The beginning and end of this letter are accidentally missing.
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
[March, 1913.]
...a better one than for a long, long while; and it enables this poor scrawl thus to try to hang itself, for the hour, however awkwardly, round your neck. What was wonderful and beautiful in your letter of last November 9th (now so handsomely and liveably before me—I adore your hand) is that it was prompted, to the last perfection, by a sublime sense of what was just exactly my case at that hour, so that when I think of this, and of how I felt it when the letter came, and of how exquisite and interesting that essential fact made it (over and above its essential charm,) I don't know whether I am most amazed or ashamed at my not having as nearly as possible just then and there acclaimed the touching marvel. But in truth this very fact of the justesse of your globe-spanning divination is the real answer to that. You wrote because you so beautifully and suddenly saw from afar (and so admirably wanted to lay your hand on me in consequence:) saw, I mean, that I was in some acute trouble, and had the heavenly wish to signal to me your sympathetic sense of it. So, as I say, your admirable page itself tells me, and so at the hour I hailed the sweet phenomenon. I had had a very bad summer, but hoped (and supposed) I was more or less throwing it off. But the points I make are, 1st, that your psychic sense of the situation had absolutely coincided in time, and in California, with what was going on at Lamb House, on the other side of the globe; and 2nd, after all, that precisely the condition so revealed to you was what made it too difficult for me to vibrate back to you with any proportionate punctuality or grace. Only this, you see, is my long-delayed and comparatively dull vibration. Here I am, at any rate, dearest Bruce, taking you as straight again to my aged heart as these poor clumsy methods will allow. Thank God meanwhile I have no supernatural fears about you! nor vain dreams that you are not in the living equilibrium, now as ever, that becomes you best, and of which you have the brave secret. I am incapable of doubting of this—though after all I now feel how exceedingly I should like you to tell me so even if but on one side of a sheet like this so handsome (I come back to that!) example that I have before me. You can do so much with one side of a sheet. But oh for a better approach to a real personal jaw! It is indeed most strange, this intimate relation of ours that has been doomed to consist of a grain of contact (et encore!) to a ton of separation. It's to the honour of us anyhow that we can and do keep touching without the more platitudinous kind of demonstration of it. Still—demonstrate, as I say, for three minutes. Feel a little, to help you to it, how tenderly I lay my hands on you. This address will find me till the end of June—but Lamb House of course always. I have taken three or four (or five) years' lease of a small flat on this pleasant old Chelsea riverside to hibernate in for the future. I return to the country for five or six months of summer and autumn, but can't stand the utter solitude and confinement of it from December to the spring's end. Ah, had we only a climate!—yours or Fanny Stevenson's (if she is still the exploiter of climates)—I believe I should be all right then! Tell me of her—and tell me of your Mother. I am sending you by the Scribners a volume of reminiscential twaddle....
To Lady Ritchie.
Lady Ritchie had at this time thoughts (afterwards abandoned) of going to America. She was the "Princess Royal," of course, as the daughter of Thackeray.
21 Carlyle Mansions,
Cheyne Walk, S.W.
March 25th, 1913.
Dearest old Friend!
I am deeply interested and touched by your letter from the Island!—so much so that I shall indeed rush to you this (day-after-to-morrow) Thursday at 5.15. Your idea is (as regards your sainted Self!) of the bravest and most ingenious, but needing no end of things to be said about it—and I think I shall be able to say them ALL! The furore you would excite there, the glory in which you would swim (or sink!) would be of an ineffable resonance and effulgence; but I fear it would simply be a fatal Apotheosis, a prostrating exaltation. The devil of the thing (for yourself) would be that that terrific country is in every pulse of its being and on every inch of its surface a roaring repudiation and negation of anything like Privacy, and of the blinding and deafening Publicity you might come near to perish. But we will jaw about it—there is so much to say—and for Hester it would be another matter: she could ride the whirlwind and enjoy, in a manner, the storm. Besides, she isn't the Princess Royal—but only a remove of the Blood! Again, however, nous en causerons—on Thursday. I shall so hug the chance.... I am impatient for it and am yours and the Child's all so faithfully,
HENRY JAMES.