Chapter XV: Preface: 379 (13)

I thank you again for your letter, and I thank you very kindly indeed for the volume of Beardsley's letters, by which I have been greatly touched. I knew him a little, and he was himself to my vision touching, and extremely individual; but I hated his productions and thought them extraordinarily base--and couldn't find (perhaps didn't try enough to find!) the formula that reconciled this baseness, aesthetically, with his being so perfect a case of the artistic spirit. But now the personal spirit in him, the beauty of nature, is disclosed to me by your letter as wonderful and, in the conditions and circumstances, deeply pathetic and interesting. The amenity, the intelligence, the patience and grace and play of mind and of temper--how charming and individual an exhibition!...And very right have you been to publish the letters, for which Father Gray's claim is indeed supported. The poor boy remains quite one of the few distinguished images on the roll of young English genius brutally clipped, a victim of victims, given the vivacity of his endowment. I am glad I have three or four very definite--though one of them rather disconcerting--recollections of him.

Very curious and interesting your little history of your migration to Edinburgh--on the social aspect and intimate identity of which you must, I imagine, have much gathered light to throw ... And you are still young enough to find La Province meets your case too. It is because I am now so very far from that condition that London again (to which I return on the 20th) has become possible to me for longer periods: I am so old that I have shamelessly to simplify, and the simplified London that in the hustled and distracted years I vainly invoked, has come round to me easily now, and fortunately meets my case. I shall be glad to see you there, but I _won't_--thank you, no!--come to meat with you at Claridge's. One doesn't go to Claridge's if one simplifies. I am obliged now absolutely _never_ to dine or lunch out (a bad physical ailment wholly imposes this:) but I hope you will come to luncheon with _me_, since you have free range--on very different vittles from the Claridge, however, if you can stand that. I count on your having still more then to tell me, and am yours most truly,

/* HENRY JAMES. */

_To Henry James, junior_

/#
In quoting some early letters of William James's in _Notes of a Son
and Brother_, H.J. had not thought it necessary to reproduce them
with absolutely literal fidelity. The following interesting account
of his procedure was written in answer to some queries from his
nephew on the subject.
#/

/* Lamb House, Rye. November 15th-18th, 1913. */

/* Dearest Harry, */

...It is very difficult, and even pretty painful, to try to put forward after the fact the considerations and emotions that have been intense for one in the long ferment of an artistic process: but I must nevertheless do something toward making you see a little perhaps how ... the editing of those earliest things other than "rigidly" had for me a sort of exquisite inevitability. From the moment of those of my weeks in Cambridge of 1911 during which I began, by a sudden turn of talk with your Mother, to dally with the idea of a "Family Book," this idea took on for me a particular light, the light which hasn't varied, through all sorts of discomfitures and difficulties--and disillusionments, and in which in fact I have put the thing through. That turn of talk was the germ, it dropped the seed. Once when I had been "reminiscing" over some matters of your Dad's and my old life of the time previous, far previous, to her knowing us, over some memories of our Father and Mother and the rest of us, I had moved her to exclaim with the most generous appreciation and response, "Oh Henry, why don't you _write_ these things?"--with such an effect that after a bit I found myself wondering vaguely whether I _mightn't_ do something of the sort. But it dated from those words of your Mother's, which gave me the impulse and determined the spirit of my vision--a spirit and a vision as far removed as possible from my mere isolated documentation of your Father's record. We talked again, and still again, of the "Family Book," and by the time I came away I felt I had somehow found my inspiration, though the idea could only be most experimental, and all at the mercy of my putting it, perhaps defeatedly, to the proof. It was such a very special and delicate and discriminated thing to do, and only governable by proprieties and considerations all of its own, as I should evidently, in the struggle with it, more and more find. This is what I did find above all in coming at last to work these Cambridge letters into the whole harmony of my text--the general purpose of which was to be a reflection of all the amenity and felicity of our young life of that time at the highest pitch that was consistent with perfect truth--to show us all at our best for characteristic expression and colour and variety and everything that would be charming. And when I laid hands upon the letters to use as so many touches and tones in the picture, I frankly confess I seemed to see them in a better, or at all events in another light, here and there, than those rough and rather illiterate copies I had from you showed at their face value. I found myself again in such close relation with your Father, such a revival of relation as I hadn't known since his death, and which was a passion of tenderness for doing the best thing by him that the material allowed, and which I seemed to feel him in the room and at my elbow asking me for as I worked and as he listened. It was as if he had said to me on seeing me lay my hands on the weak little relics of our common youth, "Oh but you're not going to give me away, to hand me over, in my raggedness and my poor accidents, quite unhelped, unfriendly: you're going to do the very best for me you _can_, aren't you, and since you appear to be making such claims for me you're going to let me seem to justify them as much as I possibly may?" And it was as if I kept spiritually replying to this that he might indeed trust me to handle him with the last tact and devotion--that is do with him everything I seemed to feel him _like_, for being kept up to the amenity pitch. These were small things, the very smallest, they appeared to me all along to be, tiny amendments in order of words, degrees of emphasis &c., to the end that he should be more easily and engagingly readable and thereby more tasted and liked--from the moment there was no excess of these _soins_ and no violence done to his real identity. Everything the letters meant affected me so, in all the business, as of _our_ old world only, mine and his alone together, with every item of it intimately known and remembered by me, that I daresay I did instinctively regard it at last as all _my_ truth, to do what I would with.... I have to the last point the instinct and the sense for fusions and interrelations, for framing and encircling (as I think I have already called it) every part of my stuff in every other--and that makes a danger when the frame and circle play over too much upon the image. Never again shall I stray from my proper work--the one in which that danger is the reverse of one and becomes a rightness and a beauty....

I may mention however that your exception that particularly caught my eye--to "poor old Abraham" for "poor old Abe"--was a case for change that I remember feeling wholly irresistible. Never, never, under our Father's roof did we talk of Abe, either _tout court_ or as "Abe Lincoln"--it wasn't conceivable: Abraham Lincoln he was for us, when he wasn't either Lincoln or Mr. Lincoln (the Western note and the popularization of "Abe" were quite away from us _then_:) and the form of the name in your Dad's letter made me reflect how off, how far off in his queer other company than ours I must at the time have felt him to be. You will say that this was just a reason for leaving it so--and so in a sense it was. But I could _hear_ him say Abraham and couldn't hear him say Abe, and the former came back to me as sincere, also graver and tenderer and more like ourselves, among whom I couldn't imagine any "Abe" ejaculation under the shock of his death as possible.... However, I am not pretending to pick up any particular challenge to my appearance of wantonness--I should be able to justify myself (_when_ able) only out of such abysses of association, and the stirring up of these, for vindication, is simply a strain that stirs up tears.

/* Yours, dearest Harry, all affectionately,

HENRY JAMES. */

_To Edmund Gosse._

/#
The portrait of H. J. (together with the bust by Mr. Derwent Wood)
had been on exhibition to the subscribers in Mr. Sargent's studio
in Tite Street. The "slight flaw in the title" had been the
accidental omission of the subscribers' names in the printed
announcement sent to them, whereby the letter opened familiarly
with "Dear"--without further formality. It was partly to repair the
oversight that H. J. had "put himself on exhibition" each day
beside the portrait.
#/

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. December 18th, 1913. */

/* My dear Gosse, */

The exquisite incident in Tite Street having happily closed, I have breathing time to thank you for the goodly Flaubert volume, which safely arrived yesterday and which helps me happily out of my difficulty. You shall receive it again as soon as I have made my respectful use of it.

The exhibition of the Portrait came to a most brilliant end to-day, with a very great affluence of people. (There have been during the three days an immense number.) It has been a great and charming success--I mean the View has been; and the work itself acclaimed with an unanimity of admiration and, literally, of _intelligence_, that I can intimately testify to. For I really put myself on exhibition beside it, each of the days, morning and afternoon, and the translation (a perfect Omar Khayyam, _quoi!_) visibly left the original nowhere. I _attended_--most assiduously; and can really assure you that it has been a most beautiful and flawless episode. The slight original flaw (in the title) I sought to bury under a mountain of flowers, till I found that it didn't in the least do to "explain it away," as every one (like the dear Ranee) said: they exclaimed too ruefully "Ah, don't tell me you didn't _mean_ it!" After which I let it alone, and speedily recognised that it was really _the_ flower--even if but a little wayward wild flower!--of our success. I am pectorally much spent with affability and emissions of voice, but as soon as the tract heals a little I shall come and ask to be heard in your circle. Be meanwhile at great peace and ease, at perfect rest about everything.

/* Yours all faithfully,

HENRY JAMES. */

_To Bruce L. Richmond._

/#
The projected article on "The New Novel" afterwards appeared in two
numbers of the _Times Literary Supplement_, and was reprinted in
_Notes on Novelists_.
#/

_Dictated._

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. December 19th, 1913. */

/* Dear Bruce Richmond, */

Your good letter of a day or two ago is most interesting and suggestive and puts to me as lucidly as possible the questions with which the appearance of my so copious George Sand is involved. I have been turning the matter earnestly over, and rather think I had best tell you now at once in what form it presses on myself. This forces me to consider it in a particular light. It has come up for me that I shall be well advised (from my own obscure point of view!) to collect into a volume and publish at an early date a number of ungathered papers that have appeared here and there during the last fifteen years; these being mainly concerned with the tribe of the Novelists. This involves my asking your leave to include in the Book the article on Balzac of a few months ago, and my original idea was that if the G.S. should appear in the Supplement at once, you would probably authorize my reprinting _it_ also after a decent little interval. As the case stands, and as I so well understand it on your showing--the case for the Supplement I mean--I am afraid that I shall really _need_ the G.S. paper for the Volume before you will have had time to put it forth at your entire convenience--the only thing I would have wished you to consider. What should you say to my withdrawing the paper in question from your indulgent hands, and--as the possibility glimmers before me--making you a compensation in the way of something addressed with greater actuality and more of a certain current significance to the Spring Fiction Number that you mention? (The words, you know, if you can forgive my irreverence--I divine in fact that you share it!--somehow suggest competition with a vast case of plate-glass "window-dressing" at Selfridge's!) The G.S. isn't really a very fit or near thing for the purpose of such a number: that lady is as a fictionist too superannuated and rococo at the present time to have much bearing on any of those questions pure and simple. My article really deals with her on quite a different side--as you would see on coming to look into it. Should you kindly surrender it to me again I would restore to it four or five pages that I excised in sending it to you--so monstrously had it rounded itself!--and make it thereby a still properer thing for my Book, where it would add itself to two other earlier studies of the same subject, as the Balzac of the Supplement will likewise do. And if you ask me what you then gain by your charming generosity I just make bold to say that there looms to me (though I have just called it glimmering) the conception of a paper really _related_ to our own present ground and air--which shall gather in several of the better of the younger generation about us, some half dozen of whom I think I can make out as treatable, and try to do under _their_ suggestion something that may be of real reference to our conditions, and of some interest about them or help for them.... Do you mind my going so far as to say even, as a battered old practitioner, that I have sometimes yearningly wished I might intervene a little on the subject of the Supplement's Notices of Novels--in which, frankly, I seem to have seen, often, so many occasions missed! Of course the trouble is that all the books in question, or most of them at least, are such wretchedly poor occasions in themselves. If it hadn't been for this I think I should have two or three times quite said to you: "Won't you let _me_ have a try?" But when it came to considering I couldn't alas, probably, either have read the books or pretended to give time and thought to them. It is in truth only because I half persuade myself that there are, as I say, some half a dozen _selectable_ cases that the possibility hovers before me. Will you consider at your leisure the plea thus put? I shouldn't want my paper back absolutely at once, though in the event of your kindly gratifying me I should like it before very long.

I am really working out a plan of approach to your domicile in the conditions most favourable to my seeing you as well as Elena, and it will in due course break upon you, if it doesn't rather take the form of my trying to drag you both hither!

/* Believe me all faithfully yours,

HENRY JAMES. */

_To Hugh Walpole._

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. Jan. 2, 1914. */

...I have just despatched your inclosure to P. L. at _I, Dorotheergasse 6, Vienna_; an address that I recommend your taking a note of; and I have also made the reflection that the fury, or whatever, that Edinburgh inspires you with ought, you know, to do the very opposite of drying up the founts of your genius in writing to me--since you say your letter would have been other (as it truly might have been longer) didn't you suffer so from all that surrounds you. That's the very _most_ juvenile logic possible--and the juvenility of it (which yet in a manner touches me) is why I call you retrogressive--by way of a long stroke of endearment. _There_ was exactly an admirable matter for you to write me _about_--a matter as to which you are strongly and abundantly feeling; and in a relation which lives on communication as ours surely should, and would (save for starving,) such occasions fertilise. However, of course the terms are easy on which you extract communication from me, and always have been, and always will be--so that there's doubtless a point of view from which your reservations (another fine word) are quite right. I'm glad at any rate that you've been reading Balzac (whose "romantic" side _is_ rot!) and a great contemporary of your own even in his unconsidered trifles. _I've_ just been reading Compton Mackenzie's _Sinister Street_ and finding in it an unexpected amount of talent and life. Really a very interesting and remarkable performance, I think, in spite of a considerable, or large, element of waste and irresponsibility--_selection_ isn't in him--and at one and the same time so extremely young (he too) and so confoundingly mature. It has the feature of improving so as it goes on, and disposes me much to read, if I can, its immediate predecessor. You must tell me again what you know of him (I've forgotten what you _did_ tell me, more or less,) but in your own good time. I think--I mean I blindly feel--I should be _with_ you about Auld Reekie--which somehow hasn't a right to be so handsome. But I long for illustrations--at your own good time. We have emerged from a very clear and quiet Xmas--quiet for _me_, save for rather a large assault of correspondence. It weighs on me still, so this is what I call--and you will too--very brief.... I wish you the very decentest New Year that ever was. Yours, dearest boy, all affectionately,

/* H. J. */

_To Compton Mackenzie._

/#
It will be recalled that Edward Compton, Mr. Mackenzie's father,
had played the part of Christopher Newman in H.J.'s play _The
American_, produced in 1891.
#/

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. Jan. 21, 1914. */

/* My dear "Monty Compton!"-- */

For that was, I think, as I first heard you named--by a worthy old actress of your father's company who, when we were rehearsing The American in some touring town to which I had gone for the purpose, showed me with touching elation a story-book she had provided for you on the occasion of your birthday. That story-book, weighted with my blessing on it, evidently sealed your vocation--for the sharpness of my sense that you are really a prey to the vocation was what, after reading you, I was moved to emphasise to Pinker. I am glad he let you know of this, and it gives me great pleasure that you have written to me--the only abatement of which is learning from you that you are in such prolonged exile on grounds of health. May that dizzying sun of Capri cook every peccant humour out of you. As to this untowardness I mean, frankly, to inquire of your Mother--whom I am already in communication with on the subject of going to see her to talk about you! For that, my dear young man, I feel as a need: with the force that I find and so much admire in your talent your _genesis_ becomes, like the rest of it, interesting and remarkable to me; you are so rare a case of the _kind_ of reaction from the theatre--and from so _much_ theatre--and the reaction in itself is rare--as seldom taking place; and when it does it is mostly, I think, away from the arts altogether--it is violent and utter. But your pushing straight through the door into literature and then closing it so tight behind you and putting the key in your pocket, as it were--that strikes me as unusual and brilliant! However, it isn't to go into all that that I snatch these too few minutes, but to thank you for having so much arrested my attention, as by the effect of Carnival and Sinister Street, on what I confess I am for the most part (as a consequence of some thankless experiments) none too easily beguiled by, a striking exhibition by a member of the generation to which you belong. When I wrote to Pinker I had only read S.S., but I have now taken down Carnival in persistent short draughts--which is how I took S.S. and is how I take anything I take at all; and I have given myself still further up to the pleasure, quite to the emotion, of intercourse with a young talent that really moves one to hold it to an account. Yours strikes me as very living and real and sincere, making me care for it--to anxiety--care above all for what shall become of it. You ought, you know, to do only some very fine and ripe things, really solid and serious and charming ones; but your dangers are almost as many as your aspects, and as I am a mere monster of _appreciation_ when I read--by which I mean of the critical passion--I would fain lay an earnest and communicative hand on you and hypnotize or otherwise bedevil you into proceeding as I feel you most _ought_ to, you know. The great point is that I would so fain personally see you--that we may talk; and I do very much wish that you _had_ given me a chance at one of those moments when you tell me you inclined to it, and then held off. You are so intelligent, and it's a blessing--whereby I prefigure it as a luxury to have a go at you. I am to be in town till the end of June--I _hibernate_ no more at Rye; and if you were only to turn up a little before that it would be excellent. Otherwise you must indeed come to me there. I wish you all profit of all your experience, some of it lately, I fear, rather harsh, and all experience of your genius--which I also wish myself. I _think_ of Sinister Street II, and am yours most truly,

/* HENRY JAMES. */

_To William Roughead, W.S._

/#
Mr. Roughead had sent H. J. his edition of the trial of Mary
Blandy, the notable murderess, who was hung in 1752 for poisoning
her father.
#/

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. January 29th, 1914. */

/* Dear Mr. Roughead, */

I devoured the tender Blandy in a single feast; I thank you most kindly for having anticipated so handsomely my appetite; and I highly appreciate the terms in general, and the concluding ones in particular, in which you serve her up. You tell the story with excellent art and animation, and it's quite a gem of a story in its way, History herself having put it together as with the best compositional method, a strong sense for sequences and the proper march, order and _time_. The only thing is that, as always, one wants to know _more_, more than the mere evidence supplies--and wants it even when as in this case one feels that the people concerned were after all of so dire a simplicity, so primitive a state of soul and sense, that the exhibition they make tells or expresses about all there was of them. Dear Mary must have consisted but of two or three pieces, one of which was a strong and simple carnal affinity, as it were, with the stinking little Cranstoun. Yet, also, one would like to get a glimpse of how an apparently normal young woman of her class, at that period, could have viewed such a creature in such a light. The light would throw itself on the Taste, the sense of proportion, of the time. However, dear Mary was a clear barbarian, simply. Enfin!--as one must always wind up these matters by exhaling. I continue to have escaped a further sense of ---- and as I think I have told you I cultivate the exquisite art of ignorance. Yet not of Blandy, Pritchard and Co.--_there_, perversely, I am all for knowledge. Do continue to feed in me that languishing need, and believe me all faithfully yours,

/* HENRY JAMES. */

_To Mrs. Wharton._

/#
The two novels referred to in the following are M. Marcel Proust's
_Du Cote de chez Swann_ and M. Abel Bonnard's _La Vie et l'Amour_.
#/

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. February 25th, 1914. */

/* Dearest Edith, */

The nearest I have come to receipt or possession of the interesting volumes you have so generously in mind is to have had _Bernstein's_ assurance, when I met him here some time since, that _he_ would give himself the delight of sending me the Proust production, which he learned from me that I hadn't seen. I tried to dissuade him from this excess, but nothing would serve--he was too yearningly bent upon it, and we parted with his asseveration that I might absolutely count on this tribute both to poor Proust's charms and to my own. But depuis lors--! he has evidently been less "en train" than he was so good as to find _me_. So that I shall indeed be "very pleased" to receive the "Swann" and the "Vie et l'Amour" from you at your entire convenience. It is indeed beautiful of you to think of these little deeds of kindness, little words of love (or is it the other way round?) What I want above all to thank you for, however, is your so brave backing in the matter of my disgarnished gums. That I am doing right is already unmistakeable. It won't make me "well"; nothing will do that, nor do I complain of the muffled miracle; but it will make me mind less being ill--in short it will make me better. As I say, it has already done so, even with my sacrifice for the present imperfect--for I am "keeping on" no less than eight pure pearls, in front seats, till I can deal with them in some less exposed and exposing conditions. Meanwhile tons of implanted and domesticated gold &c (one's caps and crowns and bridges being _most_ anathema to Des Voeux, who regards them as so much installed metallic poison) have, with everything they fondly clung to, been, less visibly, eradicated; and it is enough, as I say, to have made a marked difference in my felt state. That is the point, for the time--and I spare you further details....

/* Yours de coeur,

HENRY JAMES. */

_To Dr. J. William White._

_Dictated._

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. March 2nd, 1914. */

/* My dear J. William, */

I won't pretend it isn't an aid and comfort to me to be able to thank you for your so brilliant and interesting overflow from Sumatra in this mean way--since from the point of view of such a life as you are leading nothing I could possibly do in my poor sphere and state would seem less mean than anything else, and I therefore might as well get the good of being legible. I am such a votary and victim of the single impression and the imperceptible adventure, picked up by accident and cherished, as it were, in secret, that your scale of operation and sensation would be for me the most choking, the most fatal of programmes, and I should simply go ashore at Sumatra and refuse ever to fall into line again. But that is simply my contemptible capacity, which doesn't want a little of five million things, but only requires [much] of three or four; as to which _then_, I confess, my requirements are inordinate. But I am so glad, for the world and for themselves, above all for you and Letitia, that many great persons, and especially you two, are constructed on nobler lines, with stouter organs and longer breaths, to say nothing of purses, that I don't in the least mind your doing such things if _you_ don't; and most positively and richly enjoy sitting under the warm and fragrant spray of the enumeration of them. Keep it up therefore, and don't let me hear of your daring to skip a single page, or dodge a single prescription, of the programme and the dose!...

I am signing, with J. S. S., three hundred very fine photographs of the Portrait, ever so much finer still, that he did of me last summer, and which I think you know about--in order that they be sent to my friends, of whom you are not the least; so that you will find one in Rittenhouse Square on your return thither, if with the extraordinarily dissipated life you lead you do really get back. With it will wait on you probably this, which I hope won't be sent either to meet or to follow you; I really can't even to the extent of a letter personally participate in your dissipation while it's at its worst. How embarrassed poor Letitia must truly be, if she but dared to confess it, at finding herself so associated; for that is not _her_ nature; _my_ life here, had she but consented to share it, would be so much more congruous with _that_! I don't quite gather when you expect to reach these shores--since my brain reels at the thought of your re-embarking for them after you reach your own at the climax of your orgy. I realise all that these passions are capable of leading you on to, and therefore shall not be surprised if you do pursue them without a break--shall in fact even be delighted to think I may see you gloriously approach by just sitting right here at this window, which commands so the prospect. But goodbye, dear good friends; gather your roses while ye may and _don't_ neglect this blighted modest old bud, your affectionate friend,

/* HENRY JAMES. */

_To Henry Adams._

/#
The book sent to Mr. Adams was _Notes of a Son and Brother_, now
just published.
#/

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. March 21, 1914. */

/* My dear Henry, */

I have your melancholy outpouring of the 7th, and I know not how better to acknowledge it than by the full recognition of its unmitigated blackness. _Of course_ we are lone survivors, of course the past that was our lives is at the bottom of an abyss--if the abyss _has_ any bottom; of course, too, there's no use talking unless one particularly _wants_ to. But the purpose, almost, of my printed divagations was to show you that one _can_, strange to say, still want to--or at least can behave as if one did. Behold me therefore so behaving--and apparently capable of continuing to do so. I still find my consciousness interesting--under _cultivation_ of the interest. Cultivate it _with_ me, dear Henry--that's what I hoped to make you do--to cultivate yours for all that it has in common with mine. _Why_ mine yields an interest I don't know that I can tell you, but I don't challenge or quarrel with it--I encourage it with a ghastly grin. You see I still, in presence of life (or of what you deny to be such,) have reactions--as many as possible--and the book I sent you is a proof of them. It's, I suppose, because I am that queer monster, the artist, an obstinate finality, an inexhaustible sensibility. Hence the reactions--appearances, memories, many things, go on playing upon it with consequences that I note and "enjoy" (grim word!) noting. It all takes doing--and I _do_. I believe I shall do yet again--it is still an act of life. But you perform them still yourself--and I don't know what keeps me from calling your letter a charming one! There we are, and it's a blessing that you understand--I admit indeed alone--your all-faithful

/* HENRY JAMES. */

_To Mrs. William James._

/#
"Minnie" is of course Mary Temple, the young cousin of old days
commemorated in the last chapter of _Notes of a Son and Brother_.
#/

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. March 29th, 1914. */

/* Dearest Alice, */

This is a Saturday a.m., but several days have come and gone since there came to me your dear and beautiful letter of March 14th (considerably about my "Notes,") and though the American post closes early I must get off some word of recognition to you, however brief I have scramblingly to make it. I hoped of course you would find in the book something of what I difficultly tried to put there--and you have indeed, you have found all, and I rejoice, because it was in talk with you in that terrible winter of 1910-11 that the impulse to the whole attempt came to me. Glad you will be to know that the thing appears to be quite extraordinarily appreciated, absolutely acclaimed, here--scarcely any difficulties being felt as to "parts that are best," unless it be that the early passage and the final chapter about dear Minnie seem the great, the beautiful "success" of the whole. What I have been able to do for _her_ after all the long years--judged by this test of expressed admiration--strikes me as a wondrous stroke of fate and beneficence of time: I seem really to have (her letters and ---- 's and your admirable committal of them to me aiding) made her emerge and live on, endowed her with a kind dim sweet immortality that places and keeps her--and I couldn't be at all sure that I was doing it; I was so anxious and worried as to my really getting the effect in the right way--with tact and taste and without overstrain....

I am counting the weeks till Peg swims into view again--so delightful will it be to have her near and easily to commune with her, and above all to get from her all that detail of the state of the case about you all that I so constantly yearn for and that only talk can give. The one shade on the picture is my fear that she will find the poor old Uncle much more handicapped about _socially_ ministering to them (two young women with large social appetites) than she is perhaps prepared to find me. And yet after all she probably does take in that I have had to cut my connections with society entirely. Complications and efforts with people floor me, anginally, _on the spot_, and my state is that of living every hour and at every minute on my guard. So I am anything but the centre of an attractive circle--I am cut down to the barest inevitabilities, and occupied really more than in any other way now in simply saving my life. However, the blest child was witness of my condition last summer, my letters have probably sufficiently reflected it since--and I am really on a _better_ plane than when she was last with me. To have her with me is a true support and joy, and I somehow feel that with her admirable capacity to be interested in the near and the characteristic, whatever these may be, she will have lots of pleasant and informing experience and contact in spite of my inability to "take her out" or to entertain company for her at home. She knows this and she comes in all her indulgence and charity and generosity--for the sake of the sweet good she can herself do _me_. And I rejoice that she has Margaret P. with her--who will help and solidify and enrich the whole scene. No. 3 will be all satisfactorily ready for them, and I have no real fear but that they will find it a true bower of ease. The omens and auspices seem to me all of the best.

The political atmosphere here is charged to explosion as it has never been--what is to happen no man knows; but this only makes it a more thrilling and spectacular world. The tension has never been so great--but it will, for the time at least, ease down. The dread of violence is shared all round. I am finishing this rather tiredly by night--I couldn't get it off and have alas missed a post. But all love.

/* Your affectionate

H. J. */

_To Arthur Christopher Benson._

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W.

April 21st, 1914. */

/* My dear Arthur, */

What a delightful thing this still more interesting _extension_ of our fortunate talk! I can't help being glad that you had second thoughts (though your first affected me as good enough, quite, to need no better ones,) since the result has been your rich and genial letter. The only thing is that if your first thoughts were to torment (or whatever) yourself, these supersessive rather torment _me_--by their suggestion that there's still more to say yet--than you do say: as when you remark that you ought either to have told me nothing about ---- or to have told me all. "All" is precisely what I should have liked to have from you--all in fact about everything!--and what a pity we can't appoint another tea-hour for my making up that loss. You clearly live in these years so much more in the current of life than I do that no one of your impressions would have failed of a lively interest for me--and the more we had been able to talk of ---- and his current, and even of ---- and his, the more I should have felt your basis of friendship in everything and the generosity of your relation to them. I don't think we see anything, about our friends, unless we see all--so far as in us lies; and there is surely no care we can so take for them as to turn our mind upon them liberally. Don't turn yours too much upon yourself for having done so. The virtue of that "ruder jostle" that you speak of so happily is exactly that it shakes out more aspects and involves more impressions, and that in fine you young people are together in a way that makes vivid realities spring from it--I having cognisance, in my ancient isolation, I well know, but of the more or less edited, revised, not to say expurgated, creature. It's inevitable--that is--for ancient isolation; but you're in the thick of history and the air of it was all about you, and the records of it in the precious casket that I saw you give in charge to the porter. So with that, oh man of action, perpetually breaking out and bristling with performances and seeing (and feeling) things on the field, I don't know what you mean by the image of the toys given you to play with in a corner--charming as the image is. It's the _corner_ I contest--you're in the middle of the market-place, and I alter the figure to that of the brilliant juggler acquitting himself to the admiration of the widest circle amid a whirl of objects projected so fast that they can scarce be recognised, but that as they fly round your head one somehow guesses to be _books_, and one of which in fact now and again hits that of your gaping and dazzled and all-faithful old spectator and friend,

/* HENRY JAMES. */

_To Mrs. Humphry Ward._

/#
The following is one of a large number of letters written in answer
to condolences on the subject of the mutilation of his portrait, at
this time hanging at the Royal Academy, by a militant
"suffragette": who had apparently selected it for attack as being
the most notable and valuable canvas in the exhibition.
#/

_Dictated_.

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W.

May 6th, 1914. */

/* Dear and Illustrious Friend, */

I blush to acknowledge by this rude method the kindness that has expressed itself on your part in your admirable heroic hand. But figure me as a poor thing additionally impaired by the tomahawk of the savage, and then further see me as breasting a wondrous high tide of postal condolence in this doubly-damaged state. I am fairly driven to machinery for expedition's sake. And let me say at once that I gather the sense of the experts to be that my wounds are really curable--such rare secrets for restoration can now be brought to bear! They are to be tried at any rate upon Sargent's admirable work, and I am taking the view that they _must_ be effective. As for our discomfort from _ces dames_, that is another affair--and which leaves me much at a loss. Surely indeed the good ladies who claim as a virtue for their sex that they can look an artistic possession of that quality and rarity well in the face only to be moved bloodily to smash it, make a strange appeal to the confidence of the country in the _kind_ of character they shall bring to the transaction of our affairs. Valuable to us that species of intelligence! Precious to us that degree of sensibility! But I have just made these reflections in very much these terms in a note to dear Anne Ritchie. Postal pressure induces conversational thrift! However, I do indeed hope to come to see you on Thursday, either a bit early or a bit late, and shall then throw all thrift to the winds and be splendidly extravagant! I dare say I shall make bold to bring with me my young niece (my brother William's only daughter,) who is spending a couple of months near me here; and possibly too a young relative of her own who is with her. Till very soon then at the worst.

/* Yours all faithfully, HENRY JAMES. */

_To Thomas Sergeant Perry._

_Dictated._

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W.

May 17th, 1914. */

/* My dear Thomas, */

As usual I groan gratefully under the multiplication of your bounties; the last of these in particular heaping that measure up. Pardon the use of this form to tell you so: there are times when I faint by the wayside, and can then only scramble to my feet by the aid of the firm secretarial crutch. I fall, physically, physiologically speaking, into holes of no inconsiderable depth, and though experience shows me that I can pretty well always count on scrambling out again, my case while at the bottom is difficult, and it is from such a depth, as happens, that I now address you: not wanting to wait till I _am_ above ground again, for my arrears, on those emergences, are too discouraging to face. Lilla wrote me gentle words on the receipt of the photograph of Sargent's portrait, and now you have poured upon the wounds it was so deplorably to receive the oil of your compassion and sympathy. I gather up duly and gratefully those rich drops, but even while I stow them away in my best reliquary am able to tell you that, quite extraordinarily, the consummate restorer has been able to make the injuries good, desperate though they at first seemed, and that I am assured (this by Sargent himself) that one would never guess what the canvas has been through. It goes back at once to the Academy to hang upon its nail again, and as soon as it's in place I shall go and sneak a glance at it. I have feared equally till now seeing it either wounded or doctored--that is in course of treatment. Tell Lilla, please, for her interest, that the job will owe its success apparently very much to the newness of the paint, the whole surface more plastic to the manipulator's subtle craft than if it had hardened with time, after the manner of the celebrated old things that are really superior, I think, by their age alone. As I didn't paint the picture myself I feel just as free to admire it inordinately as any other admirer may be; and those are the terms in which I express myself. I won't say, my dear Thomas, much more today. Don't worry about me on any of these counts: I am on a distinctly better footing than this time a year ago, and have worried through upwards of a twelve-month without the convenience, by which I mean the deathly complication, of having to see a Doctor. If I can but go on with that separation there will be hope for me yet. I take you to be now in villeggiatura and preparing for the irruption of your Nursery--which, however, with your vast safe countryside to spread it over won't probably press on you to smotheration. I remember getting the sense that Hancock would bear much peopling. Plant it here and there with my affectionate thought, ground fine and scattered freely, and believe me yours both all faithfully,

/* HENRY JAMES. */

_To Mrs. Wharton._

/#
The allusions in the following are to a motor-tour of Mrs.
Wharton's in Algeria and Tunisia, and to an article by her in the
_Times Literary Supplement_ on "The Criticism of Fiction."
#/

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W.

June 2nd, 1914. */

/* Dearest Edith, */

Yes, I have been even to my own sense too long and too hideously silent--small wonder that I should have learned from dear Mary Cadwal therefore (here since Saturday night) that I have seemed to you not less miserably so. Yet there has been all the while a certain sublime inevitability in it--over and above those _general_ reactions in favour of a simplifying and softening _mutisme_ that increase with my increasing age and infirmity. I am able to go on only always plus doucement, and when you are off on different phases of your great world-swing the mere side-wind of it from afar, across continents and seas, stirs me to wonderments and admirations, sympathies, curiosities, intensities of envy, and eke thereby of _humility_, which I have to check and guard against for their strain on my damaged organism. The _relation_ thus escapes me--and I feel it must so escape you, drunk with draughts of every description and immersed in visions which so utterly and inevitably turn their back--or turn yours--on what one might one's self have de mieux to vous offrir. The idea of tugging at you to make you look round therefore--look round at these small sordidries and poornesses, and thereby lose the very finest flash of the revelation then and there organised for you or (the great thing!) _by_ you perchance: that affects me ever as really consonant with no minimum even of modesty or discretion on one's own account--so that, in fine, I have simply lain stretched, a faithful old veteran slave, upon the door-mat of your palace of adventure, sufficiently proud to give the alarm of any irruption, should I catch it, but otherwise waiting till you should emerge again, stepping over my prostrate form to do so. That gracious act now performed by you--since I gather you to be back in Paris by this speaking--I get up, as you see, to wish you the most affectionate and devoted welcome home and tell you that I believe myself to have "kept" in quite a sound and decent way, in the domestic ice-chest of your absence. I mix my metaphors a little, comme toujours (or rather comme jamais!) but the great thing is to feel you really within hail again and in this air of my own poor little world, which isn't for me the non-conductor (that's the real hitch when you're "off") of that of your great globe-life. I won't try to ask you of this last glory now--for, though the temperature of the ice-chest itself has naturally risen with your nearer approximation, I still shall keep long enough, I trust, to sit at your knee in some peaceful nook here and gather in the wondrous tale. I have had echoes--even, in very faint and vague form, that of the burglarious attempt upon you in the anonymous oriental city (vagueness does possess me!)--but by the time my sound of indignant participation would have reached you I took up my Lit. Supp. to find you in such force over the subject you there treated, on that so happy occasion, that the beautiful firmness and "clarity," even if not charity, of your nerves and tone clearly gave the lie to any fear I should entertain for the effect of your annoyance. I greatly admired by the same token the fine strain of that critical voice from out the path of shade projected upon the desert sand, as I suppose, by the silhouette of your camel. Beautifully said, thought, felt, inimitably _jete_, the paper has excited great attention and admiration here--and is probably doing an amount of missionary work in savage breasts that we shall yet have some comparatively rude or ingenuous betrayal of. I do notice that the flow of the little _impayables_ reviews meanders on--but enfin ne desesperons pas.... But oh dear, I want to see you about everything--and am yours all affectionately and not in the least patiently,

/* HENRY JAMES. */

_To William Roughead, W. S._

/#
This and the next letter refer to further gifts in the literature
of crime. Lord Justice Clerk Macqueen of Braxfield was of course
the original of Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston.
#/

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W.

June 10th, 1914. */

/* My dear Roughead, */

(Let me take a flying leap across the formal barrier!) You are the most munificent of men as well as the most ingenious of writers, and my modest library will have been extremely enriched by you in a department in which it has been weak out of all proportion to the yearning curiosity of its owner. I greatly appreciate your gift to me of the so complete and pictorial Blandy volume--dreadfully informing as it is in the whole contemporary connection--the documents are such good reporting that they make the manners and the tone, the human and social note, live after a fashion beside which our own general exhibition becomes more soothing to my soul. Your summary of the Blandy trial strikes me afresh as an admirable piece of foreshortening (of the larger quantities--now that these are presented.) But how very good the reporting of cases appears to have been capable of being all the same, in those pre-shorthand days. I find your Braxfield a fine vivid thing--and the pleasure of sense over the park-like page of the Juridical is a satisfaction by itself; but I confess your hero most interests by the fact that he so interested R. L. S., incurable yearning Scot that Louis was. I am rather easily sated, in the direct way, with the mainly "broad" and monotonously massive characters of that type, uncouth of sound, and with their tendency to be almost stupidly sane. History never does them--never _has_, I think--_in_adequate justice (you must help her to that blandness here;) and it's all right and there they numerously and soundly and heavily were and are. But they but renew, ever (when reproduced,) my personal appetite--by reaction--for the handlers of the fiddle-string and the fumblers for the essence. Such are my more natural sneaking affinities. But keep on with them _all_, please--and continue to beckon me along the gallery that I can't tread alone and where, by your leave, I link my arm confraternally in yours: the gallery of sinister perspective just stretches in this manner straight away. I am delighted the photograph is to receive such honour--the original (I don't mean _me_, but Sargent's improvement on me) is really magnificent, and I, unimproved, am yours all truly,

/* HENRY JAMES. */

_To William Roughead, W. S._

/#
Miss Madeleine Hamilton Smith, to whom the following refers, was
tried on a charge of poisoning in 1857.
#/

/* 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk, S.W. June 16th, 1914. */

/* My dear Roughead, */