BIB_ID
397012
Accession number
MA 8732.24
Creator
James, Henry, 1843-1916.
Display Date
"Wednesday" [1892 June 8].
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Description
1 item (6 pages) ; 17.4 x 11.3 cm + envelope
Notes
Date of letter from postmark. James simply dates the letter as "Wednesday."
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 mourning stationery from the Hotel de Sienne, Siena.
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 mourning stationery from the Hotel de Sienne, Siena.
Provenance
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Summary
Informing him "...that I have become, within the last 24 hours, your neighbour. I left London on Saturday last & made straight for this place...The motive of this very direct journey has been to join here, before they leave Siena, & spend 2 or 3 weeks with, my dear old French friend Paul Bourget, who with his new young wife, has been spending the winter in Rome & has lately come to Siena for a short stay before leaving Italy for the summer - I promised them this visit two months ago, & innumerable delays have since intervened. At last, however, I got off, & can as yet scarcely believe in my happiness in having arrived. The impression of this dear old place - the total impression of Italy - is thank heaven, as sweet to me, as adorable as ever. The weather, the temperature, the air that I find here are all wonderfully to my taste. My present plan is to stop to the end of the month - after which I have a slight idea of going to Venice for ten days - But I shall stop in Florence to embrace you, to spend as many as possible good hours near you. How I shall enjoy a long talk with you! Wouldn't it refresh you to come down for a day while I am here? Think of this - it would give me such pleasure. I shall write you again in a few days when my immediate future takes a more definite shape. I hope your house & all its inmates are not otherwise than blooming. Please give my friendship greeting to your wife. Tell Taccini that if I were not here I should be at Volterra. Give me of your news, my dear Baldwin & let it be of the best & believe how much I like to think that I am at last near you again."
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