by Henry James
VII
IT LEFT me moreover, I become aware—or at least it now leaves me—fingering the loose ends of this particular free stretch of my tapestry; so that, with my perhaps even extravagant aversion to loose ends, I can but try for a moment to interweave them. There dangles again for me least confusedly, I think, the vision of a dinner at Mrs. Greville’s—and I like even to remember that Cadogan Place, where memories hang thick for me, was the scene of it—which took its light from the presence of Louisa Lady Waterford, who took hers in turn from that combination of rare beauty with rare talent which the previous Victorian age had for many years not ceased to acclaim. It insists on coming back to me with the utmost vividness that Lady Waterford was illustrational, historically, preciously so, meeting one’s largest demand for the blest recovery, when possible, of some glimmer of the sense of personal beauty, to say nothing of personal “accomplishment”, as our fathers were appointed to enjoy it. Scarce to be sated that form of wonder, to my own imagination, I confess—so that I fairly believe there was no moment at which I wouldn’t have been ready to turn my back for the time even on the most triumphant actuality of form and feature if a chance apprehension of a like force as it played on the sensibility of the past had competed. And this for a reason I fear I can scarce explain—unless, when I come to consider it, by the perversity of a conviction that the conditions of beauty have improved, though those of character, in the fine old sense, may not, and that with these the measure of it is more just, the appreciation, as who should say, more competent and the effect more completely attained.
What the question seems thus to come to would be a consuming curiosity as to any cited old case of the spell in the very interest of one’s catching it comparatively “out”; in the interest positively of the likelihood of one’s doing so, and this in the face of so many great testifying portraits. My private perversity, as I here glance at it, has had its difficulties—most of all possibly that of one’s addiction, in growing older, to allowing a supreme force to one’s earlier, even one’s earliest, estimates of physical felicity; or in other words that of the felt impulse to leave the palm for good looks to those who have reached out to it through the medium of our own history. If the conditions grow better for them why then should we have almost the habit of thinking better of our handsome folk dead than of our living?—and even to the very point of not resenting on the part of others similarly affected the wail of wonder as to what has strangely “become” of the happy types d’antan. I dodge that inquiry just now—we may meet it again; noting simply the fact that “old” pretenders to the particular crown I speak of—and in the sense especially of the pretension made rather for than by them—offered to my eyes a greater interest than the new, whom I was ready enough to take for granted, as one for the most part easily could; belonging as it exactly did on the other hand to the interest of their elders that this couldn’t be so taken. That was just the attraction of the latter claim—that the grounds of it had to be made out, puzzled out verily on occasion, but that when they were recognised they had a force all their own. One would have liked to be able to clear the distinction between the new and the old of all ambiguity—explain, that is, how little the superficially invidious term was sometimes noted as having in common with the elderly: so much was it a clear light held up to the question that truly beautiful persons might be old without being elderly. Their juniors couldn’t be new, unfortunately, without being youthful—unfortunately because the fact of youth, so far from dispelling ambiguity, positively introduced it. One made up one’s mind thus that the only sure specimens were, and had to be, those acquainted with time, and with whom time, on its side, was acquainted; those in fine who had borne the test and still looked at it face to face. These were of one’s own period of course—one looked at them face to face; one blessedly hadn’t to consider them by hearsay or to refer to any portrait of them for proof: indeed in presence of the resisting, the gained, cases one found one’s self practically averse to old facts or old traditions of portraiture, accompanied by no matter what names.
All of which leads by an avenue I trust not unduly majestic up to that hour of contemplation during which I could see quite enough for the major interest what was meant by Lady Waterford’s great reputation. Nothing could in fact have been more informing than so to see what was meant, than so copiously to share with admirers who had had their vision and passed on; for if I spoke above of her image as illustrational this is because it affected me on the spot as so diffusing information. My impression was of course but the old story—to which my reader will feel himself treated, I fear, to satiety: when once I had drawn the curtain for the light shed by this or that or the other personal presence upon the society more or less intimately concerned in producing it the last thing I could think of was to darken the scene again. For this right or this wrong reason then Mrs. Greville’s admirable guest struck me as flooding it; indebted in the highest degree to every art by which a commended appearance may have formed the habit of still suggesting commendation, she certainly—to my imagination at least—triumphed over time in the sense that if the years, in their generosity, went on helping her to live her grace returned the favour by paying life back to them. I mean that she reanimated for the fond analyst the age in which persons of her type could so greatly flourish—it being ever so pertinently of her type, or at least of that of the age, that she was regarded as having cast the spell of genius as well as of beauty. She painted, and on the largest scale, with all confidence and facility, and nothing could have contributed more, by my sense, to what I glance at again as her illustrational value than the apparently widespread appreciation of this fact—taken together, that is, with one’s own impression of the work of her hand. There it was that, like Mrs. Greville herself, yet in a still higher degree, she bore witness to the fine old felicity of the fortunate and the “great” under the “old” order which would have made it so good then to live could one but have been in their shoes. She determined in me, I remember, a renewed perception of the old order, a renewed insistence on one’s having come just in time to see it begin to stretch back: a little earlier one wouldn’t have had the light for this perhaps, and a little later it would have receded too much.
The precious persons, the surviving figures, who held up, as I may call it, the light were still here and there to be met; my sense being that the last of them, at least for any vision of mine, has now quite gone and that illustration—not to let that term slip—accordingly fails. We all now illustrate together, in higgledy-piggledy fashion, or as a vast monotonous mob, our own wonderful period and order, and nothing else; whereby the historic imagination, under its acuter need of facing backward, gropes before it with a vain gesture, missing, or all but missing, the concrete other, always other, specimen which has volumes to give where hearsay has only snippets. The old, as we call it, I recognise, doesn’t disappear all at once; the ancien régime of our commonest reference survived the Revolution of our most horrific in patches and scraps, and I bring myself to say that even at my present writing I am aware of more than one individual on the scene about me touched comparatively with the elder grace. (I think of the difference between these persons and so nearly all other persons as a grace for reasons that become perfectly clear in the immediate presence of the former, but of which a generalising account is difficult.) None the less it used to be one of the finest of pleasures to acclaim and cherish, in case of meeting them, one and another of the complete examples of the conditions irrecoverable, even if, as I have already noted, they were themselves least intelligently conscious of these; and for the enjoyment of that critical emotion to draw one’s own wanton line between the past and the present. The happy effect of such apparitions as Lady Waterford, to whom I thus undisseverably cling, though I might give her after all much like company, was that they made one draw it just where they might most profit from it. They profited in that they recruited my group of the fatuously fortunate, the class, as I seemed to see it, that had had the
longest and happiest innings in history—happier and longer, on the whole, even than their congeners of the old French time—and for whom the future wasn’t going to be, by most signs, anything like as bland and benedictory as the past. They placed themselves in the right perspective for appreciation, and did it quite without knowing, which was half the interest; did it simply by showing themselves with all the right grace and the right assurance. It was as if they had come up to the very edge of the ground that was going to begin to fail them; yet looking over it, looking on and on always, with a confidence still unalarmed. One would have turned away certainly from the sight of any actual catastrophe, wouldn’t have watched the ground nearly fail, in a particular case, without a sense of gross indelicacy. I can scarcely say how vivid I felt the drama so preparing might become—that of the lapse of immemorial protection, that of the finally complete exposure of the immemorially protected. It might take place rather more intensely before the footlights of one’s inner vision than on the trodden stage of Cadogan Place or wherever, but it corresponded none the less to realities all the while in course of enactment and which only wanted the attentive enough spectator. Nothing should I evermore see comparable to the large fond consensus of admiration enjoyed by my beatific fellow-guest’s imputed command of the very palette of the Venetian and other masters—Titian’s, Bonifazio’s, Rubens’s, where did the delightful agreement on the subject stop? and never again should a noble lady be lifted so still further aloft on the ecstatic breath of connoisseurship.
This last consciousness, confirming my impression of a climax that could only decline, didn’t break upon me all at once but spread itself through a couple of subsequent occasions into which my remembrance of the dinner at Mrs. Greville’s was richly to play. The first of these was a visit to an exhibition of Lady Waterford’s paintings held, in Carlton House Terrace, under the roof of a friend of the artist, and, as it enriched the hour also to be able to feel, a friend, one of the most generously gracious, of my own; during which the reflection that “they” had indeed had their innings, and were still splendidly using for the purpose the very fag-end of the waning time, mixed itself for me with all the “wonderful colour” framed and arrayed, that blazed from the walls of the kindly great room, lent for the advantage of a charity, and lost itself in the general chorus of immense comparison and tender consecration. Later on a few days spent at a house of the greatest beauty and interest in Northumberland did wonders to round off my view; the place, occupied for the time by genial tenants, belonged to the family of Lady Waterford’s husband and fairly bristled, it might be said, with coloured designs from her brush. . .
OTHER AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS
1881–1910
From the Notebooks, 1881–82
Brunswick Hotel, Boston.
November 25th 1881.
If I should write here all that I might write, I should speedily fill this as yet unspotted blank-book, bought in London six months ago, but hitherto unopened. It is so long since I have kept any notes, taken any memoranda, written down my current reflections, taken a sheet of paper, as it were, into my confidence! Meanwhile so much has come and gone, so much that it is now too late to catch, to reproduce, to preserve. I have lost too much by losing, or rather by not having acquired, the note-taking habit. It might be of great profit to me; & now that I am older, that I have more time, that the labour of writing is less onerous to me, & I can work more at my leisure, I ought to endeavour to keep, to a certain extent, a record of passing impressions, of all that comes, that goes, that I see, & feel, & observe. To catch and keep something of life—that’s what I mean. Here I am back in America, for instance, after six years of absence, & likely while here to see and learn a great deal that ought not to become mere waste material. Here I am, da vero, and here I am likely to be for the next five months. I am glad I have come—it was a wise thing to do. I needed to see again les miens, to revive my relations with them, and my sense of the consequences that these relations entail. Such relations, such consequences, are a part of one’s life, and the best life, the most complete, is the one that takes full account of such things. One can only do this by seeing one’s people from time to time, by being with them, by entering into their lives. Apart from this I hold it was not necessary I should come to this country. I am 37 years old, I have made my choice, & God knows that I have now no time to waste. My choice is the old world—my choice, my need, my life. There is no need for me to-day to argue about this; it is an inestimable blessing to me, and a rare good fortune, that the problem was settled long ago, & that I have now nothing to do but to act on the settlement.—My impressions here are exactly what I expected they would be, & I scarcely see the place, and feel the manners, the race, the tone of things, now that I am on the spot, more vividly than I did while I was still in Europe. My work lies there—and with this vast new world, je n’ai que faire. One can’t do both—one must choose. No European writer is called upon to assume that terrible burden, and it seems hard that I should be. The burden is necessarily greater for an American—for he must deal, more or less, even if only by implication, with Europe; whereas no European is obliged to deal in the least with America. No one dreams of calling him less complete for not doing so. (I speak of course of people who do the sort of work that I do; not of economists, of social science people.) The painter of manners who neglects America is not thereby incomplete as yet; but a hundred years hence—fifty years hence perhaps—he will doubtless be accounted so. My impressions of America, however, I shall after all, not write here. I don’t need to write them (at least not àpropos of Boston;) I know too well what they are. In many ways they are extremely pleasant; but, heaven forgive me! I feel as if my time were terribly wasted here! x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
It is too late to recover all those lost impressions—those of the last six years—that I spoke of in beginning; besides, they are not lost altogether, they are buried deep in my mind, they have become part of my life, of my nature. At the same time if I had nothing better to do, I might indulge in a retrospect that would be interesting and even fruitful—look back over all that has befallen me since last I left my native shores. I could remember vividly, & I have little doubt I could express happily enough, if I made the effort. I can remember without effort with what an irresistible longing I turned to Europe, with what ardent yet timid hopes, with what indefinite yet inspiring intentions, I took leave of les miens. I recall perfectly the maturing of my little plan to get abroad again and remain for years, during the summer of 1875; the summer the latter part of which I spent in Cambridge. It came to me there on my return from New York where I had been spending a bright cold unremunerative, uninteresting winter, finishing Roderick Hudson & writing for the Nation. (It was these two tasks that kept me alive.) I had returned from Europe the year before that, the beginning of September ’74, sailing for Boston with Wendell Holmes & his wife as my fellow passengers. I had come back then to “try New York”—thinking it my duty to attempt to live at home before I should grow older, and not take for granted too much that Europe alone was possible; especially as Europe for me then meant simply Italy, where I had had some very discouraged hours, and which, lovely and desirable though it was, didn’t seem as a permanent residence, to lead to anything. I wanted some thing more active, and I came back and sought it in New York. I came back with a certain amount of scepticism, but with very loyal intentions, & extremely eager to be “interested.” As I say, I was interested but imperfectly, and I very soon decided what was the real issue of my experiment. It was by no means equally soon, however, that I perceived how I should be able to cross the Atlantic again. But the opportunity came to me at last—it loomed before me one summer’s day, in Quincy St. The best thing I could imagine then was to go and take up my abode in Paris. I went (sailing about October 20th 1875,) & I settled myself in Paris with the idea that I should spend several years there. This was not really what I wanted; what I wanted was London—and Paris was only a stopgap. But London
appeared to me then impossible. I believed that I might arrive there in the fulness of years, but there were all sorts of obstacles to my attempting to live there then. I wonder greatly now, in the light of my present knowledge of England, that these obstacles should have seemed so large, so overwhelming & depressing as they did at that time. When a year later I came really to look them in the face, they absolutely melted away. But that year in Paris was not a lost year—on the contrary. On my way thither I spent something like a fortnight in London; lodging at Story’s Hotel, in Dover Street. It was November—dark, foggy, muddy, rainy, & I knew scarcely a creature in the place. I don’t remember calling on anyone but Lady Rose and H.J.W. Coulson, with whom I went out to lunch at Petersham, near Richmond. And yet the great city seemed to me enchanting, & I would have given my little finger to remain there rather than go to Paris. But I went to Paris, and lived for a year at 29 Rue de Luxembourg (now Rue Cambon.) I shall not attempt to write the history of that year—further than to say that it was time by no means mis-spent. I learned to know Paris & French affairs much better than before—I got a certain familiarity with Paris (added to what I had acquired before) which I shall never lose. I wrote letters to the New York Tribune, of which, though they were poor stuff, I may say that they were too good for the purpose; (of course they didn’t succeed.) I saw a good deal of Charles Peirce that winter—as to whom his being a man of genius reconciled me to much that was intolerable in him. In the spring, at Madame Tourguéneff’s I made the acquaintance of Paul Joukowsky. Non ragionam di lui—ma guarda e passa. I don’t speak of Ivan Tourguéneff, most delightful & lovable of men, nor of Gustave Flaubert, whom I shall always be so glad to have known; a powerful, serious, melancholy, manly, deeply corrupted, yet not corrupting, nature. There was something I greatly liked in him, & he was very kind to me. He was a head & shoulders above the others, the men I saw at his house on Sunday afternoons—Zola, Goncourt, Daudet, &c; (I mean as a man—not as a talker &c.) I remember in especial one afternoon (a weekday) that I went to see him and found him alone. I sat with him a long time, something led him to repeat to me a little poem of Th. Gautier’s—Les Vieux Portraits (what led him to repeat it was that we had been talking of French poets, and he had been expressing his preference for Theophile Gautier over Alfred de Musset—“il était plus fran[ç]ais,” etc.) I went that winter a great deal to the Comédie Fran[ç]aise—though not so much as when I was in Paris in ’72. Then I went every night—or almost. And I have been a great deal since; I may say that I know the Comédie Francaise. Of course I saw a great deal of the little American “set”—the American village encamped en plein Paris. They were all very kind, very friendly, hospitable &c; they knew up to a certain point their Paris. But ineffably tiresome and unprofitable. Their society had become a kind of obligation, and it had much to do with my suddenly deciding to abandon my plans of indefinite residence, take flight to London & settle there as best I could. I remember well what a crime Mrs. S. made of my doing so; & one or two other persons as to whom I was perfectly unconscious of having given them the right to judge my movements so intimately. Nothing is more characteristic of certain American women than the extraordinary promptitude with which they assume such a right. I remember how Paris had in a hundred ways, come to weary and displease me; I couldn’t get out of the detestable American Paris. Then I hated the Boulevards, the horrible monotony of the new quarters. I saw, moreover, that I should be an eternal outsider. I went to London in November 1876. I should say that I had spent that summer chiefly in three places: at Etretat, at Varennes (with the Lee Childes,) and at Biarritz—or rather at Bayonne, where I took refuge being unable to find quarters at Biarritz. Then late in September I spent a short time at St. Germain, at the Pavillon Louis XIV. I was finishing the American. The pleasantest episode (by far) of that summer was my visit to the Childes; to whom I had been introduced by dear Jane Norton; who had been very kind to me during the winter; and who have remained my very good friends. Varennes is a little moated castel of the most picturesque character, a few miles from Montargis, “au coeur de l’ancienne France.” I well recall the impression of my arrival—driving over from Montargis with Edward Childe in the warm August evening and reaching the place in the vague twilight, which made it look precisely like a décor d’op[é]ra. I have been back there since—and it was still delightful; but at that time I had not had my now very considerable experience of country visits in England; I had not seen all those other wonderful things. Varennes therefore was an exquisite sensation—a memory I shall never lose. I settled my self again in Paris—or attempted to do so; (I like to linger over these details, and to recall them one by one;) I had no intention of giving it up. But there were difficulties in the Rue de Luxembourg—I couldn’t get back my old apartment, which I had given up during the summer. I don’t remember what suddenly brought me to the point of saying—“Go to—I will try London.” I think a letter from William had a good deal to do with it, in which he said “Why don’t you?—that must be the place.” A single word from outside often moves one (moves me at least) more than the same word infinitely multiplied, as a simple voice from within. I did try it, and it has succeeded beyond my most ardent hopes. As I think I wrote just now, I have become passionately fond of it; it is an anchorage for life. Here I sit scribbling in my bedroom at a Boston hotel—on a marble-topped table!—& conscious of a ferocious homesickness—a homesickness which makes me think of the day when I shall next see the white cliffs of old England loom through their native fog, as one of the happiest of my life! The history of the five years I have spent in London—a pledge, I suppose, of many future years—is too long, and too full to write. I can only glance at it here. I took a lodging at 3 Bolton St, Piccadilly; and there I have remained till to-day—there I have left my few earthly possessions, to await my return. I have lived much there, felt much, thought much, learned much, produced much; the little shabby furnished apartment ought to be sacred to me. I came to London as a complete stranger, and to-day I know much too many people. J’y suis absolument comme chez moi. Such an experience is an education—it fortifies the character & embellishes the mind. It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners—all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. I have felt these things at times so strongly that I have said—“Ah London, you too then are impossible?” But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. I take it as an artist and as a bachelor; as one who has the passion of observation and whose business is the study of human life. It is the biggest aggregation of human life—the most complete compendium of the world. The human race is better represented there than anywhere else, and if you learn to know your London you learn a great many things. I felt all this in that autumn of 1876, when I first took up my abode in Bolton St. I had very few friends, the season was of the darkest & wettest; but I was in a state of deep delight. I had complete liberty, and the prospect of profitable work; I used to take long walks in the rain. I took possession of London; I felt it to be the right place. I could get English books: I used to read in the evenings, before an English fire. I can hardly say how it was, but little by little I came to know people, to dine out, &c. I did, I was able to do, nothing at all to bring this state of things about; it came rather of itself. I had very few letters—I was afraid of letters. Three or four from Henry Adams, three or four from Mrs. Wister, of which I only, as I think, presented one (to George Howard.) Poor Motley, who died a few months later, & on whom I
had no claim of any kind, sent me an invitation to the Athenaeum, which was renewed for several months, and which proved an unspeakable blessing. When one starts in the London world (& one cares enough about it, as I did, to make one’s self agreeable, as I did) cela va de soi; it goes with constantly increasing velocity. I remained in London all the following summer—till Sept. 1st—& then went abroad. I spent some six weeks in Paris, which was rather empty and very lovely, and went a good deal to the theatre. Then I went to Italy, spending almost all my time in Rome (I had a little apartment flooded with sun, in the Capo le Case.) I came back to England before Xmas, and spent the following nine months or so in Bolton St. The club question had become serious and difficult; a club was indispensable, but I had of course none of my own. I went through Gaskell’s, (& I think Locker’s) kindness for some time to the Traveller’s; then after that for a good while to the St. James’s, where I could pay a monthly fee. At last, I forget exactly when, I was elected to the Reform; I think it was about April 1878. (F.H. Hill had proposed, and C.H. Robarts had seconded, me: or vice versa.) This was an excellent piece of good fortune, and the Club has ever since been, to me, a convenience of the first order. I could not have remained in London without it, and I have become extremely fond of it; a deep local attachment. I can now only briefly enumerate the landmarks of the rest of my residence in London. In the autumn of 1878 I went to Scotland, chiefly to stay at Tillypronie. (I afterwards paid a whole visit at Gillesbie, Mrs. Rogerson’s, in Dumfriesshire.) This was my first visit to Scotland, which made a great impression on me. The following year, 1879, I went abroad again—but only to Paris. I staid in London during all August, writing my little book on Hawthorne, and on September 1st crossed over to Paris and remained there till within a few days of Xmas. I lodged again in the Rue de Luxembourg, in another house, in a delightful little entresol entre cour et jardin, which I had to give up after a few weeks however, as it had been let over my head. Afterwards I went to an hotel in the Rue St. Augustin (de Choiseul et d’Egypte—) where I was staying during the great snow-storm of that year, which will long be famous. It was in that October that I went again to Varennes; & I had other plans for seeing a little of France which I was unable to carry out. But I did a good deal of work: finished the ill-fated little Hawthorne, finished Confidence, began Washington Square, wrote a Bundle of Letters. I went that Christmas, and had been, I think, the Xmas before, to Ch. Milnes Gaskell’s (Thorne’s.) In the spring I went to Italy—partly to escape the “Season”, which had become a terror to me. I couldn’t keep out of it (I had become a highly-developed diner-out, &c,) & its interruptions, its repetitions, its fatigues, were horribly wearisome, & made work extremely difficult. I went to Florence and spent a couple of months, during which I took a short run down to Rome and to Naples, where I had not been since my first visit to Italy, in 1869. I spent three days with Paul Joukowsky at Posilippo, and a couple of days alone at Sorrento. Florence was divine, as usual, and I was a great deal with the Bootts, at that exquisite Bellosguardo. At the Hotel de l’Arno, in a room in that deep recess, in the front, I began the Portrait of a Lady—that is I took up, and worked over, an old beginning, made long before. I returned to London to meet William, who came out in the early part of June, & spent a month with me in Bolton St, before going to the continent. That summer and autumn I worked, tant bien que mal, at my novel which began to appear in Macmillan in October (1880.) I got away from London more or less—to Brighton, detestable in August, to Folkestone, Dover, St. Leonard’s &c. I tried to work hard, and I paid very few visits. I had a plan of coming to America for the winter, and even took my passage; but I gave it up. William came back from abroad & was with me again for a few days, before sailing for home. I spent November & December quietly in London, getting on with the Portrait, which went steadily, but very slowly, every part being written twice. About Xmas I went down into Cornwall, to stay with the John Clarks, who were wintering there, & then to the Pakenhams, who were (and still are,) in the Government House at Plymouth. (Xmas day, indeed, I spent at the Pakenhams’—a bright, military dinner, at which I took in Elizabeth Thompson (Mrs. Butler,) the military paintress: a gentle, pleasing woman, very deaf.) Cornwall was charming, and my dear Sir John drove me far away to Penzance, & thence to the Land’s End, where we spent the morning of New Year’s day—a soft moist morning, with the great Atlantic heaving gently round the nethermost point of Old England (I was wrong just above in saying that I went first to the Clarks—I went on there from Devonport.) I came back to London for a few weeks, and then, again, I went abroad. I wished to get away from the London crowd, the London hubbub, all the entanglements & interruptions of London life; and to quietly bring my novel to a close. So I planned to betake myself to Venice. I started about February 10th and I came back the middle of July following. I have always to pay toll in Paris—it’s impossible to pass through. I was there for a fortnight, which I didn’t much enjoy. Then I travelled down through France, to Avignon, Marseilles, Nice, Mentone & San Remo, in which latter place I spent three charming weeks, during most of which time I had the genial society of Mrs. Lombard & Fanny L. who came over from Nice for a fortnight. I worked there capitally, and it made me very happy. I used in the morning, to take a walk among the olives, over the hills, behind the queer little black, steep town. Those old paved roads that rise behind and above San Remo, and climb and wander through the dusky light of the olives, have an extraordinary sweetness. Below and beyond, were the deep ravines, on whose sides old villages were perched, and the blue sea, glittering through the grey foliage. Fanny L. used to go with me—enjoying it so much that it was a pleasure to take her. I went back to the inn to breakfast (that is, lunch) and scribbled for 3 or 4 hours in the afternoon. Then, in the fading light, I took another stroll, before dinner. We went to bed early, but I used to read late. I went with the Lombards, one lovely day, on an enchanting drive—to the strange little old mountain town of Ceriana. I shall never forget that; it was one of the things one remembers; the grand clear hills, among which we wound higher and higher; the long valleys, swimming seaward, far away beneath; the bright Mediterranean, growing paler and paler as we rose above it; the splendid stillness, the infinite light, the clumps of olives, the brown villages, pierced by the carriage road, where the vehicle bumped against opposite doorposts. I spent ten days at Milan after that, working at my tale & scarcely speaking to a soul; Milan was cold, dull, & less attractive than it had been to me before. Thence I went straight to Venice, where I remained till the last of June—between three and four months. It would take long to go into that now; and yet I can’t simply pass it by. It was a charming time; one of those things that don’t repeat themselves; I seemed to myself to grow young again. The lovely Venetian spring came and went, and brought with it an infinitude of impressions, of delightful hours. I became passionately fond of the place, of the life, of the people, of the habits. I asked myself at times whether it wouldn’t be a happy thought to take a little pied-à-terre there, which one might keep forever. I looked at unfurnished apartments; I fancied myself coming back every year. I shall go back; but not every year. Herbert Pratt was there for a month, and I saw him tolerably often; he used to talk to me about Spain, about the East, about Tripoli, Persia, Damascus; till it seemed to me that life would be manquée altogether if one shouldn’t have some of that knowledge. He was a most singular, a most interesting type, and I shall certainly put him into a novel. I shall even make the portrait close, and he won’t mind. Seeing picturesque lands, simply for their own sake, and without making any use of it—that, with him, is a passion—a passion of which if one lives with him a little (a little, I say; not too much) one feels the contagion. He gave me the nostalgia of the sun, of the south, of colour, of freedom, of being one’s own master, and doing absolutely what one pleases. He used to say “I know such a sunny corner, under the South wall of old Toledo. There’s a wild fig growing there; I have lain on the grass, with my guitar. There was a musical muleteer, &c.” I remember one
evening when he took me to a queer little wine shop, haunted only by gondoliers & facchini, in an out of the way corner of Venice. We had some excellent muscat wine; he had discovered the place and made himself quite at home there. Another evening I went with him to his rooms—far down on the Grand Canal, overlooking the Rialto. It was a hot night; the cry of the gondoliers came up from the Canal. He took out a couple of Persian books and read me extracts from Firdausi and Saadi. A good deal might be done with Herbert Pratt. He, however, was but a small part of my Venice. I lodged on the Riva, 4161, 4º pº. The view from my windows was “una bellezza;” the far-shining lagoon, the pink walls of San Giorgio, the downward curve of the Riva, the distant islands, the movement of the quay, the gondolas in profile. Here I wrote, diligently every day & finished, or virtually finished, my novel. As I say, it was a charming life; it seemed to me at times, too improbable, too festive. I went out in the morning—first to Florian’s, to breakfast; then to my bath, at the Stabilimento Chitarin; then I wandered about, looking at pictures, street life &c, till noon, when I went for my real breakfast to the Café Quadri. After this I went home and worked till six o’clock—& sometimes only till five. In this latter case I had time for an hour or two en gondole before dinner. The evenings I strolled about, went to Florian’s, listened to the music in the Piazza, & two or three nights a week went to Mrs. Bronson’s. That was a resource—but the milieu was too American. Late in the spring came Mrs. V. R., from Rome, who was an even greater resource. I went with her one day to Torcello, & Burano; where we took our lunch and ate it on a lovely canal at the former place. Toward the last of April I went down to Rome and spent a fortnight—during part of which I was laid up with one of those terrible attacks in my head. But Rome was very lovely; I saw a great deal of Mrs. V. R.: had (with her) several beautiful drives. One in particular I remember; out beyond the Ponte Normentano, a splendid Sunday. We left the carriage & wandered into the fields, where we sat down for some time. The exquisite stillness, the divine horizon, brought back to me out of the buried past all that ineffable, incomparable impression of Rome. (1869, 1873.) I returned to Venice by Ancona and Rimini. From Ancona I drove to Loreto, and, on the same occasion, to Recanati, to see the house of Giacomo Leopardi, whose infinitely touching letters I had been reading while in Rome. The day was lovely and the excursion picturesque; but I was not allowed to enter Leopardi’s house. I saw, however, the dreary little hill-town where he passed so much of his life, with its enchanting beauty of site, and its strange, bright loneliness. I saw the streets—I saw the views he looked upon. . . . Very little can have changed. I spent only an evening at Rimini, where I made the acquaintance of a most obliging officer, who seemed delighted to converse with a forestiero, and who walked me (it was a Sunday evening) all over the place. I passed near Urbino: that is I passed a station, where I might have descended to spend the night, to drive to Urbino the next day. But I didn’t stop! If I had been told that a month before, I should have repelled the foul insinuation. But my reason was strong. I was so nervous about my interrupted work that every day I lost was a misery, and I hurried back to Venice and to my MS. But I made another short absence, in June—a 5 days’ giro to Vicenza, Bassano, Padua. At Vicenza I spent 3 of these days—it was wonderfully sweet; old Italy, and the old feeling of it. Vivid in my memory is the afternoon I arrived, when I wandered into the Piazza and sat there in the warm shade, before a caffè, with the smooth slabs of the old pavement around me, the big palace & the tall campanile opposite, &c. It was so soft, so mellow, so quiet, so genial, so Italian; very little movement, only the waning of the bright day, the approach of the summer night. Before I left Venice the heat became intense, the days and nights alike impossible. I left it at last, and closed a singularly happy episode; but I took much away with me. x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x