Very interesting, not less, your picture of the blest irreflection and absence of morbid analysis in which you are living—in face of all the possibilities; and wondrous enough surely must be all the changes and lapses of importance and value, of sensibility itself, the difference of your relation to things and the drop out of some relations altogether.... But I catch in your remarks the silver thread of optimism, not bulging out but subtly gleaming, and it gives me no end of satisfaction. A few gleams have lately been coming to me otherwise, and the action of Neuve Chapelle (if I may rashly name it,) which we have reports of in the papers, is I suppose the one you speak of as cheering. The great thing we do in London, however, is to strain our ears for the thunder of the Dardanelles, which we even feel that we get pretty straight and pretty strong, and in which we see consequences the most tremendous, verily beyond all present utterance. Nothing in all the war has made me hang on it in such suspense—though we venture even almost to presume. I see few people—and try to see only those I positively want to; whom, par exemple, I value the exchange of earnest remarks with more than ever. But I am ill-conditioned for "telling" you things—and indeed I should think meanly of London if there was very much to tell. A few nights ago I dined with Mervyn O'Gorman, my rather near neighbour here, and met a youngish and exceedingly interesting, in fact charming, Colonel Brancker, just back from the front—both of which high aeronautic experts you probably know. I mention them because I extracted from them so intense a thrill—drawing them out—for they let me—on the subject of the so more and more revealed affinity of the British temperament with that of the conquering airman—and thereby of the extent to which the military, or the energetic, future of this country may be in the air. They put it so splendidly that I went home unspeakably rejoicing (it may "mean" so much!) and as if myself ponderously soaring. But what am I ridiculously remarking to you? The great point I wish to make is the lively welcome I shall give you in April—thank you for that knowledge; and that I am all-faithfully yours,
HENRY JAMES.
To Mrs. Wharton.
Dictated.
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
March 23rd, 1915.
Chère Madame et Confrère,
Don't imagine for a moment that I don't feel the full horror of my having had to wait till now, when I can avail myself of this aid, to acknowledge, as the poor pale pettifogging term has it, the receipt from you of inexpressibly splendid bounties. I won't attempt to explain or expatiate—about this abject failure of utterance: the idea of "explaining" anything to you in these days, or of any expatiation that isn't exclusively that of your own genius upon your own adventures and impressions! I think the reason why I have been so baffled, in a word, is that all my powers of being anything else have gone to living upon your two magnificent letters, the one from Verdun, and the one after your second visit there; which gave me matter of experience and appropriation to which I have done the fullest honour. Your whole record is sublime, and the interest and the beauty and the terror of it all have again and again called me back to it. I have ventured to share it, for the good of the cause and the glory of the connection (mine,) with two or three select others—this I candidly confess to you—one of whom was dear Howard, absolutely as dear as ever through everything, and whom I all but reduced to floods of tears, tears of understanding and sympathy. I know them at last, your incomparable pages, by heart—and thus it is really that I feel qualified to speak to you of them. With the two sublimities in question, or between them, came of course also the couple of other favours, enclosing me, pressing back upon me, my attempted contribution to your Paris labour: to which perversity I have had to bow my head. I was very sorry to be so forced, but even while cursing and gnashing my teeth I got your post-office order cashed, and the money is, God knows, assistingly spendable here! Another pang was your mention of Jean du Breuil's death.... I didn't know him, had never seen him; but your account of the admirable manner of his end makes one feel that one would like even to have just beheld him. We are in the midst, the very midst, of histories of that sort, miserable and terrible, here too; the Neuve Chapelle business, from a strange, in the sense of being a pretty false, glamour at first flung about which we are gradually recovering, seems to have taken a hideous toll of officers, and other distressing legends (legends of mistake and confusion) are somehow overgrowing it too. But painful particulars are not what I want to give you—of anything; you are up to your neck in your own, and I had much rather pick my steps to the clear places, so far as there be any such! I continue to try and keep my own existence one, so far as I may—a place clear of the last accablement, I mean: apparently what it comes to is that it's "full up" with the last but one.
Wednesday, 24th. I had to break this off yesterday—and it was time, apparently, with the rather dreary note I was sounding: though I don't know that I have a very larky one to go on with to-day—save so far as the taking of the big Austrian fortress, which I can neither write nor pronounce, makes one a little soar and sing. This seems really to represent something, but how much I put forth not the slightest pretension to measure. In fact I think I am not measuring anything whatever just now, and not pretending to—I find myself, much more, quite consentingly dumb in the presence of the boundless enormity; and when I wish to give myself the best possible account of this state of mind I call it the pious attitude of waiting. Verily there is much to wait for—but there I am at it again, and should blush to offer you in the midst of what I believe to be your more grandly attuned state, such a pale apology for a living faith. Probably all that's the matter with one is one's vicious propensity to go on feeling more and more, instead of less and less—which would be so infinitely more convenient; for the former course puts one really quite out of relation to almost everybody else and causes one to circle helplessly round outer social edges like a kind of prowling pariah. However, I try to be as stupid as I can....
All the while, with this, I am not expressing my deep appreciation of your generous remarks about again placing Frederick at my disposition. I am doing perfectly well in these conditions without a servant; my life is so simplified that all acuteness of need has been abated; in short I manage—and it is of course fortunate, inasmuch as the question would otherwise not be at all practically soluble. No young man of military age would I for a moment consider—and in fact there are none about, putting aside the physically inapt (for the Army)—and these are kept tight hold of by those who can use them. Small boys and aged men are alone available—but the matter has in short not the least importance. The thing that most assuages me continues to be dealing with the wounded in such scant measure as I may; such, e.g., as my having turned into Victoria Station, yesterday afternoon, to buy an evening paper and there been so struck with the bad lameness of a poor hobbling khaki convalescent that I inquired of him to such sympathetic effect that, by what I can make out, I must have committed myself to the support of him for the remainder of his days—a trifle on account having sealed the compact on the spot. It all helps, however—helps me; which is so much what I do it for. Let it help you by ricochet, even a little too....