Part 28 (2/2)

It is a very wonderful book If only raph experience in their fiction as she has done in soes! The episode of Pachay, short as that is, is masterly--above the reach of Balzac; how far above the laborious, beetle--flight of Henry Jaive his right hand to do once The episode of Antonelli is very good, too, but not so exquisite as the other

There is so pathetic about both ”Asolando” and ”Demeter,”

those shrivelled blossoms from the stout old laurels touched with frost of winter and old age But I find little to dwell upon in either of the has more sap of life--Tennyson more ripe andhisto you, you see, just as if I had not been silent for so long I take you at your word, and expect Margot to be always the same to a comrade

If you were only here! Keats said that ”heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter” How false!

Yes, thus it is: so, rippling notes of thee Are sounding still; while I alone Ah and say-- Music unheard is sweet as they

This is no ht bubble-breath of improvisatory verse It expresses what I often feel when, after a long night's work, I light o to bed at your portrait in the corner of raphy It is blocked out, and certain parts of it are written for good But a thing of this sort ought to be ato produce

AM HOF, DAVOS PLATZ, SWITZERLAND, Sept 27th, 1891

MY DEAR MARGOT,

I a you back your two typewritten records They are both very interesting, the one as autobiographical and a study of your family, the other as a vivid and, I think, justly critical picture of Gladstone It will have a great literary value sometime I do not quite feel with Jowett, who told you, did he not? that you had made him UNDERSTAND Gladstone But I feel that you have offered an extremely powerful and brilliant conception, which is i because of your obvious sincerity and breadth of view The purely biographical and literary value of this bit of work seereat, and makesexperiences, and your first-hand studies of exceptional personalities in the sa this, you would accumulate material of real importance; much better than novels or stories, and more valuable than the passionate utterances of personal emotion

Did I ever show you the record I privately printed of an evening passed by me at Woolner, the sculptor's, when Gladstone met Tennyson for the first time? If I had been able to enjoy more of such incidents, I should also have made documents But my opportunities have been limited For future historians, the illu will be incomparable

I suppose I ether with this letter Let liement and syotisreat point

When Symonds died I lost my best intellectual tutor as well as one of my dearest friends I wish I had taken his advice and seriously tried to write years ago, but, except for a few azine sketches, I have never written a line for publication in my life I have only kept a careful and accurate diary, [Footnote: Out of all es, for on re- reading them I find they are not only full of Cabinet secrets but jerky, disjointed and dangerously frank] and here, in the interests of otistical, it is not inappropriate that I should publish the following letters in connection with these diaries and :

21 CARLYLE MANSIONS, CHEYNE WALK, SW

April 9th, 1915

MY DEAR MARGOT ASQUITH,

By what felicity of divination were you inspired to send o that wonderful diary under its lock and key?--feeling so rightly certain, I ree and particular PANG of interest that I should find in it? I don't wonder, indeed, at your general presumption to that effect, but the ether for e with the liveliest appreciation, and I think Iintimately, and I take off my hat to you as to the very Balzac of diarists It is full of life and force and colour, of a res and for squeezing, in the case of the resolute portraits of certain of your eminent characters, especially the last drop of truth and sense out of theularly searching vision Happy, then, those who had, of this essence, the fewest secrets or crooked lives to yield up to you--for the inable soht andon your impression in each case with the liveliest suspense and wonder, so thrillingly does the expression keep abreast of it and really translate it This and your extraordinary fullness of opportunity, lish document, a rare revelation of the human inwardness of political life in this country, and a picture of manners and personal characters as ”creditable” on the whole (to the country) as it is frank and acute The beauty is that you write with such authority, that you've seen soso the chance to observe and feel and discrih pressure, you haven't been in the least afraid, but have faced and assimilated and represented for all you're worth

I have lived, you see, wholly out of the inner circle of political life, and yet ht, for years, of many of its outer appearances, and in superficial contact--though this, indeed, pretty anciently noith various actors and figures, standing off froround and neither able nor wanting to be of the craft of , so to speak, my own poor, private ones, such as they have been) and yet with all sorts of unsatisfied curiosities and yearnings and ieneral, your fearful direction Well, you take me by the hand and lead s beautifully up to me--ALL my losses andtaken all the right notes, apprehended all the right values and enjoyed all the right reactions--ht ones, those that must have ministered most to interest and e while I flattened ainst the shopand you were there within, eating the tarts, shall I say, or handing them over the counter? It's to-day as if you had taken all the trouble for me and left ain! I have hovered about two or three of your distinguished persons a bit longingly (in the past); but you open up the abysses, or such like, that I really missed, and the torch you play over the I findyou (you having had all t'other) veritably roo on that I deplore your apparent arrest--Saint Siot be put in one? Your own portrait is an extraordinarily patient and detached and touch-upon-touch thing; but the book itself really constitutes an i individual tone An admirable portrait of a lady, with no end of finish and style, is thereby projected, and if I don't stop now, I shall be calling it a regular masterpiece Please believe how truly touched I ah old, friend,

HENRY JAMES

My dear and distinguished friend Lord Morley sentletter of the 15th of September, 1919, and it was in consequence of this letter that, two an to write this book:

FLOWERMEAD, PRINCES ROAD, WIMBLEDON PARK, SW, SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1919

DEAR MRS ASQUITH,

Your kindest of letters gave me uncommon pleasure, both personal and literary Personal, because I like to know that we are still affectionate friends, as we have been for such long, i years Literary--because it is a brilliant exa in which the French so indisputably beat us If you like, you can be as keen and brilliant and penetrating as Madane or the best of theh emoluments and certainty of fame You ask me to leave you a book when I depart this life If I were your generous isher, I should not leave, but give you, my rather full collection of French Memoirs nohile I am alive Well, I am in very truth your best isher, but incline to bequeath my modern library to a public body of feant expression I have nothing good or interesting to tell you of th will stand no tax upon it