Читать книгу The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II - Генри Джеймс, Henry Foss James - Страница 41

The work just finished was the revision of The High Bid, shortly to be produced by Mr. and Mrs. Forbes Robertson.

Lamb House, Rye.

January 2nd, 1908.

My dear Edith,

G. T. Lapsley has gone to bed—he has been seeing the New Year in with me (generously giving a couple of days to it)—and I snatch this hour from out the blizzard of Xmas and Year's End and New Year's Beginning missives, to tell you too belatedly how touched I have been with your charming little Xmas memento—an exquisite and interesting piece for which I have found a very effective position on the little old oak-wainscotted wall of my very own room. There it will hang as a fond reminder of tout ce que je vous dois. (I am trying to make use of an accursed "fountain" pen—but it's a vain struggle; it beats me, and I recur to this familiar and well-worn old unimproved utensil.) I have passed here a very solitary and casanier Christmastide (of wondrous still and frosty days, and nights of huge silver stars,) and yesterday finished a job of the last urgency for which this intense concentration had been all vitally indispensable. I got the conditions, here at home thus, in perfection—I put my job through, and now—or in time—it may have, on my scant fortunes, a far-reaching effect. If it does have, you'll be the first all generously to congratulate me, and to understand why, under the stress of it, I couldn't indeed break my little started spell of application by a frolic absence from my field of action. If it, on the contrary, fails of that influence I offer my breast to the acutest of your silver arrows; though the beautiful charity with which you have drawn from your critical quiver nothing more fatally-feathered than that dear little framed and glazed, squared and gilded étrenne serves for me as a kind of omen of my going unscathed to the end.... I admit that it's horrible that we can't—nous autres—talk more face to face of the other phenomena; but life is terrible, tragic, perverse and abysmal—besides, patientons. I can't pretend to speak of the phenomena that are now renewing themselves round you; for there is the eternal penalty of my having shared your cup last year—that I must taste the liquor or go without—there can be no question of my otherwise handling the cup. Ah I'm conscious enough, I assure you, of going without, and of all the rich arrears that will never—for me—be made up—! But I hope for yourselves a thoroughly good and full experience—about the possibilities of which, as I see them, there is, alas, all too much to say. Let me therefore but wonder and wish!… But it's long past midnight, and I am yours and Teddy's ever so affectionate

HENRY JAMES.