To Robert Bridges.
This continues the subject dealt with in the letter to Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith of Oct. 27, 1913.
Lamb House, Rye.
Nov. 7, 1913.
My dear Bridges,
How delightful to hear from you in this generously appreciative way!—it makes me very grateful to Logan for having reported to you of my pleasure in your beautiful disclosure of young Dolben—which seems to me such a happy chance for you to have had, in so effective conditions, after so many years—I mean as by the production of cards from up your sleeve. My impression of your volume was indeed a very lively one—it gave me a really acute emotion to thank you for: which is a luxury of the spirit quite rare and refreshing at my time of day. Your picture of your extraordinary young friend suggests so much beauty, such a fine young individual, and yet both suggests it in such a judging and, as one feels, truth-keeping a way, that the effect is quite different from that of the posthumous tribute to the early-gathered in general—it inspires a peculiar confidence and respect. Difficult to do I can well imagine the thing to have been—keeping the course between the too great claim and the too timid; and this but among other complicated matters. I feel however that there is need, in respect to the poor boy's note of inspiration, of no shade of timidity at all—of so absolutely distinguished a reality is that note, given the age at which it sounded: such fineness of impulse and such fineness of art—one doesn't really at all know where such another instance lurks—in the like condition. What an interesting and beautiful one to have had such a near view of—in the golden age, and to have been able to recover and reconstruct with such tenderness—of the measured and responsible sort. How could you not have had the emotion which, as you rightly say, can be such an extraordinary (on occasion such a miracle-working) quickener of memory!—and yet how could you not also, I see, feel shy of some of the divagations in that line to which your subject is somehow formed rather to lend itself! Your tone and tact seem to me perfect—and the rare little image is embedded in them, so safely and cleanly, for duration—which is a real "service, from you, to literature" and to our sum of intelligent life. And you make one ask one's self just enough, I think, what he would have meant had he lived—without making us do so too much. I don't quite see, myself, what he would have meant, and the result is an odd kind of concurrence in his charming, flashing catastrophe which is different from what most such accidents, in the case of the young of high promise, make one feel. However, I do envy you the young experience of your own, and the abiding sense of him in his actuality, just as you had and have them, and your having been able to intervene with such a light and final authority of taste and tenderness. I say final because the little clear medallion will hang there exactly as you have framed it, and your volume is the very condition of its hanging. There should be absolutely no issue of the poems without your introduction. This is odd or anomalous considering what the best of them are, bless them!—but it is exactly the best of them that most want it. I hear the poor young spirit call on you out of the vague to stick to him. But you always will.—I find myself so glad to be writing to you, however, that I only now become aware that the small hours of the a.m. are getting larger ...
Yours all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To André Raffalovich.
This refers to the gift of the Last Letters of Aubrey Beardsley, edited by Father Gray (1904).
Lamb House, Rye.
November 7th, 1913.
Dear André Raffalovich,