My dear Bailey,
It greatly touches and gratifies me to hear from you—even though I have to inflict on you the wound of a small announced (positively last) postponement of my re-appearance. I like to think that you may be a little wounded—wanton as that declaration sounds; for it gives me the measure of my being cared for in poor dear old distracted England—than which there can be no sweeter or more healing sense to my bruised and aching and oh so nostalgic soul.... I am exceedingly better in health, I thank the "powers"—and even presume to figure it out that I shall next slip between the soft swing-doors of Athene in the character of a confirmed improver, struggler upward, or even bay-crowned victor over ills. Don't lament my small procrastination—a matter of only six weeks; for I shall then still better know where and how I am. I am at the present hour (more literally) staying with some amiable cousins, of the more amiable sex—supposedly at least (my supposition is not about the cousins, but about the sex)—in the deep warm heart of "New England at its best." This large Connecticut scenery of mountain and broad vale, recurrent great lake and splendid river (the great Connecticut itself, the Housatonic, the Farmington,) all embowered with truly prodigious elms and maples, is very noble and charming and sympathetic, and made—on its great scale of extent—to be dealt with by the blest motor-car, the consolation of my declining years. This luxury I am charitably much treated to, and it does me a world of good. The enormous, the unique ubiquity of the "auto" here suggests many reflections—but I can't go into these now, or into any branch of the prodigious economic or "sociological" side of this unspeakable and amazing country; I must keep such matters to regale you withal in poor dear little Lamb House garden; for one brick of the old battered purple wall of which I would give at this instant (home-sick quand même) the whole bristling state of Connecticut. I shall "stay about" till I embark—that may represent to you my temperamental or other gain. However, you must autobiographically regale me not a bit less than yours, my dear Bailey, all faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.
To Sir T. H. Warren.
The following letter to the President of Magdalen refers to the offer of an honorary degree at Oxford, subsequently conferred in 1912.
Salisbury, Connecticut.
May 29th, 1911.
My dear President,
I was more sorry than I can say to have to cable you last evening in that disabled sense. I had some time ago taken my return passage to England for June 14th, but more lately the President of Harvard was so good as to invite me to receive an Honorary Degree at their hands on the 28th of that month—the same day as your Encaenia. Urgent and intimate family reasons conspired to make a delay advisable; so I accepted the Harvard invitation and have shifted my departure to August 2nd.
Behold me thus committed to Harvard—and unable moreover at this season of the multitudinous (I mean of the rush to Europe) to get a decent berth on an outward ship even were I to try. The formal document from the University arrived with your kind letter—proposing to me the Degree of Doctor of Letters, as your letter mentions; and quickened my great regret at being thus perversely prevented from embracing an occasion the appeal of which I might so have connected with your benevolence.
I should feel an Oxford degree a very great honour and a great consideration, and I am writing of course to the Registrar of the University. I rejoice to be going back at last to a more immediate—or more possible—sight and sound of you and of all your surrounding amenities and glories. Yet I wish too I could open to you for a few days the impression of the things about me here; in the warm, the very warm, heart of "New England at its best," such a vast abounding Arcadia of mountains and broad vales and great rivers and large lakes and white villages embowered in prodigious elms and maples. It is extraordinarily beautiful and graceful and idyllic—for America....