Lamb House, Rye.
September 3rd, 1914.
My dear E. W.,
It's a great luxury to be able to go on in this way. I wired you at once this morning how very glad indeed I shall be to take over your superfluous young man as a substitute for Burgess, if he will come in the regular way, my servant entirely, not borrowed from you (otherwise than in the sense of his going back to you whenever you shall want him again;) and remaining with me on a wage basis settled by me with him, and about the same as Burgess's, if possible, so long as the latter is away....
I am afraid indeed now, after this lapse of days, that the "Russian" legend doesn't very particularly hold water—some information I have this morning in the way of a positive denial of the War Office points that way, unless the sharp denial is conceivable quand même. The only thing is that there remains an extraordinary residuum of fact to be accounted for: it being indisputable by too much convergence of testimony that trains upon trains of troops seen in the light of day, and not recognised by innumerable watchers and wonderers as English, were pouring down from the north and to the east during the end of last week and the beginning of this. It seems difficult that there should have been that amount of variously scattered hallucination, misconception, fantastication or whatever—yet I chuck up the sponge!
Far from brilliant the news to-day of course, and likely I am afraid to act on your disposition to go back to Paris; which I think a very gallant and magnificent and ideal one, but which at the same time I well understand, within you, the urgent force of. I feel I cannot take upon myself to utter any relevant remark about it at all—any plea against it, which you wouldn't in the least mind, once the thing determined for you, or any in favour of it, which you so intensely don't require. I understand too well—that's the devil of such a state of mind about everything. Whatever resolution you take and apply you will put it through to your very highest honour and accomplishment of service; sur quoi I take off my hat to you down to the ground, and only desire not to worry you with vain words.... I kind of hanker for any scrap of really domestic fact about you all that I may be able to extract from Frederick if he comes. But I shall get at you again quickly in this way, and am your all-faithfullest
HENRY JAMES.
To Mrs. Wharton.
It will be remembered that the first news of the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral suggested greater destruction than was the fact at that time. The wreckage was of course carried much further before the end of the war.
Lamb House, Rye.
September 21st, 1914.
Dearest Edith,