BIB_ID
397383
Accession number
MA 8732.2
Creator
James, Henry, 1843-1916.
Display Date
[1887 Feb. 6?].
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 18.2 x 11.4 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.
The letter is simply dated "Saturday a.m." and later in a postscript as "P.M." In a letter to Katherine De Kay Bronson dated "Hotel du Sud, February 5, 1887" he tells her that "Today I go...to have the day with Mrs. Ross at Castagnola. Tomorrow I dine with the Marchesa Incontri." These two engagements are referred to in this letter.
The letter is simply dated "Saturday a.m." and later in a postscript as "P.M." In a letter to Katherine De Kay Bronson dated "Hotel du Sud, February 5, 1887" he tells her that "Today I go...to have the day with Mrs. Ross at Castagnola. Tomorrow I dine with the Marchesa Incontri." These two engagements are referred to in this letter.
Provenance
Gift of Mrs. Arthur Bliss Lane and Mrs. Stanley B. Hawks, 1968.
Summary
Declining an invitation to dinner; saying he would be "delighted to accept...were it not that I am already engaged to dine tonight - in a manner not in the least Bohemian - with the Marchesa Incontri. I wouldn't say it to her - but I should have preferred your banquet. But we can't do everything - especially if we want to very much. We must manage something else before I leave Florence;" asking to be remembered to his father; adding, in a postscript which he dates "P.M.", "I should mention that I was in the country - at Mrs. Ross's - all day yesterday - & didn't come in till midnight - when I found your card."
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