The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II - Генри Джеймс 11 стр.

Dictated.

Dear William and Letitia!

It would be monstrous of me to say that what I most valued in William's last brave letter was Letitia's gentle "drag" upon it; and I hasten to insist that when I dwell on the pleasure so produced by Letitia's presence in it (to the extent of her gently "dragging") I feel that she at least will know perfectly what I mean! Explain this to William, my dear Letitia: I leave all the burden to youso used as you are to burdens! It was delightful, I can honestly say, to hear from you no long time sinceand whether by controlled or uncontrolled inspiration; and I tick a small space clear this morningclear in an air fairly black with the correspondence "of the season"just to focus you fondly in it and make, for the friendly sound of my Remington, a penetrable medium and a straight course. I am shut up, as mostly, you see, in the little stronghold your assault of which has never lost you honour, at leastI mean the honour of the brave besiegerhowever little else it may have brought you; and I waggle this small white flag at you, from my safe distance, over the battlements, as for a cheerful truce or amicable New Year's parley. I think I must figure to you a good deal as a "banked-in" Esquimau with his head alone extruding through the sole orifice of his hut, or perhaps as a Digger Indian, bursting through his mound, by the same perforation, even as a chicken through its shell: by reason of the abject immobility practised by me while you and Letitia hurl yourselves from one ecstasy of movement, one form of exercise, one style of saddled or harnessed or milked or prodded or perhaps merely "fattened," quadruped, to another. Your letterthis lastis a noble picture of a free quadrupedal lifewhich gives me the sense, all delightful, of seeing you both alone erect and nimble and graceful in the midst of the browsing herd of your subjects. Well, it all sounds delightfully pastoral to one whose "stable" consists but of the go-cart in which the gardener brings up the luggage of those of my visitors (from the station) who advance successfully to the stage of that question of transport; and my outhouses of the shed under which my solitary henchman (but sufficient to a drawbridge that plays so easily up!) "attends to the boots" of those confronted with the inevitable subsequent phase of early matutinal departure! All of which means, dear both of you, that I do seem to read into your rich record the happiest evidences of health as well as of wealth. You take my breath awayas, for that matter, you can but too easily figure with your ever-natural image of me gaping through a crevice of my door!the only other at all equal loss of it proceeding but from my mild daily revolution up and down our little local eminence here. No, you won't believe itthat these have been my only revolutions since I last risked, at a loophole, seeing you thunder past. I shall risk it again when you thunder backand really, though it spoils the consistency of my builded metaphor, watch fondly for the charming flash that will precede, and prepare! I haven't been even as far as to see the good Abbeys at Fairfordwas capable of not even sparing that encouragement when she kindly wrote to me for a visit toward the autumn's end. I haven't so much as pilgrimised to the other shrine in Tite St.and, having so little to tell you, really mustn't prolong this record of my vacancy. I am quite spending the winter here"bracing" for what the spring and summer may bring. But I do get, as the very breath of the Spice-islands, the balmy sidewind of your general luxuriance, and it makes me glad and grateful for you, and keeps me just as much as ever your faithful, vigilant, steady, sturdy friend,

To Mrs. Wharton

The work just finished was the revision of The High Bid, shortly to be produced by Mr. and Mrs. Forbes Robertson.

My dear Edith,

G. T. Lapsley has gone to bedhe has been seeing the New Year in with me (generously giving a couple of days to it)and I snatch this hour from out the blizzard of Xmas and Year's End and New Year's Beginning missives, to tell you too belatedly how touched I have been with your charming little Xmas mementoan exquisite and interesting piece for which I have found a very effective position on the little old oak-wainscotted wall of my very own room. There it will hang as a fond reminder of tout ce que je vous dois. (I am trying to make use of an accursed "fountain" penbut it's a vain struggle; it beats me, and I recur to this familiar and well-worn old unimproved utensil.) I have passed here a very solitary and casanier Christmastide (of wondrous still and frosty days, and nights of huge silver stars,) and yesterday finished a job of the last urgency for which this intense concentration had been all vitally indispensable. I got the conditions, here at home thus, in perfectionI put my job through, and nowor in timeit may have, on my scant fortunes, a far-reaching effect. If it does have, you'll be the first all generously to congratulate me, and to understand why, under the stress of it, I couldn't indeed break my little started spell of application by a frolic absence from my field of action. If it, on the contrary, fails of that influence I offer my breast to the acutest of your silver arrows; though the beautiful charity with which you have drawn from your critical quiver nothing more fatally-feathered than that dear little framed and glazed, squared and gilded étrenne serves for me as a kind of omen of my going unscathed to the end.... I admit that it's horrible that we can'tnous autrestalk more face to face of the other phenomena; but life is terrible, tragic, perverse and abysmalbesides, patientons. I can't pretend to speak of the phenomena that are now renewing themselves round you; for there is the eternal penalty of my having shared your cup last yearthat I must taste the liquor or go withoutthere can be no question of my otherwise handling the cup. Ah I'm conscious enough, I assure you, of going without, and of all the rich arrears that will neverfor mebe made up! But I hope for yourselves a thoroughly good and full experienceabout the possibilities of which, as I see them, there is, alas, all too much to say. Let me therefore but wonder and wish! But it's long past midnight, and I am yours and Teddy's ever so affectionate

To Gaillard T. Lapsley

My dear, dear Gaillard!

I can't tell you with what tender sympathy your rather disconcerting little news inspires me nor how my heart goes out to you. Alack, alack, how we do have to pay for thingsand for our virtues and grandeurs and beauties (even as you are now doing, overworked hero and model of distinguished valour,) as well as for our follies and mistakes. However, you have on your record exactly that mistake of too generous a sacrifice. Fortunately you have been pulled up before you have quite chucked away your all. It must be deuced drearyyet if you ask me whether I think of you more willingly and endurably thus, or as your image of pale overstrain haunted me after you had left me at the New Year, I shall have no difficulty in replying. In fact, dearest Gaillard, and at the risk of aggravating you, I like to keep you a little before me in the passive, the recumbent, the luxurious and ministered-to posture, and my imagination rings all the possible changes on the forms of your noble surrender. Lie as flat as you can, and live and think and feel and talk (and keep silent!) as idlyand you will thereby be laying up the most precious treasure. It's a heaven-appointed interlude, and cela ne tient qu'à vous (I mean to the wave of your white hand) to let it become a thing of beauty like the masque of Comus. Cultivate, horizontally the waving of that handand you will brush away, for the time, all responsibilities and superstitions, and the peace of the Lord will descend upon you, and you will become as one of the most promising little good boys that ever was. Après quoi the whole process and experience will grow interesting, amusing, tissue-making (history-making,) to you, and you will, after you get well, feel it to have been the time of your life which you'd have been most sorry to miss. Some five years agoor morea very interesting young friend of mine, Paul Harvey (then in the War Office as Private Sec. to Lord Lansdowne), was taken exactly as you are, and stopped off just as you are and consigned exactly to your place, I thinkor rather no, to a pseudo-Nordrach in the Mendips. I remember how I sat on just such a morning as this at this very table and in this very seat and wrote him on this very paper in the very sense in which I am no less confidently writing to youurging him to let himself utterly go and cultivate the day-to-day and the hand-to-mouth and the questions-be-damned, even as an exquisite fine art. Well, it absolutely and directly and beautifully worked: he reculato the very limitpour mieux sauter, and has since sauté'd so well that his career has caught him up again.... Your case will have gone practically quite on all fours with this. I am drenching you with my fond eloquencebut what will you have when you have touched me so by writing me so charmingly out of your quietthough ever so shining, I feellittle chamber in the great Temple of Simplification? I shall return to the chargeif it be allowed meand perhaps some small sign from you I shall have after a while again. I came up from L.H. yesterday onlyand shall be in town after this a good deal, D.V., through the rest of this month and April and May. At some stage of your mouvement ascensionnel I shall see youfor I hope they won't be sending you up quite to Alpine Heights. Take it from me, dear, dear G., that your cure will have a social iridescence, for your acute and ironic and genial observation, of the most beguiling kind. But you don't need to "take" that or any other wisdom that your beautiful intelligence now plays with from any other source but that intelligence; therefore be beholden to me almost only for the fresh reassurance that I am more affectionately than ever yours,

To Mrs. Wharton

The first performance of The High Bid took place in Edinburgh three days after the date of the following.

My dear Edith!

This is just a tremulous little line to say to you that the daily services of intercession and propitiation (to the infernal gods, those of jealousy and guignon) that I feel sure you have instituted for me will continue to be deeply appreciated. They have already borne fruit in the shape of a desperate (comparative) calmin my racked breastafter much agitationand even to-day (Sunday) of a feverish gaiety during the journey from Manchester, to this place, achieved an hour ago by special train for my whole troupe and its impedimentaI travelling with the animals like the lion-tamer or the serpent-charmer in person and quite enjoying the caravan-quality, the bariolé Bohemian or picaresque note of the affair. Here we are for the last desperate throesbut the omens are good, the little play pretty and pleasing and amusing and orthodox and mercenary and safe (absit omen!)cravenly, ignobly canny: also clearly to be very decently acted indeed: little Gertrude Elliott, on whom it so infinitely hangs, showing above all a gallantry, capacity and vaillance, on which I had not ventured to build. She is a scrap (personally, physically) where she should be a presence, and handicapped by a face too small in size to be a field for the play of expression; but allowing for this she illustrates the fact that intelligence and instinct are capables de toutso that I still hope. And each time they worry through the little "piggery" it seems to me more firm and more intrinsically without holes and weak spotsin itself I mean; and not other in short, than "consummately" artful. I even quite awfully wish you and Teddy were to be hereeven so far as that do I go! But wire me a wordhereon Thursday a.m.and I shall be almost as much heartened up. I will send you as plain and unvarnished a one after the event as the case will lend itself to. Even an Edinburgh public isn't (I mean as we go here all by the London) determinant, of coursehowever, à la guerre comme à la guerre, and don't intermit the burnt-offerings. More, more, very soonand you too will have news for yours and Edward's right recklessly even though ruefully,

To Henry James, junior

Dearest Harry,

The Nightmare of the Edition (of my Works!) is the real mot de l'Enigme of all my long gaps and delinquencies these many months pastmy terror of not keeping sufficiently ahead in doing my part of it (all the revising, rewriting, retouching, Preface-making and proof-correcting) has so paralysed meas a panic fearthat I have let other decencies go to the wall. The printers and publishers tread on my heels, and I feel their hot breath behind mewhereby I keep at it in order not to be overtaken. Fortunately I have kept at it so that I am almost out of the wood, and the next very few weeks or so will completely lay the spectre. The case has been complicated badly, moreover, the last monthand even beforeby my having, of all things in the world, let myself be drawn into a theatrical adventurewhich fortunately appears to have turned out as well as I could have possibly expected or desired. Forbes Robertson and his wife produced on the 26th last in Edinburghbeing on "tour," and the provincial production to begin with, as more experimental, having good reason in its favoura three-act comedy of mine ("The High Bid")which is just only the little one-act play presented as a "tale" at the end of the volume of the "Two Magics"; the one-act play proving really a perfect three-act one, dividing itself (by two short entractes, without fiddles) perfectly at the right little places as climaxeswith the artful beauty of unity of time and place preserved, etc.... It had a great and charming success before a big house at Edinburgha real and unmistakable victorybut what was most brought home thereby is that it should have been discharged straight in the face of London. That will be its real and best function. This I am hoping for during May and June. It has still to be done at Newcastle, Liverpool, etc. (was done this past week three times at Glasgow. Of course on tour three times in a week is the most they can give a play in a minor city.) But my great point is that preparations, rehearsals, lavishments of anxious time over it (after completely re-writing it and improving it to begin with) have represented a sacrifice of days and weeks to them that have direfully devoured my scant marginthus making my intense nervousness (about them) doubly nervous. I left home on the 17th last and rehearsed hard (every blessed day) at Manchester, and at Edinburgh till the productionhaving already, three weeks before that in London, given up a whole week to the same. I came back to town a week ago to-night (saw a second night in Edinburgh, which confirmed the impression of the first,) and return to L.H. to-morrow, after a very decent huitaine de jours here during which I have had quiet mornings, and even evenings, of work. I go to Paris about the 20th to stay 10 days, at the most, with Mrs Wharton, and shall be back by May 1st. I yearn to know positively that your Dad and Mother arrive definitely on the Oxford job then. I have had to be horribly inhuman to them in respect to the fond or repeated expression of that yearningbut they will more than understand why, "druv" as I've been, and also understand how the prospect of having them with me, and being with them, for a while, has been all these last months as the immediate jewel of my spur. Read them this letter and let it convey to them, all tenderly, that I live in the hope of their operative advent, and shall bleed half to death if there be any hitch.

But I embrace you all in spirit and am ever your fond old Uncle,

To W. D. Howells

The "lucubrations" are of course the prefaces written for the collected edition. The number of volumes was eventually raised to twenty-four, but The Bostonians was not included. The "one thing" referred to, towards the end of this letter, as likely to involve another visit to America would seem to be the possible production there of one of his plays; while the further reason for wishing to return was doubtless connected with his project of writing a novel of which the scene was to be laid in Americathe novel that finally became The Ivory Tower.

Dictated.

My dear Howells,

A great pleasure to me is your good and generous letter just receivedwith its luxurious implied licence for me of seeking this aid to prompt response; at a time when a pressure of complications (this is the complicated time of the year even in my small green garden) defeats too much and too often the genial impulse. But so far as compunction started and guided your pen, I really rub my eyes for vision of where it maysave as most misguidedlyhave come in. You were so far from having distilled any indigestible drop for me on that pleasant ultimissimo Sunday, that I parted from you with a taste, in my mouth, absolutely saccharinesated with sweetness, or with sweet reasonableness, so to speak; and aching, or wincing, in no single fibre. Extravagant and licentious, almost, your delicacy of fear of the contrary; so much so, in fact, that I didn't remember we had even spoken of the heavy lucubrations in question, or that you had had any time or opportunity, since their "inception," to look at one. However your fond mistake is all to the good, since it has brought me your charming letter and so appreciative remarks you therein make. My actual attitude about the Lucubrations is almost only, and quite inevitably, that they make, to me, for weariness; by reason of their number and extentI've now but a couple more to write. This staleness of sensibility, in connection with them, blocks out for the hour every aspect but that of their being all done, and of their perhaps helping the Edition to sell two or three copies more! They will have represented much labour to this latter endthough in that they will have differed indeed from no other of their fellow-manifestations (in general) whatever; and the resemblance will be even increased if the two or three copies don't, in the form of an extra figure or two, mingle with my withered laurels. They are, in general, a sort of plea for Criticism, for Discrimination, for Appreciation on other than infantile linesas against the so almost universal Anglo-Saxon absence of these things; which tends so, in our general trade, it seems to me, to break the heart. However, I am afraid I'm too sick of the mere doing of them, and of the general strain of the effort to avoid the deadly danger of repetition, to say much to the purpose about them. They ought, collected together, none the less, to form a sort of comprehensive manual or vade-mecum for aspirants in our arduous profession. Still, it will be long before I shall want to collect them together for that purpose and furnish them with a final Preface. I've done with prefaces for ever. As for the Edition itself, it has racked me a little that I've had to leave out so many things that would have helped to make for rather a more vivid completeness. I don't at all regret the things, pretty numerous, that I've omitted from deep-seated preference and design; but I do a little those that are crowded out by want of space and by the rigour of the 23 vols., and 23 only, which were the condition of my being able to arrange the matter with the Scribners at all. Twenty-three do seem a fairly blatant arrayand yet I rather surmise that there may have to be a couple of supplementary volumes for certain too marked omissions; such being, on the whole, detrimental to an all professedly comprehensive presentation of one's stuff. Only these, I pray God, without Prefaces! And I have even, in addition, a dim vague view of re-introducing, with a good deal of titivation and cancellation, the too-diffuse but, I somehow feel, tolerably full and good "Bostonians" of nearly a quarter of a century ago; that production never having, even to my much-disciplined patience, received any sort of justice. But it will take, doubtless, a great deal of artful re-doingand I haven't, now, had the courage or time for anything so formidable as touching and re-touching it. I feel at the same time how the series suffers commercially from its having been dropped so completely out. Basta purebasta!