately on the back, I hold you both in the most affectionate remembrance, and am yours all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To Mrs. William James
Dictated.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.March 5th, 1913.
Dearest Alice,
An extreme blessing to me is your dear letter from Montreal. I had lately much longed to hear from you—and when do I not?—and had sent you a message to that effect in writing to Harry a week ago. Really to have some of your facts and your current picture straight from yourself is better than anything else....
I write you this in conditions that give me for the hour, this morning-hour, toward noon, such a sense of the possible beneficence of Climate, relenting ethereal mildness, so long and so far as one can at all come by it. We have been having, as I believe you have, a blessedly mild winter, and the climax at this moment is a kind of all uncannily premature May-day of softness and beauty. I sit here with my big south window open to the River, open wide, and a sort of healing balm of sunshine flooding the place. Truly I feel I did well for myself in perching—even thus modestly for a "real home"—just on this spot. My beginnings of going out again have consisted, up to to-day, in four successive excursions in a Bath-chair—every command of which resource is installed but little more than round the corner from me; and the Bath-chair habit or vice is, I fear, only too capable now of marking me for its own. This of course not "really"—my excellent legs are, thank heaven, still too cherished a dependence and resource and remedy to me in the long run, or rather in the long (or even the short) crawl; only, if you've never tried it, the B.C. has a sweet appeal of its own, for contemplative ventilation; and I builded better than I knew when I happened to settle here, just where, in all London, the long, long, smooth and really charming and beguiling Thames-side Embankment offers it a quite ideal course for combined publicity (in the sense of variety) and tranquillity (in the sense of jostling against nobody and nothing and not having to pick one's steps.) Add to this that just at hand, straight across the River, by the ample and also very quiet Albert Bridge, lies the large convenient and in its way also very beguiling Battersea Park: which you may but too unspeakably remember our making something of the circuit of with William on that day of the so troubled fortnight in London, after our return from Nauheim, when Theodate Pope called for us in her great car and we came first to just round the corner here, where he and I sat waiting together outside while you and she went into Carlyle's house. Every moment of that day has again and again pressed back upon me here—and how, rather suddenly, we had, in the park, where we went afterwards, to pull up, that is to turn and get back to the sinister little Symonds's as soon as possible. However. I don't know why I should stir that dismal memory. The way the "general location" seems propitious to me ought to succeed in soothing the nerves of association. This last I keep saying—I mean in the sense that, especially on such a morning as this, I quite adore this form of residence (this particular perch I mean) in order to make fully sure of what I have of soothing and reassuring to tell you.... Lamb House hangs before me from this simplified standpoint here as a rather complicated haze; but I tend, I truly feel, to overdo that view of it—and shan't settle to any view at all for another year. It is the mere worriment of dragged-out unwellness that makes me see things in wrong dimensions. They right themselves perfectly at better periods. But I mustn't yet discourse too long: I am still under restriction as to uttering too much vocal sound; and I feel how guarding and nursing the vocal resource is beneficial and helpful. I don't speak to you of Harry—there would be too much to say and he must shine upon you even from N.Y. with so big a light of his own. I take him, and I take you all, to have been much moved by Woodrow Wilson's fine, and clearly so sincere, even if so partial and provisional address yesterday. It isn't he, but it is the so long and so deeply provincialised and diseducated and, I fear—in respect to individual activity and operative, that is administrative value—very below-the-mark "personalities" of the Democratic party, that one is pretty dismally anxious about. An administration that has to "take on" Bryan looks, from the overhere point of view, like the queerest and crudest of all things! But of course I may not know what I'm talking about save when I thus embrace you all, almost principally Peg—and your Mother!—again and am your ever affectionate
HENRY JAMES.
To Bruce Porter
The beginning and end of this letter are accidentally missing.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.[March, 1913.]
…a better one than for a long, long while; and it enables this poor scrawl thus to try to hang itself, for the hour, however awkwardly, round your neck. What was wonderful and beautiful in your letter of last November 9th (now so handsomely and liveably before me—I adore your hand) is that it was prompted, to the last perfection, by a sublime sense of what was just exactly my case at that hour, so that when I think of this, and of how I felt it when the letter came, and of how exquisite and interesting that essential fact made it (over and above its essential charm,) I don't know whether I am most amazed or ashamed at my not having as nearly as possible just then and there acclaimed the touching marvel. But in truth this very fact of the justesse of your globe-spanning divination is the real answer to that. You wrote because you so beautifully and suddenly saw from afar (and so admirably wanted to lay your hand on me in consequence:) saw, I mean, that I was in some acute trouble, and had the heavenly wish to signal to me your sympathetic sense of it. So, as I say, your admirable page itself tells me, and so at the hour I hailed the sweet phenomenon. I had had a very bad summer, but hoped (and supposed) I was more or less throwing it off. But the points I make are, 1st, that your psychic sense of the situation had absolutely coincided in time, and in California, with what was going on at Lamb House, on the other side of the globe; and 2nd, after all, that precisely the condition so revealed to you was what made it too difficult for me to vibrate back to you with any proportionate punctuality or grace. Only this, you see, is my long-delayed and comparatively dull vibration. Here I am, at any rate, dearest Bruce, taking you as straight again to my aged heart as these poor clumsy methods will allow. Thank God meanwhile I have no supernatural fears about you! nor vain dreams that you are not in the living equilibrium, now as ever, that becomes you best, and of which you have the brave secret. I am incapable of doubting of this—though after all I now feel how exceedingly I should like you to tell me so even if but on one side of a sheet like this so handsome (I come back to that!) example that I have before me. You can do so much with one side of a sheet. But oh for a better approach to a real personal jaw! It is indeed most strange, this intimate relation of ours that has been doomed to consist of a grain of contact (et encore!) to a ton of separation. It's to the honour of us anyhow that we can and do keep touching without the more platitudinous kind of demonstration of it. Still—demonstrate, as I say, for three minutes. Feel a little, to help you to it, how tenderly I lay my hands on you. This address will find me till the end of June—but Lamb House of course always. I have taken three or four (or five) years' lease of a small flat on this pleasant old Chelsea riverside to hibernate in for the future. I return to the country for five or six months of summer and autumn, but can't stand the utter solitude and confinement of it from December to the spring's end. Ah, had we only a climate!—yours or Fanny Stevenson's (if she is still the exploiter of climates)—I believe I should be all right then! Tell me of her—and tell me of your Mother. I am sending you by the Scribners a volume of reminiscential twaddle....
To Lady Ritchie
Lady Ritchie had at this time thoughts (afterwards abandoned) of going to America. She was the "Princess Royal," of course, as the daughter of Thackeray.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.March 25th, 1913.
Dearest old Friend!
I am deeply interested and touched by your letter from the Island!—so much so that I shall indeed rush to you this (day-after-to-morrow) Thursday at 5.15. Your idea is (as regards your sainted Self!) of the bravest and most ingenious, but needing no end of things to be said about it—and I think I shall be able to say them ALL! The furore you would excite there, the glory in which you would swim (or sink!) would be of an ineffable resonance and effulgence; but I fear it would simply be a fatal Apotheosis, a prostrating exaltation. The devil of the thing (for yourself) would be that that terrific country is in every pulse of its being and on every inch of its surface a roaring repudiation and negation of anything like Privacy, and of the blinding and deafening Publicity you might come near to perish. But we will jaw about it—there is so much to say—and for Hester it would be another matter: she could ride the whirlwind and enjoy, in a manner, the storm. Besides, she isn't the Princess Royal—but only a remove of the Blood! Again, however, nous en causerons—on Thursday. I shall so hug the chance.... I am impatient for it and am yours and the Child's all so faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.