To Mrs. Wharton.
The following refers to the third volume (covering the years 1838 to 1848) of Mme Vladimir Karénine's "George Sand, sa Vie et ses Œuvres," an article on which, written by H. J. for the Quarterly Review, appears in Notes on Novelists.
Reform Club, Pall Mall, S.W.
March 13th, 1912.
Dearest Edith,
Just a word to thank you—so inadequately—for everything. Your letter of the 1st infinitely appeals to me, and the 3d vol. of the amazing Vladimir (amazing for acharnement over her subject) has rejoiced my heart the more that I had quite given up expecting it. The two first vols. had long ago deeply held me—but I had at last had to suppose them but a colossal fragment. Fortunately the whole thing proves less fragmentary than colossal, and our dear old George ressort more and more prodigious the nearer one gets to her. The passages you marked contribute indeed most to this ineffable effect—and the long letter to sweet Solange is surely one of the rarest fruits of the human intelligence, one of the great things of literature. And what a value it all gets from our memory of that wondrous day when we explored the very scene where they pigged so thrillingly together. What a crew, what mœurs, what habits, what conditions and relations every way—and what an altogether mighty and marvellous George!—not diminished by all the greasiness and smelliness in which she made herself (and so many other persons!) at home. Poor gentlemanly, crucified Chop!—not naturally at home in grease—but having been originally pulled in—and floundering there at last to extinction! Ce qui dépasse, however—and it makes the last word about dear old G. really—is her overwhelming glibness, as exemplified, e.g., in her long letter to Gryzmala (or whatever his name,) the one to the first page or two of which your pencil-marks refer me, and in which she "posts" him, as they say at Stockbridge, as to all her amours. To have such a flow of remark on that subject, and everything connected with it, at her command helps somehow to make one feel that Providence laid up for the French such a store of remark, in advance and, as it were, should the worst befall, that their conduct and mœurs, coming after, had positively to justify and do honour to the whole collection of formulae, phrases and, as I say, glibnesses—so that as there were at any rate such things there for them to inevitably say, why not simply do all the things that would give them a rapport and a sense? The things we, poor disinherited race, do, we have to do so dimly and sceptically, without the sense of any such beautiful cadres awaiting us—and therefore poorly and going but half—or a tenth—of the way. It makes a difference when you have to invent your suggestions and glosses all after the fact: you do it so miserably compared with Providence—especially Providence aided by the French language: which by the way convinces me that Providence thinks and really expresses itself only in French, the language of gallantry. It will be a joy when we can next converse on these and cognate themes—I know of no such link of true interchange as a community of interest in dear old George.
I don't know what else to tell you—nor where this will find you.... I kind of pray that you may have been able to make yourself a system of some sort—to have arrived at some modus vivendi. The impossible wears on us, but we wear a little here, I think, even on the coal-strike and the mass of its attendant misery; though they produce an effect and create an atmosphere unspeakably dismal and depressing; to which the window-smashing women add a darker shade. I am blackly bored when the latter are at large and at work; but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them....
Yours all and always, dearest Edith,
HENRY JAMES.
To H. G. Wells.
This refers to a proposal (which did not take effect) that Mr. Wells should become a member of the lately formed Academic Committee of the Royal Society of Literature.