BIB_ID
396928
Accession number
MA 8732.14
Creator
James, Henry, 1843-1916.
Display Date
[1890] Sept. 29.
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Description
1 item (6 pages) ; 17.5 x 11.3 cm
Notes
Part of a collection of letters from Henry James to Dr. William W. Baldwin between 1887 and 1900 (MA 8732.1-75). This collection is part of a much larger collection of letters to Dr. Baldwin from authors, English royalty and other luminaries of the period, including Samuel Clemens, William Dean Howells, Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry Cabot Lodge, Booth Tarkington, Edith Wharton and Constance Fenimore Woolson. See MA 3564 for more information on the complete Baldwin collection.
Written on stationery embossed with "34, De Vere Gardens, / W."
Written on stationery embossed with "34, De Vere Gardens, / W."
Provenance
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Summary
Thanking him for his letter, apologizing for the delay in his reply; expressing his relief "...that you were at the end of your danger & shock that I perhaps assumed at first too much that this was all your letter was meant to prove, & rested on the contentment of it...I am afraid that the hideous accident - the monstrous infamous disaster you have just been having on that beautiful hillside of Fiesole, will have set all your nerves in motion again. What an infinite possible reverberation in the misdeed of a drunken ass! Your account of your dreams & hauntings is very curious & interesting - but may the ghost soon be laid forever;" relating news of the weather in England saying "...we have been having (to make up for the ethereal brutality during the time you were here) a really exquisite month. It goes on still, with lovely nights & a big Italian moon; relating details of his visit to Miss Woolson who "...regaled me with anecdotes of your visit, all calculated to make me try to walk in your footsteps & be not less remunerative a guest. I thought her refuge pleasant & comfortable enough for a time, but only for a time. And I left her more than ever struck with her capacity for solitude & concentration. The days are shortening, the lamps come on earlier & with this closing round me of London, the black & the grim Italy becomes more & more of a romance, a lovely myth (as always, after I leave it;) so that, at least, by the time I am ready to go back to it I shall have quite ceased to believe in it. I shall return on trust & with a simple faith. Your visit here prolonged the reality a little - but even that is fast becoming a fairy tale. Please tell Mrs. Baldwin that her great gentilezza to me is what remains with me most. And Fritz & Phil, the feeling of their soft & innocent flesh (what a menagerie of lambs!) There is a certain illusion about that still. But may everything be very real & solid & palpable & profitable to you, my dear Baldwin till we next meet..."
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