Beschreibung:

JAMES, HENRY. Autograph letter signed ("Henry James") to Edmund Gosse, Lamb House, Rye, 3 October 1899. 6 pages, 4to, parts written across. QUINTESSENTIAL JAMES "Very interesting & relieving your letter, in spite of its singularly sad & disconcerting news of your health, which dispels particularly indulged hopes, on my part, as to what Norway would have done for you. I counted on seeing you all resinous & rustling & robust, alas, alas, ce que c'est que de nous! You have my tenderest sympathy--& your wife has actually the same, for really, between ourselves, Eliza--! But I won't trust it to paper. What a hell of a time you must have had to begin to lose again your precious days, after returning from salutory leisure....But I hope...& trust you can find within yourself stores of enriching & fecundating impressions; it was too much Ibsen you had, clearly[.] What a dreadful victory for Clement Scott &c!...I am & have been putting in all the work I can: to which (among other conspiring forces) the suddenly-sprung-upon-me-purchase of this house....the pistol has been practically rather put to my head. My landlord died suddenly...& there are cogent reasons for safety & comfort. So, at last, I have had to take it -- ...& that is the order for my autumn, all . I must sit close & add up & scarce take a day away. But you will come down--in due course -- I simply assume that. Thanks for the Appleton--Flaubert remarks. Yes, them again. I'll do my 6,000 words for 30 (occult) with pleasure: only I must make this condition that if I should write my paper & deliver it any time from now, I get my money on delivery....I respond with wonder & compassion & all the justes sentiments to your vivid family piece--but am not sure my eyes don't attach themselves with most anxious intensity to the figure of Mrs. Gosse--the distracted centre of the composition. Give my love to her, please--& my blessing to all." As an afterthought, he adds: "I can't write of the Stevenson-Sydney Colvin imbroglio (if it be one). I am too annoyed at having been against my will & with every effort not to be, more or less, though thank heaven but a little, drawn into it. Little as it is, I fear it has been enough to give offense to Colvin--who is wrong, wholly, to have taken any. But that will pass, I think, when I have seen him. I can't help making an 'Ouf' that the long-drawn question of the Biography drops--as a discussion. The last thing in the world I ever dreamed could come of it was that I should hurt him..." James purchased Lamb House, where he had lived at a comfortable distance from London since the summer of 1898, after consultations with his brother William and other friends. The "Flaubert--Appleton" reference may be to the introduction James wrote for Madame Bovary , one of the series "A Century of French Romance," edited by Gosse. Published in England by Heinemann, the series was issued in America by Appleton & Co. (See Edel & Laurence B22b). The present letter is apparently unpublished, not in James, Letters , ed. L. Edel. Provenance : James Gilvarry (sale, Christie's New York, 7 February 1986, lot 157).