BIB_ID
397335
Accession number
MA 8732.7
Creator
James, Henry, 1843-1916.
Display Date
[1889] May 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
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 on which James has written "34 De Vere Gardens / May 17th."
Written on stationery on which James has written "34 De Vere Gardens / May 17th."
Provenance
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Summary
Thanking him for his letter "and its generous & hospitable proposal. It has touched me greatly & so much that I feel really ungracious & shabby in sending you any thing less than an immediate & eager acceptance of your invitation. I can think of no circumlocution considerate enough to mitigate the apparent insensibility of the answer I am compelled to make you - & can only say, crudely & brutally, that your seductive suggestion finds me bound, hand & foot to London & utterly unable to leave it for present;" explaining that he must decline saying "Alas however, dear Doctor, I can't jump - I have my feet in a bag. One of the oldest friends I have - E.L. Godkin of New York, editor of the Evening Post & The Nation - arrives in London June 1st (after an absence of 25 years) to spend the month of June & probably part of July with me; so that having pressed him to stay with me, not in vain, I must at least stay with him. The little sketch you so kindly give of the luxuries & liberties you would offer me merges itself in the general delightful picture of Florence, to make an almost irresistible appeal. But my life is spent in wanting to go to Italy & not being able...;" encouraging him to come and visit him in London.
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