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Lamb House,
Rye.

19th August, 1898

Dear Mrs. Strong,

I am very grateful for your note just received, but
rather distressed to find that your mother has not got a letter I
addressed to her at 34, Oxford Terrace some fortnight ago. Stay—I
see on re-reading you that she may have received it. It at first
seemed to me that you implied being without news of me. So much the
better, if you have had x very moderate quantity I did inflict on
you. I have had some from you, besides, through Mrs. Sitwell, to
whom I wrote asking for it; and woe is me that what she told me in
return was not better or braver. I have been meaning each day to
write to you again and tell you how much, in these days, I am with
you in thought. I can't sufficiently rejoice that you are out of
town in this fearful heat, which the air of London, as thick as the
wit of some of its inhabitants, must just now render peculiarly damn-
able. I rejoice too that you have, like myself, an old house in a

pretty old town and an old garden with pleasant old flowers. Further, I jubilate that you are within decent distance of dear old George Meredith, whom I tenderly love and venerate. But after that, I fear my jubilation ceases. I deeply regret the turn your mother's health has taken has not been, as it so utterly ought to, the right one. But if it has determined the prospect of the operation which is to afford her relief, I hope with all my heart that it will end by presenting itself to you as "a blessing in disguise." No doubt she would have preferred a good deal less disguise, but, after all, we have to take things as they come, and I throw myself into the deep comfort of gratitude that her situation has overtaken her in this country, where every perfect administration will surround her, rather than in your far-off insular abyss of mere—so to speak—picturesqueness. I should have been in that case, at the present writing, in a fidget too fierce for endurance, whereas I now can prattle to you thus quite balmily: for which you are all, no doubt, deeply grateful! Give her, please, at any rate, my tender love, and say to her that if London were actually at all accessible to me, I should dash

4968

down to her thence without delay, and thrust myself as far as would
be good for any of you into your innermost concerns. This would be
more possible to me later on if you should still be remaining a
while at Dorking—and, at any rate, please be sure that I shall man-
age to see you the first moment I am able to break with the com-
plications that, for the time, forbid me even a day's absence from
this place. I repeat, I repeat, that it eases my spirit immensely
that you have exchanged the planet Saturn, or whichever it is that's
the furthest, for this terrestrial globe. In short, between this
and October, many things may happen, and among them my finding the
right moment to drop on you. I hope all the rest of you thrive and
rusticate, and I feel awfully set up with your being, after your
tropic isle, at all tolerant of the hollyhocks and other garden pro-
duce of my adopted home. I am extremely busy trying to get on with
a belated serial—an effort in which each hour has its hideous value.
That is really all my present history—but to you all, it will mean
much, for you too have lived in Arcadia! I embrace you fondly—if
you kindly permit it—every one; beginning with the Babe, so as to
give me proper presumption, and working my way steadily up. Good-bye

LAMB HOUSE,
RYE.

December 20, 1898

Dear Mrs. Strong,

Forgive me, at the outset, for writing you in
this dictated and mechanical way, which, for reasons too numer-
pus to inflict on you, has at last become the rigid condition of
my getting through my correspondence at all. Your letter great-
ly touches me—I mean by reason of your really taking me for so
old and good a friend, and turning to me, in your so natural
and so unassuaged hunger for news, as to a probable source of in
formation about your mother. But it also plunges me into fresh
grief and shame; inasmuch as, precisely, thanks to all sorts of
perverse conditions—my absence, as you see, at the top—I
have practically remained as far away and as uninformed as your-
self. I have been absolutely confined to this place for the
last six months, and during the last several weeks had had it in
my head that she wouldn't leave England for wherever it might be

2

until after the new year; so that, completely shackled by my inability to go up to town before I had finished a hideously pressing piece of work, I was condemned, to my horror and sorrow, to hear of the departure for Madeira only after it had taken place. No one wrote me a word or made me a sign of its imminence; I am practically as far from stray echoes here as you are in New York; and they had been gone ten days before I even knew that Madeira had been definitely decided on. It made me really quite sick—for, not having been able to leave Rye even for a day, I was in the sad position of not having had, since your mother's illness, so much as a five-minutes' glimpse of her; and I feel as if she had gone off with a sense of my having rather neglected and forsaken her. It was all an inevitable fatality, produced by an exceptional state, on my part, of such bondage to work as left me no margin at all. All the same, had I only definitely known the time of their leaving, I would have dashed up for the day, throw-

3

LAMB HOUSE,
RYE.

ing everything to the winds. I have within a day or two heard
from Mrs. Sitwell of their safe arrival at Funchal, after a wild-
ish bit of voyage from Lisbon and a weary, weary interminability
of train to the latter place; and I am immediately writing to
Reid's New Hotel to pour out my compunction and regret. These
things will pass; she will come back here in the spring; Madeira
becomes piping hot, I have always heard, very early; and we will
embrace and all will be forgiven. In the meantime too she prob-
ably will have had a wonderfully beautiful, balmy and benevolent
winter, and find herself quite transformed and wound up. Yet it
does seem a strange fate for her to spend her life in being
carried off to remote tropical islands, difficult of access. It's a shame
of her, under these circumstances, to have made one so fond of
her. I only wish, however, that she had, attached to her person,
a correspondent. She ought to have one like a campaign or a
coronation. Your brother Lloyd, I seem to divine, is not one.

4

nor eke the wife; nor eke the babe.

I am delighted to hear of your boy's prosperity and prom
ise, and of his catching on to anything so big and wholesome and
beautiful as you describe: for which indeed I can well imagine,
in our unspeakable country, an almost infinite future. That is
if it were not for the polar winters—and the Senegambian sum-
mers. But Austin will take the thick with the thin and the hot
with the cold. Charming and interesting extremely is your ace
count of him and of his adventures. I wish much I could see him.

Well, I _shall_--for what more inevitable than that, as he gets
maturity and promotion, you should bring him over here again to
see all the wonders, in the line of his profession, that fos-
tering nature has achieved even in these northern isles.

English gardens are, I think, the ones I love best; and I look
upon a little one _here_ that is the joy of my heart--by reason,
partly, of the delightful old-very, very old-high brick wall

5

LAMB HOUSE,
RYE.

that surrounds it, overgrown with all sorts of pleasant old-
fashioned things, and coloured with equally pleasant old-fashione
pink and purple. I rejoice with you that you find New York in-
teresting, and am immensely touched by what you say of the way
dear old R. L. S. is still with you as a beautiful influence.

Altogether by itself seems to me—and more and more as time goes
on—the particular personal feeling, on the part of thousands
who never knew him, that he has left behind him in the world.

I know of nothing like it—and I greatly envy you being able so
fully and richly, out of your stores of knowledge, to meet it.

Please believe that I shall never again find myself near your
mother without turning to you—if you are not there too—with my
tidings of her. I fully counted—quite without your letter—on
wanting to write to you about her after seeing her (as I had no
dream of so utterly falling to do) this time. Kindly take the

34 De Vere Gdns. W.,
Moh. 20th (1889) 2

My dear Colvin,

This is so little a note of business, or of any prac-
tical commerce, that I shall be distressed if you take the trouble even
to answer it. It is only a retarded expression of interest in the cir-
cumstances of your too long absence, which I have had it at heart, always
ineffectually, a dozen times, to give. It is only when I hear that you
judge yourself better that I face the very qualified satisfaction I should
have had in telling in how friendly & troubled a spirit I participated in
your illness. People suffer & struggle, & we don't say things, & opportu-
nities go, & sympathy is obscured— but let me at least give you a cordial
sign, from city to city, with every wish for the fullest success of your
present business. There would be many things I should say to you if you
were here— so many of them that some have all the vitality to wait. We
have interests, friends & comprehensions in common— & it is a loss— to
me at least— when we seem never to discuss them. The finest point this
letter unfortunately can have is to beg you to not to defer, later, show-
ing me, by a word, that you have come back, that you may, if you kindly
will, break a crust with your, my dear Colvin,

34 De Vere Gardens, W.

Wednesday. (C. February, 1892).

My dear Colvin,

I don't see that in this admirable Epilogue, there
is a line to alter-- either by subtraction or addition. You have
said what you _had_ to, & said it with great tact. It is curious & it
will "help" the book; but I am not sure I don't regret the obligation,
which, at the same time (for Mrs. Fanny, etc.) I fully recognize. I
have a little pain at seeing a great man so emptied-- so pursued to
his innermost lair; the _sac_ so _vide_, the mystery, the backshop, the
personal i.e. the intellectual loneliness of the artist so invaded as
the hungry booksellers & newspapers insist more & more on its being. But
one is face to face with a public that gobbles as well as bullies-- and
it's all difficult, & nothing could be more considerate & adroit than
your hand. I hope all the rest of you-- other & baser organs & members
more matches it in perfection. Vale.

Ever yours,

Henry James

Sidney Colvin's note with the following letter says: *About 1869/70*
*dated by mourning for sister.*

It was while visiting this invalid sister at Bournemouth, that Henry James became so well acquainted with R. L. Stevenson and his wife. Mrs. Stevenson's letters are full of James's praise at this period.

It will be seen the following letter to Colvin by James speaks of a letter received from Mrs. Stevenson, who with her husband has been voyaging in the South Seas, telling of his improvement in health. And it should particularly be noticed that James states that under the circumstances R.L.S.'s work must suffer. James was here thinking much that he did not care to put into words on paper-- while he was a well-mannered, famous, socially prominent individual with all the hypootical gestures that must go with that, and his gestures were always kindly and made with care to cause no offense, and sometimes a warmth of interest he did not feel-- he deplored Stevenson's attachments and manner of life.

He here says that Stevenson has *much talent*-- not *genius*-- , and for talent to produce its highest, circumstances must aid it; circumstances Stevenson had deserted.

All Stevenson's real friends seemed agreed that his marriage and the acceptance of the burden of supporting his wife's family, was not the step to take him to further heights as an artist.

It was while visiting this invalid sister at Bournemouth, that Henry James became so well acquainted with R. L. Stevenson and his wife, Mrs. Stevenson's letters are full of James's praise at this period.

It will be seen the following letter to Colvin by James speaks of a letter received from Mrs. Stevenson, who with her husband has been voyaging in the South Seas, telling of his improvement in health. And it should particularly be noticed that James states that under the circumstances R.L.S.'s work must suffer. James was here thinking much that he did not care to put into words on paper-- while he was a well-mannered, famous, socially prominent individual with all the hypocritical gestures that must go with that, and his gestures were always kindly and made with care to cause no offense, and sometimes a warmth of interest he did not feel-- he deplored Stevenson's attachments and manner of life.

34 De Vere Gardens, W.

may 5.27 (1889-or 1890).

My dear Colvin,

Many thanks for Mrs. Fanny's very natural & interest-
ing letter-- doubly refreshing after her long silence. I wish, however,
she _generalized_ more, that it would give fewer "nigger" details and more
white ones. Yet those about Louis's wondrous lustiness are, after all,
white enough. In the face of such facts how can one grudge his really
_living_-- with such an apparent plentitude of physical life, no matter
how literature suffers? Oh, yes, I'm afraid it _must_ suffer, it can't
help it. But we must change our point of view, and be thankful for what
survives, what he can still give us. After all he has bien du talent!
I have a little note from him also-- but very, very casual & not worth
passing on to you. I am much touched by Mrs. Fanny's good message.-- Yes,
I depart either on Wednesday or Thursday next-- but I am sorry to say that
"quiet," either mornings or evenings, is very far from me meanwhile. The
evenings are all engaged & I am reduced, as my afternoons are the same--
from luncheon inclusively on-- to making appointments at _breakfast_-- a
terrible sigh of demoralization for me, & one that sounds, always the too-
sin for flight. But I shall do my best to commune with you, for 1/2 an hour,
before June 1st.

Always yours,

Henry James

Published in *The Letters of Henry James*.

34 De Vere Gardens W.,

Feb, 19th, 1895

My dear Colvin,

I shall send you all the Vailima Letters back tomorrow or next day by hand. I have completely read them. I can't say, or I don't want to say, anything of them but "Publish them-- they make the man so loveable." It's on _that_ I should take my stand. I think your estimate of them as ranking high in their class (epistolary) is perhaps (if I remember what you seemed to express of it) a larger one than I should concur in; but I think still more that that makes little difference; for they will assuredly be liked-- immensely, & that is mainly what one is concerned to ask for him. They are charming, living, touching, absolutely natural; & I think better toward the end than at the beginning. What they suffer from is: I-- Want of interest or want of clearness as to the subject-matter of much of them-- the Samoan personalities, politics, &c.; all to me almost squalid-- & the irritating effects on one's sense of his clearing the very ground to be able to do his daily work. Want also to a certain extent of _generalization_ about all these matters & some others-- into the dreary specifics of which the reader perhaps finds himself plunged too much. 2-- A certain tormenting effect in his literary confidences (to you), glimpses, promises, revelations &c; arising from his so seldom taking the subject, the _idea_ of the thing-- what he sees, what he wants to do &c-- as against his pouring forth titles, chapters, divisions, names &c. in such magnificent abundance.-- On the other hand the personality shines out so beautiful & there are so many charming things-- passages, pages-- that not to publish them would seem to me like the burial of something alive. I see but little in what you have left in these copies to exise on grounds of discretion, unless it be many of those reports of the state of public affairs or allusions to public personages which are primarily excisable by reason of obscurity, failure to appeal to reader's interest, &c. But I should like to see you & talk about the matter with you better than thus: & shall take the earliest occasion. The hideous sadness of them to us! To readers at large-- no. But I feel as I had been sitting with him for hours.

Yours always

Henry James

Sidney Colvin's notation to this letter is: "*Referring I think to
the publication of Across the Plains with some introductory words by
S. C. 189- ?*"

The "admirable Epilogue" to which Henry James refers in the follow-
ing letter, is to _Across the Plains_; It is dated February 1892, and the
book was issued that year. The publication of this work during R. L.
Stevenson's lifetime, was a ticklish affair on account of the scandal
associated with the journey that supplied the text, so he perhaps to per-
vade it with an odour of sanctity, as it were, by having the conservative
Colvin draw a herring across the manuscript. But, as Henry James says,
Colvin said what he had to (he preferred to say nothing), and said it with
great tact. Actually, the tact amounted to Colvin saying practically
nothing:-- "It is your prose the public wish to read, not mine," he begins,
then dashes into acknowledgments to publishers, and concludes by being
grateful that the South Sea has breathed new life into R.L.S.

The publication of this record, _Across the Plains_, violated Henry
James feeling for the fitness of things, his letter following leaves no
doubt as to his opinion of selling for cash for public consumption such
material. Again, in his usual indirect way with friends, he only implies
what he believes, he blames hungry booksellers and newspapers for the bad
taste of exposing Stevenson to his "innermost lair," instead of condemning
outright the Osbourne family for whose support Stevenson is emptied to
such depths.

Unpublished.

34 De Vere Gardens. W.

July 5, 1895

My dear Colvin,

Now that you have been so good as to let me read W. of H. you must
also let me add a word to what I said to you a day or two since in sending you back
the MS. It weighs on my spirit greatly that there shouldk as I gathered from what
you said, be a danger that the publication of this magnificent thing may be postponed
to treat of other things-- may not take place until the "psychological moment" is
passed. And you didn't even tell me *why*-- I mean what will be *gained* by this dread-
ful delay. I can't tell you how I hope so grave a mistake won't be made. Surely Mrs.
Stevenson doesn't desire it? Has she expressed any suoh wish? The moment for the
book to appear seems to me, overwhelmingly, to be the moment at which the emotion caus-
ed by Louis's death, & by the general knowledge that he had left a great piece, a su-
preme piece, of wor, unfinished, keeps the imagination of the public still *warm* about
him and makes the work count double as a contribution to his fame. For God's sake
let us have in this year of his death the thing he was so splendidly doing when he died!
It will deepen immeasurely all our sense of loss-- & that sense of loss will add to our
tenderness for the other things. If those come first (did you tell me there are 2 of
them?) the sense of loss will-- as they are inferior-- be cruelly less, & the whole
air cold for *Hermiston* when it does come. I must tell you frankly that I should re-
gard that as a great calamity & a grave unkindness to his memory. I can't imagine
any reason for our taking the other things first that is not a reason of an order al-
together inferior to this consideration that touches so the very essence of Louis's
*honour*. Do let me say to you very positively that I hope you will do everything in
your power to make it easy & feasible that *Hermiston* shall come to us with all the
sacred beauty of its *hour*; & do above all let me hear if Mrs. Louis *has* pronounced.

Yours, my dear Colvin, ever

Henry James.

(Note: *The Weir of Hermiston* was published serially in *Cosmopolis*, Jan.-April, 1896, and in book form the same year).

Unpublished.

Osborne Hotel: Torquay.

Sept. 21st. '95

My dear Colvin,

G. Balfour has just forwarded me Burlingame's letter to you of Sept 3rd, which I suppose he means me to return to yourself & which I therefore enclose. I have no reason, I confess, to think particularly to serve as a convenience to Burlingame-- but that of course is not the way to look at it: it only shows, at most, how complicated life is. If his contention is just that the publication of *Hermiston* (I mean the success of the same, I can be helped by any reference to my high opinion of the fragment, he is welcome to make that reference in any way in which you may have assented, or be disposed to assent, to any similar reference to your own pronouncement. I shall be comforted by the company and the cause. Will you kindly say this to him-- in anything you may be saying on the matter? I rejoice afresh that the thing is to be, all the same, a *Scribner* matter-- & an early one. I hope you are still in Scotland-- if the Scotch September is resembling this exquisite Devonshire one. I am here stubbornly till Nov. 1st. I couldn't go home if I would: my place is full for workmen. I hope your lungs are filled with the wherewithal to go through the long London tunnel. The Bourgets are still here!

Bien des choses to Mrs. Sitwell!

Yours evermore

Henry James.

Unpublished.

Lamb House, Rye.

September 27th, 1899

My dear Colvin,

I am very sorry you are troubled by having heard of what Lloyd Osbourne put upon me-- for I assure you there isn't the slightest need of your being so any more than I was myself. I went-- in town-- the day (or 2 days) before she sailed to bid good-bye to Fanny S., & before I left her Lloyd came in, & there, in her presence, associating her, as it were, with the request, which, for me, came from both of them, asked me to read some letters he had had type-copied. I was far from eager to do so, but I gave them leave to send them-- almost solely because I thought, felt, it ungracious to her, whom I was seeing for the last moments I ever should here below, to absolutely refuse. They came, I looked them over, & I returned them-- expressing to Lloyd my satisfaction that the question of the Life had been settled, definitely, for his mother, by your relinquishment of it-- as I have been proposing to myself to express to you, in still more definite terms, as soon as I should see you. I have been equally intending to let you know, as soon as we met again, that I had looked at the documents so placed before me: with the main definite result for me of being, frankly, extremely glad & relieved for yourslef, in particular, that you have no longer that burden on your shoulders. That impression-- of satisfaction in the closure of the incident, was the only clear impression I derived; not feeling, when once the papers were before me, that they were, frankly, much my affair, & not going into them save for a moment. I shall tell you better than I can do here, when we meet, that I really rejoice in your renouncement. It was an impossible business to my sense, & an impossible relation, & if I had been neared to you earlier in the whole history (the best years of it,) I should have taken the liberty of advising you in that sense; feeling so, I mean, that I myself should have long before given up. Therefore I am grieved to find that any expiring wave of it still worries you. For heaven's sake let that cease. I shall tell you

later on much more fully _why_ I hold the biography question less urgent, at your
hands, than you have struck me as feeling it. It is, roughly speaking, because
I can't but consider that with your admirable D. N. B. article, the Vailima Let-
ters and the so abundantly personal & autobiographic new volume (with all your
notes) Louis (the most _self-recording_, into the bargain, of all writers) has been,
with all respect, sufficiently biographised. Everything that _has_ been done is
a massive monument; the Edinburgh edition is _itself_ essentially that; & your hand
is, intensely, in all. Requiescat! There! But come down & see me here some
day next month & I shall put this to you with more nuances. My brother William
& his wife & daughter are arriving from one day to the other to spend 2 or 3 weeks
with me (from Nauheim, alas— for _him_!) & I can't mention, I'm sorry to say, till
after they go, any date. They take up all my room. But as soon as I see the coast
clear, let me make you a sign. I'm delighted to gather you are better for Scotland
& not less so that Mrs. Sitwell is. Please give her my kindest remembrance. Be,
my dear Colvin, at _peace_, & believe me very constantly yours,

Henry James

Unpublished.

Lamb House, Rye.

September 28, 1899

My dear Colvin,

I greatly grieve to learn from your note that anything I have
done has had the effect-- however completely unwitting-- of being, for you, a dis-
service. This was the very opposite, I need hardly tell you, of what I most par-
ticularly desired. I had no wish whatever (-- but every wish, of the intensest
character, the other way,) to be approached by Lloyd on the question of any matter
connected with the Life-- to that degree that on the possibility that this might
happen, I was preparing to do my great personal sympathy for Fanny S. the violence
of _sinking_ the pilgrimage (up to town hence,) promised her 4 or 5 weeks previous, to
bid her good-bye. On the supposition that Lloyd was with her, I han an apprehen-
sion that he might speak to me-- & I wanted only to escape it. But he wired to me,
on his mother's behalf, 2 days before she departed, & then of course, I went up. I
lunched with her & she was gentleness & kindness & touchingness itself, & after
lunch Lloyd came in. The appeal to me to look at certain Letters he had had type-
copied I took to be an appeal, primarily, to look at letters of his _own_-- even as
to which I gave my assent with great reluctance, after at first refusing it & in
the hope that he would later on think better of his plan of sending them & not do so.
He did, however, do so, & I immediately saw, on looking at his documents, which I
could only bring myself to do after they had been several days in the house, that it
was a question of a complicated correspondence, whose complications it concerned me
not at all to follow. I contented myself simply with perceiving that it was com-
plicated, & from this fact & other circumstances, which were all I took any cogni-
sance of whatever, proceeded to be definite to me.

1 That Fanny S. was unhappy, distressed & deaprtng.

2 That you had finally withdrawn from the field of the Life (the actual).

3 That I myself would, in the situation, have withdrawn a good while before.

The very little I said to Lloyd in returning him his papers (as to which,
when he spoke of them to me in town, I never doubted that they were things of
understood publicity,) bore solely on the 1st & 2nd of the above facts; & I never
dreamed that in expressing (which was what I did express) my appreciation of his
mother's relief at leaving with the question settled & the complications solved
behind her, I was putting anything like a weapon in his hands. What I desired to
say for her was what I should have said, certainly, in respect to any similar with-
drawal of my own, If he can strike with my words I can't help thinking it will be
a blow of which you won't be conscious-- or any one else. It was for his mother,
distinctly, that I spoke-- as I knew he would immediately say to her again (write
to her) anything I said; except for her I should have said nothing; which, after
all, is, at any cost, doubtless, always wisest-- & what is rather ignobly called
safest! Voila. Excuse my sprawling pages-- I can only write skating,-- I am
very uncertain (& a good deal anxious & worried) as to the state in which my broth-
er will reach England-- but I fear it will be a condition demanding at best a
great deal of quietude, very little circulation & almost no London. But I shall
soon see-- & I hope you will indeed come down as soon as may be thereafter.

Believe me yours always,

Henry James.

Lamb House, Rye.

Wednesday midnight.

(Oct. 1899)

My dear Colvin,

Many things *delayed* hindered my quietly & immediately reabsorbing
the continuity of the two gathered volumes, & I have delayed till this the acknow-
ledgement of your letter (sent a few days after them,) I having already written
(hadn't I?) before the letter arrived. I have spent much of the last 2 days with
them-- beautifully & sadly enough. I think you need have no doubts as to the
impression the constituted book will make-- it will be one of extraordinarily rare,
particular & individual beauty. I want to write about it really critically, if I
can-- i.e. intelligently & interpretatively-- but I sigh before the difficulty.
Still, I shall probably try. One thing it seems to me I foresee-- i.e. a demand
for *more* letters. There *are* more publishable?-- aren't there? But you will tell
me of this. How extraordinarily fine the long (almost last of all) one to his cou-
sin Bob! If there were only more *de cette force*, But there couldn't be. "I
*think* I think" the impression more equal than you do-- indeed some of the early ones
better than the earlier ones after expatriation. But the while series reek with
charm & hum with genius. It will serve as a *high* memorial-- by which I mean as a
large (comprehensive) one. Remember that I shall be delighted to see you on the 18th.
I may be alone-- or Jon Sturges may be here. Probably nessun' altro. Please commu-
nicate your decision as to this at your convenience. It not *then*, then on one of the
next Saturdays I hope?-- What horribly overdarkening S. African news. One must
sit close-- but for too long.

P.S. Re-reading your letter makes me feel I haven't perhaps answered enough

your query about early Vol.I. I don't, however, see what you need to be uneasy
about. The young flame of life & agitation of genius in them flickers & heaves
only to make one regret whatever (more) is *not* there; *never* to make one feel your
discretion has anywhere been at fault. I'm not sure I don't think it has erred
a little on the side of over-suppression. One has the vague sense of omissions
& truncations-- one smells the thing unprinted. However, that doubtless had to
be. But I don't see *any* mistake you have made. With less, there would have been
no history-- & one wants what made, what makes for his history. It *all* does--
& so would more. But you have given nothing that valuably doesn't. Be at peace.

H. J.

Partially published in *The Colvins and Their Friends*, p.278

Lamb House, Rye.

November 16, 1899

My dear Colvin,

I ought already to have signified to you my pride & pleasure
in receiving the 2 vols. of the Letters—which though they come labelled as
from Lloyd, must reach me practically, also, I think, much by your care. What a
beautifully & lordly book! It is precisely because I have been occupied in <u>saying</u> that, these last 3 or 4 days, that I have left myself time for nothing else.
I have done for the January no. of the <u>North American Review</u> such an article as
I <u>could</u>, under pressure of some haste. [ I hope it will serve a little the pub-
lication (little as that, evidently, is needed,) but I found it, somehow, diffi-
cult. I mean the avoidance of mere newspaper -ism and cheap reviewing on the
one (the "familiar") hand, & the distant & over-solemn on the other. But it is,
practically, my only possible— & I trust they will leave me my slight excess of
their meagre space. How the book is, clearly, "Taking"— & dating!— in spite
of an extraordinarily common little column about it (though fervid) in the new
"Review of the Week"— which won't live to be old. I wish there could be a
<u>French</u> calling of attention. But this is a bad moment. ]

Yours ever,

Henry James

Published in *The Colvins and Their Friends*, Vol. 278, No. 9
with the exception of text between red brackets.

Lamb House, Rye,

January 26, 1900

My dear Colvin,

Please don't consider my delay in thanking you for your letter about my R.L.S. in the N. A. R. due to any failure of extreme pleasure in receiving. It has all been quite other frsutrations. I am definitely gratified by what you have to say of it-- all the more that I but very barely indeed contented myself. I don't know why I found him so difficult-- but I did. Partly, doubtless, because he has been so much be-written-- in an inferior way. And I left unsaid all the really critical (I mean closely analytic) things about his talent, manner, literary idiosyncrasies, views &c-- the things one would have like most to say. But the conditions of space, attention, in which any literary criticism that is not the best hand to mouth journalism can get itself uttered at all now, are too beggarly for one's courage. You are quite right-- wholly-- about my being in places too entortillé. I am always in places too entortillé-- & the effort of my scant remaining years is to make the places fewer.

[I] shall be delighted to see you down here for any Sunday you may propose yourself-- I only feel a delicacy now (I mean in this odious weather-- it rains here every day & all day & is fine only in the vain might.) about proposing to a friend to come & find me utterly alone (my brother & his wife are at Carqueronne (Var.) & be, thank heaven, already the better for it,) in the still short days & long evenings, with muddy roads, muddled views & no one to "meet." Bit it's just these conditions that would make a benefaction-- to me-- of a descent. Let it be-- for the coast is clear far ahead-- whenever le coeur vous en dit. I sit & gloom here in solitude over the "news." But are gloomy crowds better? Heaven mend the prospect.

Yours, my dear Colvin, ever

Henry James

Published in *The Colvins & Their Friends*, vol 1928, pp. 282-284
*excepting text between red brackets.*

Irving St.,
Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.

Jan.5, 1911

My dear Colvin,

I am delighted exceedingly to find myself again in communication
with you, however belatedly-- & I fear even this response to your so interesting
letter with the R. L. S. questions will seem to you tardy indeed. I have such ar-
rears of information to make up in the way of reporting of myself that the mere vi-
sion frightens me off that ground-- all the more that I _can't_ report of myself now
even if I would-- I mean by reason of the fact that my long & difficult convales-
cence from a most damnable & distressful illness is in itself too subject to fluctu-
ation-- frustration, & that the slow, stiff, weary climb up-hill has slips & retro-
gressions that often belie my hopes, as well, I hasten to add, as advances or recoup-
erations that frequently reassure my fears. I have had, alas, a hideous, a terrible,
a tragio year-- & have been in this appalling country (as my exasperated sensibility
forces me to feel it) since August last. I have just taken my passage to England
again-- but only for June 14th, so that I have a terrible bit yet to wait. Meantime
the sorest homesickness, the sharpest pangs of the exile, will be my daily portion--
& yet I have reasons for remaining that make that anghish a matter of comparative
indifference to me. I cling to this particular rooftree (my beloved brother's) in
order to hold fast slightly the longer to his cherished shade, & to be with my admir-
able sister-in-law & my so interesting & delightful nephews & niece (4 in all & the
youngest aetatis 19;) they clinging also as closely to me & constituting almost the
only society for which I am just now fit.-- The two Louis letters of which you send
me copies come back to me from so far off like small pale fluttering ghosts & fill me
with a thrill of tenderness. Use them by all means-- they deserve immortalization,
& oh do indeed let me have the originals & the other originals, as soon as I get home.

The Solution," alluded to in one of the notes is simply the title of a little old tale of mine, of years ago, published at that time in some periodical & reprinted in a Maomillan volume that had for its designation "The Lesson of the Master"— the 1st story of 1/2 a dozen. (It is not included in the quasi-collected editions of my products, but perhaps will be in some supplementary volume.) Fanny S. will be a bigger fool than I ever took her for if she resents the lovely description of their domestic broil. It helps to commemorate her & makes her interesting— & just so, I feel sure, she will rejoice. By the same token don't hesitate to print the passage about Meredith tel quel— leaving the "humbugging" untouched. The word ... isn't invidiously but pictorially & caressingly used— as with a rich, or vague, loose synthetic suggestion. Who in the world is there today to complain of it? Voila! There is much I should like to say to you, but we are here still more or less buried under the measureless avalanche of letters ensuing on my brother's death— & of which I have had my share. Thereby the letter still soares me— or at least finds me depleted. I greet her ladyship very devotedly— all faithfully & tenderly— You tell me little of yourself but you write bravely & I wish you both all continued courage & cheer. It will be a great hour when I see you again.

Yours always & ever

Henry James

*   **The Solution:** R.L.S. wrote to Henry James, Feb. 19, 1890, congratulating him its exquisite art. Printed in The Letters.

**   **The broil:** R.L.S. wrote to Henry James, Jan. 1887, describing a row he and his wife had had— the letter is printed in The Letters of R.L.S.

***   **Meredith:** R.L.S. wrote to Henry James, March 1886, of Meredith, saying he contained a high mixture of veracity and intellectual humbug. Printed in The Letters.

Unpublished.

34 De Vere Gardens. W.

August 27 (1895)

My dear Gosse,

Why, I feel as if I had done nothing but write to you! I answered
immediately your first from the Bel Alp & here I am at it again. If I have a modesty
about being at it every day it is that it seems a poor thing to show you that while
you are wallowing in the eternal snows & flirting with princes of the church, I am
only hanging about these empty courts & riding on the tops of penny busses. But I
**have** had an adventure-- I have spent 3 days at Folkestone, from which I have just
returned-- going there to say Howdydo to my melancholy old friend Du Maurier, melan-
choly in spite of the chink-- what say I, the "chink"?-- the deafening roar of sor-
did gold flowing in to him from the **intarissable** _Trilby_ (the **play** is a 2nd gold mine,)
& preparing to flow in from its completed successor. He was just arranging that ques-
tion. I came back feeling an even worse failure than usual, & your luxurious letter
only deepens my blush.

You seem to announce your descent from là-haut, but you don't tell
me where this graceful flutter alights. Not in Delamere Terrace I opine-- I don't
dare to assume you return hither so soon, & fear there is no chance of my drinking in
your reminiscences before I leave town again-- till November 1st, in all probability,
on Sept 5th. The humility of my situation leaves me absolutely nothing to tell you
save that I admire equally your vivid letters & your pedestrian piety. Very beauti-
ful & brave your monument to poor Eyre. May you not however interweave with it any
of your own bones. Wonderful your description of the sister & her brilliant grief--
& strange to have to hang that way over the vertiginous gulf. I'm glad, for the rest,
that you have the chatter of the Gaul about you rather than the expectoration of his
viotor. You make me long for a gossip with your noctambulist viscountess-- apropos

and seem bent on taking their affairs out of his hands. This will be difficult, but
may become necessary I fear. I am having now (for the first time) a struggle with
him over a matter vital to L's memory and the interests of those he has left behind.
This for the present please regard as absolutely confidential." (Original letter in
the Beinecke Collection).

The day was shortly to come when Colvin himself would have to smart from the
anger and contempt of the glory-seeking, money-loving mother and son, and when they
were finished with him, his own condition was more than deplorable-- and Baxter
was often the buffer between them, the balance, the mediator, until the row was over.

Unpublished.

Lamb House, Rye.

August 30th, 1899

My dear Lloyd,

Please excuse my having kept your valuable packet of letters more
days than I at all meant to do on receiving it. At the time it arrived, there
arrived also a considerable strain on my attention in the form of 2 old American
friends, to spend 3 days, one of whom is an invalid (still with me) to be much
arranged for, & this at a moment of particular hurry-- at of course some belated
work: so that till this evening I havnt had the full attention or free mind I
desired to give. But I have now read your documents with those needful adjuncts,
& I return them to you, with thanks, by this post but in a separate envelope (from
this letter.) They make me understand, I think, what you wished-- the definite-
ly business-like nature of your mother's arrangements with our friend-- & also,
above all, the inevitability of the change of authorship of the Life; & my satis-
faction that this change is a completely settled matter is so much, in the connec-
tion, my predominant emotion, that it is really the only one I need as the case
finally stands, express:-- unless it be indeed that I do say how very interesting
& dramatic & human, all round, I have found the correspondence. Louis would have
been delighted with it! All's well, at any rate, that ends well, & I am very glad
your mother was able to depart without any further suspense added to the effects of
these latter years of tension. It was a deep satisfaction to me to spend those last
two or three hours with her & see her so natural & tranquil & noble, so just as what
may possibly be for me a last memory of her will be most happy to show her & keep
her always. But too sad & grave for words are all inevitable ends-- so far indeed
as they are ends. The end, after all (of some manner of talk with her) is not yet.
I wish her a brave, or at least a bearable voyage. And the same to you & your wife
when the days come. I shall not bid you good-bye yet-- so glad shall I be to see
you again-- should the chance of my being once more in town help it. I may have to
fold your packet a little differently for another envelope's sake, but without dis-
figurement, I hope. With kind remembrances to your wife & my benediction to the boy,
believe me, my dear Lloyd,

Yours very faithfully

Henry James.

Lamb House, Rye.

September 25, 1900

Dear Mrs. Sitwell,

Very kind, very charming, very welcome your note. I'm delighted it was prompted by perusal's and pleasures. Such echoes rarely come to me— & I thank you the more. Very remote & romantic you sound to me all, & rusticating in conditions of ideal irregularity: by which I mean nothing worse than that if one has a house, in a little south-coast prosy town, on one's back, a pang of envy seizes at the image of faraway nests in the northern weather, improvised haunts of the eagle & the grouse! My ornithology may be wrong, but my vision I feel it roughly true. I greet very cordially both your comrades & send them lively congratulations on each other & on you. Tell Colvin from me, please, that I encountered him— his Doppelganger— today, as it oddly happened, at the good bicycle-man's of this place, in the shape of a gentleman so startlingly & utterly & completely resembling him in every particular of face & form that it constituted the strongest approach to identity (through similarity) that I've ever encountered. He was cycling through & having a repair done, & while he waited, & I waited, I couldn't help asking him if by chance there was any one he had ever been taken for. He said No— with a good conscience apparently— & left me to marvel at the truth of my favourite theory— that nobody ever observes anything: nobody but me! I do come back to town this year; but later I fear, before Xmas. I thank Colvin & Ethel most kindly again for their part in your communication & beg them to aid me in getting you to pardon the stupidity of these midnight— more than midnight— weak & wandering words. Good night & good health!

Yours always,

Henry James

HENRY JAMES to R.L.S.

[?London]

n.d.

Dear Stevenson,

I will come down on Saturday afternoon to spend Sunday & Monday, will go to the Highcliffe Hotel, & be with you as of yore, as soon as I have eaten a hasty chop. I want for the hours of our reunion. Archer is fine & really very clever. It comes over me that I never did send you the last Bostonians, [s[en]t] you with this. Pray god you are pretty well. Love to your dear wife.

H. James