To H. G. Wells.

95 Irving Street,Cambridge, Mass.March 3rd, 1911.

My dear Wells,

I seem to have had notice from my housekeeper at Rye that you have very kindly sent me there a copy of the New Machiavelli—which she has forborne to forward me to these tariff-guarded shores; in obedience to my general instructions. But this needn't prevent me from thanking you for the generous gift, which will keep company with a brave row of other such valued signs of your remembrance at Lamb House; thanking you all the more too that I hadn't waited for gift or guerdon to fall on you and devour you, but have just lately been finding the American issue of your wondrous book a sufficient occasion for that. Thus it is that I can't rest longer till I make you some small sign at last of my conscious indebtedness.

I have read you then, I need scarcely tell you, with an intensified sense of that life and force and temperament, that fulness of endowment and easy impudence of genius, which makes you extraordinary and which have long claimed my unstinted admiration: you being for me so much the most interesting and masterful prose-painter of your English generation (or indeed of your generation unqualified) that I see you hang there over the subject scene practically all alone; a far-flaring even though turbid and smoky lamp, projecting the most vivid and splendid golden splotches,creatingthem about the field—shining scattered innumerable morsels of a huge smashed mirror. I seem to feel that there can be no better proof of your great gift—The N.M.makes me most particularly feel it—than that you bedevil and coerce to the extentyou do such a reader and victim as I am, I mean one so engaged on the side of ways and attempts to which yours are extremely alien, and for whom the great interest of the art we practise involves a lot of considerations and preoccupations over which you more and more ride roughshod and triumphant—when you don't, that is, with a strange and brilliant impunity of your own, leave them to one side altogether (whichisindeed what you now apparently incline most to do.) Your big feeling for life, your capacity for chewing up the thickness of the world in such enormous mouthfuls, while you fairly slobber, so to speak, with the multitudinous taste—this constitutes for me a rare and wonderful and admirable exhibition, on your part, in itself, so that one should doubtless frankly ask one's self what the devil, in the way of effect and evocation and general demonic activity, one wants more. Well, I am willing for to-day to let it stand at that; the whole of the earlier part of the book, or the first half, is so alive and kicking—and sprawling!—so vivid and rich and strong—above all soamusing(in the high sense of the word,) and I make remonstrance—for I do remonstrate—bear upon the bad service you have done your cause by riding so hard again that accurst autobiographic form which puts a premium on the loose, the improvised, the cheap and the easy. Save in the fantastic and the romantic (Copperfield, Jane Eyre, that charming thing of Stevenson's with the bad title—"Kidnapped"?) it has no authority, no persuasive or convincing force—its grasp of reality and truth isn't strong and disinterested. R. Crusoe, e.g., isn't a novel at all. There is, to my vision, no authentic, and no really interesting and nobeautiful, report of things on the novelist's, the painter's part unless a particular detachment has operated, unless the great stewpot or crucible of the imagination, of the observant and recording and interpretingmind in short, has intervened and played its part—and this detachment, this chemical transmutation for the aesthetic, the representational, end is terribly wanting in autobiography brought, as the horrible phrase is, up to date. That's my main "criticism" on theN.M.—and on the whole ground there would be a hundred things more to say. It's accurst that I am not near enough to you to say them in less floundering fashion than this—but give me time (I return to England in June, never again, D.V., to leave it—surprise Mr. Remington thereby as I may!) and we will jaw as far as you will keep me company. Meanwhile I don'twantto send across the wintry sea anything but my expressed gratitude for the immense impressionistic and speculative wealth and variety of your book. Yours, my dear Wells, ever,

HENRYJAMES.

P.S. I think the exhibition of "Love" as "Love"—functional Love—always suffers from a certain inevitable and insurmountable flat-footedness (for the reader's nerves etc.;) which is only to be counterplotted by roundabout arts—as by tracing it through indirectness and tortuosities of application and effect—to keep it somehow interesting and productive (though I don't meanreproductive!) But this again is a big subject.

P.S. 2.I am like your hero's forsaken wife: I knowhavingthings (the things of life, history, the world) only as, and bykeepingthem. So, and so only, Idohave them!

"The Outcry" had not appeared on the stage, but was shortly to be published in the form of a narrative. The following refers to a suggestion, not carried further at this time, that the play might be performed by the Stage Society.

21 East Eleventh Street,New York City.April 9th, 1911.

Dear Christopher Wheeler,

I amnotback in England, as you see, and shall not be till toward the end of June. I havealmostrecovered from the very compromised state in which my long illness of last year left me, but not absolutely and wholly. I am, however, in a very much better way, and the rest is a question of more or less further patience and prudence. About the "Outcry," in the light of your plan, I am afraid that the moment isn't favourable for me to discuss or decide. I have made a disposition, a "literary use," of that work (so as not to have to view it as merely wasted labour on the one hand and not sickeningly to hawk it about on the other) which isn't propitious to any otherpresentdealing with it—though it might not (in fact certainly wouldn't) [be unfavourable] to some eventual theatrical life for it. Before I do anything else I must first see what shall come of the application I have made of my play. This, you see, is a practically unhelpful answer to your interesting inquiry, and I am sorry the actual situation so limits the matter. I rejoice in your continued interest in the theatrical question, and I dare say your idea as to a repertory effort on the lines you mention is a thing of light and life. But I have little heart or judgment left, as I grow older, for the meretheatricalmystery: the drama interests me as much as ever, but I see thetheatre-experiment of this, that or the other supposedly enlightened kind prove, all round me, so abysmally futile and fallacious and treacherous that I am practically quite "off" from it and can but let it pass. Pardon my weary cynicism—and try me again later. The conditions—the theatre-question generally—in this country are horrific and unspeakable—utter, and so far as I can see irreclaimable, barbarism reigns. The anomalous fact is that the theatre, so called, can flourish in barbarism, but that anydramaworth speaking of can develop but in the air of civilization. However, keep tight hold of your clue and believe me yours ever,

HENRYJAMES.

95 Irving Street,Cambridge, Mass.May 12th, 1911.

My dear J. William,

I have from far back so dragged you, and the gentle Letitia even, not less, through the deep dark desperate discipline of my unmatched genius for not being quick on the epistolary trigger, that, with such a perfection of schooling—quite my prize pupils and little show performers in short—I can be certain that you won't so much as have turned a hair under my recent probably unsurpassed exhibitions of it. Nevertheless I shall expect you to sit up and look bright and gratified (even quite intelligent—like true heads of the class) now that I do write and reward your exemplary patience and beautiful drill. Yes, dear prize pupils, I feel I can fully depend on you to regard the present as a "regular answer" to your sweet letter from Bermuda; or to behave, beautifully, as if youdid—which comes to the same thing. Above all I cantrust you to believe that ifyourdiscipline has been stiff, that of your battered and tattered old disciplinarian himself has been stiffer—incessant and uninterrupted and really not leaving him a moment's attention for anything else. He is still very limp and bewildered with it all—yet with a gleam of better things ahead, that after his dire and interminable ordeal, and though the gleam has but just broken out, causes him to turn to you again with that fond fidelity which enjoyed its liveliest expression, in the ancient past, on the day, never to be forgotten, when we had such an affectionate scuffle to get ahead of each other in making a joyous bonfire of Lamb House in honour of your so acclaimed arrival there: Letitia sitting by, with her impartial smile, as the queen of beauty at a Tournament. (She will remember how she crowned the victor—I modestly forbear to name him: and what a ruinously—tohim—genialfeu de joieresulted from the expensive application of my brandished torch.) Well, the upshot of it all is that I have put off my sailing by the Mauretania of June 14th—but not alas to your Olympic, vessel of the gods, evidently, later that month. I have shifted to the same Mauretania of August 2nd—urgent and intimate family reasons making for my stop-over till then. So when I see you in England, as I fondly count on doing after this dismal interlude, it will be during the delightful weeks you will spend there in the autumn, when all your athletic laurels have been gathered, all your high-class hotels checked off, all your obedient servants (except me!) tipped, and all your portentous drafts honoured. Let us plot out those sweet September days a little even now—letmeat least dream of them as a supreme test, proof and consecration, of what returning health will once more enable me to stand. I am too unutterably glad to be going back even with a further delay—I am wasted to a shadow (eventhough the shadow of a still formidable mass) by homesickness (for the home I once had—before we applied the match. You see the loss for younow—by the way: if you had only allowed it to stand!) I have taken places in the Reform Gallery "for the coronation"—and won them by ballot—for the second procession: and now palmed them off on two of my female victims—aftersucha quandary in the choice! Apropos of coronations and such-like, won't you, when you write, very kindly give me some news of the dear dashing Abbeys, long lost to sight and sound of me? It has come round to me in vague ways that they have at last actually left Morgan Hall for some newly-acquired princely estate: do you know where and what the place is? A gentle word on this head would immensely assuage my curiosity. Where-ever and whatever it is, let us stay there together next September! You see therefore how practical my demand is. Of course Ned will paint this coronation too—while his hand is in. And oh you should be here now to share a holy rage with me.... Such is this babyish democracy.

Ever your grand, yet attached old aristocrat,

HENRYJAMES.

Barack-Matiff Farm,Salisbury, Conn.May 27, 1911.

My dear Bailey,

It greatly touches and gratifies me to hear from you—even though I have to inflict on you the wound of a small announced (positively last) postponement of my re-appearance. Iliketo think that you may be a little wounded—wanton as thatdeclaration sounds; for it gives me the measure of my being cared for in poor dear old distracted England—than which there can be no sweeter or more healing sense to my bruised and aching and oh so nostalgic soul.... I am exceedingly better in health, I thank the "powers"—and even presume to figure it out that I shall next slip between the soft swing-doors of Athene in the character of a confirmed improver, struggler upward, or even bay-crowned victor over ills. Don't lament my small procrastination—a matter of only six weeks; for I shall then still better know where and how I am. I am at the present hour (more literally) staying with some amiable cousins, of the more amiable sex—supposedly at least (my supposition is not about the cousins, but about the sex)—in the deep warm heart of "New England at its best." This large Connecticut scenery of mountain and broad vale, recurrent great lake and splendid river (the great Connecticut itself, the Housatonic, the Farmington,) all embowered with truly prodigious elms and maples, is very noble and charming and sympathetic, and made—on its great scale of extent—to be dealt with by the blest motor-car, the consolation of my declining years. This luxury I am charitably much treated to, and it does me a world of good. The enormous, the unique ubiquity of the "auto" here suggests many reflections—but I can't go into these now, or into any branch of the prodigious economic or "sociological" side of this unspeakable and amazing country; I must keep such matters to regale you withal in poor dear little Lamb House garden; for one brick of the old battered purple wall of which I would give at this instant (home-sick quand même) the whole bristling state of Connecticut. I shall "stay about" till I embark—that may represent to you my temperamental or other gain. However, you must autobiographicallyregale me not a bit less than yours, my dear Bailey, all faithfully,

HENRYJAMES.

The following letter to the President of Magdalen refers to the offer of an honorary degree at Oxford, subsequently conferred in 1912.

Salisbury, Connecticut.May 29th, 1911.

My dear President,

I was more sorry than I can say to have to cable you last evening in that disabled sense. I had some time ago taken my return passage to England for June 14th, but more lately the President of Harvard was so good as to invite me to receive an Honorary Degree at their hands on the 28th of that month—the same day as your Encaenia. Urgent and intimate family reasons conspired to make a delay advisable; so I accepted the Harvard invitation and have shifted my departure to August 2nd.

Behold me thus committed to Harvard—and unable moreover at this season of the multitudinous (I mean of the rush to Europe) to get a decent berth on an outward ship even were I to try. The formal document from the University arrived with your kind letter—proposing to me the Degree of Doctor of Letters, as your letter mentions; and quickened my great regret at being thus perversely prevented from embracing an occasion the appeal of which I might so have connected with your benevolence.

I should feel an Oxford degree a very great honour and a great consideration, and I am writing of course to the Registrar of the University. I rejoice to be going back at last to a moreimmediate—or more possible—sight and sound of you and of all your surrounding amenities and glories. Yet I wish too I could open to you for a few days the impression of the things about me here; in the warm, the very warm, heart of "New England at its best," such a vast abounding Arcadia of mountains and broad vales and great rivers and large lakes and white villages embowered in prodigious elms and maples. It is extraordinarily beautiful and graceful and idyllic—for America....

I am very sincerely and faithfully and gratefully yours,

HENRYJAMES.

Mrs. George Hunter and her daughters had been H. J.'s hostesses at Salisbury, Connecticut, in the preceding May.

Lamb House, Rye.Aug. 15th, 1911.

Beloved dearest darling Bay!

Your so beautifully human letter of Aug. 1st reaches me here this a.m. through Harry—who appears to have picked it out of perdition at the Belmont after I had sailed (at peep of dawn) on Aug. 2nd. It deeply and exquisitely touches me—so bowed down under the shame of my long silence to all your House, to your splendid mother in particular, have I remained ever since the day I brought my little visit to you to a heated close—which sounds absurdly as if I had left you in a rage after a violent discussion. But you will know too well what I mean and how the appalling summer that was even then beginning so actively to cook for us could only prove a well-nigh fatal dishto your aged and infirm uncle. I met the full force of this awful and almost (to the moment I sailed) unbroken visitation just after leaving you—and, frankly, it simply demoralized me and flattened me out. Manners, memories, decencies, all alike fell from me and I simply lay for long weeks a senseless, stricken, perspiring, inconsiderate, unclothed mass. I expected and desired nothing but to melt utterly away—and could only treat my nearest and dearest as iftheyexpected and desired no more. I am convinced that you all didn't and that you noticed not at all that I had become a most ungracious and uncommunicative recipient of your bounty. I lived from day to day, most of the time in my bath, and please tell your mother that when I thought of you it was to say to myself, "oh, they're all up to their necks together in their Foxhunter spring, and it would be really indiscreet to break in upon them!" That is how I do trust you have mainly spent your time—though in your letter you're too delicate to mention it. I was caught as in two or three firetraps—I mean places of great and special suffering, as during a week at the terrific Intervale, N.H., from July 1st to 8th or so (with the kind Merrimans, themselves Salamanders, who served me nothing but hot food and expected clothing;) but I found a blest refuge betimes with my kind old friend George James (widower of Lily Lodge,) at the tip end of the Nahant promontory, quite out at sea, where, amid gardens and groves and on a vast breezy verandah, my life was most mercifully saved and where I stuck fast till the very eve of my sailing.... I got backhere, myself, with a great sense that it was, quite desperately, high time; though, alas, I came upon the same brassy sky and red-hot air here as I left behind me—it has been as formidable a summer here as in the U.S. Everything is scorched and blighted—my garden a thing almostof cinders. There has been no rain for weeks and weeks, the thermometer is mostly at 90, and still it goes on. (90 in this thick English air is like 100 with us.) The like was never seen, and famine-threatening strikes (at London and Liverpool docks,) with wars and rumours of wars and the smash of the House of Lords and, as many people hold, of the constitution, complete the picture of a distracted and afflicted country. Nevertheless I shouldn't mind it so much if we could only have rain.ThenI think all troubles would end, or mend—and at least I should begin to find myself again. I can't do so yet, and am waiting to see how and where I am.

I directed Notman, of Boston, to send you a photograph of a little old—ever so ancient—ambrotype lent me by Lilla Perry to have copied—her husband T.S.P. having been in obscure possession of it for half a century. It will at least show you where and how I was in about my 16th year. I strike myself as such a sweet little thing that I want you, and your mother, to see it in order to believe it—though she will believe it more easily than you. It looks even a great deal likeherabout that time too—we were always thought to look a little alike.... My journey (voyage) out on the big smooth swift Mauretania gave me, and has left me with, such a sense as of a few hours' pamperedferry, making a mere mouthful of the waste of waters, that I kind of promise myself to come back "all the time." I had never been so blandly just lifted across. Tell your mother and Rosina and Leslie that I just cherish and adore them all. I cling to the memory of all those lovely motor-hours; tell Leslie in particular how dear I hold the remembrance of our run together to Stockbridge and Emily T.'s that wonderful long day. And I had the sweetest passages with great Rosina. But I fold you all together in my arms, withGrenville, please, well in the thick of it, and am, darling Bay, your most faithfully fond old

HENRYJAMES.

Lamb House, Rye.August 17th, 1911.

Beloved creature!

As if I hadn't mainly spent my time since my return here (a week ago yesterday) in writhing and squirming for very shame at having left your several, or at least your generously two or three last, exquisite outpourings unanswered. But I had long before sailing from là-bas, dearest Howard, and especially during the final throes and exhaustions, been utterly overturned by the savage heat and drought of a summer that had set in furiously the very last of May, going crescendo all that time—and of which I am finding here (so far as the sky of brass and the earth of cinders is concerned) so admirable an imitation. I have shown you often enough, I think, how much more I have in me of the polar bear than of the salamander—and in fine, at the time I last heard from you, pen, ink and paper had dropped from my perspiring grasp (though whileinthe grasp they had never felt more adhesively sticky,) and I had become a mere prostrate, panting, liquefying mass, wailing to be removed. Iwasremoved—at the date I mention—pressing your supreme benediction (in the form of eight sheets of lovely "stamped paper," as they say in the U.S.) to my heaving bosom; but only to less sustaining and refreshing conditions than I had hoped for here. You will understand how some of these—in this seamed and cracked and blasted and distracted country—strike me; and perhaps even a little how I seem to myselfto have been transferred simply from one sizzling grid-iron to another—at a time when my further toleration of grid-irons had reached its lowest ebb.Sucha pile of waiting letters greeted me here—most of them pushing in with an indecency of clamour beforeyourdear delicate signal. But it is always of you, dear and delicate and supremely interesting, that I have been thinking, and here is just a poor palpitating stopgap of a reply. Don't take it amiss of my wise affection if I tell you that I am heartily glad you are going to Scotland. Go,go, and stay as long as you ever can—it's the sort of thing exactly that will do you a world of good. I am to go there, I believe, next month, to stay four or five days with John Cadwalader—and eke with Minnie of that ilk (or more or less,) in Forfarshire—but that will probably be lateish in the month; and before I go you will have come back from the Eshers and I have returned from a visit of a few days which I expect to embark upon on Saturday next. Then, when we are gathered in, no power on earth will prevent me from throwing myself on your bosom. Forgive meanwhile the vulgar sufficiency and banality of my advice, above, as to what will "do you good"—loathsome expression! But one grasps in one's haste the cheapest current coin. I commend myself strongly to the gentlest (no, that's not the word—say the firmest even while the fairest) of Williams, and am yours, dearest Howard, ever so yearningly,

HENRYJAMES.

P.S. I don't know of course in the least what Esher's "operation" may have been—but I hope not very grave and that he is coming round from it. I should like to be very kindly remembered toher—who shines to me, from far back, in so amiable a light....

Hill, Theydon Mount, Epping.August 27th, 1911.

Dearest Alice,

I want to write you while I am here—and it helps me (thus putting pen to paper does) to conjure away the darkness of this black anniversary—just a little. I have been dreading this day—as I have been living through this week, as you and Peg will have done, and Bill not less, under the shadow of all the memories and pangs of a year ago—but there is a strange (strange enough!) kind of weak anodyne of association in doing so here, where thanks to your support and unspeakable charity, utterly and entirely, I got sufficiently better of my own then deadly visitation of misery to struggle with you on to Nauheim. I met here at first on coming down a week—nine days—ago (quite fleeing from the hot and blighted Rye) the assault of all that miserable and yet in a way helpful vision—but have since been very glad I came, just as I am glad that you were here then—in spite of everything.... I am adding day to day here, as you see—partly because it helps to tide me over a bad—notphysicallybad—time, and partly because my admirable and more than ever wonderful hostess puts it so as a favour to her that I do, that I can only oblige her in memory of all her great goodness to us—when itdidmake such a difference—of May 1910. So I daresay I shall stay on for ten or twelve days more (I don't want to stir, for one thing, till we have had some relief bywater. It has now rained in some places, but there has fallen as yet no drop here or hereabouts—and the earth is sickening to behold.) I have my old room—and I have paid a visit to yours—which is empty.... Mrs. Swynnertonis doing an historical picture for a decorative competition—the embellishment of the Chelsea Town Hall, I believe: Queen Elizabeth taking refuge (at Chelsea) under an oak during a thunder-storm, and she finds the great oak here and Mrs. Hunter, in a wonderful Tudor dress and headgear and red wig, to be admirably, though too beautifully, the Queen: with the big canvas set up, out of doors, by the tree, where her marvellous model still finds time, on top of everything, topose, hooped and ruffled and decorated, and in a most trying queenly position. Mrs. S. is also doing—finishing—the portrait of me that she pushed on so last year.

...But goodbye, dearest Alice, dearest all. I hope your Mother is with you and that Harry has begun to take his holiday—bless him. I bless your Mother too and send her my affectionate love. Goodbye, dearest Alice. Your all faithful

HENRY.

Hill, Theydon Mount, Epping.September 3rd, 1911.

Dearest Isabella Gardner,

Yes, it has been abominable, my silence since I last heard from you—so kindly and beautifully and touchingly—during those few last flurried and worried days before I left America. They were very difficult, they were very deadly days: I was ill with the heat and the tension and the trouble, and, amid all the things to be done for the wind-up of a year's stay, I allowed myself to defer the great pleasure of answering you, yet the general pain of taking leave of you, to some such supposedly calmer hour as this.... I fled away from my little south coast habitation a very fewdays after reaching it—by reason of the brassy sky, the shadeless glare and the baked and barren earth, and took refuge among these supposedly dense shades—yet where also all summer no drop of rain has fallen. There is less of a glare nevertheless, and more of the cooling motor-car, and a very vast and beautiful old William and Mary (and older) house of a very interesting and delightful character, which has lately come into possession of an admirable friend of mine, Mrs. Charles Hunter, who tells me that she happily knows you and that you were very kind and helpful to her during a short visit she made a few (or several) years ago to America. It is a splendid old house—and though, in the midst of Epping Forest, it is but a ninety minutes' motor-ride from London, it's as sequestered and woodlanded as if it were much deeper in the country. And there are innumerable other interesting old places about, and such old-world nooks and corners and felicities as make one feel (in the thick of revolution) that anything that "happens"—happens disturbingly—to this wonderful little attaching old England, the ripest fruit of time, can only be a change for the worse. Even the North Shore and its rich wild beauty fades by comparison—even East Gloucester and Cecilia's clamorous little bower make a less exquisite harmony. Nevertheless, I think tenderly even of that bustling desert now—such is the magic of fond association. George James's shelter of me in his seaward fastness during those else insufferable weeks was a mercy I can never forget, and my beautiful day with you from Lynn on and on, to the lovely climax above-mentioned, is a cherished treasure of memory. I water this last sweet withered flower in particular with tears of regret—that we mightn't have had more of them. I hope your month of August has gone gently and reasonably and that you have continued to be able to put it inby the sea. I found the salt breath of that element gave the only savour—or the main one—that my consciousness knew at those bad times; and if you cultivated it duly and cultivated sweet peace, into the bargain, as hard as ever you could, I'll engage that you're better now—and will continue so if you'll only really take your unassailablestandon sweet peace. You will find in the depth of your admirable nature more genius and vocation for it than you have ever let yourself find out—and I hereby give you my blessing on your now splendid exploitation of that hitherto least attended-to of your many gardens. Become rich in indifference—to almost everything but your fondly faithful old

HENRYJAMES.

By "Her" is meant Mrs. Wharton's motor, always referred to by the chauffeur as "she."

Lamb House, Rye.Sept. 27th, 1911.

Dearest Edith,

Alas it is not possible—it is not even for a moment thinkable. I returned, practically, but last night to my long-abandoned home, where every earthly consideration, and every desire of my heart, conspires now to fix me in some sort of recovered peace and stability; I cling to its very doorposts, for which I have yearned for long months, and the idea of going forth again on new and distant and expensive adventure fills me with—let me frankly say—absolute terror and dismay—the desire, the frantic impulse of scared childhood, to plunge my head under the bedclothes and burrow there, not to "let it (i.e.Her!) get me!" In fine Iwantas little to renew the junketings and squanderings ofexile—time, priceless time-squanderings as they are for me now—as I want devoutly much to do something very different, to which I must begin immediately to address myself—and even if my desire were intense indeed there would be gross difficulties for me to overcome. But enough—don't let me pile up the agony of the ungracious—as any failure of response to a magnificent invitation can only be. Let me simply gape all admiringly, from a distance, at the splendour of your own spirit and general resources—or rather let me just simply stay my pen and hide my head (under the bedclothes before-mentioned.) My finest deepest sense of the general matter is that the whole economy of my future (in which I see myself reviving again to certain things, very definite things, that I want to do) absolutely lays an interdict (to which I oh so fondly bow!) on myeverleaving these shores again. And I have no scruple of saying this to you—your beautiful genius being so for great globe-adventures and putting girdles round the earth. Mine is, incomparably, for brooding like the Hen, whom I differ from but by a syllable in designation; and see how little I personally lose by it, since your putting on girdles so quite inevitably involves your passing at a given moment where I can reach forth and grab you a little. Don't despise me for a spiritless worm, onlylivrez-vous-yyourself ... with all pride and power, and unroll the rich record later to your so inevitably deprived (though so basely resigned) and always so faithfully fond old

HENRYJAMES.

Lamb House, Rye.Oct. 2nd, 1911.

Dear incomparable Child!

What is one to do, how is your poor old battered and tattered ex-neighbour above all to demean himself in the glittering presence of such a letter? Yes, Ihave—through the force of dire accidents—treated you to the most confused and aching void that could pretend to pass for the mere ghost of conversability, and yet you shine upon me still with your own sole light—the absolute dazzle of which very naturally brings tears to my eyes. You are a monster—or almost!—of magnanimity, as well as beauty and ability and (above all, clearly) of felicity, and there is nothing for me, I quite recognise, but to collapse and grovel. Behold me before you worm-like therefore—a pretty ponderous worm, but still capable of the quiver of sensibility and quite inoffensively transportable—whether by motor-car or train, or the local, frugal fly. There is an almost incredible kindness for me in your and Wilfred's being prepared literally to harbour and nourish, to exhibit on your bright scene, publicly and all incongruously, so aged and dingy a parasite; but a real big breezy happiness sometimes begets, I know, a regular wantonness of charity, a fond extravagance of altruism, and I surrender myself to the wild experiment with the very most pious hope that you won't repent of it. You shall not at any point, I promise you, if the effort on my part decently to grace the splendid situation can possibly stave it off. I will bravely come then on Friday 27th—arriving, in the afternoon, by any conveyance that you are so good as to instruct me to adopt. And even as the earthworm might aspire—occasion offering—to matewith the silkworm, I will gladly arrange with dear glossy Howard to present myself if possible inhiscompany. I rejoice in your offering me that cherished company, there is a rare felicity in it: for Howard is the person in all the world who is kindest to menext after you. I shall rejoice to see Wilfred again, and be particularly delighted to see him as my host; our acquaintance began a long time ago, but seemed till now to have been blighted by adversity. This splendidly makes up—and all the good I thought of him is confirmed for me by his thinking so much good of you. It will thrill me likewise to see your bower of bliss—afester Burgin a distracted world just now, and where I pray that good understandings shall ever hold their own. It mustn't be difficult to be happy with you and by you, dear Clare, and you will see how I, for my permitted part, shall pull it off. I was lately very happy in Scotland—happy forme, and for Scotland!—and it must have been something to do with the fact that (I being in Forfarshire) you were, or were even about to be, though unknown to me, in the neighbouring county. This created an atmosphere—over and above the bonny Scotch; I kind of sniffed your great geniality—from afar; so you see the kind of good you can't help doing me. It's rapture to think that you'll do me yet more—at closer quarters, and I am yours, my dear Clare, all affectionately,

HENRYJAMES.

H. J.'s nephew William, his brother's second son, had just become engaged to Miss Runnells.

Lamb House, Rye.Oct. 4th, 1911.

My very dear Niece,

I must tell you at once all the pleasure your beautiful and generous letter of the 23rd September has given me. It's a genuine joy to have from you so straight the delightful truth of the whole matter, and I can't thank you enough for talking to me with an exquisite young confidence and treating me as the fond and faithful and intensely participating old uncle that I want to be. It makes me feel—all you say—how right I've been to be glad, and how righter still I shall be to be myself confident. How shall I tell you in return what an interest I am going to take in you—and how I want you to multiply for me the occasions of showing it? You see I take the greatest and tenderest interest in Bill—and you and I feel then exactly together about that. We shall do—always more or less together!—everything we can think of to help him and back him up, and we shall find nothing more interesting and more paying. I expect somehow or other to see a great deal of him—and of you; and count on you to bring him out to me on the very first pretext, and on him to bring you. He is splendidly serious andentier; it's a great thing to be asentieras that. And he has great ability, great possibilities, which will take, and so much reward, all the bringing out and wooing forth and caring and looking out for that we can give them—as faith and affection can do these things; though of a certainty they would go their own way in spite of us—the fine powers would—if, unluckilyfor us, theydidn'tappeal to us. I like to think of you working out your ideas—planning all those possibilities together—in the wondrous Chocorua October—where I hope you are staying to the end—and even if intensity at the studio naturally suffers for the time it has only fallen back a little to gather again for the spring. I mean in particular the intensity of which you were the subject and centre, and which must have at first been somewhat hampered by its own very excess. Bill's only danger is in his tendency to be intensely intense—which is a bit of a waste; if oneisintense (and it's the only thing for an artist to be) one should be economically, that is carelessly and cynically so: in that way one limits the conditions and tangles of one's problem. But don't give Bill this for a specimen of the way you and I are going to pull him through: we shall do much better yet—only it's past, far past, midnight and the deep hush of the little old sleeping town suggests bed-time rather as the great question for the moment. I have come back to this admirable small corner with great joy and profit—and oh, dear Alice, how earnestly you are awaited here at some not really distant hour by your affectionate old uncle,

HENRYJAMES.

The "small fiction" sent to Mrs. Harrison wasThe Outcry.

Reform Club, Pall Mall, S.W.Oct. 19, 1911.

Dear Mrs. Harrison,

I am more touched than I can say by your gentle and generous acknowledgment of the poor little sign of contrition and apology (in the shape of a slight offered beguilement) that referred tomy graceless silence after the receipt of a beautiful word of sympathy in a great sorrow months and months ago—I am ashamed to remind you of how many! You now heap coals of fire, as the phrase is, on my head—and I can scarcely bear it, for the pure crushing sense of your goodness. I was in truth, at the time of your other letter, deeply submerged—at once horribly bereft and very ill physically, but I was really almost as much touched by the kindness of which yours was a part as I was either. Only I was unable to do anything at the time in the way of recognition—at the time or for a long while afterwards; and when at last I did begin to emerge—after a very difficult year in America which came to an end only two months ago, my very indebtednesses were paralysing—my long silence required, to my sore sense, so much explanation. However, Ihavelittle by little explained—to some friends; though I think not to those I count as closest—for such, one feels, are the best comprehenders, without one's having to tell too much.

I am in town, you see—not at Rye, having gone back there definitely, three weeks ago, to the questionable experiment of taking up my abode there for the season to come. The experiment broke down—I can no longer stand the solitude and confinement, theimmobilisation, of that contracted corner in these shortening and darkening weeks and months. These things have the worst effect upon me—and I fled to London pavements, lamplights, shopfronts, taxi's—and friends; amid all of which I have recovered my equilibrium excellently, and shall do so still more. It means definitely for me no more winters at rueful Rye—only summers, though I hope plenty ofthem. I go down there, however, for bits, to keep my small household together—I can't yet, or till I arrange some frugal footing, bring it up here; and I shall be delightedto profit by one of those occasions to seek your hospitality in a neighbourly way for a couple of nights. I shall be eager for this, and will communicate with you as soon as the opportunity seems to glimmer. Please express to Frederic Harrison my hearty participation, by sympathy and sense, in all the fine things that are now so handsomely happening to him; he is a splendid example and incitement (excitement in fact) for those climbing the great hill—the hill of the long faith and the stout staff—just after him, and who see him so little spent and so erect against the sky at the top. We see youwithhim, dear Mrs. Harrison, making scarcely less brave a figure—at least to your very faithful old friend,

HENRYJAMES.

P.S. I have it at heart to mention that my small fiction was written two years ago—in 1909.

On this appeal Miss Bosanquet, H. J.'s amanuensis, secured rooms for him in Lawrence Street, Chelsea.

105 Pall Mall, S.W.October 27th, 1911.

Dear Miss Bosanquet,

Oh if youcouldonly have the real right thing to miraculously propose to me, you and Miss Bradley, when I see you on Tuesday at 4.30! For you see, by this bolting in horror and loathing (but don'trepeatthose expressions!) from Rye for the winter, my situation suddenly becomes special and difficult; and largely through this, that having got back to work and to a very particular job, the need of expressing myself, of pushing it on, on the oldRemingtonese terms, grows daily stronger within me. But I haven't a seat and temple for the Remington and its priestess—can'thave here at this club, and on the other hand can't now organize a permanent or regular and continuous footing for the London winter, which means something unfurnished and taking (wasting, now) time and thought. I want a small, very cheap and very cleanfurnishedflat or trio of rooms etc. (like the one we talked of under the King's Cross delusion—only betterandwith some, a very few, tables and chairs and fireplaces,) that I could hire for 2 or 3—3 or 4—months to drive ahead my job in—the Remington priestess and I converging and meeting there morning by morning—and it being preferably nearer to her than to me; though near tubes and things for both of us! I must keep onthisplace for food and bed etc.—I have it by the year—till I reallyhavesomething else by the year—for winter purposes—to supersede it (Lamb House abides, for long summers.) Your researches can have only been for theunfurnished—but look,think, invent! Two or three decent little tabled and chaired and lighted rooms would do. I catch a train till Monday, probably late. But on Tuesday!

Yours ever,HENRYJAMES.

The book on which H. J. was now at work wasA Small Boy and Others.

The Athenaeum, Pall Mall, S.W.Nov. 13th, 1911.

Dearest Alice,

I must bless you on the spot for your dear letter of the 22nd—continued on the 31st. I clutchso at everything that concerns and emanates from you all that I kind of pine for the need of it all the while—or at any rate am immensely and positively bettered by every scrap of the dear old Library life that you can manage to waft over to me.... I find, naturally, that I can think of you all, and mingle with you so, ever so much more vividly than I could of old—through the effect of all those weeks and months of last year—which have had at any rate that happy result, that I have the constant image of your days and doings. You must think now very cheerfully and relievedly of mine—because distinctly, yes, dear brave old London is working my cure. Theconditionshere were what I needed all the while that I was so far away from them—I mean because they are of the kind materially best addressed to helping me to work my way back to an equilibrium.... I shall see how it works—from 10.30 to 1.30 each day—and let you hear more; but it represents the yearning effort really to get, more surely and swiftly now, up to my neck into the book about William and the rest of us. I have written to Harry to ask him for certain of the young, youthful letters (copies of them) which I didn't bring away with me—on the other hand I have found some six or eight very precious ones mixed up with the mass of Father's that I have with me (thrust into Father's envelopes etc.) Of Father's, alas, very few are useable; they are so intensely domestic, private and personal.

November 19th.I find with horror, dearest Alice, that I have inadvertently left this all these days in my portfolio (interrupted where I broke off above,) under the impression that I had finished and posted it. This is dreadful, and I am afraid shows how the beneficent London, for all its beneficence, does interpose, invade and distract, giving one too many things to do and to bear in mind atonce. What sickened me is that I have thus kept my letter over a whole wasted week—so far as being in touch with you all is concerned. On the other hand this lapse of time enables me blessedly to confirm, in the light of further experience, whatever of good and hopeful the beginning of the present states to you....

In the third place a most valued letter from Harry has come, accompanying a packet of more of William's letters typed, for which I heartily thank him, and promising me some others yet. I am writing to him in a very few days, and will then tell him how I am entirely at one with him about the kind of use to be made by me of all these early things, the kind of setting they must have, the kind of encompassment that the book, asmybook, my play of reminiscence and almost of brotherly autobiography, and filial autobiography not less, must enshrine them in. The book I see and feel will be difficult and unprecedented and perilous—but if I bring it off it will be exquisite and unique; bring it off as I inwardly project it and oh so devoutly desire it. I greatly regret only, also, the almost complete absence of letters from Alice. She clearly destroyed after Father's death all the letters she had written tothem—him and Mother—in absence, and this was natural enough. But it leaves a perfect blank—though there are on the other hand all my own intimate memories. Could you see—ask—if Fanny Morse has kept any? that is just possible. She wrote after all so little. I marvel thatIhave none—during the Cambridge years. But she was so ill that writing was rare for her—veryrare. However, I must end this. I hope the Irving St. winter wears a friendly face for you. I think so gratefully and kindly now of the little chintzy parlour—blest refuge. I re-embrace dearest Peg and I do so want some demonstration of what Aleck is doing. It's a pang to hear from youthat he "isn't so well physically." What does that sadly mean? I send him all my love and to your mother. Ever your

HENRY.

Reform Club, Pall Mall, S.W.Nov. 19th, 1911.

Dearest Edith,

There are scarce degrees of difference in my constant need of hearing from you, yet when that felicity comes it manages each time to seem pre-eminent and to have assuaged an exceptional hunger. The pleasure and relief, at any rate, three days since, were of the rarest quality—and it's always least discouraging (for the exchange of sentiments) to know that your wings are for the moment folded and your field a bit delimited. I knew you were back in Paris as an informer passing hereby on his way thence again to N.Y. had seen you dining at the Ritz en nombreuse compagnie, "looking awfully handsome and stunningly dressed." And Mary Hunter cesjours-ci had given me earlier and more exotic news of you, yet coloured with a great vividness of sympathy and admiration.... But I feel that it takes a hard assurance to speak to you of "arriving" anywhere—as that implies starting and continuing, and before your great heroic rushes and revolutions I can only gape and sigh and sink back. It requires an association of ease—with the whole heroic question (of the "up and doing" state)—which I don't possess, to presume to suggestionise on the subject of a new advent. Great will be the glory and joy, and the rushing to and fro, when the wide wings are able, marvellously, to show us symptoms of spreading again—and here I am (mainly here this winter) to thrill with thefirst announcement. London is better for me, during these months, than any other spot of earth, or of pavement; and even here I seem to find I can work—and n'ai pas maintenant d'autre idée. Apropos of which aid to life your remarks about my small latest-born are absolutely to the point. The little creature is absolutely of the irresistible sex of her most intelligent critic—for I don't pretend, like Lady Macbeth, to bring forth men-children only. You speak at your ease, chère Madame, of the interminable and formidable job of my producing à mon âge another Golden Bowl—the most arduous and thankless task I ever set myself. However, on all that il y aurait bien des choses à dire; and meanwhile, I blush to say, the Outcry is on its way to a fifth edition (in these few weeks), whereas it has taken the poor old G.B. eight or nine years to get even into a third. And I should have to go back and live for two continuous years at Lamb House to write it (living on dried herbs and cold water—for "staying power"—meanwhile;) and that would be very bad for me, would probably indeed put an end to me altogether. My own sense is that I don't want, and oughtn't to try, to attack ever again anything longer (save for about 70 or 80 pages more) than the Outcry. That is déjà assez difficile—the "artistic economy" of that inferior little product being a much more calculated and ciphered, much more cunning and (to use your sweet expression) crafty one than that of five G.B.'s. The vague verbosity of the Oxusflood (beau nom!) terrifies me—sates me; whereas the steel structure of the other form makes every parcelle a weighed and related value. Moreover nobody is really doing (or, ce me semble, as I look about, can do) Outcries, while all the world is doing G.B.'s—and vous-même, chère Madame, tout le premier: which gives you really the cat out of the bag! My vanity forbids me (instead of the moresweetly consecrating it) a form in which you run me so close. Seulement alors je compterais bâtir a great many (a great many, entendezvous?) Outcries—and on données autrement rich. About this present one hangs the inferiority, the comparative triviality, of its primal origin. But pardon this flood of professional egotism. I have in any case got back to work—on something that now the more urgently occupies me as the time for me circumstantially to have done it would have been last winter, when I was insuperably unfit for it, and that is extremely special, experimental and as yet occult. I apply myself to my effort every morning at a little repaire in the depths of Chelsea, a couple of little rooms that I have secured for quiet and concentration—to which our blest taxi whirls me from hence every morning at 10 o'clock, and where I meet my amanuensis (of the days of the composition of the G.B.) to whom I gueuler to the best of my power. In said repaire I propose to crouch and me blottir (in the English shade of the word, for so intensely revising an animal, as well) for many, many weeks; so that I fear dearest Edith, your idea of "whirling me away" will have to adapt itself to the sense worn by "away"—as it clearly so gracefully will! For there are senses in which that particle is for me just the most obnoxious little object in the language. Make your fond use of it at any rate by first coming away—away hither....

Yours all and always,HENRYJAMES.

P.S. This was begun five days ago—and was raggedly and ruthlessly broken off—had to be—and I didn't mark the place this Sunday a.m. where I took it up again—on page 6th. But I put only today's date—as I didn't put the other day's at the time.

Lamb House, Rye.January 5th, 1912.

My dear Norris,

I don't know whether to call this a belated or a premature thing; as "a New Year's offering" (and my hand is tremendouslyinfor those just now, though it is also tremendously fatigued) it is a bit behind; whereas for an independent overture it follows perhaps indiscreetly fast on the heels of my Christmas letter. However, as since this last I have had the promptest and most beautiful one from you—a miracle of the perfect "fist" as well as of the perfect ease and grace—I make bold to feel that I am not quite untimely, that you won't find me so, and I offer you still all the compliments of the Season—sated and gorged as you must by this time be with them and vague thin sustenance as they at best afford. If I hadn't already in the course of the several score of letters which had long weighed on me and which I really retired to this place on Dec. 30th to work off as much as anything else, run into the ground the image of the coming year as the grim, veiled, equivocal and sinister figure who holds us all in his dread hand and whom we must therefore grovel and abase ourselves at once on the threshold of, as to curry favour with him, I would give you the full benefit of it—but I leave it there as it is; though if you do wish to crawl beside me, here I am flat on my face. I am putting in a few more days here—in order to bore if possiblethroughmy huge heap of postal obligations, the accumulation of three or four years, and not very visibly reduced even by the heroic efforts of the last week. I have never in all my life written so many letters within the same space of time—and I really think that is in the full sense of theterm documentary proof of my recovery of anormalsenile strength. I go to-morrow over into Kent to spend Sunday with some friends near Maidstone (they have lately acquired and extraordinarily restored Allington Castle, which is down in a deep sequestered bottom, plants its huge feet in the Medway, actually overflowed, I believe, up to its middle). I come back here again (with acute lumbago, I quite expect,) and begin again—that is, write 300 more letters; after which I relapse fondly, and I think very wisely, upon London. Now that I am notobligedto be in this place (by having so committed myself to it for better for worse as I had in the past) I find I quite like it—having enjoyed the deep peace and ease of it this last week; but I have to go away to prove to myself the non-obligation to stay, and that takes some doing—which I shall have set about by the 15th. London was quite delicious during that brown still Xmastide—the four or five days after I wrote to you: the drop of life and of traffic was beyond anything of the sort I had ever seen in that frame. The gregariousness of movement of the population is an amazing phenomenon—they had vanished so in a bunch that the streets were an uncanny desert, with the difference from of old that the taxis and motors were more absent than the cabs and carriages and busses ever were, for at any given moment the horizon is through this power of disappearance, void of them—whereas the old thingshad, through their slowness, to hang about. Onegetsa taxi, by the way, much faster than one ever got a handsome (lo, I have managed to forget how towritethe extinct object!)—and yet one gets it from so much further away and from such an at first hopeless void....

Very romantic and charming the arrival of your gallant George—from all across Europe—for his Xmas eve with you; your account of it touches meand I find myself ranking you with the celebrated fair of history and fable for whom the swimmings of the Hellespont and the breakings of the lance were perpetrated. I congratulate you on such a George in these for the most part merely "awfully sorry" days, and him on a chance of which he must have been awfully glad. And àpropos of such felicities—or rather of felicities pure and simple, and not quite such, I do heartily hope that youwillgo on to Spain with your niece in the spring—I'm convinced that you'll find it a charming adventure. I've myself utterly ceased to travel—I'm a limpet now, for the rest of my life, on the rock of Britain, but I intensely enjoy the travels of my friends.

My pen fails and my clock strikes and I am yours all faithfully,

HENRYJAMES.

Lamb House, Rye,Jan. 5th, 1912.

Dear Miss Betham Edwards,

I can now at last tell you the sad story of the book for Emily Morgan—which I am having put up to go to you with this; as well as explain a little my long silence. The very day, or the very second day, after last seeing you, a change suddenly took place, under great necessity, in my then current plans and arrangements; I departed under that stress for London, practically to spend the winter, and have come back but for a very small number of days—I return there next week. "But," you will say, "why didn't you send the promised volume for E. M. fromLondonthen? What matter to us where it came from so long as it came?" To which I reply: "Well, I had in this house a small row of books available for the purpose andamong which I could choose—also which I came away, in my precipitation, too soon to catch up in flight. In London I should have to go andbuythe thing, my own production—while Ihavetwo or three bran-new volumes, which will be an economy to a man utterly depleted by the inordinate number of copies ofThe Outcrythat he has given away and all but six of which he has had to pay for—his sanguinary (admire my restraint!) publisher allowing him but six." "Why then couldn't you write home and have one of the books in question sent you?—or have it sent to Hastings directly from your house?" "Because I am the happy possessor of a priceless parlourmaid wholovesdoing up books, and other parcels, and does them up beautifully, and if the volume comes to me here, to be inscribed, I shall then have to do it up myself, an act for which I have absolutely no skill and which I dread and loathe, and tumble it forth clumsily and insecurely! Besides I was vague as to which of my works Ididhave on the accessible shelf—I only knew I had some—and would have to look and consider and decide: which I have now punctually done. And the thing will be beautifully wrapped!" "That's all very well; but why then didn't you write and explain why it was that you were keeping us unserved and uninformed?" "Oh, because from the moment I go up to town Iplunge—plunge into the great whirlpool of postal matter, social matter, and above all, this time, grey matter ofcerebration—having got back to horrible arrears of work and being at best sopostallysubmerged during these last weeks that every claim of that sort that could be temporarily dodged was a claim that found me shameless and heartless." But you see the penalty of all is that I have to write allthisnow.

...I'm glad you like adverbs—I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect,and I agree with the fine author of your quotations in saying—or in thinking—that the sense for them istheliterary sense. None other is much worth speaking of. But I hope my volume won't contain too many for Emily Morgan. Don't let her dream of "acknowledging" it. She can do so when we meet again. Perhaps you can even help her out with the book by reading, yourself, the Beast in the Jungle, say—or the Birthplace. May our generally so ambiguous 1912 be all easy figuring foryou. Yours, dear Miss Betham Edwards, all faithfully,

HENRYJAMES.

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