BIB_ID
397246
Accession number
MA 8732.63
Creator
James, Henry, 1843-1916.
Display Date
1897 Jan. 17.
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Description
1 item (8 pages) ; 17.7 x 11.2 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
Expressing joy at receiving his letter, "...even when I hear of complications & fatigue. Fancy my ever reproaching you with, or in any way resenting, anything that your heroic existence leaves you no time for - I am only overcome with your magnificence in writing to me so lavishly & so expressively. I find the letter-question more & more of a burden & tangle - & have practically given it up altogether - as you will easily infer from this hare scrawl. I am more grieved than I can say to know that you've been ill again. Woe is me; your burden is great...It would be too cruel else - if you were never to have, yourself, any of the balm that you administer to others. Sidney Colvin told me, on his return, of all your kindness to him & made me 'squirm' with envy of him & with homesickness for the Lung Arno. However, I have managed to bear it because I rejoice to say I see a probability of my being able to start for Italy on April 1st. The only blot on the picture is the number of irreconcilable things that I seem somehow to be let in for. I shall have to be in Rome a little, & I shall have to be both in Venice & at Asolo - & I shall have to stop in Paris & at Hyères & at Nervi on the way. I wish to heavens I were going straight to Florence to sit quiet - it's what I above all things desire. In that case I think I should ask you to kindly take for a couple of months a decent little furnished apartment for me - where I could be to myself & out of the chatter...But I must wait to see what I shall be able to do & at what dates be able to do it. Forgive the mean brevity of these hieroglyphics. I have rheumatism fixed in my tired right wrists & all writing is the crazy pain you see proof of. I shall soon take to dictating to a typist. I read over your so graceful letter & appreciate it afresh. And I send a benediction to all your house."
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