Читать книгу The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II - Генри Джеймс, Henry Foss James - Страница 46

Lamb House, Rye.

October 13th, 1908.

My very dear Friend,

I cabled you an hour ago my earnest hope that you may see your way to sailing … on the 20th—and if you do manage that, this won't catch you before you start. Nevertheless I can't not write to you—however briefly (I mean on the chance of my letter being useless)—after receiving your two last, of rapprochées dates, which have come within a very few days of each other—that of Oct. 5th only to-day. I am deeply distressed at the situation you describe and as to which my power to suggest or enlighten now quite miserably fails me. I move in darkness; I rack my brain; I gnash my teeth; I don't pretend to understand or to imagine.... Only sit tight yourself and go through the movements of life. That keeps up our connection with life—I mean of the immediate and apparent life; behind which, all the while, the deeper and darker and unapparent, in which things really happen to us, learns, under that hygiene, to stay in its place. Let it get out of its place and it swamps the scene; besides which its place, God knows, is enough for it! Live it all through, every inch of it—out of it something valuable will come—but live it ever so quietly; and—je maintiens mon dire—waitingly!… What I am really hoping is that you'll be on your voyage when this reaches the Mount. If you're not, you'll be so very soon afterwards, won't you?—and you'll come down and see me here and we'll talk à perte de vue, and there will be something in that for both of us.... Believe meanwhile and always in the aboundingly tender friendship—the understanding, the participation, the princely (though I say it who shouldn't) hospitality of spirit and soul of yours more than ever,

HENRY JAMES.