JAMES, Henry (1843-1916). American novelist.
Autograph Letter Signed ('Uncle') to his nephew William James ('Dearest Bill'), 4 pages 4to with original envelope (envelope torn on opening), Lamb House, Rye, 15 July 1907.
Writing after his return from Italy Henry James welcomes his nephew him to England ('... after a journey that I fear indeed must have been beastly if you had to go wearily through to Oxford that same night. May good impressions smother & beguile you there, however - though I pity you for any Oxford lodging cuisine after a year of the divine Juliette! This must be a sore trial - which let the gardens & the tennis & the river make up. ...'), proposing possible days for meeting in London and going together to Lamb House ('... to great comfort & a lovely (if lonely) garden ...') and asking him to write ('... Make me some postcard sign of your (I earnestly hope) felicity ...') and apologising for not having written earlier himself ('... I was covered with shame on the arrival of your 1st letter two days ago - shame at not having anticipated it by news of myself. I was on the very edge of writing when it came in - & had before that been busy with the mass of arrears that awaited my return here ...') and signing off 'I wish you all sport & benefit. Ever your Uncle'.
This letter is apparently unpublished; not in The Letters, edited by Leon Edel, 1974-1984. Bill James, son of Henry's brother William, was a painter who had been training in Rome. James's hopes that Bill might enjoy an English idyll were not however to be met - they suffered instead what James later called the 'beastliest, wettest, windiest, cruellist summer known here for six centuries.' (Henry James: A Life in Letters, edited by Philip Hone, 1999, page 448).
£1050 [No: 24744]
Autograph Letter Signed ('Uncle') to his nephew William James ('Dearest Bill'), 4 pages 4to with original envelope (envelope torn on opening), Lamb House, Rye, 15 July 1907.
Writing after his return from Italy Henry James welcomes his nephew him to England ('... after a journey that I fear indeed must have been beastly if you had to go wearily through to Oxford that same night. May good impressions smother & beguile you there, however - though I pity you for any Oxford lodging cuisine after a year of the divine Juliette! This must be a sore trial - which let the gardens & the tennis & the river make up. ...'), proposing possible days for meeting in London and going together to Lamb House ('... to great comfort & a lovely (if lonely) garden ...') and asking him to write ('... Make me some postcard sign of your (I earnestly hope) felicity ...') and apologising for not having written earlier himself ('... I was covered with shame on the arrival of your 1st letter two days ago - shame at not having anticipated it by news of myself. I was on the very edge of writing when it came in - & had before that been busy with the mass of arrears that awaited my return here ...') and signing off 'I wish you all sport & benefit. Ever your Uncle'.
This letter is apparently unpublished; not in The Letters, edited by Leon Edel, 1974-1984. Bill James, son of Henry's brother William, was a painter who had been training in Rome. James's hopes that Bill might enjoy an English idyll were not however to be met - they suffered instead what James later called the 'beastliest, wettest, windiest, cruellist summer known here for six centuries.' (Henry James: A Life in Letters, edited by Philip Hone, 1999, page 448).
£1050 [No: 24744]