Details
SIR COMPTON MACKENZIE (1883-1972) ON HENRY JAMES (1843-1916)
An 8-page working manuscript by Compton Mackenzie for a B.B.C. programme, "Recollections of Henry James," broadcast on January 14th, 1955 at 7.30, in ink on paper headed, 18, Chelsea Square, S.W.3. This contains both his first and last recollection of the novelist: "I first remember him with a beard, which suited him. Although it concealed his sensitive mouth. Later the splendid head seemed a little heavy for the shoulders ... In my last impression of Henry James he is sitting by my bed reading me the war news in 1915. Illness had brought me back to London after a year spent in a French hospital. He could not hear enough about conditions there and pity seemed to shatter him." He relates that James "had been an old friend of my mother's ... He wrote to her about his books ... but by the time I knew him well ... he had become so sensitive about the apparent indifference to his work that the subject was taboo we did not dare to speak of it ... Edith Wharton ... was his most valuable woman friend, the one person he always treated as an intellectual equal."
An 8-page working manuscript by Compton Mackenzie for a B.B.C. programme, "Recollections of Henry James," broadcast on January 14th, 1955 at 7.30, in ink on paper headed, 18, Chelsea Square, S.W.3. This contains both his first and last recollection of the novelist: "I first remember him with a beard, which suited him. Although it concealed his sensitive mouth. Later the splendid head seemed a little heavy for the shoulders ... In my last impression of Henry James he is sitting by my bed reading me the war news in 1915. Illness had brought me back to London after a year spent in a French hospital. He could not hear enough about conditions there and pity seemed to shatter him." He relates that James "had been an old friend of my mother's ... He wrote to her about his books ... but by the time I knew him well ... he had become so sensitive about the apparent indifference to his work that the subject was taboo we did not dare to speak of it ... Edith Wharton ... was his most valuable woman friend, the one person he always treated as an intellectual equal."