August 2d, 1901.
My dear Maud Elliott.
Your beautiful Newport (if Newport I may call it) letter greatly touches and interests me, and the effect of it is enhanced or confirmed by the arrival almost at the same moment of the pale photographic reminder and pale, though not wholly ineffectual, of the monumental composition. All thanks for everything, and most of all for the friendly remembrance that has dictated them. It is a great pleasure, a great pride, for me to possess the dim shadows of the picture, and, shadows though they be, I shall suspend the most substantial on one of my little room-walls, where it will keep constantly in memory for me those too few weeks in Rome, more than two years ago, when I assisted a little at the glorious but difficult birth and since I am afraid I shall never see the great canvas itself in place. And your letter is full of other echoes too and of a further-away past and a prior state, almost, of being; so extremely does your description of your soft grey day in that unforgotten Clime bring the whole place and air and feeling back to me, and transport me to my long-vanished youth, or put it again before me. I am delighted you have so mildly-melancholy a refuge from the rather screwed-up American summer. We read awful things of heat-waves over here, but I hope you successfully oppose them with the waves of the sea, since you suggest that you lead more or less an amphibious life. We have moreover our own heat-waves here, overwhelming enough (the globe surely is being resolved again into its primal ball-of-fire condition), and without any sea-change for me, whom salt-water afflicts and distance (the shining sands are 3 miles off) discourages. I greatly regret to hear of your mother’s failure of health; it must be a comfort for you—as such comforts go—to be able to be with her. She must indeed be grand, and above all strongly fortified. May she long, may she subtly, and not too painfully, resist! I venture to send her the benediction of my sincerity. Your best news is that of your possible appearance here at no distant date. Of course Elliott must go back to Rome and of course the chance will come and the situation reconstitute itself. Tell him, please, with my kind regards, that I put up for you both that friendliest prayer. And don’t wait too long; I want to see you there again; and my sands are running low. But I want to see you here too, and I should warmly welcome you.[4] Keep up your heart, dear Maud Elliott, and believe in the extreme constancy of your affectionate old friend
Henry James.
CHAPTER XXII
By the Tiber and by the Charles
Boston, January 1, 1901. We thought we had seen the birth of the Twentieth Century in Rome; when we reached Boston we found out we were mistaken, for here the new century begins to-day—what luck to celebrate twice! Last night at fifteen minutes before midnight, we were on Beacon Hill, outside the State House, where half of Boston had gathered for a mass meeting, called by the Twentieth Century Club. The services began by Boston’s G. O. M., Edward Everett Hale, reading the Nineteenth Psalm. The night was mild, not a breath of east wind, the stars like diamonds, the opening words most appropriate:
“The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”
The Handel and Haydn Society sang a cantata in great form, then a host of trumpets rang out a splendid call, the retreat of the dear old Nineteenth Century—I felt that I held it dying in my arms. The whole vast crowd that had stood silent then burst out with “My Country, ’tis of Thee” as I never quite heard it sung before. At twelve o’clock the bells swung and rung themselves hoarse in every belfry in Boston, and people began to wish each other “Happy Century”, instead of “Happy New Year!”
January 2. Last evening to an original festivity arranged by the Saturday Morning Club. All the dresses were of the styles worn between 1800 and 1880. The prettiest was a tulle ball dress of 1859 worn over a large crinoline; the ugliest one a magenta silk of about 1870 with a ruffled train and an enormous bustle.