JAMES, HENRY. Two autograph letters signed (10 pages) and one typed letter signed (5 pages) to a Mr. Phillips, Lamb House, Sussex and 21 Carlyle Mansions [London], 1 June 1904, 29 October 1913 and 25 October 1914. Together 15 pages, 4to, parts of the A.Ls.S. written across, all on printed stationery, two with envelopes addressed by James. Three interesting letters to a correspondent in Magrath, Alberta, Canada, who we have been unable to identify. 1 June 1904: "I must thank you for your touching little letter--which brings tears, as it were, to my eyes--and I do so as soon as I am quitted by my old friend W.D. Howells & his daughter, who have been with me since you left. Never doubt, my dear boy, of my very positive inability to take my hand from your shoulder (where I laid it originally when you were almost too young to help yourself)...You remind me always, & always will, of old beautiful days & hours, of a great affection & a cherished image--these things come closer again when I am with you, & I felt the breath of them, bountifully, while you were here....I am very affectionately yours...." 29 October 1913: "...I much appreciate your brave & handsome letter--which has found me you see still on this small sweet spot that I can well imagine your longing at times, & your wife's, to feel again under your feet. When one is in my state of immobility here the whirligig of time seems to operate with extraordinary speed...." He urges strength and patience in the face of Phillips's homesickness: "...Stiff indeed must the ordeal be in these first stages....But it is I take it one of the very rules of the game that settling in a huge new crude country can't be 'liked,' at first, by any possibility--it can at the most be but endured & put through: the liking comes afterwards....& you reap the reward of patience & courage...However, I haven't wanted to preach to you....I would rather send you a whiff of old England...." He has read Phillips's letter to his friend Dunster, "who I met while out on one of my slow crawls." Rye's weather had been disagreeable lately, but James still takes a daily walk "mostly toward your foot of the Godborough hill where we used to meet & talk....I am reduced to communing with the dim Canadian ghost of you--who haunts the spot for me!...." 25 October 1914: James is heartened by the improvement in Phillips's situation; he gives news of Dunster, but reports that "we see here now but as through a glass darkly everything that is not of the huge oppression and obsession of the War..." Virtually the whole of the long letter is devoted to James's views of the combatants' morale in England ("the whole spirit and attitude and energy of the country are magnificent"), and his own efforts in sending "daily eight or ten papers for despatch to the wounded and convalescent..." Apparently unpublished, not in Letters , ed. Edel. Provenance : James Gilvarry (sale, Christie's New York, 7 February 1986, lot 158). (3)
JAMES, HENRY. Two autograph letters signed (10 pages) and one typed letter signed (5 pages) to a Mr. Phillips, Lamb House, Sussex and 21 Carlyle Mansions [London], 1 June 1904, 29 October 1913 and 25 October 1914. Together 15 pages, 4to, parts of the A.Ls.S. written across, all on printed stationery, two with envelopes addressed by James. Three interesting letters to a correspondent in Magrath, Alberta, Canada, who we have been unable to identify. 1 June 1904: "I must thank you for your touching little letter--which brings tears, as it were, to my eyes--and I do so as soon as I am quitted by my old friend W.D. Howells & his daughter, who have been with me since you left. Never doubt, my dear boy, of my very positive inability to take my hand from your shoulder (where I laid it originally when you were almost too young to help yourself)...You remind me always, & always will, of old beautiful days & hours, of a great affection & a cherished image--these things come closer again when I am with you, & I felt the breath of them, bountifully, while you were here....I am very affectionately yours...." 29 October 1913: "...I much appreciate your brave & handsome letter--which has found me you see still on this small sweet spot that I can well imagine your longing at times, & your wife's, to feel again under your feet. When one is in my state of immobility here the whirligig of time seems to operate with extraordinary speed...." He urges strength and patience in the face of Phillips's homesickness: "...Stiff indeed must the ordeal be in these first stages....But it is I take it one of the very rules of the game that settling in a huge new crude country can't be 'liked,' at first, by any possibility--it can at the most be but endured & put through: the liking comes afterwards....& you reap the reward of patience & courage...However, I haven't wanted to preach to you....I would rather send you a whiff of old England...." He has read Phillips's letter to his friend Dunster, "who I met while out on one of my slow crawls." Rye's weather had been disagreeable lately, but James still takes a daily walk "mostly toward your foot of the Godborough hill where we used to meet & talk....I am reduced to communing with the dim Canadian ghost of you--who haunts the spot for me!...." 25 October 1914: James is heartened by the improvement in Phillips's situation; he gives news of Dunster, but reports that "we see here now but as through a glass darkly everything that is not of the huge oppression and obsession of the War..." Virtually the whole of the long letter is devoted to James's views of the combatants' morale in England ("the whole spirit and attitude and energy of the country are magnificent"), and his own efforts in sending "daily eight or ten papers for despatch to the wounded and convalescent..." Apparently unpublished, not in Letters , ed. Edel. Provenance : James Gilvarry (sale, Christie's New York, 7 February 1986, lot 158). (3)
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
