To Hugh Walpole
Mr. Walpole was now serving with the Red Cross on the Russian front.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.February 14th, 1915.
Dearest Hugh,
"When you write," you say, and when do I write but just exactly an hour after your letter of this evening, that of February 1st, a fortnight ago to a day, has come to hand? I delight in having got it, and find it no less interesting than genial—bristling with fine realities. Much as it tells me, indeed, I could have done with still more; but that is of course always the case at such a time as this, and amid such wonderments and yearnings; and I make gratefully the most of what there is. The basis, the connection, the mode of employment on, and in, and under which you "go off," for instance, are matters that leave me scratching my head and exhaling long and sad sighs—but as those two things are what I am at in these days most of my time I don't bring them home most criminally to you. Only I am moved to beseech you this time not to throw yourself into the thick of military operations amid which your want of even the minimum of proper eyesight apparently may devote you to destruction, more or less—after the manner of the blind quart d'heure described to me in your letter previous to this one. I am sorry the black homesickness so feeds upon you amid your terrific paradoxical friends, the sport alike of their bodies and their souls, of whom your account is admirably vivid; but I well conceive your state, which has my tenderest sympathy—that nostalgic ache at its worst being the invocation of the very devil of devils. Don't let it break the spell of your purpose of learning Russian, of really mastering it—though even while I say this I rather wince at your telling me that you incline not to return to England till September next. I don't put that regret on the score of my loss of the sight of you till then—that gives the sort of personal turn to the matter that we are all ashamed together of giving to any matter now. But the being and the having been in England—or in France, which is now so much the same thing—during at least a part of this unspeakable year affects me as something you are not unlikely to be sorry to have missed; there attaches to it—to the being here—something so sovereign and so initiatory in the way of a British experience. I mean that it's as if you wouldn't have had the full general British experience without it, and that this may be a pity for you as a painter of British phenomena—for I don't suppose you think of reproducing only Russian for the rest of your shining days. However, I hasten to add that I feel the very greatest aversion to intermeddlingly advising you—your completing your year in Russia all depends on what you do with the precious time. You may bring home fruits by which you will be wholly justified. Address yourself indeed to doing that and putting it absolutely through—and I will, for my part, back you up unlimitedly. Only, bring your sheaves with you, and gather in a golden bundle of the same. I detest, myself, the fine old British horror—as it has flourished at least up to now, when in respect to the great matter that's upon us the fashion has so much changed—of doing anything consistently and seriously. So if you should draw out your absence I shall believe in your reasons. Meanwhile I am myself of the most flaming British complexion—the whole thing is to me an unspeakably intimate experience—if it isn't abject to apply such a term when one hasn't had one's precious person straight up against the facts. I have only had my poor old mind and imagination—but as one can have them here; and I live partly in dark abysses and partly in high and, I think, noble elations. But how, at my age and in my conditions, I could have beautifully done without it! I resist more or less—since you ask me to tell you how I "am"; I resist and go on from day to day because I want to and the horrible interest is too great not to. But that same is adding the years in great shovel-fulls to our poor old lives (those at least of my generation:) so don't be too long away after all if you want ever to see me again. I have in a manner got back to work—after a black interregnum; and find it a refuge and a prop—but the conditions make it difficult, exceedingly, almost insuperably, I find, in a sense far other than the mere distressing and depressing. The subject-matter of one's effort has become itself utterly treacherous and false—its relation to reality utterly given away and smashed. Reality is a world that was to be capable of this—and how represent that horrific capability, historically latent, historically ahead of it? How on the other hand not represent it either—without putting into play mere fiddlesticks?
I had to break off my letter last night from excess of lateness, and now I see I misdated it. Tonight is the 15th, the p.m. of a cold grey Sunday such as we find wintry here, in our innocence of your ferocities of climate; to which in your place I should speedily succumb. That buried beneath the polar blizzard and the howling homesick snowdrift you don't utterly give way is, I think, a proof of very superior resources and of your being reserved for a big future.... Goodnight, however, now really, dearest Hugh. I follow your adventure with all the affectionate solicitude of your all-faithful old
H. J.
To Mrs. Henry Cabot Lodge
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.February 16th, 1915.
My dear Mrs. Lodge,
It is indeed very horrible that having had the kindest of little letters from you ever so long ago (I won't remind you how long—you may have magnanimously forgotten it a little) I am thanking you for it only at this late day. Explanations are vain things, and yet if I throw myself on the biggest explanation that ever was in the world there may be something in it.... Fortunately the interest and the sympathy grow (if things that start at the superlative degree can grow), and I never am sick with all the monstrosity of it but I become after a bit almost well with all the virtue and the decency. I try to live in the admiring contemplation of that as much as possible—and I thought I already knew how deeply attached I am to this remarkable country and to the character of its people. I find I haven't known until now the real degree of my attachment—which I try to show—that is to apply—the intensity of in small and futile ways. To-day for instance I have been taking to my dentist a convalesced soldier—a mere sapper of the R.E.—whom I fished out of a hospital; yesterday I went to the Stores to send "food-chocolate" to my cook's nephew at the front, Driver Bisset of the Artillery; and at the moment I write I am putting up for the night a young ex-postman from Rye who has come up to pass the doctor tomorrow for the Naval Brigade. These things, as I write them, make me almost feel that I do push before you the inevitability of my silence. But they don't mean, please, that I am not living very intensively, at the same time, with you all at Washington—where I fondly suppose you all to entertain sentiments, the Senator and yourself, Constance and that admirable Gussy, into which I may enter with the last freedom. I won't go into the particulars of my sympathy—or at least into the particulars of what it imputes to you: but I have a general sweet confidence, a kind of wealth of divination.
London is of course not gay (thank the Lord;) but I wouldn't for the world not be here—there are impressions under which I feel it a kind of uplifting privilege. The situation doesn't make me gregarious—but on the contrary very fastidious about the people I care to see. I know exactly those I don't, but never have I taken more kindly to those I do—and with them intercourse has a fine intimacy that is beyond anything of the past. But we are very mature—and that is part of the harmony—the young and the youngish are all away getting killed, so far as they are males; and so far as they are females, wives and fiancées and sisters, they are occupied with being simply beyond praise. The mothers are pure Roman and it's all tremendously becoming to every one. There are really no fiancées by the way—the young men get home for three days and are married—then off into the absolute Hell of it again. But good-night now. It was truly exquisite of you to write to me. Do feel, and tell Cabot that I take the liberty of asking him to feel, how thoroughly I count on all your house. It's a luxury for me to know how I can on Constance. Yours, dear Mrs. Lodge, ever and ever so faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To Mrs. William James
H. J.'s eldest nephew was at this time occupied with relief work in Belgium.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.Feb. 20th, 1915.
Dearest Alice,
Of course our great (family) public fact is Harry's continuously inscrutable and unseizable activity here. "Here" I say, without knowing in the least where he now is—and the torment of his spending all this time on this side of the sea, and of one's utter loss of him in consequence, is really quite dreadful.... England is splendid, undisturbed and undismayed by the savage fury and the roaring mad-bull "policy" of Germany's mine-and-torpedo practice against all the nations of the earth, or rather of the sea—though of course there will be a certain number of disasters, and it will probably be on neutrals that most of these will fall.
Feb. 22nd, p.m. I had to break this off two nights ago and since then that remark has been signally confirmed—three neutral ships have been sunk by mines and torpedoes, and one of these we learn this a.m. is an American cargo-boat. I don't suppose anything particular will "happen" for you all with Germany because of this incident alone (the crew were saved;) yet it can hardly improve relations, and she is sure to repeat the injury in some form, promptly, and then the fat will be on the fire. Mr. Roosevelt is far from being dear to me, but I can't not agree with his contention that the U.S.'s sitting down in meekness and silence under the German repudiation of every engagement she solemnly took with us, as the initiatory power in the Hague convention, constitutes an unspeakable precedent, and makes us a deplorable figure.
Meanwhile I find it a real uplifting privilege to live in an air so unterrorized as that of this country, and to feel what confidence we insuperably feel in the big sea-genius, let alone the huge sea-resources, of this people. It is a great experience. I mean the whole process of life here is now—even if it does so abound in tragedy and pity, such as one can often scarcely face. But there is too much of all that to say—and all I intended was to remark that while Germany roars and runs amuck the new armies now at last ready are being oh so quietly transported across the diabolised Channel. The quiet and the steady going here, amid the German vociferation, is of itself an enormous—I was going to say pleasure. We have just heard from Burgess of the arrival of his regiment at Havre—they left the Tower of London but a few days ago.... I go to-morrow to the Protheros to help them with tea-ing a party of convalescent soldiers from hospital—Mrs. J. G. Butcher, like thousands, or at least hundreds, of other people, sends her car on certain afternoons of the week to different hospitals for four of the bettering patients—or as many as will go into it—and they are conveyed either to her house or to some other arranged with. I have "met" sets of them thus several times—the "right people" are wanted for them, and nothing can be more interesting and admirable and verily charming than I mostly find them. The last time the Protheros had, by Mrs. Butcher's car, wounded Belgians—but to-morrow it is to be British, whom I on the whole prefer, though the Belgians are more gravely pathetic. The difficulty about them is that they are so apt to know only Flemish and understand almost no French—save as one of them, always included for the purpose, can interpret. I had to-day to luncheon a most decent and appreciative little sapper in the Engineers, whom I originally found in hospital and whose teeth I have been having done up for him—at very reduced military rates! There is nothing one isn't eager to do for them, and their gratitude for small mercies, excellent stuff as they are, almost wrings the heart. This obscure hero (a great athlete in the running line) is completely well again and goes in a day or two back to the Front; but oh how they don't like the hellishness of it (that is beyond all conception,) and oh how they don't let this make any difference! Tremendously will the "people" by this war—I mean by their patience of it and in it—have made good their place in the sun; though even as one says that one recognizes still more how the "upper classes" in this country and the others have poured themselves unstintedly out. The way "society" at large, in England, has magnificently played up, will have given it, I think it will be found, a new lease of life. However, society, in wars, always does play up—and it is by them, and for them, that the same are mostly made....
Feb. 23rd. Again I had to go to bed, but it's all right and my letter wouldn't in any case have gone to you till to-morrow's New York post. Meanwhile not much has happened, thank heaven, save that I went to tea with little Fanny P. and her five convalescents, and that it was a very successful affair.... We plied them with edibles and torrents of the drinkable and they expanded, as always, and became interesting and moving, in the warmth of civilization and sympathy. Those I had on either side of me at table were men of the old Army—I mean who had been through the Boer War, and were therefore nigh upon forty, and proportionately more soldatesques; but there is nothing, ever, that one wouldn't do for any one of them; they become at once such children of history, such creatures of distinction....
Ever your affectionateHENRY.
To Mrs. Wharton
Mrs. Wharton, writing to describe a journey she had made along part of the French front, had mentioned that a staff-officer at Ste. Menehould had read some of her books, and had shown his appreciation by facilitating her visit to Verdun.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.March 5th, 1915.
Dearest Edith,
How can I welcome and applaud enough your splendid thrilling letter—in which, though it gives me your whole spectacle and impression as unspeakably portentous, I find you somehow of the very same heroic taille of whatever it was that gave the rest at the monstrous maximum. I unutterably envy you these sights and suffered assaults of the maxima—condemned as I am by doddering age and "mean" infirmity to the poor mesquins minima, when really to find myself in closer touch would so fearfully interest and inspire and overwhelm me (as one wants to be overwhelmed.) However, since my ignoble portion is what it is, the next best thing is to heap you on the altar of sacrifice and gloat over your overwhelmedness and demand of you to serve me still more and more of it. On this I even insist now that I have tasted of your state and your substance—for your impression is rendered in a degree so vivid and touching that it all (especially those vespers in the church with the tragic beds in the aisles) wrings tears from my aged eyes. What a hungry luxury to be able to come back with things and give them then and there straight into the aching voids: do it, do it, my blest Edith, for all you're worth: rather, rather—"sauvez, sauvez la France!" Ah, je la sauverais bien, moi, if I hadn't been ruined myself too soon!… Ce que c'est for you, evidently, to find yourself in these adventures, like Ouida, "the favourite reading of the military." Well, as I say, do keep in touch with your public! I stupidly forgot to tell Frederick to tell you not to dream of returning me those £6. 0. 0 (all he would take,) but to regard them as the contribution I was really then in the very nick of sending to your Belges! So I wired you a day or two ago to that effect, after too much wool-gathering, and to anticipate absolutely any restitution. It made it so easy a sending. Well then à bientôt—Oliver shamelessly (not asks, but) howls for more. Yours all devotedlier than ever,
HENRY JAMES.
To the Hon. Evan Charteris
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.March 13th, 1915.
My dear Evan,
Your letter is of such interest and beauty that I must thank you for it, at once. Little idea can you have of how the sense of your whereabouts, your visions, impressions and contacts, thrills me and makes me wonder, enriches and excites my poor little private life.... In short you affect me as gulping down great mugfuls of experience, while I am sipping that compound out of a liqueur-glass not a quarter full. The only thing I can say to myself is that I can live too, thank God, by my friends' experience, when I hang about them in imagination, as you must take it from me that I do about you. You help me greatly to do so with your account of the soupless return of hospitality to your kind French harbourers that you had been bringing-off—and this in particular by your mention of the admirable aspects they, and all who around you are like them, present to your intelligent English eyes. I rejoice in all expressions and testimonies about the French, wonderful and genial race; all generous appreciation of the way they are carrying themselves now seems to me of the highest international value and importance, and, frankly, I wish more of that found its way into our newspapers here, so prodigiously (even if erratically) copious about our own doings. We ought to commend and commemorate and celebrate them—our Allies' doings—more publicly and explicitly—but the want of imagination hereabouts (save as to that of—to the report of—grand things that haven't happened) is often almost a painful impression. I find myself really wondering whether people can do without it, succeed without it, as much as that! One meets constant examples of a sort of unpenetrated state which disconcert and rather alarm. However, these remarks are but the fruit of the fact that something stirs in me ever so deeply and gratefully, almost to the point of a pang, at all rendering of justice and homage to the children of France! Go on being charming and responsive to them—it will do us good as well as do them. I am sure their (your particular guests') enjoyment of your agitated dinner was exquisite.
Very interesting, not less, your picture of the blest irreflection and absence of morbid analysis in which you are living—in face of all the possibilities; and wondrous enough surely must be all the changes and lapses of importance and value, of sensibility itself, the difference of your relation to things and the drop out of some relations altogether.... But I catch in your remarks the silver thread of optimism, not bulging out but subtly gleaming, and it gives me no end of satisfaction. A few gleams have lately been coming to me otherwise, and the action of Neuve Chapelle (if I may rashly name it,) which we have reports of in the papers, is I suppose the one you speak of as cheering. The great thing we do in London, however, is to strain our ears for the thunder of the Dardanelles, which we even feel that we get pretty straight and pretty strong, and in which we see consequences the most tremendous, verily beyond all present utterance. Nothing in all the war has made me hang on it in such suspense—though we venture even almost to presume. I see few people—and try to see only those I positively want to; whom, par exemple, I value the exchange of earnest remarks with more than ever. But I am ill-conditioned for "telling" you things—and indeed I should think meanly of London if there was very much to tell. A few nights ago I dined with Mervyn O'Gorman, my rather near neighbour here, and met a youngish and exceedingly interesting, in fact charming, Colonel Brancker, just back from the front—both of which high aeronautic experts you probably know. I mention them because I extracted from them so intense a thrill—drawing them out—for they let me—on the subject of the so more and more revealed affinity of the British temperament with that of the conquering airman—and thereby of the extent to which the military, or the energetic, future of this country may be in the air. They put it so splendidly that I went home unspeakably rejoicing (it may "mean" so much!) and as if myself ponderously soaring. But what am I ridiculously remarking to you? The great point I wish to make is the lively welcome I shall give you in April—thank you for that knowledge; and that I am all-faithfully yours,
HENRY JAMES.