The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II - Генри Джеймс 9 стр.

To William James, junior

Dearest Bill,

This is just a word to tell you that your poor old far-flying Uncle is safe and sound and greatly enjoying [himself], so far, after étapes consisting of Bois, Poictiers, and Bordeaux, with wonderful minor stops, déjeuners and other impressions in between. We got here last nightinto the balmiest, tepidest, dustiest south, and stay three days or so, for excursions, going probably after today's luncheon to Lourdes and back. This large, smooth old France is wonderful (wisely seen, as we are seeing it,) and I know it already much more infinitely well. The motor is a magical marveldiscreetly and honourably used, as we are using itand my hosts are full of amenity, sympathy, appreciation, etc. (as well as of wondrous other servanted and avant-courier'd arts of travel,) so that we are an excellent combination and most happy familyincluding our most admirable American chauffeur from Lee, Mass., whose native Yankee saneness and intelligence (projected into these unprecedented conditions) makes me as proud of him as he is of his Panhard car. On Thursday or Friday (at furthest) we turn "her" head to Parisbut of course with other stops and impressionsthough none, I think, of more than one night. Don't dream of troubling to writeI will write again as we draw nearer. I hope these efflorescent days (if you have them) don't turn your stomach too much against the thick taste of the Julian broth. I already long to see you again.

To Howard Sturgis

The plan of approaching Italy through South Germany and Austria was not carried out. He presently went straight from Paris to Rome.

Dearest Howard,

I find your beautiful tragic wail on my return from a wondrous, miraculous motor tour of three weeks and a day with these admirable friends of ours, who so serve one up all the luxuries of the season and all the ripe fruits of time that one's overloaded plate will hold. We got back fromfrom everywhere, literallylast night; and in presence of a table groaning under arrears and calendars and other stationery I can but, as it were, fold you in my arms. You talk of sad and fearful things and I don't know what to say to you (at least in this poor inky, scratchy way.) What I should like to be able to say is that I will come down to Rome and see you even now; but this alas is not in my power without my altering all sorts of other pressing arrangements and combinations already made. I do hope to go to Rome for a littlea very littlestay later; but not before the middle or 20th of May; a timea generally emptier, quieter timeI greatly prefer there to any other. It is of extreme importance to me to be (to remain) in Paris till May 1stI haven't been here for years and shall probably never once again be here (or "come abroad" once again, like you) for the rest of my natural life. Ergo I am taking what there is of it for meI can't afford, as it were, not to. And I have made my plans (if they hold) for approaching Italy by South Germany, Vienna, Trieste, Venice &c.all of which will bring me to Rome by the 20th of May about, when, I fear, you will well nighor certainlyhave cleared out altogether. From Rome and Florence I shall return straight homewhere at least, then, I must infallibly see you. Or shall you pass through this placehomewardbefore May 1st? The gentlest of lionesses bids me tell you what a tenderest welcome you would have from them. Hold up your heart, meanwhile, and remember, for God's sake, that there is a point beyond which the follies and infirmities of our friends and our proches have no right to ravage and wreck our own independence of soul. That quantity is too precious a contribution to the saving human sum of good, of lucidity, and we are responsible for the entretien of it. So keep yours, shake yours, upwell upmy dearest friend, and to this end believe in your admirable human use. To be "crushed" is to be of no use; and I for one insist that you shall be of some, and the most delightful, to me. Feel everything, tant que vous voudrezbut then soar superior and don't leave tatters of your precious person on every bush that happens to bristle with all the avidities and egotisms. We shall judge it all sanely and taste it all wisely and talk of it all (even) thrillinglyand profitablyyet; and I depend on your keeping that appointment with me. This is all, dearest Howard, now. I almost blush to break through your obsessions to the point of saying that my three weeks of really seeing this large incomparable France in our friend's chariot of fire has been almost the time of my life. It's the old travelling-carriage way glorified and raised to the 100th power. Will you very kindly say to Maud Story for me, with my love, that I am coming to Rome very nearly all to see her. I bless your companions and am your tout dévoué

To Howard Sturgis

From Rome H. J. went to Cernitoio, Mr. Edward Boit's villa near Vallombrosa.

Dearest Howard,

I've been disgustingly silent in spite of your so good prompt, blessed letterbut the waters of Rome have been closing over my head, for I have, each day, a good part of each, something urgent and imperative to do, "for myself," as it wereand everything the hours and the "people" bring forth has to be crowded into too scant a margin; with a consequent sensation of breathlessness that ill consorts alike with my figure, my years and my inclinations. I am "sitting for my bust," into the bargainto Hendrik Andersen (it will be, I think, better than some other such work of his,) and that makes practically a great hole of two hours and a half in the daywithout which, in truth (the promise to hold out to the end of the ordeal,) I should already have broken away from this now very highly-developed heat and dust and glare. My days "abroad" are violently shrinkingI am long since due at home; and my yearning for a damp grey temperate clime hourly develops. However, I didn't mean to pour forth this plaintive floodbut rather to take a fine healthy jolly tone over the fact of your own so happily achieved (I trust) liberation from the Roman yoke and your probable inhalation at this moment of the fresh air of the summits and of the tonic influence of admirable friends. Need I say that I number poor dear deafened Rhoda's Florentine contact as among the stimulating?since it surely must take more than deafness, must take utter and cataclysmal dumbnessand I'm not sure even that would get the better of her practical acuityto make her fall from the tonic. But I'm very sorryI mean for her I trust temporary troubleand if I but knew where she iswhich you don't mentionand when departing, or how long staying, would reach her if I might. I cherish the thought of getting off Tuesday at very latestif I return intact from a long motor-day that awaits me at the hands of the Filippo Filippis on Saturdayas I believe. I drove with Mrs. Mason out yesterday afternoon to the Abbotts' villathat is a very charming late afternoon tea-garden, and they told me you are soon to have them at Cernitoio. Expansive (not to say expensive) and illimitable you! All this time I don't tell youtell Mildred Seymoura tenth of the comfort I am deriving amid continued tension from the sense that her (and your bow is for the time unstrung and hung up for the Vallombrosa pines to let the mountain-breeze loosely play with it.... I expect to be here till Tuesday a.m.but I see I've said so. You shall then, and so shall Edward Boit (to whom and his girls I send tanti saluti, as well as to brave and beneficent Mr. William) have further news of yours, my dear Howard, ever affectionately,

To Madame Wagnière

The name of this correspondent recalls a meeting at Florence, described in an early letter (vol. i, p. 28). Madame Wagnière (born Huntington) was now living in Switzerland.

Dear Laura Wagnière,

I have waited since getting your good note to have the right moment and right light for casting the right sort of longing lingering look on the little house with the "Giardinetto" on the Canal Grande, to the right of Guggenheim as you face Guggenheim. I hung about it yesterday afternoon in the gondola with Mrs. Curtis, and we both thought it very charming and desirable, only that she has (perhaps a little vaguely) heard it spoken of as "damp" which I confess it looks to me just a trifle. However, this may be the vainest of calumnies. It does look expensive and also a trifle contracted, and is at present clearly occupied and with no outward trace of being to let about it at all. For myself, in this paradise of great household spaces (I mean Venice generally), I kind of feel that even the bribe of the Canal Grande and a giardinetto together wouldn't quite reconcile me to the purgatory of a very small, really (and not merely relatively) small house.... Mrs. Curtis is eloquent on the sacrifices one must make (to a high rent here) if one must have, for "smartness," the "Canal Grande" at any price. She makes me feel afresh what I've always felt, that what I should probably do with my own available ninepence would be to put up with some large marble halls in some comparatively modest or remote locality, especially della parte di fondamenta nuova, etc.; that is, so I got there air and breeze and light and pulizia and a dozen other conveniences! In fine, the place you covet is no doubt a dear little "fancy" place; but as to the question of "coming to Venice" if one can, I have but a single passionate emotion, a thousand times Yes! It would be for me, I feel, in certain circumstances (were I free, with a hundred other facts of my life different,) the solution of all my questions, and the consolation of my declining years. Never has the whole place seemed to me sweeter, dearer, diviner. It leaves everything else out in the cold. I wish I could dream of coming to me mettre dans mes meubles (except that my meubles would look so awful here!) beside you. I presume to enter into it with a yearning sympathy. Happy you to be able even to discuss it....

This place and this large cool upper floor of the Barbaro, with all the space practically to myself, and draughts and scirocco airs playing over me indecently undressed, is more than ever delicious and unique.... The breath of the lagoon still plays up, but I mingle too much of another fluid with my ink, and I have no more clothes to take off.... I greet affectionately, yes affectionately, kind Henry, and the exquisite gold-haired maiden, and I am, dear Laura Wagnière, your very faithful old friend,

To Mrs. Wharton

The Vicomte Robert d'Humières, poet and essayist, fell in action in France, April 26, 1915.

My dear Edith and my dear Edward,

The d'Humières have just been lunching with me, and that has so reknotted the silver cord that stretched so tense from the first days of last March to the first of those of Maywasn't it?that I feel it a folly in addition to a shame not yet to have written to you (as I have been daily and hourly yearning to do) ever since my return from Italy about a month ago. You flung me the handkerchief, Edith, just at that timeliterally cast it at my feet: it met me, exactly, boundingreboundingfrom my hall-table as I recrossed my threshold after my long absence; which fact makes this tardy response, I am well aware, all the more graceless. And then came the charming little picture-card of the poor Lamb House hack grinding out his patient prose under your light lash and dear Walter B.'swhich should have accelerated my production to the point of its breaking in waves at your feet: and yet it's only to-night that my overburdened spiritpushing its way, ever since my return, through the accumulations and arrears, in every sort, of absenceputs pen to paper for your especial benefitif benefit it be. The charming d'Humières both, as I say, touringtrainingin England, through horrid wind and weather, with a bonne grace and a wit and a Parisianism worthy of a better cause, amiably lunched with me a couple of days since on their way from town to Folkestone, and so back to Plassac (don't you like "Plassac," down in our dear old Gascony?) the seat of M. de Dampierreto whom, à ce qu'il paraît, that day at luncheon we were all exquisitely sympathetic! Well, it threw back the bridge across the gulfs and the months, even to the very spot where the great nobly-clanging glass door used to open to the arrested, the engulfing and disgorging carfor we sat in my little garden here and talked about you galore and kind of made plans (wild vain dreams, though I didn't let them see it!) for our all somehow being together again.... But oh, I should like to remount the stream of time much further back than their passage hereif it weren't (as it somehow always is when I get at urgent letters) ever so much past midnight. It was only with my final return hither that my deep draught of riotous living came to an end, and as the cup had originally been held to my lips all by your hands I somehow felt in presence of your interest and sympathy up to the very last, and as if you absolutely should have been avertie from day to dayI did the matter that justice at least. Too much of the story has by this time dropped out; but there are bits I wish I could save for you.... But I must break offit's 1.15 a.m.!

Aug. 12th. I wrote you last from Rome, I thinkdidn't I? but it was after that that I heard of your having had at the last awful delays and complications, awful strike-botherations, over your sailing. I knew nothing of them at the time.... I can only hope that the horrid memory of it has been brushed and blown away for you by the wind of your American kilometres. I remained in Romefor myselfa goodish while after last writing you, and there were charming moments, faint reverberations of the old-time refrainswith a happy tendency of the superfluous, the incongruous crew to take its departure as the summer came on; yet I feel that I shouldn't care if I never saw the perverted place again, were it not for the memory of four or five adorable occasionscharming chancesenjoyed by the bounty of the Filippis.... My point is that they carried me in their wondrous car (he drove it himself all the way from Paris via Macerata, and with four or five more picked-up inmates!) first to two or three adorable Roman excursionsto Fiumicino, e.g., where we crossed the Tiber on a medieval raft and then had teaout of a Piccadilly tea-basketon the cool sea-sand, and for a divine day to Subiaco, the unutterable, where I had never been; and then, second down to Naples (where we spent two days) and back; going by the mountains (the valleys really) and Monte Cassino, and returning by the seai.e. by Gaeta, Terracina, the Pontine Marshes and the Castelliquite an ineffable experience. This brought home to me with an intimacy and a penetration unprecedented how incomparably the old coquine of an Italy is the most beautiful country in the worldof a beauty (and an interest and complexity of beauty) so far beyond any other that none other is worth talking about. The day we came down from Posilipo in the early June morning (getting out of Naples and round about by that endthe road from Capua on, coming, is archi-damnable) is a memory of splendour and style and heroic elegance I never shall loseand never shall renew! Noyou will come in for it and Cook will picture it up, bless him, repeatedlybut I have drunk and turned the glass upside downor rather I have placed it under my heel and smashed itand the Gipsy life with it!for ever. (Apropos of smashes, two or three days after we had crossed the level crossing of Caianello, near Caserta, seven Neapolitan "smarts" were all killed deadand this by no coming of the train, but simply by furious reckless driving and a deviation, a slip, that dashed them against a rock and made an instant end. The Italian driving is crapulous, and the roads mostly not good enough.) But I mustn't expatiate. I wish I were younger. But for that matter the "State Line" would do me well enough this eveningfor it's again the stroke of midnight. If it weren't I would tell you more. Yes, I wish I were to be seated with you to-morrowcatching the breeze-borne "burr" from under Cook's fine nose! How is Gross, dear woman, and how are Mitou and Nicettewhom I missed so at Monte Cassino? I spent four daysout from Florenceat Ned Boit's wondrousreally quite divine "eyrie" of Cernitoio, over against Vallombrosa, a dream of Tuscan loveliness and a really admirable séjour.... I spent at the last two divine weeks in Veniceat the Barbaro. I don't care, frankly, if I never see the vulgarized Rome or Florence again, but Venice never seemed to me more loveablethough the vaporetto rages. They keep their cars at Mestre! and I am devotedly yours both,