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,
To George Abbot James
This refers to the death of Mrs. G. A. James, sister of the Hon. H. Cabot Lodge, Senior Senator for Massachusetts. H. J.'s friendship with his correspondent, dating from early years, is commemorated in Notes of a Son and Brother.
My dear old Friend,
Mrs. Lodge has written to me, and I have answered her letter, but I long very particularly to hold out my hand to you in person, and take your own and keep it a moment ever so tenderly and faithfully. All these months I haven't known of the blow that has descended on you or I'm sure you feel that I would have made you some sign. My communications with Boston are few and faint in these days—though what I do hear has in general more or less the tragic note. You must have been through much darkness and living on now in a changed world. I hadn't seen her, you know, for long years, and as I have just said to Mrs. Lodge, always thought of her, or remembered her, as I saw her in youth—charming and young and bright, animated and eager, with life all before her. Great must be your alteration. I wonder about you and yet spend my wonder in vain, and somehow think we were meant not so to miss—during long years—sight and knowledge of each other. But life does strange and incalculable things with us all—life which I myself still find interesting. I have a hope that you do—in spite of everything. I wish I hadn't so awkwardly failed, practically, of seeing you when I was in America; then I should be better able to write to you now. Make me some sign—wonderful above all would be the sign that in great freedom you might come again at last to these regions of the earth. How I should hold out my hands to you! But perhaps you stick, as it were, to your past.... I don't know, you see, and I can only make you these uncertain, yet all affectionate motions. The best thing I can tell you about myself is that I have no second self to part with—having lived always deprived! But I've had other things, and may you still find you have—a few! Don't fail of feeling me at any rate, my dear George, ever so tenderly yours,
To Hugh Walpole
My dear young friend Hugh Walpole,
I had from you some days ago a very kind and touching letter, which greatly charmed me, but which now that I wish to read it over again before belatedly thanking you for it I find I have stupidly and inexplicably mislaid—at any rate I can't to-night put my hand on it. But the extremely pleasant and interesting impression of it abides with me; I rejoice that you were moved to write it and that you didn't resist the generous movement—since I always find myself (when the rare and blest revelation—once in a blue moon—takes place) the happier for the thought that I enjoy the sympathy of the gallant and intelligent young. I shall send this to Arthur Benson with the request that he will kindly transmit it to you—since I fail thus, provokingly, of having your address before me. I gather that you are about to hurl yourself into the deep sea of journalism—the more treacherous currents of which (and they strike me as numerous) I hope you may safely breast. Give me more news of this at some convenient hour, and let me believe that at some propitious one I may have the pleasure of seeing you. I never see A.C.B. in these days, to my loss and sorrow—and if this continues I shall have to depend on you considerably to give me tidings of him. However, my appeal to him (my only resource) to put you in possession of this will perhaps strike a welcome spark—so you see you are already something of a link. Believe me very truly yours,
To George Abbot James
My dear dear George—
How I wish I might for a while be with you, or that you were here a little with me! I am deeply touched by your letter, which makes me feel all your desolation. Clearly you have lived for long years in a union so close and unbroken that what has happened is like a violent and unnatural mutilation and as if a part of your very self had been cut off, leaving you to go through the movements of life without it—movements for which it had become to you indispensable. Your case is rare and wonderful—the suppression of the other relations and complications and contacts of our common condition, for the most part—and such as no example of seems possible in this more infringing and insisting world, over here—which creates all sorts of inevitabilities of life round