To Edmund Gosse.
H. J.'s four sponsors at his naturalisation were Mr. Asquith, Mr. Gosse, Mr. J. B. Pinker, and Mr. G. W. Prothero.
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
June 25th, 1915.
My dear Gosse,
Remarkably enough, I should be writing you this evening even if I hadn't received your interesting information about ——, concerning whom nothing perversely base and publicly pernicious at all surprises me. He is the cleverest idiot and the most pernicious talent imaginable, and I await to see if he won't somehow swing—!
But il ne s'agit pas de ça; il s'agit of the fact that there is a matter I should have liked to speak to you of the other day when you lunched here, yet hung fire about through its not having then absolutely come to a head. It has within these days done so, and in brief it is this. The force of the public situation now at last determines me to testify to my attachment to this country, my fond domicile for nearly forty years (forty next year,) by applying for naturalisation here: the throwing of my imponderable moral weight into the scale of her fortune is the geste that will best express my devotion—absolutely nothing else will. Therefore my mind is made up, and you are the first person save my Solicitor (whom I have had to consult) to whom the fact has been imparted. Kindly respect for the moment the privacy of it. I learned with horror just lately that if I go down into Sussex (for two or three months of Rye) I have at once to register myself there as an Alien and place myself under the observation of the Police. But that is only the occasion of my decision—it's not in the least the cause. The disposition itself has haunted me as Wordsworth's sounding cataract haunted him—"like a passion"—ever since the beginning of the War. But the point, please, is this: that the process for me is really of the simplest, and may be very rapid, if I can obtain four honourable householders to testify to their knowledge of me as a respectable person, "speaking and writing English decently" etc. Will you give me the great pleasure of being one of them?—signing a paper to that effect? I should take it ever so kindly. And I should further take kindly your giving me if possible your sense on this delicate point. Should you say that our admirable friend the Prime Minister would perhaps be approachable by me as another of the signatory four?—to whom, you see, great historic honour, not to say immortality, as my sponsors, will accrue. I don't like to approach him without your so qualified sense of the matter first—and he has always been so beautifully kind and charming to me. I will do nothing till I hear from you—but his signature (which my solicitor's representative, if not himself, would simply wait upon him for) would enormously accelerate the putting through of the application and the disburdening me of the Sussex "restricted area" alienship—which it distresses me to carry on my back a day longer than I need. I have in mind my other two sponsors, but if I could have from you, in addition to your own personal response, on which my hopes are so founded, your ingenious prefiguration (fed by your intimacy with him) as to how the P.M. would "take" my appeal, you would increase the obligations of yours all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To J. B. Pinker.
The two articles here referred to, "The Long Wards" and "Within the Rim," were both eventually devoted to charitable purposes.