Dearest Mary Hunter,
Beautiful and tender the letter I just receive from you—and that follows by a few days an equally beneficent one to my sister. She will (if she hasn't done it already) thank you for this herself—and tell you how deeply we feel the kindly balm of your faithful thought of us. Our return here, with my brother so acutely suffering and so all too precipitately (none the less) succumbing altogether—quite against what seemed presumable during our last three weeks in England—was a dreadful time; from the worst darkness of which we are, however, gradually emerging.... What is for the time a great further support is the wondrous beauty of this region, where we are lingering on three or four weeks more (when it becomes too cold in a house built only for summer—in spite of glorious wood-fires;) this season being the finest thing in the American year for weather and colour. The former is golden and the latter, amid these innumerable mountains and great forests and frequent lakes, a magnificence of crimson and orange, a mixture of flames and gems. I shall stay for some months (I mean on this side of the sea;) and yet I am so homesick that I seem to feel that when I do get back to dear little old England, I shall never in my life leave it again. We cling to each other, all of us here, meanwhile, and I can never be sufficiently grateful to my fate for my having been with my dearest brother for so many weeks before his death and up to the bitter end. I am better and better than three months ago, thank heaven, in spite of everything, and really believe I shall end by being better than I have been at all these last years, when I was spoiling for my illness. I pray most devoutly that Salso will again repay and refresh and comfort you; I absolutely yearn to see you, and I am yours all affectionately always,
HENRY JAMES.
To Mrs. W. K. Clifford.
95 Irving Street,
Cambridge, Mass.
October 29th, 1910.
Dearest Lucy!
My silence has been atrocious, since the receipt of two quite divine letters from you, but the most particular blessing of you is that with you one needn't explain nor elaborate nor take up the burden of dire demonstration, because you understand and you feel, you allow, and you know, and above all you love (your poor old entangled and afflicted H.J.).... Now at last I am really on the rise and on the higher ground again—more than I have been, and more unmistakeably, than at any time since the first of my illness. Your letters meanwhile, dearest Lucy, were admirable and exquisite, in their rare beauty of your knowing, for the appreciation of such a loss and such a wound, immensely what you were talking about. Every word went to my heart, and it was as if you sat by me and held my hand and let me wail, and wailed yourself, so gently and intelligently, with me. The extinction of such a presence in my life as my great and radiant (even in suffering and sorrow) brother's, means a hundred things that I can't begin to say; but immense, all the same, are the abiding possessions, the interest and the honour. We will talk of all these things by your endlessly friendly fire in due time again (oh how I gnash my teeth with homesickness at that dear little Chilworth St. vision of old lamp lit gossiping hours!) and we will pull together meanwhile as intimately and unitedly as possible even thus across the separating sea. I have pretty well settled to remain on this side of that wintry obstacle till late in the spring. I am at present with my priceless sister-in-law and her dear delightful children. We came back a short time since from the country (I going for ten days to New York, the prodigious, from which I have just returned, while she, after her so long and tragic absence, settled us admirably for the winter.) We all hang unspeakably together, and that's why I am staying. I am getting back to work—though the flood of letters to be breasted by reason of my brother's death and situation has been formidable in the extreme, and the "breasting" (with the very weak hand only that I have been able, till now to lend) is even yet far from over. My companions are unspeakably kind to me, and I cherish the break in the excess of solitude that I have been steeped in these last years. If I get as "well" as I see reason now at last to believe, I shall be absolutely better than at any time for three or four—and shall even feel sweetly younger (by a miraculous emergence from my hideous year.) Dreams of work come back to me—which I've a superstitious dread still, however, of talking about. Materially and carnally speaking my "comfort"—odious word!—in a most pleasant, commodious house, is absolute, and is much fostered by my having brought with me my devoted if diminutive Burgess, whom you will remember at Lamb House.... During all which time, however, see how I don't prod you with questions about yourself—in spite of my burning thirst for knowledge. After the generosity of your letters of last month how can I ask you to labour again in my too thankless cause? But I do yearn over you, and I needn't tell you how any rough sketch of your late history will gladden my sight. I wrote a day or two ago to Hugh Walpole and besought him to go and see you and make me some sign of you—which going and gathering-in I hope he of himself, and constantly, takes to. I think of you as always heroic—but I hope that no particular extra need for it has lately salted your cup. Is Margaret on better ground again? God grant it! But such things as I wish to talk about—I mean that we might! But with patience the hour will strike—like silver smiting silver. Till then I am so far-offishly and so affectionately yours,
HENRY JAMES.
To W. E. Norris.
95 Irving St.
Cambridge, Mass.
Dec. 13th, 1910.