Kitabı oku: «The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II», sayfa 4

To William James

Lamb House, Rye.

November 23rd, 1905.

Dearest William,

I wrote not many days since to Aleck, and not very, very many before to Peggy—but I can't, to-night, hideously further postpone acknowledging your so liberal letter of Oct. 22nd (the one in which you enclosed me Aleck's sweet one,) albeit I have been in the house all day without an outing, and very continuously writing, and it is now 11 p.m. and I am rather fagged.... However, I shall write to Alice for information—all the more that I deeply owe that dear eternal Heroine a letter. I am not "satisfied about her," please tell her with my tender love, and should have testified to this otherwise than by my long cold silence if only I hadn't been, for stress of composition, putting myself on very limited contribution to the post. The worst of these bad manners are now over, and please tell Alice that my very next letter shall be to her. Only she mustn't put pen to paper for me, not so much as dream of it, before she hears from me. I take a deep and rich and brooding comfort in the thought of how splendidly you are all "turning out" all the while—especially Harry and Bill, and especially Peg, and above all, Aleck—in addition to Alice and you. I turn you over (in my spiritual pocket,) collectively and individually, and make you chink and rattle and ring; getting from you the sense of a great, though too-much (for my use) tied-up fortune. I have great joy (tell him with my love) of the news of Bill's so superior work, and yearn to have some sort of a squint at it. Tell him, at any rate, how I await him, for his holidays, out here—on this spot—and I wish I realized more richly Harry's present conditions. I await him here not less.

I mean (in response to what you write me of your having read the Golden B.) to try to produce some uncanny form of thing, in fiction, that will gratify you, as Brother—but let me say, dear William, that I shall greatly be humiliated if you do like it, and thereby lump it, in your affection, with things, of the current age, that I have heard you express admiration for and that I would sooner descend to a dishonoured grave than have written. Still I will write you your book, on that two-and-two-make-four system on which all the awful truck that surrounds us is produced, and then descend to my dishonoured grave—taking up the art of the slate pencil instead of, longer, the art of the brush (vide my lecture on Balzac.) But it is, seriously, too late at night, and I am too tired, for me to express myself on this question—beyond saying that I'm always sorry when I hear of your reading anything of mine, and always hope you won't—you seem to me so constitutionally unable to "enjoy" it, and so condemned to look at it from a point of view remotely alien to mine in writing it, and to the conditions out of which, as mine, it has inevitably sprung—so that all the intentions that have been its main reason for being (with me) appear never to have reached you at all—and you appear even to assume that the life, the elements forming its subject-matter, deviate from felicity in not having an impossible analogy with the life of Cambridge. I see nowhere about me done or dreamed of the things that alone for me constitute the interest of the doing of the novel—and yet it is in a sacrifice of them on their very own ground that the thing you suggest to me evidently consists. It shows how far apart and to what different ends we have had to work out (very naturally and properly!) our respective intellectual lives. And yet I can read you with rapture—having three weeks ago spent three or four days with Manton Marble at Brighton and found in his hands ever so many of your recent papers and discourses, which, having margin of mornings in my room, through both breakfasting and lunching there (by the habit of the house,) I found time to read several of—with the effect of asking you, earnestly, to address me some of those that I so often, in Irving St., saw you address to others who were not your brother. I had no time to read them there. Philosophically, in short, I am "with" you, almost completely, and you ought to take account of this and get me over altogether.—There are two books by the way (one fictive) that I permit you to raffoler about as much as you like, for I have been doing so myself—H. G. Wells's Utopia and his Kipps. The Utopia seems to me even more remarkable for other things than for his characteristic cheek, and Kipps is quite magnificent. Read them both if you haven't—certainly read Kipps.—There's also another subject I'm too full of not to mention the good thing I've done for myself—that is, for Lamb House and my garden—by moving the greenhouse away from the high old wall near the house (into the back garden, setting it up better—against the street wall) and thereby throwing the liberated space into the front garden to its immense apparent extension and beautification....

But oh, fondly, good-night!

Ever your

HENRY.

To W. E. Norris

Lamb House, Rye.

December 23rd, 1905.

My dear Norris,

It is my desire that this, which I shall post here to-morrow, shall be a tiny item in the hecatomb of friendship gracing your breakfast table on Christmas morning and mingling the smoke of (certain) aged and infirm victims with the finer and fresher fumes of the board. But the aged and infirm propose and the postman disposes and I can only hope I shall not be either disconcertingly previous or ineffectively subsequent. If my mind's eye loses you at sweet (yet sublime) Underbank, I still see you in a Devonshire mild light and feel your Torquay window letting in your Torquay air—which, at this distance, in this sadly Southeasternized corner, suggests all sorts of enviable balm and beatitude. It was a real pang to me, some weeks ago, when you were coming up to town, to have to put behind me, with so ungracious and uncompromising a gesture, the question, and the great temptation, of being there for a little at the same moment. But there are hours and seasons—and I know the face of them well—when my need to mind my business here, and to mind nothing else, becomes absolute—London tending rather over-much, moreover, to set frequent and freshly-baited traps, at all times, for a still too susceptible and guileless old country mouse. All my consciousness centres, necessarily, just now, on a single small problem, that of managing to do an "American book" (or rather a couple of them,) that I had supposed myself, in advance, capable of doing on the spot, but that I had there, in fact, utterly to forswear—time, energy, opportunity to write, every possibility quite failing me—with the consequence of my material, my "documents" over here, quite failing me too and there being nothing left for me but to run a race with an illusion, the illusion of still seeing it, which is, as it recedes, so to speak, a thousand lengths ahead of me. I shall keep it up as a tour de force, and produce my copy somehow (I have indeed practically done one vol. of "Impressions"—there are to be two, separate and differently-titled;) but I am unable, meanwhile, to dally by the way—the sweet wayside of Pall Mall—or to turn either to the right or the left. (My subject—unless I grip it tight—melts away—Rye, Sussex, is so little like it; and then where am I? And yet the thing interests me to do, though at the same time appalling me by its difficulty. But I didn't mean to tell you this long story about it.) I hope you are plashing yourself in more pellucid waters—and I find I assume that there is in every way a great increase of the pellucid in your case by the fact of the neighbouring presence of your (as I again, and I trust not fallaciously assume) sympathetic collaterals. I should greatly like, here, a collateral or two myself—to find the advantage, across the sea, of the handful of those of mine who are sympathetic, makes me miss them, or the possibility of them, in this country of my adoption, which is more than kind, but less than kin.... I spend the month of January, further, in this place—then I do seek the metropolis for 12 or 14 weeks. I expect to hear from you that you have carried off some cup or other (sculling for preference) in your Bank Holiday Sports—so for heaven's sake don't disappoint me. You're my one link with the Athletic world, and I like to be able to talk about you. Therefore, àpropos of cups, all power to your elbow! I know none now—no cup—but the uninspiring cocoa—which I carry with a more and more doddering hand. But I am still, my dear Norris, very lustily and constantly yours,

HENRY JAMES.

To Paul Harvey

Lamb House, Rye.

March 11, 1906.

My dear Paul,

It is delightful to me, please believe, not wholly to lose touch of you—ghostly and ineffective indeed as that touch seems destined to feel itself. I find myself almost wishing that the whirligig of time had brought round the day of your inscription with many honours on some comfortable "retired list" which might keep you a little less on the dim confines of the Empire, and make you thereby more accessible and conversible. Only I reflect that by the time the grey purgatory of South Kensington, or wherever, crowns and pensions your bright career, I, alas, shall have been whirled away to a sphere compared to which Salonica and even furthest Ind are easy and familiar resorts, with no crown at all, most probably—not even "heavenly," and no communication with you save by table-raps and telepathists (like a really startling communication I have just had from—or through—a "Medium" in America (near Boston,) a message purporting to come from my Mother, who died 25 years ago and from whom it ostensibly proceeded during a séance at which my sister-in-law, with two or three other persons, was present. The point is that the message is an allusion to a matter known (so personal is it to myself) to no other individual in the world but me—not possibly either to the medium or to my sister-in-law; and an allusion so pertinent and initiated and tender and helpful, and yet so unhelped by any actual earthly knowledge on any one's part, that it quite astounds as well as deeply touches me. If the subject of the message had been conceivably in my sister-in-law's mind it would have been an interesting but not infrequent case of telepathy; but, as I say, it couldn't thinkably have been, and she only transmits it to me, after the fact, not even fully understanding it. So, I repeat, I am astounded!—and almost equally astounded at my having drifted into this importunate mention of it to you! But the letter retailing it arrived only this a.m. and I have been rather full of it.)—I had heard of your present whereabouts from Edward Childe … and I give you my word of honour that my great thought was, already before your own good words had come, to attest to you, on my own side, and pen in hand, my inextinguishable interest in you. I came back from the U.S. after an absence of nearly a year (11 months) by last midsummer, whereupon my joy at returning to this so little American nook took the form of my having stuck here fast (with great arrears of sedentary occupation &c.) till almost the other day … I found my native land, after so many years, interesting, formidable, fearsome and fatiguing, and much more difficult to see and deal with in any extended and various way than I had supposed. I was able to do with it far less than I had hoped, in the way of visitation—I found many of the conditions too deterrent; but I did what I could, went to the far South, the Middle West, California, the whole Pacific coast &c., and spent some time in the Eastern cities. It is an extraordinary world, an altogether huge "proposition," as they say there, giving one, I think, an immense impression of material and political power; but almost cruelly charmless, in effect, and calculated to make one crouch, ever afterwards, as cravenly as possible, at Lamb House, Rye—if one happens to have a poor little L.H., R., to crouch in. This I am accordingly doing very hard—with intervals of London inserted a good deal at this Season—I go up again, in a few days, to stay till about May. So I am not making history, my dear Paul, as you are; I am at least only making my very limited and intimate own. Vous avez beau dire, you, and Mrs Paul, and Miss Paul, are making that of Europe—though you don't appear to realize it any more than M. Jourdain did that he was talking prose. Have patience, meanwhile—you will have plenty of South Kensington later on (among other retired pro-consuls and where Miss Paul will "come out";) and meanwhile you are, from the L.H. point of view, a family of thrilling Romance. And it must be interesting to améliorer le sort des populations—and to see real live Turbaned Turks going about you, and above all to have, even in the sea, a house from which you look at divine Olympus. You live with the gods, if not like them—and out of all this unutterable Anglo-Saxon banality—so extra-banalized by the extinction of dear Arthur Balfour. I take great joy in the prospect of really getting hold of you, all three, next summer. I count, fondly, on your presence here and I send the very kindest greeting and blessing to your two companions. The elder is of course still very young, but how old the younger must now be!

Yours, my dear Paul, always and ever,

HENRY JAMES.

To William James

Professor and Mrs. William James had been in California at this time of the great San Francisco earthquake and conflagration. They fortunately escaped uninjured, but for some days H. J. had been in deep anxiety, not knowing their exact whereabouts.

Reform Club, Pall Mall, S.W.

May 4th, 1906.

[2]Beloved Ones!

I wrote you, feverishly, last Saturday, but now comes in a blest cable from Harry telling of your being as far on your way home as at Denver and communicating thence in inspired accents and form, and this, for which I have been yearning (the news of your having to that extent shaken off the dust of your ruin), fills me with such joy that I scrawl you these still agitated words of jubilation—though I can't seem to you less than incoherent and beside the mark, I fear, till I have got your letter from Stanford which Harry has already announced his expedition of on the 28th. (This must come in a day or two more.) Meanwhile there was three days ago an excellent letter in the Times from Stanford itself (or P.A.) enabling me, for the first time, to conceive a little, and a trifle less luridly to imagine, the facts of your case. I had at first believed those facts to be that you were thrown bedless and roofless upon the world, semi-clad and semi-starving, and with all that class of phenomena about you. But how do I know, after all, even yet? and I await your light with an anxiety that still endures. I have just parted with Bill, who dined with me, and who is to lunch with me tomorrow—(I going in the evening to the "Academy Dinner.") I have, since the arrival of Harry's telegram, or cable of reassurance—the second to that effect, not this of to-day, which makes the third and best—I have been, as I say, trying, under pressure, a three days' motor trip with the Whartons, much frustrated by bad weather and from which I impatiently and prematurely and gleefully returned to-day: so that I have been separated from B. for 48 hours. But I tell you of him rather than talk to you, in the air, of your own weird experiences. He is to go on to Paris on the 6th, having waited over here to go to the Private View of the Academy, to see me again, and to make use of Sunday 6th (a dies non in Paris as here) for his journey. It has been delightful to me to have him near me, and he has spent and re-spent long hours at the National Gallery, from which he derives (as also from the Wallace Collection) great stimulus and profit. I am extremely struck with his seriousness of spirit and intention—he seems to me all in the thing he wants to do (and awfully intelligent about it;) so that in fine he seems to me to bring to his design quite an exceptional quality and kind of intensity.... What a family—with the gallantries of the pair of you thrown in! Well, you, beloved Alice, have needed so exceedingly a "change," and I was preaching to you that you should arrive at one somehow or perish—whereby you have had it with a vengeance, and I hope the effects will be appreciable (that is not altogether accurst) to you. What I really now most feel the pang and the woe of is my not being there to hang upon the lips of your conjoined eloquence. I really think I must go over to you again for a month—just to listen to you. But I wait and am ever more and more fondly your

HENRY.

To William James

The Athenaeum, Pall Mall, S.W.

May 11th, 1906.

Dearest William,

To-day at last reach me (an hour ago) your blest letter to myself of April 19th and Alice's not less sublime one (or a type-copy of the same,) addressed to Irving St. and forwarded by dear Peg, to whom all thanks … I have written to Harry a good deal from the first, and to your dear selves last week, and you will know how wide open the mouth of my desire stands to learn from you everything and anything you can chuck into it. Most vivid and pathetic these so surprisingly lucid pictures dashed down—or rather so calmly committed to paper—by both of you in the very midst of the crash, and what a hell of a time you must have had altogether. What a noble act your taking your Miss Martin to the blazing and bursting San Francisco—and what a devil of a day of anxiety it must have given to the sublime Alice. Dearest sublime Alice, your details of feeding the hungry and sleeping in the backyard bring tears to my eyes. I hope all the later experience didn't turn to worse dreariness and weariness—it was probably kept human and "vivid" by the whole associated elements of drama. Yet how differently I read it all from knowing you now restored to your liberal home and lovely brood—where I hope you are guest-receiving and housekeeping as little as possible. How your mother must have folded you in! I kept thinking of her, for days, please tell her, almost more than of you! It's hideous to want to condemn you to write on top of everything else—yet I sneakingly hope for more, though indeed it wouldn't take much to make me sail straight home—just to talk with you for a week.

I return to Rye on the 16th with rapture—after too long a tangle of delays here. However, it is no more than the right moment for adequate charm of season, drop (unberufen!) of east wind etc.—But why do I talk of these trifles when what I am after all really full of is the hope that they have been crowning you both with laurels and smothering you with flowers at Cambridge. Also, greedily (for you), with the hope that you didn't come away minus any lecture-money due to you....

But good-bye for now—with ever so tender love.

Ever your HENRY.

To Miss Margaret James

Lamb House, Rye.

November 8th, 1906.

Dearest Peggot,

I have had before me but an hour or two your delightful, though somewhat agitating letter of October 29th, and I am so touched by your faithful memory of your poor fond old Uncle, and by your snatching an hour to devote to him, even as a brand from the burning, that I scribble you this joyous acknowledgment before I go to bed. I have been immensely interested in your whole Collegiate adventure—fragments of the history of which, so far as you've got, I've had from your mother—and all the more interested that, by a blest good fortune, I happen to know your scholastic shades and so am able, in imagination, to cling to you and follow you round. I seem to make out that you are very physically comfortable, all round, and I have indeed a very charming image of Bryn Mawr, though I dare say these months adorn it less than my June-time. I yearn tenderly over your home-sickness—and fear I don't help you with it when I tell you how well I understand it as, at first, your inevitable portion. To exchange the realm of talk and taste of Irving St. and the privileges and luxury of your Dad's and your Mother's company and genius for the common doings and sayings, the common air and effluence of other American homes, represents a sorry drop—which can only be softened for you by the diversion of seeking out what charms of sorts these other homes may have had that Irving St. lacks. You may not find any, to speak of, but meanwhile you will have wandered away and in so doing will have left the bloom of your nostalgia behind. It doesn't remain acute, but there will be always enough for you to go home with again. And you will make your little sphere of relations—which will give out an interest of their own; and see a lot of life and realise a lot of types, not to speak of all the enriching of your mind and augmentation of your power. Your poor old uncle groans with shame when he bethinks himself of the scant and miserable education, and educative opportunity, he had [compared with] his magnificent modern niece. No one took any interest whatever in his development, except to neglect or snub it where it might have helped—and any that he was ever to have he picked up wholly by himself. But that is very ancient history now—and he is very glad to have picked up Lamb House, where he sits writing you this of a wet November night and communes, so far as possible, on the spot, with the ghost of the little niece who came down from Harrow to spend her holidays in so dull and patient and Waverley-novelly a fashion with him.... I rejoice greatly in your sweet companion—I mean in the sweetness of her as chum and comrade, for you, and I send, I hope not presumptuously, a slice of your Uncle's blessing. Also is it uplifting to hear that you find Miss Carey Thomas benevolent and inspiring—she struck me as a very able and accomplished and intelligent lady, and I should like to send her through you, if you have a chance, my very faithful remembrance and to thank her very kindly for her appreciation of my niece. But I hope she doesn't, or won't, work you to the bone! Goodnight, dear Child.

Your fond old Uncle.