To Mrs. William James
The offering to Henry James from his friends in England on his seventieth birthday (April 15, 1913) took the form of a letter, a piece of plate (described in the following), and a request that he would sit for his portrait.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.April 1st, 1913.
Dearest Alice,
Today comes blessedly your letter of the 18th, written after the receipt of my cable to you in answer to your preceding one of the 6th (after you had heard from Robert Allerton of my illness.) You will have been reassured further—I mean beyond my cable—by a letter I lately despatched to Bill and Alice conjointly, in which I told them of my good and continued improvement. I am going on very well, increasingly so—in spite of my having to reckon with so much chronic pectoral pain, now so seated and settled, of the queer "falsely anginal" but none the less, when it is bad, distressing order.... Moreover too it is astonishing with how much pain one can with long practice learn constantly and not too defeatedly to live. Therefore, dearest Alice, don't think of this as too black a picture of my situation: it is so much brighter a one than I have thought at certain bad moments and seasons of the past that I should probably ever be able to paint. The mere power to work in such measure as I can is an infinite help to a better consciousness—and though so impaired compared to what it used to be, it tends to grow, distinctly—which by itself proves that I have some firm ground under my feet. And I repeat to satiety that my conditions here are admirably helpful and favouring.
You can see, can't you? how strange and desperate it would be to "chuck" everything up, Lamb House, servants, Miss Bosanquet, this newly acquired and prized resource, to come over, by a formidable and expensive journey, to spend a summer in the (at best) to me torrid and (the inmost inside of 95 apart) utterly arid and vacuous Cambridge. Dearest Alice, I could come back to America (could be carried back on a stretcher) to die—but never, never to live. To say how the question affects me is dreadfully difficult because of its appearing so to make light of you and the children—but when I think of how little Boston and Cambridge were of old ever my affair, or anything but an accident, for me, of the parental life there to which I occasionally and painfully and losingly sacrificed, I have a superstitious terror of seeing them at the end of time again stretch out strange inevitable tentacles to draw me back and destroy me. And then I could never either make or afford the journey (I have no margin at all for that degree of effort.) But you will have understood too well—without my saying more—how little I can dream of any déplacement now—especially for the sake of a milieu in which you and Peg and Bill and Alice and Aleck would be burdened with the charge of making up all my life.... You see my capital—yielding all my income, intellectual, social, associational, on the old investment of so many years—my capital is here, and to let it all slide would be simply to become bankrupt. Oh if you only, on the other hand, you and Peg and Aleck, could walk beside my bath-chair down this brave Thames-side I would get back into it again (it was some three weeks ago dismissed,) and half live there for the sake of your company. I have a kind of sense that you would be able to live rather pleasantly near me here—if you could once get planted. But of course I on my side understand all your present complications.
April 16th! It's really too dismal, dearest Alice, that, breaking off the above at the hour I had to, I have been unable to go on with it for so many days. It's now more than a fortnight old; still, though my check was owing to my having of a sudden, just as I rested my pen, to drop perversely into a less decent phase (than I reported to you at the moment of writing) and [from which I] have had with some difficulty to wriggle up again, I am now none the less able to send you no too bad news. I have wriggled up a good deal, and still keep believing in my capacity to wriggle up in general.... Suffice if for the moment that I just couldn't, for the time, drive the pen myself—when I am "bad" I feel too demoralised, too debilitated, for this; and it doesn't at all do for me then to push against the grain. Don't feel, all the same, that if I resort this morning to the present help, it is because I am not feeling differently—for I really am in an easier way again (I mean of course specifically and "anginally" speaking) and the circumstances of the hour a good deal explain my proceeding thus. I had yesterday a Birthday, an extraordinary, prodigious, portentous, quite public Birthday, of all things in the world, and it has piled up acknowledgments and supposedly delightful complications and arrears at such a rate all round me that in short, Miss Bosanquet being here, I today at least throw myself upon her aid for getting on correspondentially—instead of attending to my proper work, which has, however, kept going none so badly in spite of my last poor fortnight. I will tell you in a moment of my signal honours, but want to mention first that your good note written on receipt of A Small Boy has meanwhile come to me and by the perfect fulness of its appreciation gave me the greatest joy. There are several things I want to say to you about the shape and substance of the book—and I will yet; only now I want to get this off absolutely by today's American post, and tell you about the Honours, a little, before you wonder, in comparative darkness, over whatever there may have been in the American papers that you will perhaps have seen; though in two or three of the New York ones more possibly than in the Boston. I send you by this post a copy of yesterday's Times and one of the Pall Mall Gazette—the two or three passages in which, together, I suppose to have been more probably than not reproduced in N. Y. But I send you above all a copy of the really very beautiful Letter … ushering in the quite wonderful array of signatures (as I can't but feel) of my testifying and "presenting" friends: a list of which you perhaps can't quite measure the very charming and distinguished and "brilliant" character without knowing your London better. What I wish I could send you is the huge harvest of exquisite, of splendid sheaves of flowers that converted a goodly table in this room, by the time yesterday was waning, into such a blooming garden of complimentary colour as I never dreamed I should, on my own modest premises, almost bewilderedly stare at, sniff at, all but quite "cry" at. I think I must and shall in fact compass sending you a photograph of the still more glittering tribute dropped upon me—a really splendid "golden bowl," of the highest interest and most perfect taste, which would, in the extremity of its elegance, be too proudly false a note amid my small belongings here if it didn't happen to fit, or to sit, rather, with perfect grace and comfort, on the middle of my chimney-piece, where the rather good glass and some other happy accidents of tone most fortunately consort with it. It is a very brave and artistic (exact) reproduction of a piece of old Charles II plate; the bowl or cup having handles and a particularly charming lid or cover, and standing on an ample round tray or salver; the whole being wrought in solid silver-gilt and covered over with quaint incised little figures of a (in the taste of the time) Chinese intention. In short it's a very beautiful and honourable thing indeed.... Against the giving to me of the Portrait, presumably by Sargent, if I do succeed in being able to sit for it, I have absolutely and successfully protested. The possession, the attribution or ownership of it, I have insisted, shall be only their matter, that of the subscribing friends. I am sending Harry a copy of the Letter too—but do send him on this as well. You see there must be good life in me still when I can gabble so hard. The Book appears to be really most handsomely received hereabouts. It is being treated in fact with the very highest consideration. I hope it is viewed a little in some such mannerly light roundabout yourselves, but I really call for no "notices" whatever. I don't in the least want 'em. What I do want is to personally and firmly and intimately encircle Peg and Aleck and their Mother and squeeze them as hard together as is compatible with squeezing them so tenderly! With this tide of gabble you will surely feel that I shall soon be at you again. And so I shall! Yours, dearest Alice, and dearest all, ever so and ever so!
HENRY JAMES.
To Percy Lubbock
A copy of H. J.'s letter of thanks was sent to each of the subscribers to the birthday present. He eventually preferred that their names should be given in a postscript to his letter, which follows in its final form.
Dictated.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.April 21st, 1913.
My dear blest Percy!
I enclose you herewith a sort of provisional apology for a Form of Thanks! Read it and tell me on Wednesday, when I count on you at 1.45, whether you think it will do—as being on the one hand not too pompous or important and on the other not too free and easy. I have tried to steer a middle way between hysterical emotion and marble immortality! To any emendation you suggest I will give the eagerest ear, though I have really considered and pondered my expression not a little, studying the pro's and con's as to each tour. However, we will earnestly speak of it. The question of exactly where and how my addresses had best figure when the thing is reduced to print you will perhaps have your idea about. For it must seem to you, as it certainly does to me, that their names must in common decency be all drawn out again.... But you will pronounce when we meet—heaven speed the hour!
Yours, my dear Percy, more than ever constantly,
HENRY JAMES.
P.S. It seems to me that the little arrangement that really almost imposes itself would be that the Printed Thing should begin with my date and address and my Dear Friends All; and that the full list, taking even three complete pages or whatever, should then and there draw itself out; after which, as a fresh paragraph, the body of my little text should begin. Anything else affects me as more awkward; and I seem to see you in full agreement with me as to the absolute necessity that every Signer, without exception, shall be addressed.
To two hundred and seventy Friends
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.April 21st, 1913.
Dear Friends All,
Let me acknowledge with boundless pleasure the singularly generous and beautiful letter, signed by your great and dazzling array and reinforced by a correspondingly bright material gage, which reached me on my recent birthday, April 15th. It has moved me as brave gifts and benedictions can only do when they come as signal surprises. I seem to wake up to an air of breathing good will the full sweetness of which I had never yet tasted; though I ask myself now, as a second thought, how the large kindness and hospitality in which I have so long and so consciously lived among you could fail to act itself out according to its genial nature and by some inspired application. The perfect grace with which it has embraced the just-past occasion for its happy thought affects me, I ask you to believe, with an emotion too deep for stammering words. I was drawn to London long years ago as by the sense, felt from still earlier, of all the interest and association I should find here, and I now see how my faith was to sink deeper foundations than I could presume ever to measure—how my justification was both stoutly to grow and wisely to wait. It is so wonderful indeed to me as I count up your numerous and various, your dear and distinguished friendly names, taking in all they recall and represent, that I permit myself to feel at once highly successful and extremely proud. I had never in the least understood that I was the one or signified that I was the other, but you have made a great difference. You tell me together, making one rich tone of your many voices, almost the whole story of my social experience, which I have reached the right point for living over again, with all manner of old times and places renewed, old wonderments and pleasures reappeased and recaptured—so that there is scarce one of your ranged company but makes good the particular connection, quickens the excellent relation, lights some happy train and flushes with some individual colour. I pay you my very best respects while I receive from your two hundred and fifty pair of hands, and more, the admirable, the inestimable bowl, and while I engage to sit, with every accommodation to the so markedly indicated "one of you," my illustrious friend Sargent. With every accommodation, I say, but with this one condition that you yourselves, in your strength and goodness, remain guardians of the result of his labour—even as I remain all faithfully and gratefully yours,
HENRY JAMES.
P.S. And let me say over your names.
[There follows the list of the two hundred and seventy subscribers to the birthday gift.]
To Mrs. G. W. Prothero
Mr. and Mrs. Prothero, already at Rye, had suggested that H. J. should go to Lamb House for Whitsuntide.
Dictated.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.April 30th, 1913.
Best of Friends Both!
Oh it is a dream of delight, but I should have to climb a perpendicular mountain first. Your accents are all but irresistible, and your company divinely desirable, but if you knew how thoroughly, and for such innumerable good reasons, I am seated here till I am able to leave for a real and workable absence, you would do my poor plea of impossibility justice. I have just conversed with Joan and Kidd, conversed so affably, not to say lovingly, in the luminous kitchen, which somehow let in a derisive glare upon every cranny and crevice of the infatuated scheme. With this fierce light there mingled the respectful jeers of the two ladies themselves, which rose to a mocking (though still deeply deferential) climax for the picture of their polishing off, or dragging violently out of bed, the so dormant and tucked-in house in the ideal couple of hours. Before their attitude I lowered my lance—easily understanding moreover that their round of London gaieties is still so fresh and spiced a cup to them that to feel it removed from their lips even for a moment is almost more than they can bear. And then the coarse and brutal truth is, further that I am oh so utterly well fixed here for the moment and so void of physical agility for any kind of somersault. A little while back, while the Birthday raged, I did just look about me for an off-corner; but now there has been a drop and, the best calm of Whitsuntide descending on the scene here, I feel it would be a kind of lapse of logic to hurry off to where the social wave, hurrying ahead of me, would be breaking on a holiday strand. I am so abjectly, so ignobly fond of not "travelling." To keep up not doing it is in itself for me the most thrilling of adventures. And I am working so well (unberufen!) with my admirable Secretary; I shouldn't really dare to ask her to join our little caravan, raising it to the number of five, for a fresh tuning-up again. And on the other hand I mayn't now abandon what I am fatuously pleased to call my work for a single precious hour. Forgive my beastly rudeness. I will write more in a day or two. Do loll in the garden yourselves to your very fill; do cultivate George's geniality; do steal any volume or set of volumes out of the house that you may like; and do still think gently of your poor ponderous and thereby, don't you see? so permanent, old friend,
HENRY JAMES.
To William James, junior
Dictated.
21 Carlyle Mansions,Cheyne Walk, S.W.June 18th, 1913.
Dearest Bill,
I suppose myself to be trying to-day to get off a brief response both to Harry and to dear Peg (whom I owe, much rather, volumes of acknowledgment to;) but I put in first these few words to you and Alice—for the quite wrong reason that the couple of notes just received from you are those that have last come. This is because I feel as if I had worried you a good bit more than helped over the so interesting name-question of the Babe. It wasn't so much an attempted solution, at all, that I the other week hastily rushed into, but only a word or two that I felt I absolutely had to utter, for my own relief, by way of warning against our reembarking, any of us, on a fresh and possibly interminable career of the tiresome and graceless "Junior." You see I myself suffered from that tag to help out my identity for forty years, greatly disliking it all the while, and with my dislike never in the least understood or my state pitied; and I felt I couldn't be dumb if there was any danger of your Boy's being started unguardedly and de gaieté de cœur on a like long course; so probably and desirably very very long in his case, given your youth and "prominence," in short your immortal duration. It seemed to me I ought to do something to conjure away the danger, though I couldn't go into the matter of exactly what, at all, as if we were only, and most delightfully, talking it over at our leisure and face to face—face to face with the Babe, I mean; as I wish to goodness we were! The different modes of evasion or attenuation, in that American world where designations are so bare and variations, of the accruing or "social" kind, so few, are difficult to go into this distance; and in short all that I meant at all by my attack was just a Hint! I feel so for poor dear Harry's carrying of his tag—and as if I myself were directly responsible for it! However, no more of that.
To this machinery the complications arising from the socially so fierce London June inevitably (and in fact mercifully) drive me; for I feel the assault, the attack on one's time and one's strength, even in my so simplified and disqualified state; which it is my one great effort not to allow to be knocked about. However, I of course do succeed in simplifying and in guarding myself enormously; one can't but succeed when the question is so vital as it has now become with me. Which is really but a preface to telling you how much the most interesting thing in the matter has been, during the last three weeks, my regular sittings for my portrait to Sargent; which have numbered now some seven or eight, I forget which, and with but a couple more to come. So the thing is, I make out, very nearly finished, and the head apparently (as I much hope) to have almost nothing more done to it. It is, I infer, a very great success; a number of the competent and intelligent have seen it, and so pronounce it in the strongest terms.... In short it seems likely to be one of S.'s very fine things. One is almost full-face, with one's left arm over the corner of one's chair-back and the hand brought round so that the thumb is caught in the arm-hole of one's waistcoat, and said hand therefore, with the fingers a bit folded, entirely visible and "treated." Of course I'm sitting a little askance in the chair. The canvas comes down to just where my watch-chain (such as it is, poor thing!) is hung across the waistcoat: which latter, in itself, is found to be splendidly (poor thing though it also be) and most interestingly treated. Sargent can make such things so interesting—such things as my coat-lappet and shoulder and sleeve too! But what is most interesting, every one is agreed, is the mouth—than which even he has never painted a more living and, as I am told, "expressive"! In fact I can quite see that myself; and really, I seem to feel, the thing will be all that can at the best (the best with such a subject!) have been expected of it. I only wish you and Alice had assisted at some of the sittings—as Sargent likes animated, sympathetic, beautiful, talkative friends to do, in order to correct by their presence too lugubrious expressions. I take for granted I shall before long have a photograph to send you, and then you will be able partially to judge for yourselves.
I grieve over your somewhat sorry account of your own winter record of work, though I allow in it for your habitual extravagance of blackness. Evidently the real meaning of it is that you are getting so fort all the while that you kick every rung of your ladder away from under you, by mere uncontrollable force, as you mount and mount. But the rungs, I trust, are all the while being carefully picked up, far below, and treasured; this being Alice's, to say nothing of anybody else's, natural care and duty. Give all my love to her and to the beautiful nursing scrap! I want to say thirty things more to her, but my saying power is too finite a quantity. I gather that this will find you happily, and I trust very conveniently and workably, settled at Chocorua—where may the summer be blest to you, and the thermometer low, and the motor-runs many! Now I really have to get at Harry! But do send this in any case on to Irving Street, for the sake of the report of the picture. I want them to have the good news of it without delay.
Yours both all affectionately,HENRY JAMES.