To Arthur Christopher Benson

34 De Vere Gardens, W.
December 28th, 1896.

My dear Arthur,

Your generous letter has, this wild, mild, soft, sombre morning, made me feel as if I were standing beside you, with my hand on your shoulder, in an embrasure of one of the windows—at that fine old Farnham Castle that I have seen (years ago)—that look out on the noble things you speak of. And the communication in question is worthy, exactly, of the things in question; and grave and handsome and interesting and touching even as they are. "Burn" it, quotha!—it wouldn't have burnt, I would have you know: it would have flown straight up the chimney and taken, unscathed as marble, its invulnerable way to the individual for whom it had just been so admirably winged. You say to me exactly the right things, and you say them to exactly the right person. I can't tell you how glad I am for you that you have all that highest sanity and soundness (though it isn't as if I doubted it!) of emotion, full, frank and deep. If there be a wisdom in not feeling—to the last throb—the great things that happen to us, it is a wisdom I shall never either know or esteem. Let your soul live—it's the only life that isn't, on the whole, a sell. You have evidently been magnificent, and as I have my hand on your shoulder I take the opportunity of patting you very tenderly on the back. That back will evidently carry its load and be all the straighter for the—as it seems to me—really quite massive experience. I rejoice that the waters have held you up—they do, always, I think, when they are only deep enough. And all your missings and memories and contrasts and tendernesses are a part—the essence—of the very force that is in you to live, and to feel again—and yet again and again; when, at last, to have so felt will be the thing in the world you'll be gladdest to have done.

I don't know, in spite of your compliment, whether I am much like Gray, save in the devil of a time it takes me to do a thing. What keeps me incommunicative, however, is not indifference, but almost a kind of suspense, a fear to break—by speaking—the spell of some other spectacle—other than that of my own fonctionnement. But I respond to the lightest touch of a friendly hand, I think I may say; and I haven't the slightest fear of breaking any spell in saying—to you—that I seem to myself just now (absit omen!) to fonctionner pretty well. I am as occupied and preoccupied with work as even my technical temper can desire, and out of it something not irremediably nauseating will not improbably spring! I never had more intentions—what do I say?—more ferocities; I am sitting in my boat and my oars rhythmically creak. In short I propose to win my little battle—and even believe, more than hitherto, that I may annex my little province. It will be as small as the Grand Duchy of Pumpernickel—but there will be room to put up a friend. Therefore you must come and stay with me there; in fact I give you rendez-vous on the battlefield itself, the moment the day is declared. I mix my metaphors—but it all means that it's all a fight and that the only thing that changes is our fighting train. Let us then fight side by side, never too far out of sight.

How I congratulate you on the value of your friends; I mean the particular Davidsons. I don't know them, but I like them for liking you. I think I have a strong sense, too, of the beauty and charm of many of the conditions in which you are engaged and which have a really decorative effect—so that the aesthetic sense too is pleased—on everything that makes you minister to the confidence, my dear Arthur, of yours very constantly,

HENRY JAMES.