Lamb House, Rye.
July 16th, 1912.
Dearest Harry,
...I came down here from town but five days ago, and feel intensely, after so long an absence, the blest, the invaluable, little old refuge-quality of dear L. H. at this and kindred seasons. A tremendous wave of heat is sweeping over the land—passed on apparently from "your side"—and I left London a fiery furnace and the Reform Club a feather bed on top of one in the same. The visitation still goes on day after day, but, with immense mitigation, I can bear it here—where nothing could be more mitigating than my fortunate conditions.
...The "working expensively" meanwhile signifies for me simply the "literary and artistic," the technical, side of the matter—the fact that in doing this book I am led, by the very process and action of my idiosyncrasy, on and on into more evocation and ramification of old images and connections, more intellectual and moral autobiography (though all closely and, as I feel it, exquisitely associated and involved,) than I shall quite know what to do with—to do with, that is, in this book (I shall doubtless be able to use rejected or suppressed parts in some other way.) It's my more and more (or long since established) difficulty always, that I have to project and do a great deal in order to choose from that, after the fact, what is most designated and supremely urgent. That is a costly way of working, as regards time, material etc.—at least in the short run. In the long run, and "by and large," it, I think, abundantly justifies itself. That is really all I meant to convey to you and to your mother through Bill—as a kind of precaution and forewarning—for your inevitable sense of my "slowness." Of course too I have had pulls up and breaks, sometimes disheartening ones, through the recurrence of bad physical conditions—and am still liable, strictly speaking, to these. But the main thing to say about these, once for all, is that they tend steadily, and most helpfully, to diminish, both in intensity and in duration, and that I have really now reached the point at which the successful effort to work really helps me physically—to say nothing of course of (a thousand times) morally. It remains true that I do worry about the money-question—by nature and fate (since I was born worrying, though myself much more than others!)—and that this is largely the result of these last years of lapse of productive work while my expenses have gone more or less (while I was with you all in America less!) ruthlessly on. But of this it's also to be cheeringly said that I have only to be successfully and continuously at work for a period of about ten days for it all to fall into the background altogether (all the worry,) and be replaced by the bravest confidence of calculation. So much for that! And now, for the moment—for this post at least, I must pull up. Well of course do I understand that with your big new preoccupations and duties close at hand you mayn't dream of a move in this direction, and I should be horrified at seeming to exert the least pressure toward your even repining at it. More still than the delight of seeing you will be that of knowing that you are getting into close quarters with your new job. I repeat that you have no idea of the good this will do me!—as to which I sit between your Mother and Peg, clasping a hand of each, while we watch your every movement and gloat, ecstatically, over you. Oh, give my love so aboundingly to them, and to your grandmother, on it all!
Yours, dearest Harry, more affectionately than ever,
H. J.
To R. W. Chapman.
Mrs. Brookenham is of course the mother of the young heroine of The Awkward Age.
Lamb House, Rye.
July 17th, 1912.
Dear Mr. Chapman,