The Letters of Henry James. Vol. I

By the time this reaches you I suppose your wife and children will have gone to recline under the greenwood tree. I hope their gentle outlawry will be full of comfort for them. It's poor work to me writing about them without ever seeing them. But my interest in them is deep and large, and please never omit to give my great love to them: to Alice first in the lump, to be broken up and distributed by her. May you squeeze with a whole skin through the tight weeks of the last of the term—may you live to rest and may you rest to live. I shall not, I think, soon again write to you so rarely as for the last year. This will be partly because The Tragic Muse is to be my last long novel. For the rest of my life I hope to do lots of short things with irresponsible spaces between. I see even a great future (ten years) of such. But they won't make money. Excuse (you probably rather will esteem) the sordid tone of your affectionate

HENRY JAMES.

To W. D. Howells

Hôtel de la Ville, Milan.May 17th, 1890.

My dear Howells,

I have been not writing to you at a tremendous, an infamous rate, for a long time past; but I should indeed be sunk in baseness if I were to keep this pace after what has just happened. For what has just happened is that I have been reading the Hazard of New Fortunes (I confess I should have liked to change the name for you,) and that it has filled me with communicable rapture. I remember that the last time I came to Italy (or almost,) I brought your Lemuel Barker, which had just come out, to read in the train, and let it divert an intense professional eye from the most clamourous beauties of the way—writing to you afternoons from this very place, I think, all the good and all the wonder I thought of it. So I have a decent precedent for insisting to you, now, under circumstances exactly similar (save that the present book is a much bigger feat,) that, to my charmed and gratified sense, the Hazard is simply prodigious.... I should think it would make you as happy as poor happiness will let us be, to turn off from one year to the other, and from a reservoir in daily domestic use, such a free, full, rich flood. In fact your reservoir deluges me, altogether, with surprise as well as other sorts of effusion; by which I mean that though you do much to empty it you keep it remarkably full. I seem to myself, in comparison, to fill mine with a teaspoon and obtain but a trickle. However, I don't mean to compare myself with you or to compare you, in the particular case, with anything but life. When I do that—with the life you see and represent—your faculty for representing it seems to me extraordinary and to shave the truth—the general truth you aim at—several degrees closer than anyone else begins to do. You are less big than Zola, but you are ever so much less clumsy and more really various, and moreover you and he don't see the same things—you have a wholly different consciousness—you see a totally different side of a different race. Man isn't at all one after all—it takes so much of him to be American, to be French, &c. I won't even compare you with something I have a sort of dim stupid sense you might be and are not—for I don't in the least know that you might be it, after all, or whether, if you were, you wouldn't cease to be that something you are which makes me write to you thus. We don't know what people might give us that they don't—the only thing is to take them on what they do and to allow them absolutely and utterly their conditions. This alone, for the tastes, secures freedom of enjoyment. I apply the rule to you, and it represents a perfect triumph of appreciation; because it makes me accept, largely, all your material from you—an absolute gain when I consider that I should never take it from myself. I note certain things which make me wonder at your form and your fortune (e.g.—as I have told you before—the fatal colour in which they let you, because you live at home—is it?—paint American life; and the fact that there's a whole quarter of the heaven upon which, in the matter of composition, you seem consciously—is it consciously?—to have turned your back;) but these things have no relevancy whatever as grounds of dislike—simply because you communicate so completely what you undertake to communicate. The novelist is a particular window, absolutely—and of worth in so far as he is one; and it's because you open so well and are hung so close over the street that I could hang out of it all day long. Your very value is that you choose your own street—heaven forbid I should have to choose it for you. If I should say I mortally dislike the people who pass in it, I should seem to be taking on myself that intolerable responsibility of selection which it is exactly such a luxury to be relieved of. Indeed I'm convinced that no readers above the rank of an idiot—this number is moderate, I admit—really fail to take any view that is really shown them—any gift (of subject) that's really given. The usual imbecility of the novel is that the showing and giving simply don't come off—the reader never touches the subject and the subject never touches the reader; the window is no window at all—but only childish finta, like the ornaments of our beloved Italy. This is why, as a triumph of communication, I hold the Hazard so rare and strong. You communicate in touches so close, so fine, so true, so droll, so frequent. I am writing too much (you will think me demented with chatter;) so that I can't go into specifications of success....

I continue to scribble, though with relaxed continuity while abroad; but I can't talk to you about it. One thing only is clear, that henceforth I must do, or half do, England in fiction—as the place I see most today, and, in a sort of way, know best. I have at last more acquired notions of it, on the whole, than of any other world, and it will serve as well as any other. It has been growing distincter that America fades from me, and as she never trusted me at best, I can trust her, for effect, no longer. Besides I can't be doing de chic, from here, when you, on the spot, are doing so brilliantly the vécu....

To Miss Alice James

The play which H. J. had given his sister to read was the dramatic version of The American. It had now been accepted for production by Edward Compton, who was to play the part of Christopher Newman. Some intentional and humorous exaggeration, it ought perhaps to be mentioned, enters into H. J.'s constant appeal for discreet silence in these matters. As for the projected excursion with Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, he eventually went with them the whole way, and saw the Passion Play at Oberammergau.

Palazzo Barbaro, Venice.June 6th [1890].

Dearest Sister,

I am ravished by your letter after reading the play (keep it locked up, safe and secret, though there are three or four copies in existence) which makes me feel as if there had been a triumphant première and I had received overtures from every managerial quarter and had only to count my gold. At any rate I am delighted that you have been struck with it exactly as I have tried to strike, and that the pure practical character of the effort has worked its calculated spell upon you. For what encourages me in the whole business is that, as the piece stands, there is not, in its felicitous form, the ghost of a "fluke" or a mere chance: it is all "art" and an absolute address of means to the end—the end, viz., of meeting exactly the immediate, actual, intense British conditions, both subjective and objective, and of acting in (to a minute, including entr'actes) 2 hours and 3/4. Ergo, I can do a dozen more infinitely better; and I am excited to think how much, since the writing of this one piece has been an education to me, a little further experience will do for me. Also I am sustained by the sense, on the whole, that though really superior acting would help it immensely, yet mediocrity of handling (which is all, at the best, I am pretty sure, that it will get) won't and can't kill it, and that there may be even something sufficiently general and human about it, to make it (given its eminent actability) "keep the stage," even after any first vogue it may have had has passed away. That fate—in the poverty-stricken condition of the English repertory—would mean profit indeed, and an income to my descendants. But one mustn't talk of this kind of thing yet. However, since you have been already so deeply initiated, I think I will enclose (keep it sacredly for me) an admirable letter I have just received from the precious Balestier in whose hands, as I wrote you, I placed the settlement of the money-question, the terms of the writing agreement with Compton. Compton saw him on Monday last—and I send the letter mainly to illustrate the capital intelligence and competence of Balestier and show you in what good hands I am. He will probably strike you, as he strikes me, as the perfection of an "agent"—especially when you consider that he has undertaken this particular job out of pure friendship. Everything, evidently, will be well settled—on the basis, of course, which can't be helped, of production in London only about the middle of next year. But by that time I hope to have done a good bit more work—and I shall be beguiled by beginning to follow, in the autumn, the rehearsals for the country production. Keep Balestier's letter till I come back—I shall get another one from him in a day or two with the agreement to sign.... These castles in Spain are at least exhilarating: in a certain sense I should like you very much to communicate to William your good impression of the drama—but on the whole I think you had better not, for the simple reason that it is very important it shouldn't be talked about (especially so long) in advance—and it wouldn't be safe, inasmuch as every whisper gets into the papers—and in some fearfully vulgarized and perverted form. You might hint to William that you have read the piece under seal of secresy to me and think so-and-so of it—but are so bound (to me) not to give a sign that he must bury what you tell him in tenfold mystery. But I doubt if even this would be secure—it would be in the Transcript the next week.

Venice continues adorable and the Curtises the soul of benevolence. Their upstairs apartment (empty and still unoffered—at forty pounds a year—to any one but me) beckons me so, as a foot-on-the-water here, that if my dramatic ship had begun to come in, I should probably be tempted to take it at a venture—for all it would matter. But for the present I resist perfectly—especially as Venice isn't all advantageous. The great charm of such an idea is the having, in Italy, a little cheap and private refuge independent of hotels etc., which every year grow more disagreeable and German and tiresome to face—not to say dearer too. But it won't be for this year—and the Curtises won't let it. What Pen Browning has done here … with the splendid Palazzo Rezzonico, transcends description for the beauty, and, as Ruskin would say, "wisdom and rightness" of it. It is altogether royal and imperial—but "Pen" isn't kingly and the train de vie remains to be seen. Gondoliers ushering in friends from pensions won't fill it out.... I am thinking, after all, of joining the Curtises in the evidently most beautiful drive (of upwards of a week, with rests) they are starting upon on the 14th, from a place called Vittorio, in the Venetian Alps, two hours rail from here, through Cadore, Titian's country, the Dolomites etc., toward Oberammergau. They offer me pressingly the fourth seat in the carriage that awaits them when they leave the train—and also an extra ticket they have taken for the play at Oberammergau, if I choose to go so far. This I shall scarcely do, but I shall probably leave with them, drive 4 or 5 days and come back, via Verona, by rail—leaving my luggage here. Continue to address here—unless, before that, I give you one other address while I am gone. I shall find all letters here, on my return, if I do go, in the keeping of the excellent maestro di casa—the Venetian Smith. I should be back, at the latest, by the 25th—probably by the 20th. In this case I shall presumably go back to Florence to spend 4 or 5 days with Baldwin (going to Siena or Perugia;) after which I have a dream of going to Vallombrosa (nearly 4000 feet above the sea—but of a softness!) for 2 or 3 weeks—till I have to leave Italy on my way home. I am writing to Edith Peruzzi, who has got a summer-lodge there, and is already there, for information about the inn. If I don't go there I shall perhaps try Camaldoli or San Marcello—all high in the violet Apennines, within 3 or 4 hours, and mainly by a little carriage, of Florence. But I want to compass Vallombrosa, which I have never seen and have always dreamed of and which I am assured is divine—infinitely salubrious and softly cool. The idea of lingering in Italy a few weeks longer on these terms is very delightful to me—it does me, as yet, nothing but good. But I shall see. I put B.'s letter in another envelope. I rejoiced in your eight gallops; they may be the dozen now.

Ever your HENRY.

To William James

Paradisino, Vallombrosa, Tuscany.July 23rd, 1890.

My dear Brother,

I had from you some ten days ago a most delightful letter written just after the heroic perusal of my interminable novel—which, according to your request, I sent off almost too precipitately to Alice, so that I haven't it here to refer to. But I don't need to "refer" to it, inasmuch as it has plunged me into a glow of satisfaction which is far, as yet, from having faded. I can only thank you tenderly for seeing so much good in the clumsy thing—as I thanked your Alice, who wrote me a most lovely letter, a week or two ago. I have no illusions of any kind about the book, and least of all about its circulation and "popularity." From these things I am quite divorced and never was happier than since the dissolution has been consecrated by (what seems to me) the highest authorities. One must go one's way and know what one's about and have a general plan and a private religion—in short have made up one's mind as to ce qui en est with a public the draggling after which simply leads one in the gutter. One has always a "public" enough if one has an audible vibration—even if it should only come from one's self. I shall never make my fortune—nor anything like it; but—I know what I shall do, and it won't be bad.—I am lingering on late in Italy, as you see, so as to keep away from London till August 1st or thereabouts. (I stay in this exquisite spot till that date.) I shall then, returning to my normal occupations, have had the best and clearest and pleasantest holiday of three months, that I have had for many a day. I have been accompanied on this occasion by a literary irresponsibility which has caused me to enjoy Italy perhaps more than ever before;—let alone that I have never before been perched (more than three thousand feet in the air) in so perfect a paradise as this unspeakable Vallombrosa. It is Milton's Vallombrosa, the original of his famous line, the site of the old mountain monastery which he visited and which stands still a few hundred feet below me as I write, "suppressed" and appropriated some time ago by the Italian Government, who have converted it to the State school of "Forestry." This little inn—the Paradisino, as it is called, on a pedestal of rock overhanging the violet abysses like the prow of a ship, is the Hermitage (a very comfortable one) of the old convent. The place is extraordinarily beautiful and "sympathetic," the most romantic mountains and most admirable woods—chestnut and beech and magnificent pine-forests, the densest, coolest shade, the freshest, sweetest air and the most enchanting views. It is full 20 years since I have done anything like so much wandering through dusky woods and lying with a book on warm, breezy hillsides. It has given me a sense of summer which I had lost in so many London Julys; given me almost the summer of one's childhood back again. I shall certainly come back here for other Julys and other Augusts—and I hate to go away now. May you, and all of you, these weeks, have as sweet, or half as sweet, an impression of the natural universe as yours affectionately,

HENRY JAMES.

To Edmund Gosse

The "ordeal" was the first night of The American, produced by Edward Compton and his company at Southport in anticipation of its eventual appearance in London.

Prince of Wales Hotel,Southport.Jan. 3rd [1891].

My dear Gosse,

I am touched by your petit mot. De gros mots seem to me to be so much more applicable to my fallen state. The only thing that can be said for it is that it is not so low as it may perhaps be to-morrow—after the vulgar ordeal of to-night. Let me therefore profit by the few remaining hours of a recognizable status to pretend to an affectionate reciprocity. I am yours and your wife's while yet I may be. After 11 o'clock to-night I may be the world's—you know—and I may be the undertaker's. I count upon you both to spend this evening in fasting, silence and supplication. I will send you a word in the morning—wire you if I can—if there is anything at all to boast of. My hopes rest solely on intrinsic charms—the adventitious graces of art are not "in it." I am so nervous that I miswrite and misspell. Pity your infatuated but not presumptuous friend,

HENRY JAMES.

P.S. It would have been delightful—and terrible—if you had been able to come. I believe Archer is to come.

P.P.S. I don't return straight to London—don't get there till Tuesday or Wednesday. I shall have to wait and telegraph you which evening I can come in.

To Mrs. Hugh Bell

34 De Vere Gardens, W.Jan. 8th [1891].

Dear Mrs. Bell,

Your most kind gratulatory note deserved an answer more gratefully prompt than this. But I extended my absence from town to a short visit at Cheltenham, and the whole thing was virtually, till yesterday, a complete extinction of leisure. Delightful of you to want "details." I think, if I were to inflict them on you, they would all be illustrative of the cheering and rewarding side of our feverish profession. The passage from knock-kneed nervousness (the night of the première, as one clings, in the wing, to the curtain rod, as to the pied des autels) to a simmering serenity is especially life-saving in its effect. I flung myself upon Compton after the 1st act: "In heaven's name, is it going?" "Going?—Rather! You could hear a pin drop!" Then, after that, one felt it—one heard it—one blessed it—and, at the end of all, one (after a decent and discreet delay) simpered and gave oneself up to courbettes before the curtain, while the applausive house emitted agreeable sounds from a kind of gas-flaring indistinguishable dimness and the gratified Compton publicly pressed one's hand and one felt that, really, as far as Southport could testify to the circumstance, the stake was won. Of course it's only Southport—but I have larger hopes, inasmuch as it was just the meagre provincial conditions and the limited provincial interpretation that deprived the performance of all adventitious aid. And when my hero and heroine and another friend supped with me at the inn after the battle, I felt that they were really as radiant as if we were carousing among the slain. They seem indeed wondrous content. The great feature of the evening was the way Compton "came out" beyond what he had done or promised at rehearsal, and acted really most interestingly and admirably—if not a "revelation" at any rate a very jolly surprise. His part is one in which I surmise he really counts upon making a large success—and though I say it who shouldn't, it is one of incontestable opportunities. However, all this is to come—and we stumble in judgment. Amen. Voilà, ma chère amie. You have been through all this, and more, and will tolerate my ingenuities....

All merriment to your "full house."

Yours most truly,HENRY JAMES.

To Robert Louis Stevenson

34 De Vere Gardens, W.January 12th, 1891.

My dear Louis,

I have owed you a letter too shamefully long—and now that I have taken my pen in hand, as we used to say, I feel how much I burn to communicate with you. As your magnanimity will probably have forgotten how long ago it was that you addressed me, from Sydney, the tragic statement of your permanent secession I won't remind you of so detested a date. That statement, indeed, smote me to the silence I have so long preserved: I couldn't—I didn't protest; I even mechanically and grimly assented; but I couldn't talk about it—even to you and your wife. Missing you is always a perpetual ache—and aches are disqualifying for gymnastic feats. In short we forgive you (the Muses and the soft Passions forgive us!) but we can't quite treat you as if we did. However, all this while I have many things to thank you for. In the first place for Lloyd. He was delightful, we loved him—nous nous l'arrachâmes. He is a most sympathetic youth, and we revelled in his rich conversation and exclaimed on his courtly manners. How vulgar you'll think us all when you come back (there is malice in that "when.") Then for the beautiful strange things you sent me and which make for ever in my sky-parlour a sort of dim rumble as of the Pacific surf. My heart beats over them—my imagination throbs—my eyes fill. I have covered a blank wall of my bedroom with an acre of painted cloth and feel as if I lived in a Samoan tent—and I have placed the sad sepia-drawing just where, 50 times a day, it most transports and reminds me. To-day what I am grateful for is your new ballad-book, which has just reached me by your command. I have had time only to read the first few things—but I shall absorb the rest and give you my impression of them before I close this. As I turn the pages I seem to see that they are full of charm and of your "Protean" imaginative life—but above all of your terrible far-off-ness. My state of mind about that is of the strangest—a sort of delight at having you poised there in the inconceivable; and a miserable feeling, at the same time, that I am in too wretched a back seat to assist properly at the performance. I don't want to lose any of your vibrations; and, as it is, I feel that I only catch a few of them—and that is a constant woe. I read with unrestrictive relish the first chapters of your prose volume (kindly vouchsafed me in the little copyright-catching red volume,) and I loved 'em and blessed them quite. But I did make one restriction—I missed the visible in them—I mean as regards people, things, objects, faces, bodies, costumes, features, gestures, manners, the introductory, the personal painter-touch. It struck me that you either didn't feel—through some accident—your responsibility on this article quite enough; or, on some theory of your own, had declined it. No theory is kind to us that cheats us of seeing. However, no doubt we shall rub our eyes for satiety before we have done. Of course the pictures—Lloyd's blessed photographs—y sont pour beaucoup; but I wanted more the note of portraiture. Doubtless I am greedy—but one is when one dines at the Maison d'or. I have an idea you take but a qualified interest in "Beau Austin"—or I should tell you how religiously I was present at that memorable première. Lloyd and your wonderful and delightful mother will have given you the agreeable facts of the occasion. I found it—not the occasion, so much, but the work—full of quality, and stamped with a charm; but on the other hand seeming to shrug its shoulders a little too much at scenic precautions. I have an idea, however, you don't care about the matter, and I won't bore you with it further than to say that the piece has been repeatedly played, that it has been the only honourable affair transacted dans notre sale tripot for many a day—and that Wm. Archer en raffole periodically in the "World." Don't despise me too much if I confess that anch' io son pittore. Je fais aussi du théâtre, moi; and am doing it, to begin with, for reasons too numerous to burden you with, but all excellent and practical. In the provinces I had the other night, at Southport, Lancashire, with the dramatization of an early novel—The American—a success dont je rougis encore. This thing is to be played in London only after several months—and to make the tour of the British Islands first. Don't be hard on me—simplifying and chastening necessity has laid its brutal hand on me and I have had to try to make somehow or other the money I don't make by literature. My books don't sell, and it looks as if my plays might. Therefore I am going with a brazen front to write half a dozen. I have, in fact, already written two others than the one just performed; and the success of the latter pronounced—really pronounced—will probably precipitate them. I am glad for all this that you are not here. Literature is out of it. I miss no occasion of talking of you. Colvin I tolerably often see: I expect to do so for instance to-night, at a decidedly too starched dining-club to which we both belong, of which Lord Coleridge is president and too many persons of the type of Sir Theodore Martin are members. Happy islanders—with no Sir Theodore Martin. On Mrs. Sitwell I called the other day, in a charming new habitat: all clean paint and fresh chintz. We always go on at a great rate about you—celebrate rites as faithful as the early Christians in the catacombs....