Lamb House,
Rye.
Monday—Small hours—1.30 a.m.
[Feb. 27. 1899].
My dear Don Tony,
You can't say I overwhelm you with acknowledgments, din my gratitude into your ear or make you curse the day you suffered a kindly impulse to an intensely susceptible friend to get the better of your appreciation of a quiet life. No—you can do none of these things. On the other hand you can perhaps complete your graceful generosity by remembering that your admirable little Xmas memento was accompanied with a "Now hold your tongue!" almost as admirable in its distinguished consideration as the felicitous object itself. It was, clearly, that you felt: "Oh yes, of course you're charmed: à qui le dites-vous? But for heaven's sake, thanked to satiety as I am on all sides, don't set your ponderous machinery in motion to drop the last straw!" So I've put out the fires and stopped the wheels and paid off the stokers till now. I've held my tongue like an angel, but I've thought of you—and of your matchless mate—like—well, if not a, at least, the devil, and at last the whole shop insists on beginning again to hum. I cherish your so periodical and so munificent thoughts of me as one of the good things of this world of worries. Nothing ever touches me more. I am finally going abroad for three months—on Tuesday or Wednesday, and the little sensitive blank record, in its little green sheath, accompanies me—to drink in Impressions—in the usual itinerant shrine of your gifts: my left-hand upper waistcoat-pocket. There are vulgar things—a watch, an eyeglass, seven-and-sixpence—in the other pockets; but nothing but you in that one. Voilà. I go to Italy after more than 5 years interlude.
* * * * * * * * * *
Drama—tableau! My dear Tony, you are literally my saviour. The above row of stars represents midnight emotions and palpitations of no mean order. As I finished the line just before the stars I became aware that a smell of smoke, a sense of burning that had worried me for the previous hour, had suddenly very much increased and that the room was full of it. De fil en aiguille, and in much anxiety, I presently discovered that the said smoke was coming up through the floor between the painted dark-green planks (dark green!) of the margin—outside of matting and rugs, and under a table near the fireplace. To assure myself that there was no source of flame in the room below, and then to go up and call my servant, do you see? (he long since snoring in bed—for it's now 2.15 a.m.) was the work of a moment. With such tools as we could command we hacked and pried and sawed and tore up a couple of planks—from which volumes of smoke issued!! Do you see the midnight little flurry? Bref, we got at it—a charred, smouldering—long-smouldering, I suppose—beam under, or almost under, the hearthstone and in process of time kindled—that is heated to smoking-point by its temperature (that of the hearth,) which was very high. We put him out, we made him stop, with soaked sponges—and then the relief: even while gazing at the hacked and smashed and disfigured floors. Now my man is gone to bed, and I, rather enlivened for immediate sleep, sit and watch by the scene of the small scare and finish my letter to you: really, you know, to grasp your hand, to hang upon your neck, in gratitude, you being at the bottom of the whole thing. I sat up late in the first instance to write to you, because I knew I shouldn't have time to-morrow: and it was because I did so that I was saved a much worse later alarm. Two or three hours hence the smoke would have penetrated to the rest of the house and we should have started up to "fly round" to a much livelier tune.
Bravo, then, again, dear indispensable man! How I feel with magnificent Mrs Tony—for if you're such an "A no. 1" guardian-angel to my house, what are you to your own? The only thing is that I was going to write to you of two or three other things and this stupid little accident has smoked them all out. I've lent this really most amiable little old house to Jonathan Sturges while I'm away—and he's to come as soon as he can. He has been wretched, as you know, with poisonous influenza, but I went up to town to see him a few days since, and he seemed really mending. He was here a long time in the autumn and the early winter and our conversation hung and hovered about you. Good night—it's 2.45 and all's well. I must turn in. I grovel before your wife—and take endless liberties with your son—and am yours—after all this—more than ever—much as that was—
HENRY JAMES.
P.S. Tuesday night. This, my dear Tony, is a sorrier postscript than I expected. I had just—on Sunday night, in the small hours—signed my name as above when my fond delusion of the cessation of my scare dropped from me and I became aware that I had, really, a fire "on." The rest was sad—and I can't detail it—but I've got off wondrous easy. We got the brave pumpers with creditable promptitude—they were thoroughly up to the mark—above all without trop de zèle—and the damage is limited wholly to one side of two rooms—especially the room I was writing to you in so blandly. The pumpers were here till 5—and I slept not till the following (last) night. Still more, therefore, I repeat, it was you preserved me. Finishing my letter to you kept me on the spot and being on the spot was all. If I had had my head under the bed-clothes I wouldn't—couldn't have sniffed till two or three hours later, when headway would have been gained—and headway would have doubled, quadrupled damage, and perhaps even deprived you of this missive—and its author—altogether. Aussi je vous embrasse—and am your startled but re-quieted and fully insured H. J.
P.P.S. But look out for insidious under-fireplace-and-hearth tricks and traps in old houses!