BIB_ID
397207
Accession number
MA 8732.58
Creator
James, Henry, 1843-1916.
Display Date
1896 Jan. 2.
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Description
1 item (6 pages) ; 17.8 x 11.2 cm + envelope
Notes
It is possible James is referring to Willard Fiske (1831-1904) to whom he referred in an earlier letter (MA 8732.33).
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."
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."
Provenance
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Summary
Thanking him for his "2 beautiful letters"; saying "They tell me a great deal that is charming (about your children for instance) together with a little that is horrid (about that bloated little egotist Fisk & his midnight messages - which I hope were expensive ones). But nothing is of (comparative) consequence save their telling me that you are really to rest. Blessed Mr. Murri to have taken you in hand! The only thing is that you don't tell me when; & here's the winter half over & Biskra in danger of getting hot, & still you depart not. I hope you really don't mean to delay much longer for I think of you anxiously & impatiently. It is excellent news that your brother is coming - it is the least, I should say, he ought to do, for I know you have been exceedingly good to him. Don't wait for him - be off. be off. I have heard wonders of Biskra & would give anything to be going with you. But my travelling days are over - though I shall come to Italy again. The air is darkened here, with the preposterous American explosion of jingoism - a thing that makes me feel how long I've been away from the U.S. & how little I know the masses there today. There won't be war (for Venezuela!) - it's unthinkable, but the outbreak of a big aggressive policy across the Atlantic is a stupefying hideosity. Don't talk (as regards yourself) about your having 'whined' - you have been splendid, my dear Baldwin, in the way you've carried your burden & held your tongue. I've never, in all my days, seen a holiday, a snatch of freedom, so heroically earned. Only let me repeat, begin - or rather, end! Yes, the months bring round the dark reminder of C.F.W.'s fate. To me she was so unwell (beneath her studied worldly cheerfulness) the most unhappy person (by constitution - only in part by circumstance) that I have ever known, that I can only veil my face in crape & in silence, as it were, as the tragic hour comes round...Partenza, therefore - partenza!...Write me from Biskra. Give yourself up to nature, liberty - to licence."
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