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

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

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 America—the novel that finally became The Ivory Tower .

Dictated .

My dear Howells,

A great pleasure to me is your good and generous letter just received—with 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 may—save as most misguidedly—have 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 saccharine—sated 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 extent—I'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 end—though 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 lines—as 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 array—and 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-doing—and 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 pure—basta!

I am charmed to hear of your Roman book and beg you very kindly to send it me directly it bounds into the ring. I rejoice, moreover, with much envy, and also a certain yearning and impotent non-intelligence, at your being moved to-day to Roman utterance—I mean in presence of the so bedrenched and vulgarised (I mean more particularly commonised ) and transformed City (as well as, alas, more or less, Suburbs) of our current time. There was nothing, I felt, to myself, I could less do than write again, in the whole presence—when I was there some fifteen months agone. The idea of doing so (even had any periodical wanted my stuff, much less bid for it) would have affected me as a sort of give-away of my ancient and other reactions in presence of all the unutterable old Rome I originally found and adored. It would have come over me that if those ancient emotions of my own meant anything, no others on the new basis could mean much; or if any on the new basis should pretend to sense, it would be at the cost of all imputable coherency and sincerity on the part of my prime infatuation. In spite, all the same, of which doubtless too pedantic view—it only means, I fear, that I am, to my great disadvantage, utterly bereft of any convenient journalistic ease—I am just beginning to re-do … certain little old Italian papers, with titivations and expansions, in form to match with a volume of "English Hours" re-fabricated three or four years ago on the same system. In this little job I shall meet again my not much more than scant, yet still appreciable, old Roman stuff in my path—and shall have to commit myself about it, or about its general subject, somehow or other. I shall trick it out again to my best ability, at any rate—and to the cost, I fear, of your thinking I have retitivation on the brain. I haven't—I only have it on (to the end that I may then have it a little consequently in ) the flat pocket-book. The system has succeeded a little with "English Hours"; which have sold quite vulgarly—for wares of mine; whereas the previous and original untitivated had long since dropped almost to nothing. In spite of which I could really shed salt tears of impatience and yearning to get back, after so prolonged a blocking of traffic, to too dreadfully postponed and neglected "creative" work; an accumulated store of ideas and reachings-out for which even now clogs my brain.

We are having here so bland and beautiful a summer that when I receive the waft of your furnace-mouth, blown upon my breakfast-table every few days through the cornucopia, or improvised resounding trumpet, of the Times, I groan across at my brother William (now happily domesticated with me:) "Ah why did they, poor infatuated dears? why did they?"—and he always knows I mean Why did you three hie you home from one of the most beautiful seasons of splendid cool summer, or splendid summery cool, that ever was, just to swoon in the arms of your Kittery genius loci (genius of perspiration!)—to whose terrific embrace you saw me four years ago, or whatever terrible time it was, almost utterly succumb. In my small green garden here the elements have been, ever since you left, quite enchantingly mixed; and I have been quite happy and proud to show my brother and his wife and two of his children, who have been more or less collectively and individually with me, what a decent English season can be....