HENRY.
To Miss Muir Mackenzie.
Miss Muir Mackenzie, who was staying at Winchelsea, had reported on the progress of the preparations at Lamb House.
34 De Vere Gardens, W.
Thursday [May 19, 1898].
Dear Miss Muir Mackenzie,
Forgive the constant pressure which has delayed the expression of my gratitude for your charming, vivid, pictorial report of—well, of everything. It was most kind of you to paddle again over to Rye to minister to my anxieties. You both assuage and encourage them—but with the right thing for each. I am content enough with the bathroom—but hopeless about the garden, which I don't know what to do with, and shall never, never know. I am densely ignorant—only just barely know dahlias from mignonette—and shall never be able to work it in any way. So I shan't try—but remain gardenless—only go in for a lawn; which requires mere brute force—no intellect! For the rest I shall do decently, perhaps—so far as one can do for two-and-ninepence. I shall have nothing really "good"—only the humblest old fifth-hand, 50th hand, mahogany and brass. I have collected a handful of feeble relics—but I fear the small desert will too cruelly interspace them. Well, speriamo. I'm very sorry to say that getting down before Saturday has proved only the fondest of many delusions. The whole place has to be mattinged before the rickety mahogany can go in, and the end of that—or, for aught I know, the beginning—is not yet. I have but just received the "estimate" for the (humblest) window-curtains (two tiers, on the windows, instead of blinds: white for downstairs etc., greeny-blue for up, if you like details,) and the "figure" leaves me prostrate. Oh, what a tangled web we weave!—Still, I hope you, dear lady, have a nice tangled one of some sort to occupy you such a day as this. I think of you, on the high style of your castled steep, with tender compassion. I scarce flatter myself you will in the hereafter again haunt the neighbourhood; but if you ever do, I gloat over the idea of making up for the shame of your having gone forth tea-less and toast-less from any door of mine. I wish that, within it—my door—we might discuss still weightier things. Of an ordinary—a normal—year, I hope always to be there in May.
Deeply interesting your Winchelsea touches—especially so the portrait of my future colleague—confrère—the Mayor—for the inhabitants of Lamb House have always been Mayors of Rye. When I reach this dignity I will appoint you my own Sketcher-in-Chief and replace for you by Château Ypres (the old Rye stronghold) the limitations of Château Noakes. I express to you fresh gratitude and sympathy, and am yours, dear Miss Muir Mackenzie, most cordially,
HENRY JAMES.