Details
JAMES, HENRY. Five autograph letters signed to Mrs. Marie Belloc Lowndes, 21 Carlyle Mansions, Cheyne Walk [London], 6 and 8 February, 27 April, 20 May and 17 August 1915. Together 9 pages, 4to and small 4to, on printed Cheyne Walk stationery, partly written across in two cases.
DEPLORING THE DEATH OF RUPERT BROOKE
Mrs. Lowndes was the sister of Hilaire Belloc, and a novelist, best known today for The Lodger, based on the Jack-the-Ripper murders. In June 1909 James visited Cambridge, where he was respectfully fêted by a circle of young undergraduates who included Geoffrey Keynes, Sydney Cockerell and Rupert Brooke. "There was no question in the minds of the participants that the future war poet 'made' the occasion for the Master....The best remembered episode of the week-end was James reclining in a punt on velvet cushions....gazing up through prominent half-closed eyes at Brooke's handsome figure clad in white shirt and white flannel trousers" (Edel, Life, V, pp. 395-396). After Brooke's death in the War, James wrote a moving preface for his Letters from America.
27 April 1915: "...be thankful for feeling with me about the deplorable, infinitely detestable extinction of our splendid young Rupert Brooke. I knew him enough exceedingly to prize him & I find his death an unmitigated pang. I confess that I have no philosophy, nor piety nor patience, no art of reflection nor theory of compensation, to meet things so hideous, so cruel & so bêtes. They are just unspeakably horrible & irremediable to me, & I stare at them with angry & almost blighted eyes. He was of an exquisite poetic value & personal charm. It's purely black! I rejoice to hear you have written kindly & considerately to Hugh W[alpole]--he will greatly value it. I don't see how one can not do one's friend the justice & pay him the respect of treating him as if he is neither a baby nor a beast, and that if he is reflectively taking a certain course [Walpole had just joined the Ambulance Corps]...there may be much more to be said for it than even our brilliant eyes discern..."
17 August 1915: James, after 40 years residence in England, had applied for and been granted British citzenship on July 28. "It is only the deluge of benedictions that has kept me breasting it all these days to such a tune that I find the time to have gone more in panting and puffing--for simple grateful life--than in really 'answering' more good and beautiful words than I think ever fluttered down on a poor old modest & denuded head...before. I still but gape, fondly & delightedly, at my welcomers and well-wishers, & though I pretty well thought I should like doing what I have done, I find it agrees with me still better than I had imagined....I think I taste my citizenship rather more on this spot--discounted as it truly was, when I took it up, by something for long years so remarkably like it that I wonder any one can tell them apart--I myself being all but unable to..." The last letter only published in Letters, ed. Edel.
Provenance: James Gilvarry (sale, Christie's New York, 7 February 1986, lot 165). (5)
DEPLORING THE DEATH OF RUPERT BROOKE
Mrs. Lowndes was the sister of Hilaire Belloc, and a novelist, best known today for The Lodger, based on the Jack-the-Ripper murders. In June 1909 James visited Cambridge, where he was respectfully fêted by a circle of young undergraduates who included Geoffrey Keynes, Sydney Cockerell and Rupert Brooke. "There was no question in the minds of the participants that the future war poet 'made' the occasion for the Master....The best remembered episode of the week-end was James reclining in a punt on velvet cushions....gazing up through prominent half-closed eyes at Brooke's handsome figure clad in white shirt and white flannel trousers" (Edel, Life, V, pp. 395-396). After Brooke's death in the War, James wrote a moving preface for his Letters from America.
27 April 1915: "...be thankful for feeling with me about the deplorable, infinitely detestable extinction of our splendid young Rupert Brooke. I knew him enough exceedingly to prize him & I find his death an unmitigated pang. I confess that I have no philosophy, nor piety nor patience, no art of reflection nor theory of compensation, to meet things so hideous, so cruel & so bêtes. They are just unspeakably horrible & irremediable to me, & I stare at them with angry & almost blighted eyes. He was of an exquisite poetic value & personal charm. It's purely black! I rejoice to hear you have written kindly & considerately to Hugh W[alpole]--he will greatly value it. I don't see how one can not do one's friend the justice & pay him the respect of treating him as if he is neither a baby nor a beast, and that if he is reflectively taking a certain course [Walpole had just joined the Ambulance Corps]...there may be much more to be said for it than even our brilliant eyes discern..."
17 August 1915: James, after 40 years residence in England, had applied for and been granted British citzenship on July 28. "It is only the deluge of benedictions that has kept me breasting it all these days to such a tune that I find the time to have gone more in panting and puffing--for simple grateful life--than in really 'answering' more good and beautiful words than I think ever fluttered down on a poor old modest & denuded head...before. I still but gape, fondly & delightedly, at my welcomers and well-wishers, & though I pretty well thought I should like doing what I have done, I find it agrees with me still better than I had imagined....I think I taste my citizenship rather more on this spot--discounted as it truly was, when I took it up, by something for long years so remarkably like it that I wonder any one can tell them apart--I myself being all but unable to..." The last letter only published in Letters, ed. Edel.
Provenance: James Gilvarry (sale, Christie's New York, 7 February 1986, lot 165). (5)