Buch lesen: «The Letters of Henry James. Vol. I», Seite 11
To Charles Eliot Norton
Professor Norton had sent H. J. the first instalment of his edition of Carlyle's correspondence.
Milan, December 6th [1886].
My dear Charles,
I ought long ago to have thanked you for your very substantial present of Carlyle—but I waited in the first place till I should have read the book (which business was considerably delayed,) and then till I had wound up a variety of little matters, mainly matters of writing which pressed upon me in anticipation of my leaving England for two or three months. Now when at last I seize the moment, I have left England, but you will be as glad of a letter from here as from out of the dense grey medium in which we had been living for a month before I quitted London. I came hither straight from Dover last night through the hideous but convenient hole in the dear old St. Gotthard, and I have been strolling about Milan all the morning, drinking in the delicious Italian sun, which fortunately shines, and giving myself up to the sweet sense of living once more—after an interval of several years—in the adorable country it illumines. It is Sunday and all the world is in the streets and squares, and the Italian type greets me in all its handsomeness and friendliness, and also, I fear I must add, not a little in its vulgarity. But its vulgarity is the exaggeration of a merit and not, as in England and the U.S., of a defect. Churches and galleries have such a fatal chill that being sore-throatish and neuralgic I have had to keep out of them, but the Duomo lifts all its pinnacles and statues into the far away light, and looks across at the other white needles and spires of the Alps in the same bewildering cluster. I go to spend the remainder of this month in Florence and afterwards to—I hope—take a month between Rome, Naples and Venice—but it will be as it will turn out. Once I am in Italy it is about the same to me to be in one place as in another.
All this takes me away from Carlyle and from the Annandale view of life. I read the two volumes with exceeding interest; for my admiration of Carlyle as a letter writer is boundless, and it is curious to watch the first step and gradual amplification of his afterwards extraordinary style. Those addressed to his own family are most remarkable as dedicated to a household of peasants, by one of themselves, and in short for the amateur of Carlyle the book has a high value. But I doubt whether the general public will bite at it very eagerly. I don't know why I allude to this, though—for the general public has small sense and less taste, and its likes and dislikes, I think, must mostly make the judicious grieve. You seem to me a most perfect and ideal editor—and it is a great pleasure to me that so excellent and faultless a piece of editorial work should proceed from our rough and ready country—but at the same time your demolitions of the unspeakable Froude don't persuade me that Carlyle was amiable. It seems to me he remains the most disagreeable in character of men of genius of equal magnificence. In these youthful letters it appears to me even striking how his disagreeableness comes out more and more in proportion as his talent develops. This doesn't prevent him, however, from being in my opinion—and doubtless in yours—one of the very greatest—perhaps the very greatest of letter writers; only when one thinks of the other most distinguished masters of expression the image evoked has (though sometimes it may be sad enough) a serenity, a general pleasantness. When the vision of Carlyle comes to us there comes with it the idea of harshness and discord. The difference between the man and the genius seems to me, in other words, greater than in any other case—for if Voltaire was a rascal he was eminently a social one—and Rousseau (to think of a great intellectual swell who must have been odious) hadn't anything like Carlyle's "parts." All the same, I shall devour the volumes I am delighted to see you are still to publish.
I ought to have plenty of London news for you—but somehow I feel as if I had not brought it to Italy with me. Much of it, in these days, is such as there must be little profit in carrying about with one. The subject of the moment, as I came away, was the hideous – divorce case, which will besmirch exceedingly the already very damaged prestige of the English upper class. The condition of that body seems to me to be in many ways very much the same rotten and collapsible one as that of the French aristocracy before the revolution—minus cleverness and conversation; or perhaps it's more like the heavy, congested and depraved Roman world upon which the barbarians came down. In England the Huns and Vandals will have to come up—from the black depths of the (in the people) enormous misery, though I don't think the Attila is quite yet found—in the person of Mr. Hyndman. At all events, much of English life is grossly materialistic and wants blood-letting. I had not been absent from London for a year before this—save for two or three days at a time. I remained in town all summer and autumn—only paying an occasional, or indeed a rather frequent, country visit—a business, however, which I endeavour more and more to keep, if possible, within the compass of hours. The gilded bondage of the country house becomes onerous as one grows older, and then the waste of time in vain sitting and strolling about is a gruesome thought in the face of what one still wants to do with one's remnant of existence. I saw Matt Arnold the other night, and he spoke very genially of you and of his visit to Ashfield—very affectionately, too, of George Curtis—which I loudly echoed. M. A. said of Stockbridge and the summer life thereabouts, etc. (with his chin in the air)—"Yes, yes—it's a proof that it's attaching that one thinks of it again—one thinks of it again." This was amiably sublime and amiably characteristic.—I see Burne-Jones from time to time, but not as often as I should like. I am always so afraid of breaking in on his work. Whenever he is at home he is working and when he isn't working he's not at home. When I do see him, it is one of the best human pleasures that London has for me. But I don't understand his life—that is the manner and tenor of his production—a complete studio existence, with doors and windows closed, and no search for impressions outside—no open air, no real daylight and no looking out for it. The things he does in these conditions have exceeding beauty—but they seem to me to grow colder and colder—pictured abstractions, less and less observed. Such as he is, however, he is certainly the most distinguished artistic figure among Englishmen to-day—the only one who has escaped vulgarization and on whom claptrap has no hold. Moreover he is, as you know, exquisite in mind and talk—and we fraternize greatly....
To Miss Grace Norton
34 De Vere Gardens, W.July 23rd, 1887.
My dear Grace,
I am ashamed to find myself back in England without having fulfilled the inward vow I took when I received your last good and generous letter—that of writing to you before my long stay on the continent was over. But I almost don't fail of that vow—inasmuch as I returned only day before yesterday. My eight months escape into the happy immunities of foreign life is over and the stern realities of London surround me, in the shape of stuffy midsummer heat (that of this metropolis has a truly British ponderosity—it's as dull as an article in a Quarterly,) smoke, circulars, invitations, bills, the one sauce that Talleyrand commemorated, and reverberations of the grotesque Jubilee. On the other hand my small house seems most pleasant and peculiar (in the sense of being my own,) and my servants are as punctual as they are prim—which is saying much. But I enjoyed my absence, and I shall endeavour to repeat it every year, for the future, on a smaller scale; that is, to leave London, not at the beginning of the winter but at the end, by the mid-April, and take the period of the insufferable Season regularly in Italy. It was a great satisfaction to me to find that I am as fond of that dear country as I ever was—and that its infinite charm and interest are one of the things in life to be most relied upon. I was afraid that the dryness of age—which drains us of so many sentiments—had reduced my old tendresse to a mere memory. But no—it is really so much in my pocket, as it were, to feel that Italy is always there. It is rather rude, my dear Grace, to say all this to you—for whom it is there to so little purpose. But if I should observe this scruple about all the places that you don't go to, or are not in, when I write to you, my writing would go very much on one leg. I was back again in Venice—where I paid a second visit late in the season (from the middle of May to July 1st)—when I got your last letter. I was staying at the Palazzo Barbaro, with the Daniel Curtises—the happy owners, to-day, of that magnificent house—a place of which the full charm only sinks into your spirit as you go on living there, seeing it in all its hours and phases. I went for ten days, and they clinging to me, I stayed five weeks: the longest visit I ever paid a "private family." … In the interval between my two visits to Venice I took again some rooms at the Villa Bricchieri at Bellosguardo—the one just below your old Ombrellino—where I had stayed for three December weeks on my arrival in Florence. The springtime there was enchanting, and you know what a thing that incomparable view is to live with. I really did live with it, and rejoiced in it every minute, holding it to be (to my sensibilities) positively the most beautiful and interesting in the world. Florence was given over to fêtes during most of those weeks—the fêtes of the completion of the façade of the Duomo—which by the way (the new façade) isn't "half bad." It is of a very splendouriferous effect, and there is doubtless too much of it. But it does great honour to the contemporary (as well as to the departed) Italian—and I don't believe such work could have been produced elsewhere than in that country of the delicate hand and the insinuating chisel. I stepped down into the fêtes from my hill top—and even put on a crimson lucco and a beautiful black velvet headgear and disported myself at the great ballo storico that was given at the Palazzo Vecchio to the King and Queen. This had the defect of its class—a profusion of magnificent costumes but a want of entrain; and the success of the whole episode was much more a certain really splendid procession of the old time, with all the Strozzis, Guicciardinis, Rucellais, etc., mounted on magnificent horses and wearing admirable dresses with the childlike gallantry and glee with which only Italians can wear them, riding through the brown old streets and followed by an immense train of citizens all in the carefullest quattro-cento garb. This was really a noble picture and testified to the latent love of splendour which is still in those dear people and which only asks for a favouring chance to shine out, even at the cost of ruining them. Before leaving Italy I spent a week with Mrs. Kemble at Lago Maggiore—she having dipped over there, in spite of torrid heat. She is a very (or at least a partly) extinct volcano to-day, and very easy and delightful to dwell with, in her aged resignation and adoucissements. But she did suggest to me, on seeing her again after so long an interval, that it is rather a melancholy mistake, in this uncertain life of ours, to have founded oneself on so many rigidities and rules—so many siftings and sortings. Mrs. Kemble is toute d'une pièce, more than any one, probably, that ever lived; she moves in a mass, and if she does so little as to button her glove it is the whole of her "personality" that does it. Let us be flexible, dear Grace; let us be flexible! and even if we don't reach the sun we shall at least have been up in a balloon.—I left Stresa on the 15th of this month, had a glorious day on the Simplon amid mountain streams and mountain flowers, and came quickly home.... I shall be here for the rest of the summer—save for little blotches of absence—and I look forward to some quiet months of work. I am trying, not without success, to get out of society—as hard as some people try to get in. I want to be dropped and cut and consummately ignored. This only demands a little patience, and I hope eventually to elbow my way down to the bottom of the wave—to achieve an obscurity. This would sound fatuous if I didn't add that success is easily within my grasp. I know it all—all that one sees by "going out"—to-day, as if I had made it. But if I had, I would have made it better! I think of you on your porch—amid all your creepers and tendrils; and wherever you are, dear Grace, I am your very faithful and much remembering friend,
HENRY JAMES.
To Edmund Gosse
Stevenson and his family sailed for America a few days after the date of this letter. Mr. Gosse has described the episode in his recollections of R. L. S. (Critical Kit-kats). Stevenson's life in the South Seas began in the following year, and his friends in England saw him no more.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.August 17th [1887].
Dear Gosse,
I went to-day to R. L. S.'s ship, which is at the Albert Dock, about 20 minutes in the train from Fenchurch Street. Its sailing has been put off till Monday forenoon, so there is more time to do something. I couldn't, after all, get on the ship—as she stood off from the dock, without a convenient approach, and both the captain and the steward (whom I wanted to see) were not there, as I was told by a man on the dock who was seeing some things being put on by a crane in which I couldn't be transferred. The appearance of the vessel was the reverse of attractive, though she is rather large than small. I write to-night to Mrs. Stevenson, to ask if they are really coming up to sail—that is if nothing has interfered at the last moment. If they are, there is nothing to be done to deter them, that I see. I shall ask her to telegraph me an answer. I shall feel that I must go again (to the ship), as I don't very well see how things are to be sent there. I will telegraph you what she telegraphs me and what I decide to do.
Ever yours,HENRY JAMES.
To Robert Louis Stevenson
H. J.'s article on R. L. S. appeared in the Century Magazine, April, 1888, and was reprinted in Partial Portraits.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.October 30th, 1887.
My dear Louis,
It is really a delight to get your charming letter (from the undecipherable lake) just this very blessed minute. Long alienation has made my American geography vague, and not knowing what your lake is I know still less where it is. Nevertheless I roughly suspect it of being in the Adirondacks; if it isn't, may it excuse the injury. Let me tell you, quickly and crudely, that I am quite exhilarated that you like the Article. I thought—or rather I hoped—that you would, and yet I feared you wouldn't—i.e. mightn't—and altogether I was not so convinced but that your expression of pleasure is a reassurance to me as well as a gratification. I felt, while I wrote, that you served me well; you were really, my dear fellow, a capital subject—I will modestly grant you that, though it takes the bloom from my merit. To be not only witty one's self but the cause in others of a wit that is not at one's expense—that is a rare and high character, and altogether yours. I devoutly hope that it's in the November Century that the thing appears, and also that it was not too apparent to you in it that I hadn't seen a proof—a privation I detest. I wrote to you some three weeks or so ago—c/o Scribners. Wondrous seems to me the fate that leads you to the prospect of wintering at—well, wherever you are. The succession of incidents and places in your career is ever romantic. May you find what you need—white, sunny Winter hours, not too stove-heated nor too pork-fed, with a crisp dry air and a frequent leisure and no desperation of inanition. And may much good prose flow from it all. I wish I could see you—in my mind's eye: but que dis-je? I do—and the minutest particularities of your wooden bower rise before me. I see the clapboards and the piazza and the door-step and the door-handle, and the road in front and the yard behind. Don't yearn to extinction for the trim little personality of Skerryvore. I have great satisfaction in hearing (from Mrs. Procter, of course) that that sweet house is let—to those Canadians. May they be punctual with their rent. Do tell your wife, on her return from the wild West, that I supplicate her to write to me, with items, details, specifications, and insistences. I am now collecting some papers into a volume; and the Article, par excellence, in the midst. May the American air rest lightly on you, my dear friend: I wish it were mine to turn it on!
Ever faithfully yours,HENRY JAMES.
P.S. My love to your wife goes without saying—but I send a very explicit friendliness to your mother. I hope she returns the liking of America. And I bless the ticking Lloyd.
To Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson's letter (answered by the following) of admiration of Roderick Hudson and execration of The Portrait of a Lady is included in the Letters to his Family and Friends, edited by Sir Sidney Colvin.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.December 5th [1887].
My dear Louis,
I could almost hate poor Roderick H. (in whom, at best, as in all my past and shuffled off emanations and efforts, my interest is of the slenderest,) for making you write so much more about him than about a still more fascinating hero. If you had only given me a small instalment of that romantic serial, The Mundane Situation of R. L. S.! My dear fellow, you skip whole numbers at a time. Your correspondent wouldn't. I am really delighted you can find something at this late day in that work in which my diminutive muse first tried to elongate her little legs. It is a book of considerable good faith, but I think of limited skill. Besides, directly my productions are finished, or at least thrust out to earn their living, they seem to me dead. They dwindle when weaned—removed from the parental breast, and only flourish, a little, while imbibing the milk of my plastic care. None the less am I touched by your excellent and friendly words. Perhaps I am touched even more by those you dedicate to the less favoured Portrait. My dear Louis, I don't think I follow you here—why does that work move you to such scorn—since you can put up with Roderick, or with any of the others? As they are, so it is, and as it is, so they are. Upon my word you are unfair to it—and I scratch my head bewildered. 'Tis surely a graceful, ingenious, elaborate work—with too many pages, but with (I think) an interesting subject, and a good deal of life and style. There! All my works may be damnable—but I don't perceive the particular damnability of that one. However I feel as if it were almost gross to defend myself—for even your censure pleases and your restrictions refresh. I have this very day received from Mr. Bain your Memories and Portraits, and I lick my chops in advance. It is very delectable, I can see, and it has the prettiest coat and face of any of your volumes.—London is settling to its winter pace, and the cool rich fogs curtain us in. I see Colvin once in a while dans le monde, which however I frequent less and less. I miss you too sensibly. My love to your wife and mother—my greeting to the brave Lloyd.
Ever yours very faithfully,H. JAMES.
P.S. I am unspeakably vexed at the Century's long delay in printing my paper on you—it is quite sickening. But I am helpless—and they tell me it won't come out till March—d–n 'em all. I am also sorry—very—not to have any other prose specimens of my own genius to send you. I have really written a good deal lately—but the beastly periodicals hold them back: I can't make out why. But I trust the dance will begin before long, and that then you may glean some pleasure. I pray you, do write something yourself for one who knows and yet is famished: for there isn't a morsel here that will keep one alive. I won't question you—'twere vain—but I wish I knew more about you. I want to see you—where you live and how—and the complexion of your days. But I don't know even the name of your habitat nor the date of your letter: neither were on the page. I bless you all the same.
