Читать книгу The Letters of Henry James. Vol. II - Генри Джеймс, Henry Foss James - Страница 48

H. J.'s interest in the work of this "paintress-cousin" (afterwards Mrs. Blanchard Rand) has already appeared in a letter to her mother, Mrs. George Hunter (vol. i, p. 258).

Lamb House, Rye.

November 2d, 1908.

I have taken moments, beloved Bay, to weep, yes to bedew my pillow with tears, over the foul wrong I was doing you and the generous and delightful letter I so long ago had from you—and in respect to whose noble bounty your present letter, received only this evening and already moving me to this feverish response, is a heaping, on my unworthy head, of coals of fire. It is delightful at any rate, dearest Bay, to be in relation with you again, and to hear your sweet voice, as it were, and to smell your glorious paint and turpentine—to inhale, in a word, both your goodness and your glory; and I shall never again consent to be deprived of the luxury of you (long enough to notice it) on any terms whatever....

November 3d. I had to break off last night and go to bed—and as it is now much past mid-night again I shall almost surely not finish, but only scrawl you a few lines more and then take you up to London with me and go on with you there, as I am obliged to make that move, for a few days, by the 9.30 a.m. Among the things I have to do is to go to see my portrait by Jacques Blanche at the Private View of the New Gallery autumn show—he having "done" me in Paris last May (he is now quite the Bay Emmet of the London—in particular—portrait world, and does all the billionaires and such like: that's where I come in—very big and fat and uncanny and "brainy" and awful when I last saw myself—so that I now quite tremble at the prospect, though he has done a rather wondrous thing of Thomas Hardy—who, however, lends himself. I will add a word to this after I have been to the N.G., and if I am as unnatural as I fear, you must settle, really, to come out and avenge me.) … When you see William, to get on again with his portrait—in which I am infinitely and yearningly interested—as I am in every invisible stroke of your brush, over which I ache for baffled curiosity or wonderment—when you do go on to Cambridge (sooner, I trust, than later) he and Alice and Peggy will have much to tell you about their quite long summer here, lately brought to a close, and about poor little old Lamb House and its corpulent, slowly-circulating and slowly-masticating master. It was an infinite interest to have them here for a good many weeks—they are such endlessly interesting people, and Alice such a heroine of devotion and of everything. We have had a wondrous season—a real golden one, for weeks and weeks—and still it goes on, bland and breathless and changeless—the rarest autumn (and summer, from June on) known for years: a proof of what this much-abused climate is capable of for benignity and convenience. Dear little old Lamb House and garden have really become very pleasant and developed through being much (and virtuously) lived in, and I do wish you would come out and add another flourish to its happy sequel. But I must go to bed, dearest Bay—I'm ashamed to tell you what sort of hour it is. But I've not done with you yet.

105 Pall Mall. November 6th. I've been in town a couple of days without having a moment to return to this—for the London tangle immediately begins. What it will perhaps most interest you to know is that I "attended" yesterday the Private View of the Society of Portrait Painters' Exhibition and saw Blanche's "big" portrait of poor H. J. (His two exhibits are that one and one of himself—the latter very flattered, the former not.) The "funny thing about it" is that whereas I sat in almost full face, and left it on the canvas in that bloated aspect when I quitted Paris in June, it is now a splendid Profile, and with the body (and more of the body) in a quite different attitude; a wonderful tour de force (the sort of thing you ought to do if you understand your real interest!)—consisting of course of his having begun the whole thing afresh on a new canvas after I had gone, and worked out the profile, in my absence, by the aid of fond memory ("secret notes" on my silhouette, he also says, surreptitiously taken by him) and several photographs (also secretly taken at that angle while I sat there with my whole beauty, as I supposed, turned on. The result is wonderfully "fine" (for me)—considering! I think one sees a little that it's a chic'd thing, but ever so much less than you'd have supposed. He dines with me to-night and I will get him to give me two or three photographs (of the picture, not of me) and send them to you, for curiosity's sake. But I really think that (for a certain style—of presentation of H.J.—that it has, a certain dignity of intention and of indication—of who and what, poor creature, he is!) it ought to be seen in the U.S. He (Blanche) wants to go there himself—so put in all your own triumphs first. However, it would kill him—so his triumphs would be brief; and yours would then begin again. Meanwhile he was almost as agreeable and charming and beguiling to sit to, as you, dear Bay, in your own attaching person—which somebody once remarked to me explained half the "run" on you!… Dear Gaillard Lapsley (I hope immensely you'll see him on his way to Colorado or wherever) has given me occasional news of Eleanor and Elizabeth—in which I have rejoiced—seeming to hear their nurseries ring with the echo of their prosperity. As they must now have children enough for them to take care of each other (haven't they?) I hope they are thinking of profiting by it to come out here again—where they are greatly desired.... But, beloved Bay, I must get this off now. I send tenderest love to the Mother and the Sister; I beseech you not to let your waiting laurel, here, wither ungathered, and am ever your fondest,

HENRY JAMES.