To Miss Grace Ashburner.
6 PIAZZA DELL INDIPENDENZA
FLORENCE, Oct. 19, 1892.
My dear Grace,—It is needless to say that your long and delightful reply written by Theodora's self-effacing hand reached us duly, and that I have "been on the point" of writing to you again ever since. That "point" as you well know, is one to which somehow one seems long to cleave without jumping off. But at last here goes—irrevocably! I did not expect that in your condition you would be either so conscientious or so energetic as to send so immediate and full a return, and I must expressly stipulate, my dear old friend, that the sole condition upon which I write now is that you shall not feel that I expect a single word of answer. (Needless to say, however, how much any infringement of this condition on your part will be enjoyed.)
Well! Cold and wet drove us out of Switzerland that first week in September, though, as it turned out, we should have had a fine rest of the month if we had stayed. We crossed the Simplon to Pallanza on Lake Maggiore, where we stayed ten days, till the bad fare made us sick; and then came straight to Florence by the 21st. As almost no strangers had arrived, we had the pick of all the furnished apartments, most of which threatened great bleakness or gloominess for the winter, with their high ceilings, and some rooms in all of them lit from court or well. Our family seems to be of the maximum size for which apartments are made! We found but this one into all the rooms of which the sun can come either before- or after-noon. It is clean, and abundantly furnished with sofas and chairs, but not a "convenience for housekeeping" of any kind whatsoever. No oven in which to make the macaroni au gratin, no place to keep more than a week's supply of charcoal, or I fear more than three or four days' supply of wood for the fire when the cold weather comes, as come it will with a vengeance, from all accounts. I hope our children won't freeze!
Harry and Billy started school at last two days ago, and glad I am to see them at it. In the immortal words of our townsman Rindge in his monumental inscription, "every man" (and "every" boy!) "should have an honest occupation."[101] What they need is comrades of their own age, and competitive play and work, rather than monuments of antiquity or landscape beauty. Animal, not vegetable or mineral life is their element. The school is English, they'll get no more French or German there than at Browne and Nichols's [school at home] and they'll have to begin Italian, I'm afraid, which will be pure interruption and leave not a rack behind after they've been home a year. Still one mustn't always grumble about one's children, and they are getting an amount of perception over here, and a freedom from prejudices about American things and ways, which will certainly be of general service to their intelligence, and be worth more to them hereafter than their year would have been if spent in drill for the Harvard exams—even if what they lose do amount to a whole year, which I much doubt. But I think it may be called certain that they shan't be kept abroad a second year!
For ourselves, Florence is delicious. I have a sort of organic protestation against certain things here, the toneless air in the streets, which feels like used-up indoor air, the "general debility" which pervades all ways and institutions, the worn-out faces, etc., etc. But the charming sunny manners, the old-world picturesqueness wherever you cast your eye, and above all, the magnificent remains of art, redeem it all, and insidiously spin a charm round one which might well end by turning one into one of these mere northern loungers here for the rest of one's days, recreant to all one's native instincts. The stagnancy of the thermometer is the great thing. Day after day a changeless air, sometimes sun and sometimes shower, but no other difference except possibly from week to week the faintest possible progress in the direction of cold. It must be very good for one's nerves after our acrobatic climate. We have an excellent man-cook, the most faithful of beings, at two and a half dollars a week. He never goes out except to market, and understands, strange to say, the naked Latin roots without terminations in which we hold unsweet discourse with him. But on Dante and Charles Norton's admirable "pony" I am getting up the lingo fast!
All this time I am saying nothing about you or your sister, or the dear Childs, or the Nortons, or anyone. Of your own condition we have got very scanty news indeed since your letter.... Perhaps Theodora will just sit down and write two pages,—not a letter, if she isn't ready; but just two pages—to give some authentic account of how the fall finds you all, especially you. I hope the opium business and all has not given you additional trouble, and that the pain has not made worse havoc than before. When one thinks of your patience and good cheer, my dear, dear Grace, through all of life, one feels grateful to the Higher Powers for the example. Please take the heartfelt love of both of us, give some to your dear sister and to Theodora, and believe me ever your affectionate,
WM. JAMES.
Love too, to the Nortons, old and young, and to the Childs.