To Edward Marsh.
The volume sent by Mr. Marsh was Rupert Brooke's 1914 and other Poems.
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
June 6th, 1915.
Dearest Eddie,
I thank you ever so kindly for this advance copy of Rupert's volume, which you were right (and blest!) in feeling that I should intensely prize. I have been spending unspeakable hours over it—heart-breaking ones, under the sense of the stupid extinction of so exquisite an instrument and so exquisite a being. Immense the generosity of his response to life and the beauty and variety of the forms in which it broke out, and of which these further things are such an enriching exhibition. His place is now very high and very safe—even though one walks round and round it with the aching soreness of having to take the monument for the man. It's so wretched talking, really, of any "place" but his place with us, and in our eyes and affection most of all, the other being such as could wait, and grow with all confidence and power while waiting. He has something, at any rate, one feels in this volume, that puts him singularly apart even in his eminence—the fact that, member of the true high company as he is and poet of the strong wings (for he seems to me extraordinarily strong,) he has charm in a way of a kind that belong to none of the others, who have their beauty and abundance, their distinction and force and grace, whatever it may be, but haven't that particular thing as he has it and as he was going to keep on having it, since it was of his very nature—by which I mean that of his genius. The point is that I think he would still have had it even if he had grown bigger and bigger, and stronger and stronger (for this is what he would have done,) and thereby been almost alone in this idiosyncrasy. Even of Keats I don't feel myself saying that he had charm—it's all lost in the degree of beauty, which somehow allows it no chance. But in Rupert (not that I match them!) there is the beauty, so great, and then the charm, different and playing beside it and savouring of the very quality of the man. What it comes to, I suppose, is that he touches me most when he is whimsical and personal, even at the poetic pitch, or in the poetic purity, as he perpetually is. And he penetrates me most when he is most hauntingly (or hauntedly) English—he draws such a real magic from his conscious reference to it. He is extraordinarily so even in the War sonnets—not that that isn't highly natural too; and the reading of these higher things over now, which one had first read while he was still there to be exquisitely at stake in them, so to speak, is a sort of refinement both of admiration and of anguish. The present gives them such sincerity—as if they had wanted it! I adore the ironic and familiar things, the most intimately English—the Chilterns and the Great Lover (towards the close of which I recognise the misprint you speak of, but fortunately so obvious a one—the more flagrant the better—that you needn't worry:) and the Funeral of Youth, awfully charming; and of course Grantchester, which is booked for immortality. I revel in Grantchester—and how it would have made one love him if one hadn't known him. As it is it wrings the heart! And yet after all what do they do, all of them together, but again express how life had been wonderful and crowded and fortunate and exquisite for him?—with his sensibilities all so exposed, really exposed, and yet never taking the least real harm. He seems to me to have had in his short life so much that one may almost call it everything. And he isn't tragic now—he has only stopped. It's we who are tragic—you and his mother especially, and whatever others; for we can't stop, and we wish we could. The portrait has extreme beauty, but is somehow disconnected. However, great beauty does disconnect! But good-night—with the lively sense that I must see you again before I leave town—which won't be, though, before early in July. I hope you are having less particular strain and stress and am yours all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To Edward Marsh.
This refers to a photograph of Rupert Brooke, sent by Mr. Marsh, and to the death of his friend Denis Browne, who was with R. B. when he died. A letter from Browne, describing Rupert Brooke's burial on the island of Scyros, had been read to H. J. by Mr. Marsh the day before the following was written.
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
June 13th, 1915.