How I congratulate you on the value of your friends; I mean the particular Davidsons. I don't know them, but I like them for liking you. I think I have a strong sense, too, of the beauty and charm of many of the conditions in which you are engaged and which have a really decorative effect—so that the aesthetic sense too is pleased—on everything that makes you minister to the confidence, my dear Arthur, of yours very constantly,
HENRY JAMES.
To the Viscountess Wolseley.
The reference in the following letter is to a visit paid by H. J., with Lady Wolseley, to the elaborately beautiful old house of the late C. E. Kempe, the well-known artist of church-decoration, at Lindfield, Sussex.
Dictated.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
8th March, 1897.
Dear Lady Wolseley,
I was so deprived, yesterday, for all those beautiful hours, of a word with you away from our host that I felt as if I didn't say to you a tenth of what I wanted; which, however, will make it all the better for our next meeting—when I shall overflow like a river fed by melting snows. Let these few words, therefore, not anticipate the deluge—let them only express to you afresh my grateful sense of the interest and success of our excursion. The whole wonder of it was the greater through my wholly unprepared state, my antecedent inward blank—which blank is now overscored with images and emotions as thick as any page of any of your hospitable house-books ever was with visitors' names. The man himself made the place more wonderful and the place the man. I was greatly affected by his courtesy and charm; and I got afterwards, in the evening, a little of the light that I couldn't snatch from you under his nose. What struck me most about the whole thing was the consummate cleverness: that was the note it sounded for me more than any one of the notes more imposing, more deep, that an artistic creation may throw out. Don't for the world—and for my ruin—ever breathe to him I have said it; but the whole thing, and his taste, are far too Germanic, too Teutonic, a business to make a medium in which I could ever sink down in final peace or take as the domestic and decorative last word. The element of France and Italy are too much out of it—and they, to me, are the real secret of Style. But we will talk of these things—heaven speed the day. Do have a little of France and a great deal of Italy at South Wraxall; but do have also a great deal of the cunning Kempe and of the candid—too candid—companion of your pilgrimage. Don't imagine the companion didn't have a most sweet and glorious day—from which the light, even in London dusk again, has not yet wholly faded. I hope your security was complete to the end, and I am, in earnest hope also of a speedy reunion, yours, dear Lady Wolseley, more gratefully, if possible, than ever,
HENRY JAMES.