[From Henry James.]
Lamb House, Rye, Sussex,
November 9th, 1903.
My dear Maud Howe.
There is a process known as heaping coals of fire, of which you are past mistress, and I uncover my poor old bald head to it, and kneel before you abjectly and take all you will give me. This A.M. comes to me your book and your sister’s, about your illustrious father and Laura Bridgman, and the generosity of it leaves me so touched and confused that I scarce know where to look or what to do. I daresay you are generous enough perhaps not to remember that you sent me months and months ago another book, a book of verse (by some hand not known to me, or apparently much known to you) and that this offering was basely never acknowledged, though it was accompanied by the kindest of notes, and though I have been helplessly meaning to until this hour. It is the thought of my baseness that makes me beat my breast and bless your charity now. The source of evil was the embarrassing little book of verse. I couldn’t read it and by no fault, doubtless of its own, and I was shy of telling you I couldn’t, and I thought that by waiting I might be able to say, brazenly, I had; and then with this, waited so long that I was ashamed to say anything, there seemed so much to explain and such a mountain to lift, and it all came from my not writing the very day with the wisdom of the serpent to say I was going, as soon as possible to devour the graceful volume; which I didn’t do really, because that is what one does to the importunate and the intruder, and you were such millions of miles from either. Now, somehow, you cheer me up, and I don’t mind being brazen about anything. I have already been looking into Laura B., of whom you make a wondrous tale and who shines out as pathetically human through her strange prison bars. It is among other things a most curious and characteristic American document. I like immensely your aunt’s story of the girl’s feeling for her rings, bracelets, etc. and finding none, and saying luminously, “Poor?” and then, when she did find her earrings, exclaiming promptly, “Vain!” “Poor but vain!” is a delightful verdict from such a source. I wish your solid book a large success.—For the rest, I am afraid that I have done nothing more distinct or definite (for the page of history) since that evening of so long ago at the Henry Harlands, but hope and pray that the chance might be given me of meeting you again. But you haven’t come, and though I think I have vaguely heard of your being again in Europe, I have fully lost track of you and the waters have closed over the question. I am a very rusty country cousin now, as far as the terrible London of the early summer is concerned. I put in each year 3 or 4 winter months, but I flee when the season begins, like some great dangerous beast, ominously to growl.
November 3rd. I blush to confess to this length of interval. I was obliged to break off this unfinished apology for something better and before I could resume it again I was obliged to go for several days up to town. Hence endless complications and further interruptions and delays. But meanwhile I have been reading further your Laura Bridgman, which has not only brought back a hundred old recollections and reverberations to me, things of the past, images and persons, which I more or less perceivingly knew about then, but has freshly reconstituted for me your father’s high distinction and the greatness of his beneficent career. When you last wrote me you told me of your mother and of her continued triumph over time. I hope it is even yet not seriously menaced, and I beg to be recalled to her indulgent remembrance. Your husband has my best wishes for whatever of beautiful and slow he may have in hand. To which I must add my goodnight before I am again interrupted and despoiled of the last tatters of what has tried to be the reparatory promptness of yours very constantly,
Henry James.
HENRY JAMES
At the age of twenty