To Miss Rhoda Broughton
Dictated.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.June 25th, 1913.
My dear Rhoda,
I reply to your quite acclaimed letter—if there can be an acclamation of one!—by this mechanic aid for the simple reason that, much handicapped as to the free brandish of arm and hand nowadays, I find that the letters thus helped out do get written, whereas those I am too shy or too fearsome or too ceremonious to think anything but my poor scratch of a pen good enough for simply don't come into existence at all. It greatly touches me at any rate to get news of you by your own undiscouraged hand; and it kind of cheers me up about you generally, during your exile from this blest town (which you see I continue to bless), that you appear to be in some degree "on the go," and capable of the brave exploit of a country visit. With a Brother to offer you a garden-riot of roses, however, I don't wonder, but the more rejoice, that you were inspired and have been sustained.
Yes, thank you, dear F. Prothero was veracious about the Portrait, as she is about everything: it is now finished, parachevé (I sat for the last time a couple of days ago;) and is nothing less evidently, than a very fine thing indeed, Sargent at his very best and poor H. J. not at his worst; in short a living breathing likeness and a masterpiece of painting. I am really quite ashamed to admire it so much and so loudly—it's so much as if I were calling attention to my own fine points. I don't, alas, exhibit a "point" in it, but am all large and luscious rotundity—by which you may see how true a thing it is. And I am sorry to have ceased to sit, in spite of the repeated big holes it made in my precious mornings: J. S. S. being so genial and delightful a nature de grand maître to have to do with, and his beautiful high cool studio, opening upon a balcony that overhangs a charming Chelsea green garden, adding a charm to everything. He liked always a friend or two to be in to break the spell of a settled gloom in my countenance by their prattle; though you will doubtless think this effect but little achieved when I tell you that, having myself found the thing, as it grew, more and more like Sir Joshua's Dr. Johnson, and said so, a perceptive friend reinforced me a couple of sittings later by breaking out irrepressibly with the same judgment....
I am sticking on in London, you see, and have got distinctly better with the lapse of the weeks. In fact dear old Town, taken on the absolutely simplified and restricted terms in which I insist on taking it (as compared with all the ancient storm and stress), is distinctly good for me, and the weather keeping cool—absit omen!—I am not in a hurry to flee. I shall go to Rye, none the less, within a fortnight. I have just heard with distress that dear Norris has come and gone without making me a sign (I learn by telephone from his club that he left yesterday.) This has of course been "consideration," but damn such consideration. My imagination, soaring over the interval, hangs fondly about the time, next autumn, when you will be, D.V., restored to Cadogan Gardens. I am impatient for my return hither before I have so much as really prepared to go. May the months meanwhile lie light on you! Yours, my dear Rhoda, all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To Mrs. Alfred Sutro
H. J. had been with Mrs. Sutro to a performance of Henry Bernstein's play, Le Secret, with Mme. Simone in the principal part.
Dictated.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.June 25th, 1913.
Dear Mrs. Sutro,
Yes, what a sad history of struggles against fate the recital of our whole failure to achieve yesterday in Tite Street does make! It was a sorry business my not having been able to wire you on Saturday, but it wasn't till the Sunday sitting that the change to the Tuesday from the probable Wednesday (through the latter's having become impossible, unexpectedly, to Sargent) was settled. And yesterday was the last, the real last time—it terminated even at 12.30. Any touch more would be simply detrimental, and the hand, to my sense, is now all admirably there. But you must see it some day when you are naturally in town—I can easily arrange for that. I shall be there, I seem to make out, for a considerable number of days yet: Mrs. Wharton comes over from Paris on the 30th for a week, however, and, I apprehend, will catch me up in her relentless Car (pardon any apparent invidious comparison!) for most of the time she is here. That at least is her present programme, but souvent femme varie, and that lady not least. I am addressing you, you see, after this mechanic fashion, without apology, for the excellent reason that during these forenoon hours it is my so much the most expéditif way....
Almost more than missing the séance (to which, by the way, Hedworth Williamson came in just at the last with Mrs. Hunter) do I miss talking with you of Le Secret last night and of the wondrous demoniac little Simone; though of the play, and of Bernstein's extraordinary theatric art themselves more than anything else. I think our friend the Critic said beautifully right things about them in yesterday's Times—but it would be so interesting to have the matter out in more of its aspects too.... What most remains with one, in brief, is that the play somehow represents a Case merely, as distinguished, so to speak, from a Situation; the Case being always a thing rather void of connections with and into life at large, and the Situation, dramatically speaking, being largely of interest just by having those. Thereby it is that Le Secret leaves one nothing to apply, by reflection, and by way of illustration, to one's sense of life in general, but is just a barren little instance, little limited monstrosity, as curious and vivid as you like, but with no moral or morality, good old word, at all involved in it, or projected out of it as an interest. Hence the so unfertilised state in which the mutual relations are left! Thereby it's only theatrically, as distinguished from dramatically, interesting, I think; even if it be after that fashion more so, more just theatrically valuable, than anything else of Bernstein's. For him it may count as almost superior! And beautifully done, all round, yes—save in the matter of the fat blonde whose after all pretty recent lapse one has to take so comfortably and sympathetically for granted. However, if she had been more sylph-like and more pleasing she wouldn't seem to have been paying for her past at the rate demanded; and if she had been any way different, in short, would have appeared to know, and to have previously known, too much what she was about to be pathetic enough, victim enough. What a pull the French do get for their drama-form, their straight swift course, by being able to postulate such ladies, for interest, sympathy, edification even, with such a fine absence of what we call explaining! But this is all now: I must post it on the jump. Do try to put in a few hours in town at some time or other before I go; and believe me yours all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To Hugh Walpole
Lamb House, Rye,Aug: 21: 13.
Beautiful must be your Cornish land and your Cornish sea, idyllic your Cornish setting, like this flattering, this wonderful summer, and ours here doubtless may claim but a modest place beside it all. Yet as you have with you your Mother and Sister, which I am delighted to hear and whom I gratefully bless, so I can match them with my nephew and niece (the former with me alas indeed but for these 10 or 12 days,) who are an extreme benediction to me. My niece, a charming and interesting young person and most conversable, stays, I hope, through the greater part of September, and I even curse that necessary limit—when she returns to America.... I like exceedingly to hear that your work has got so bravely on, and envy you that sovereign consciousness. When it's finished—well, when it's finished let some of those sweet young people, the bons amis (yours), come to me for the small change of remark that I gathered from you the other day (you were adorable about it) they have more than once chinked in your ear as from my poor old pocket, and they will see, you will, in what coin I shall have paid them. I too am working with a certain shrunken regularity—when not made to lapse and stumble by circumstances (damnably physical) beyond my control. These circumstances tend to come, on the whole (thanks to a great power of patience in my ancient organism,) rather more within my management than for a good while back; but to live with a bad and chronic anginal demon preying on one's vitals takes a great deal of doing. However, I didn't mean to write you of that side of the picture (save that it's a large part of that same,) and only glance that way to make sure of your tenderness even when I may seem to you backward and blank. It isn't to exploit your compassion—it's only to be able to feel that I am not without your fond understanding: so far as your blooming youth (there's the crack in the fiddle-case!) can fondly understand my so otherwise-conditioned age.... My desire is to stay on here as late into the autumn as may consort with my condition—I dream of sticking on through November even if possible: Cheyne Walk and the black-barged yellow river will be the more agreeable to me when I get back to them. I make out that you will then be in London again—I mean by November, though such a black gulf of time intervenes; and then of course I may look to you to come down to me for a couple of days. It will be the lowest kind of "jinks"—so halting is my pace; yet we shall somehow make it serve. Don't say to me, by the way, à propos of jinks—the "high" kind that you speak of having so wallowed in previous to leaving town—that I ever challenge you as to why you wallow, or splash or plunge, or dizzily and sublimely soar (into the jinks element,) or whatever you may call it: as if I ever remarked on anything but the absolute inevitability of it for you at your age and with your natural curiosities, as it were, and passions. It's good healthy exercise, when it comes but in bouts and brief convulsions, and it's always a kind of thing that it's good, and considerably final, to have done. We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art, yours and mine, what we are talking about—and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth—I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace. Bad doctrine to impart to a young idiot or duffer, but in place for a young friend (pressed to my heart) with a fund of nobler passion, the preserving, the defying, the dedicating, and which always has the last word; the young friend who can dip and shake off and go his straight way again when it's time. But we'll talk of all this—it's absolutely late. Who is D. H. Lawrence, who, you think, would interest me? Send him and his book along—by which I simply mean Inoculate me, at your convenience (don't address me the volume), so far as I can be inoculated. I always try to let anything of the kind "take." Last year, you remember, a couple of improbabilities (as to "taking") did worm a little into the fortress. (Gilbert Cannan was one.) I have been reading over Tolstoi's interminable Peace and War, and am struck with the fact that I now protest as much as I admire. He doesn't do to read over, and that exactly is the answer to those who idiotically proclaim the impunity of such formless shape, such flopping looseness and such a denial of composition, selection and style. He has a mighty fund of life, but the waste, and the ugliness and vice of waste, the vice of a not finer doing, are sickening. For me he makes "composition" throne, by contrast, in effulgent lustre!
Ever your fondest of the fond,H. J.
To Mrs. Archibald Grove
Lamb House, Rye.August 22nd, 1913.
My dear Kate Grove,
Please don't measure by my not-to-be-avoided delay (of three or four—or five, days) to acknowledge it, the degree of pleasure and blest relief your most kind letter represents for me. I have fallen these last years on evil days, physically speaking, and have to do things only when and as I rather difficultly can, and not after a prompter fashion. But you give me a blest occasion, and I heartily thank you for it. Ever since that so pleasant meeting of ours in Piccadilly toward the end of 1909—nearly four long years ago—have I been haunted with the dreadful sense of a debt to your benevolence that has remained woefully undischarged. I came back to this place that same day—of our happy encounter—to be taken on the morrow with the preliminaries of a wretched illness that dismally developed, that lasted actively, in short, for two long years, and that has left me for the rest of my ancient days much compromised and disqualified (though I should be better of some of it all now—I mean betterer!—if I weren't so much older—or olderer!) However, the point is that just as I had begun, on that now far-off occasion, to take the measure of what was darkly before me—that is had been clapped into bed by my Doctor here and a nurse clapped down beside me (the first of a perfect procession)—I heard from you in very kind terms, asking me to come and see you and Archibald in the country—probably at the Pollards inscribed upon your present letter. Well, I couldn't so much as make you a sign—my correspondence had so utterly gone to pieces on the spot. Little by little in the aftertime I picked up some of those pieces—others are forever scattered to the winds—and this particular piece you see I am picking up now, with a slight painful contortion, only after this lapse of the years! It is too strange and too graceless—or would be so if you hadn't just put into it a grace for which, as I say, I can scarce sufficiently thank you. The worst of such disasters and derelictions is that they take such terrific retrospective explanations and that one's courage collapses at all there is to tell, and so the wretched appearance continues. However, I repeat, you have transformed it by your generous condonation—you have helped me to tell you a small scrap of my story. It was on your part a most beautiful inspiration, and I bless my ponderous volume for its communication to you of the impulse. Quite apart from this balm to my stricken conscience, I do rejoice that the fatuous book has beguiled and interested you. I had pleasure in writing it, but I delight in the liberality of your appreciation. But I wish you had told me too something more of yourself and of Grove, more I mean than that you are thus ideally amiable—which I already knew. Your "we" has a comprehensive looseness, and I should have welcomed more dots on the i's. Almost your only detail is that you were here at some comparatively recent hour (I infer,) and that you only gave my little house a beautiful dumb glare and went your way again. Why do you do such things?—they give you almost an air of exulting in them afterwards! If I only had a magic "car" of my own I would jump into it tomorrow and come over to see you at Crowborough—I was there in that fashion, by an afternoon lift from a friend, exactly a year ago. My brother William's only daughter, a delightful young woman, and her eldest brother, a most able and eminent young man, are with me at this time, though he too briefly, and demand of me, or receive from me, all the attention my reduced energies are capable of in a social (so to speak) and adventurous way, but if anything is possible later on I will do my best toward it. I wish you were both conceivable at luncheon here. Do ask yourselves candidly if you aren't—and make me the affirmative sign. I should so like to see you. I recall myself affectionately to Archibald—I think of the ancient wonders, images, scenes—all fantasmagoric now. Yours and his all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To William Roughead, W. S
Mr. Roughead, at this time a stranger, had sent H. J. some literature of a kind in which he always took a keen interest—the literature of crime. The following refers to the gift of a publication of the Juridical Society of Edinburgh, dealing with trials of witches in the time of James I. Other volumes of the same nature followed, and the correspondence led to a valued friendship with the giver.
Lamb House, Rye.August 24th, 1913.
Dear Mr. Roughead,
I succumbed to your Witchery, that is I read your brave pages, the very day they swam into my ken—what a pleasure, by the way, to hang over a periodical page so materially handsome as that of which the Scots members of your great profession "dispose"!—those at least who are worthy. But face to face with my correspondence, and with my age (a "certain," a very certain, age,) and some of its drawbacks, I am aware of the shrunken nature of my poor old shrunken energies of response in general (once fairly considerable;) and hence in short this little delay. Of a horrible interest and a most ingenious vividness of presentation is all that hideous business in your hands—with the unspeakable King's figure looming through the caldron-smoke he kicks up to more abominable effect than the worst witch images into which he so fondly seeks to convert other people. He was truly a precious case and quite the sort of one that makes us most ask how the time and place concerned with him could at all stagger under him or successfully stomach him. But the whole, the collective, state of mind and tissue of horrors somehow fall outside of our measure and sense and exceed our comprehension. The amenability of the victims, the wonder of what their types and characters would at all "rhyme with" among ourselves today, takes more setting forth than it can easily get—even as you figure it or touch on it; and there are too many things (in the amenability) as to which one vainly asks one's self what they can too miserably have meant. That is the flaw in respect to interest—that the "psychology" of the matter fails for want of more intimate light in the given, in any instance. It doesn't seem enough to say that the wretched people were amenable just to torture, or their torturers just to a hideous sincerity of fear; for the selectability of the former must have rested on some aspects or qualities that elude us, and the question of what could pass for the latter as valid appearances, as verifications of the imputed thing, is too abysmal. And the psychology of the loathsome James (oh the Fortunes of Nigel, which Andrew Lang admired!) is of no use in mere glimpses of his "cruelty," which explains nothing, or unless we get it all and really enter the horrid sphere. However, I don't want to do that in truth, for the wretched aspects of the creature do a disservice somehow to the so interesting and on the whole so sympathetic appearance of his wondrous mother. That she should have had but one issue of her body and that he should have had to be that particular mixture of all the contemptibilities, "bar none," is too odious to swallow. Of course he had a horrid papa—but he has always been retroactively compromising, and my poor point is simply that he is the more so the more one looks at him (as your rich page makes one do). But I insist too much, and all I really wanted to say is: "Do, very generously, send me the sequel to your present study—my appetite has opened to it too; but then go back to the dear old human and sociable murders and adulteries and forgeries in which we are so agreeably at home. And don't tell me, for charity's sake, that your supply runs short!" I am greatly obliged to you for that good information as to the accessibility of those modern cases—of which I am on the point of availing myself. It's a kind of relief to me to gather that the sinister Arran—I may take such visions too hard, but it has been made sinister to me—hasn't quite answered for you. Here we have been having a wondrous benignant August—may you therefore have had some benignity. And may you not feel the least bit pressingly the pull of this letter.
Yours most truly,HENRY JAMES.
P. S. Only send me the next Juridical—and then a wee word.