Details
JAMES, Henry. Autograph letter signed to a Miss Marpent, Lamb House, Rye, Sussex, n.d. [1909?]. 2 pages, 4to, partly written across the first page, on printed Lamb House stationary. Provenance: James Gilvarry (his sale Christie's New York, 7 February 1986, lot 160).
ON ITALY AND HIS 'ITALIAN HOURS'
"I thank you very kindly for your charming...remembrance & your friendly appreciation of my poor old Italian pages -- which it's a great pleasure to me to find spoken of as if they are not quite as stale & faded (for most of them date from long, long ago,) as I have myself been rather feeling them -- I mean on the occasion of putting them together again. The blest Italy -- luckily, & takes care somehow of any well-meant thing that is done in her name. She helps us through if we love her enough; & oh, how one yearns for her as one finds one's self, in these awful conditions, becoming more & more a more soaked sponge... I envy you dear old London winter pavements & street lamps & lighted shopfronts; this regimen practically means solitary confinement in the dark..." Apparently unpublished, not in Letters, ed. Edel.
ON ITALY AND HIS 'ITALIAN HOURS'
"I thank you very kindly for your charming...remembrance & your friendly appreciation of my poor old Italian pages -- which it's a great pleasure to me to find spoken of as if they are not quite as stale & faded (for most of them date from long, long ago,) as I have myself been rather feeling them -- I mean on the occasion of putting them together again. The blest Italy -- luckily, & takes care somehow of any well-meant thing that is done in her name. She helps us through if we love her enough; & oh, how one yearns for her as one finds one's self, in these awful conditions, becoming more & more a more soaked sponge... I envy you dear old London winter pavements & street lamps & lighted shopfronts; this regimen practically means solitary confinement in the dark..." Apparently unpublished, not in Letters, ed. Edel.