Читать книгу The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II - Генри Джеймс, Henry Foss James - Страница 12

Hotel Ponce de Leon,

St. Augustine, Florida.

February 21st, '05.

Dearest old Friend!

I am leaving this subtropical Floridian spot from one half hour to another, but the horror of not having for so long despatched a word to you, the shame and grief and contrition of it, are so strong, within me, that I simply seize the passing moment by the hair of its head and glare at it till it pauses long enough to let me—as it were—embrace you. Yet I feel, have felt, all along, that you will have understood, and that words are wasted in explaining the obvious. Letters, all these weeks and weeks, day to day and hour to hour letters, have fluttered about me in a dense crowd even as the San Marco pigeons, in Venice, round him who appears to have corn to scatter. So the whole queer time has gone in my scattering corn—scattering and chattering, and being chattered and scattered to, and moving from place to place, and surrendering to people (the only thing to do here—since things, apart from people, are nil;) in staying with them, literally, from place to place and week to week (though with old friends, as it were, alone—that is mostly, thank God—to avoid new obligations:) doing that as the only solution of the problem of "seeing" the country. I am seeing, very well—but the weariness of so much of so prolonged and sustained a process is, at times, surpassing. It would be a strain, a weariness (kept up so,) anywhere; and it is extraordinarily tiresome, on occasions, here. Vastness of space and distance, of number and quantity, is the element in which one lives: it is a great complication alone to be dealing with a country that has fifty principal cities—each a law unto itself—and unto you: England, poor old dear, having (to speak of) but one. On the other hand it is distinctly interesting—the business and the country, as a whole; there are no exquisite moments (save a few of a funniness that comes to that;) but there are none from which one doesn't get something....And meanwhile I am lecturing a little to pay the Piper, as I go—for high fees (of course) and as yet but three or four times. But they give me gladly £50 for 50 minutes (a pound a minute—like Patti!)—and always for the same lecture (as yet:) The Lesson of Balzac. I do it beautifully—feel as if I had discovered my vocation—at any rate amaze myself. It is well—for without it I don't see how I could have held out.

This winter has been a hideous succession of huge snow-blizzards, blinding polar waves, and these southernmost places, even, are not their usual soft selves. Yet the very south tiptoe of Florida, from which I came three days ago, has an air as of molten liquid velvet, and the palm and the orange, the pine-apple, the scarlet hibiscus, the vast magnolia and the sapphire sea, make it a vision of very considerable beguilement. I wanted to put over to Cuba—but one night from this coast; but it was, for reasons, not to be done—reasons of time and money. I shall try for Mexico—and meanwhile pray for me hard. My visit is doing—has done—my little reputation here, save the mark, great good. The Golden Bowl is in its fourth edition—unprecedented! You see I "answer" your last newses and things not at all—not even the note of anxiety about T. Such are these cruelties, these ferocities of separation. But I drink in everything you tell me, and I cherish you all always and am yours and the children's twain ever so constantly,

HENRY JAMES.