My dear Norris,
I detest the thought that some good word or other from me shouldn't add to the burden with which your Xmas table will groan; fortunately too the decently "good" word (as goods go at this dark crisis) is the one that I can break my long and hideous silence to send you. The only difficulty is that when silences have been so long and so hideous the renewal of the communication, the patching-up (as regards the mere facts) of the weakened and ragged link, becomes in itself a necessity, or a question, formidable even to deterrence. I have had verily an année terrible—the fag-end of which is, however, an immense improvement on everything that has preceded it. I won't attempt, none the less, to make up arrears of information in any degree whatever—but simply let off at you this rude but affectionate signal from the desert-island of my shipwreck—or what would be such if my situation were not, on the whole, the one with which I am for the present most in tune. I am staying on here with my dear and admirable sister-in-law and her children, with whom I have been ever since my beloved and illustrious elder brother's death in the country at the end of August.... My younger brother had died just a month before—and I am alone now, of my father's once rather numerous house. But there—I am trying to pick up lost chords—which is what I didn't mean to ... I expect to stick fast here through January and then go for a couple of months to New York—after which I shall begin to turn my face to England—heaven send that day! The detail of this is, however, fluid and subject to alteration—in everything save my earnest purpose of struggling back by April or May at furthest to your (or verily my) distressed country; for which I unceasingly languish.... The material conditions here (that is the best of them—others intensely and violently not) suit me singularly at present; as for instance the great and glorious American fact of weather, to which it all mainly comes back, but which, since last August here, I have never known anything to surpass. While I write you this I bask in golden December sunshine and dry, crisp, mild frost—over a great nappe of recent snow, which flushes with the "tenderest" lights. This does me a world of good—and the fact that I have brought with me my little Lamb House servant, who has lived with me these 10 years; but for the rest my life is exclusively in this one rich nest of old affections and memories. I put you, you see, no questions, but please find half a dozen very fond ones wrapped up in every good wish I send you for the coming year. A couple of nos. of the Times have just come in—and though the telegraph has made them rather ancient history I hang over them for the dear old more vivid sense of it all....
Yours, my dear Norris, all affectionately,
HENRY JAMES.
To Mrs. Wharton.
95 Irving Street,
Cambridge, Mass.
Feb. 9th, 1911.
Dearest Edith,
Hideous and infamous, yes, my interminable, my abjectly graceless silence. But it always comes, in these abnormal months, from the same sorry little cause, which I have already named to you to such satiety that I really might omit any further reference to it. Somehow, none the less, I find a vague support in my consciousness of an unsurpassable abjection (as aforesaid) in naming it once more to myself and putting afresh on record that there's a method in what I feel might pass for my madness if you weren't so nobly sane. To write is perforce to report of myself and my condition—and nothing has happened to make that process any less an evil thing. It's horrible to me to report darkly and dismally—and yet I never venture three steps in the opposite direction without having the poor effrontery flung back in my face as an outrage on the truth. In other words, to report favourably is instantly—or at very short order—to be hurled back on the couch of anguish—so that the only thing has, for the most part, been to stay my pen rather than not report favourably. You'll say doubtless: "Damn you, why report at all—if you are so crassly superstitious? Answer civilly and prettily and punctually when a lady (and 'such a lady,' as Browning says!) generously and à deux reprises writes to you—without 'dragging in Velasquez' at all." Very well then, I'll try—though it was after all pretty well poor old Velasquez who came back three evenings since from 23 days in New York, and at 21 East 11th St., of which the last six were practically spent in bed. He had had a very fairly flourishing fortnight in that kindest of houses and tenderest of cares and genialest of companies—and then repaid it all by making himself a burden and a bore. I got myself out of the way as soon as possible—by scrambling back here; and yet, all inconsequently, I think it likely I shall return there in March to perform the same evolution. In the intervals I quite take notice—but at a given moment everything temporarily goes. I come up again and quite well up—as how can I not in order again to re-taste the bitter cup? But here I am "reporting of myself" with a vengeance—forgive me if it's too dreary. When all's said and done it will eventually—the whole case—become less so. Meanwhile, too, for my consolation, I have picked up here and there wind-borne bribes, of a more or less authentic savour, from your own groaning board; and my poor old imagination does me in these days no better service than by enabling me to hover, like a too-participant larbin, behind your Louis XIV chair (if it isn't, your chair, Louis Quatorze, at least your larbin takes it so.) I gather you've been able to drive the spirited pen without cataclysms.... I take unutterable comfort in the thought that two or three months hence you'll probably be seated on the high-piled and done book—in the magnificent authority of the position, even as Catherine II on the throne of the Czars. (Forgive the implications of the comparison!) Work seems far from me yet—though perhaps a few inches nearer. A report even reaches me to the effect that there's a possibility of your deciding ... to come over and spend the summer at the Mount, and this is above all a word to say that in case you should do so at all betimes you will probably still see me here; as though I have taken my passage for England my date is only the 14th June. Therefore should you come May 1st—well, Porphyro grows faint! I yearn over this—since if you shouldn't come then (and yet should be coming at all,) heaven knows when we shall meet again. There are enormous reasons for my staying here till then, and enormous ones against my staying longer.
Such, dearest Edith, is my meagre budget—forgive me if it isn't brighter and richer. I am but just pulling through—and I am doing that, but no more, and so, you see, have no wild graces or wavy tendrils left over for the image I project. I shall try to grow some again, little by little; but for the present am as ungarnished in every way as an aged plucked fowl before the cook has dealt with him. May the great Chef see his way to serve me up to you some day in some better sauce! As I am, at any rate, share me generously with your I am sure not infrequent commensaux ... and ask them to make the best of me (an' they love me—as I love them) even if you give them only the drumsticks and keep the comparatively tender, though much shrivelled, if once mighty, "pinion" for yourself ... I saw no one of the least "real fascination" (excusez du peu of the conception!) in N.Y.—but the place relieved and beguiled me—so long as I was debout—and Mary Cadwal and Beatrix were as tenderest nursing mother and bonniest sœur de lait to me the whole day long. I really think I shall take—shall risk—another go of it before long again, and even snatch a "bite" of Washington (Washington pie, as we used to say,) to which latter the dear H. Whites have most kindly challenged me. Well, such, dearest Edith, are the short and simple annals of the poor! I hang about you, however inarticulately, de toutes les forces de mon être and am always your fondly faithful old
HENRY JAMES.