BIB_ID
397198
Accession number
MA 8732.55
Creator
James, Henry, 1843-1916.
Display Date
1895 June 2.
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 17.9 x 11.3 cm + envelope
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 "34, De Vere Gardens. W."
Written on stationery embossed "34, De Vere Gardens. W."
Provenance
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Summary
Discussing news of mutual friends, plans for the summer and the earthquake in Florence; thanking him for his "Very welcome, very touching...letter, very fertile in the usual consequences of all communications from Italy a this time of the year - homesickness, sehnsucht unutterable. I am tied tight to the soil of Britain this year - & in truth even if I had been free to cross the Alps, I don't know where I should have gone. The loved Venice, last year, was (through its Western hordes) a [illegible] of the impossible, & the loved Florence must have been drenched all spring - & be so even now - with the American overflow (in addition to its own regular saturation) of the loved Rome. So here I am, till I go to the country. I rejoice you are able to tell me that you have 'done well' this winter. I wish I could say as much. I have had a fruitless 6 months, with gout, sore throats, a futile month's visit to Ireland, interruptions innumerable, & just lately, to finish, the whole Alphonse Daudet family, 7 persons, over from Paris for three weeks of the crowded May, to give me a chance of showing them London & taking all the care of them. But things are better now, & I am really (illegible) very well. You tell me nothing of your later plans & I pray God they don't include a scamper across the Atlantic. Are the Appenines again to possess you? I wish you all rest & peace & family felicity. I get no clear idea of your horrid earthquake - that is of its effects - It appears to have had some grave ones - è vero? People tell me here that Sir T. Dick Lauder's happy home is all wrenched off its balance, & that Mrs. Ross's towers are laid low. They must indeed have been hideous minutes. Che orrori! But turn over & go to sleep. Our earthquake, here, has been social - human - sexual (if that be the word when its all one sex). You probably followed in some degree the O[scar]. W[ilde]. horrors. It's a very squalid tragedy but still a tragedy. Basta. I shld. like to hear Taccini on the terromoto; almost the sort of thing to start it up again! I spend July, August & September at some [illegible] seaside. Won't you be coming as far as this?"
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