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

But good-night, verily—with all love to all, and to Mrs. Nelly in particular.

Yours always, HENRY JAMES. Hotel Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine, Florida. February 21st, '05.

Dearest old Friend!

I am leaving this subtropical Floridian spot from one half hour to another, but the horror of not having for so long despatched a word to you, the shame and grief and contrition of it, are so strong, within me, that I simply seize the passing moment by the hair of its head and glare at it till it pauses long enough to let me—as it were—embrace you. Yet I feel, have felt, all along, that you will have understood , and that words are wasted in explaining the obvious. Letters, all these weeks and weeks, day to day and hour to hour letters, have fluttered about me in a dense crowd even as the San Marco pigeons, in Venice, round him who appears to have corn to scatter. So the whole queer time has gone in my scattering corn—scattering and chattering, and being chattered and scattered to, and moving from place to place, and surrendering to people (the only thing to do here—since things, apart from people, are nil ;) in staying with them, literally, from place to place and week to week (though with old friends, as it were, alone—that is mostly, thank God—to avoid new obligations:) doing that as the only solution of the problem of "seeing" the country. I am seeing, very well—but the weariness of so much of so prolonged and sustained a process is, at times, surpassing. It would be a strain, a weariness (kept up so,) anywhere ; and it is extraordinarily tiresome, on occasions, here. Vastness of space and distance, of number and quantity, is the element in which one lives: it is a great complication alone to be dealing with a country that has fifty principal cities—each a law unto itself—and unto you : England, poor old dear, having (to speak of) but one. On the other hand it is distinctly interesting—the business and the country, as a whole; there are no exquisite moments (save a few of a funniness that comes to that;) but there are none from which one doesn't get something....And meanwhile I am lecturing a little to pay the Piper, as I go—for high fees (of course) and as yet but three or four times. But they give me gladly £50 for 50 minutes (a pound a minute—like Patti!)—and always for the same lecture (as yet:) The Lesson of Balzac . I do it beautifully—feel as if I had discovered my vocation—at any rate amaze myself. It is well —for without it I don't see how I could have held out.

This winter has been a hideous succession of huge snow-blizzards, blinding polar waves, and these southernmost places, even, are not their usual soft selves. Yet the very south tiptoe of Florida, from which I came three days ago, has an air as of molten liquid velvet, and the palm and the orange, the pine-apple, the scarlet hibiscus, the vast magnolia and the sapphire sea, make it a vision of very considerable beguilement. I wanted to put over to Cuba—but one night from this coast; but it was, for reasons, not to be done—reasons of time and money. I shall try for Mexico—and meanwhile pray for me hard. My visit is doing— has done—my little reputation here, save the mark, great good. The Golden Bowl is in its fourth edition—unprecedented! You see I "answer" your last newses and things not at all—not even the note of anxiety about T. Such are these cruelties, these ferocities of separation. But I drink in everything you tell me, and I cherish you all always and am yours and the children's twain ever so constantly,

HENRY JAMES. University Club, Chicago. March 19th, 1905.

Dearest Edward,

This is but a mere breathless blessing hurled at you, as it were, between trains and in ever so grateful joy in your brave double letter (of the lame hand, hero that you are!) which has just overtaken me here. I'm not pretending to write—I can't; it's impossible amid the movement and obsession and complication of all this overwhelming muchness of space and distance and time (consumed,) and above all of people (consuming.) I start in a few hours straight for California—enter my train this, Monday, night 7.30, and reach Los Angeles and Pasadena at 2.30 Thursday afternoon. The train has, I believe, barber's shops, bathrooms, stenographers and typists; so that if I can add a postscript, without too much joggle, I will. But you will say " Here is joggle enough," for alack, I am already (after 17 days of the "great Middle West") rather spent and weary, weary of motion and chatter, and oh, of such an unimagined dreariness of ugliness (on many, on most sides!) and of the perpetual effort of trying to "do justice" to what one doesn't like. If one could only damn it and have done with it! So much of it is rank with good intentions. And then the "kindness"—the princely (as it were) hospitality of these clubs; besides the sense of power , huge and augmenting power (vast mechanical, industrial, social, financial) everywhere! This Chicago is huge, infinite (of potential size and form, and even of actual;) black, smoky, old -looking, very like some preternaturally boomed Manchester or Glasgow lying beside a colossal lake (Michigan) of hard pale green jade, and putting forth railway antennae of maddening complexity and gigantic length. Yet this club (which looks old and sober too!) is an abode of peace, a benediction to me in the looming largeness; I live here, and they put one up (always, everywhere,) with one's so excellent room with perfect bathroom and w.c. of its own, appurtenant (the universal joy of this country, in private houses or wherever; a feature that is really almost a consolation for many things.) I have been to the south, the far end of Florida &c—but prefer the far end of Sussex! In the heart of golden orange-groves I yearned for the shade of the old L.H. mulberry tree. So you see I am loyal, and I sail for Liverpool on July 4th. I go up the whole Pacific coast to Vancouver, and return to New York (am due there April 26th) by the Canadian-Pacific railway (said to be, in its first half, sublime.) But I scribble beyond my time. Your letters are really a blessed breath of brave old Britain. But oh for a talk in a Westminster panelled parlour, or a walk on far-shining Camber sands! All love to Margaret and the younglings. I have again written to Jonathan—he will have more news of me for you. Yours, dearest Edward, almost in nostalgic rage , and at any rate in constant affection,

HENRY JAMES. Hotel del Coronado, Coronado Beach, California. Wednesday night, April 5th, 1905.

Dearest Alice,

I must write you again before I leave this place (which I do tomorrow noon;) if only to still a little the unrest of my having condemned myself, all too awkwardly, to be so long without hearing from you. I haven't all this while—that is these several days—had the letters which I am believing you will have forwarded to Monterey sent down to me here. This I have abstained from mainly because, having stopped over here these eight or nine days to write, in extreme urgency, an article, and wishing to finish it at any price, I have felt that I should go to pieces as an author if a mass of arrears of postal matter should come tumbling in upon me—and particularly if any of it should be troublous. However, I devoutly hope none of it has been troublous—and I have done my best to let you know (in any need of wiring etc.) where I have been. Also the letterless state has added itself to the deliciously simplified social state to make me taste the charming sweetness and comfort of this spot. California, on these terms, when all is said (Southern C. at least—which, however, the real C., I believe, much repudiates,) has completely bowled me over—such a delicious difference from the rest of the U.S. do I find in it. (I speak of course all of nature and climate, fruits and flowers; for there is absolutely nothing else, and the sense of the shining social and human inane is utter.) The days have been mostly here of heavenly beauty, and the flowers, the wild flowers just now in particular, which fairly rage , with radiance, over the land, are worthy of some purer planet than this. I live on oranges and olives, fresh from the tree, and I lie awake nights to listen, on purpose, to the languid list of the Pacific, which my windows overhang. I wish poor heroic Harry could be here—the thought of whose privations, while I wallow unworthy, makes me (tell him with all my love) miserably sick and poisons much of my profit. I go back to Los Angeles to-morrow, to (as I wrote you last) re-utter my (now loathly) Lecture to a female culture club of 900 members (whom I make pay me through the nose,) and on Saturday p.m. 8th, I shall be at Monterey (Hotel del Monte.) But my stay there is now condemned to bitterest brevity and my margin of time for all the rest of this job is so rapidly shrinking that I see myself brûlant mes étapes , alas, without exception, and cutting down my famous visit to Seattle to a couple of days. It breaks my heart to have so stinted myself here—but it was inevitable, and no one had given me the least inkling that I should find California so sympathetic. It is strange and inconvenient, how little impression of anything any one ever takes the trouble to give one beforehand. I should like to stay here all April and May. But I am writing more than my time permits—my article is still to finish. I ask you no questions—you will have told me everything. I live in the hope that the news from Wm. will have been good. At least at Monterey, may there be some.... But good night—with great and distributed tenderness. Yours, dearest Alice, always and ever,

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