To Arthur Christopher Benson

The origin of The Turn of the Screw in an anecdote told him by Archbishop Benson is described in the preface that H. J. wrote for it when it appeared in the collected edition of his works.

34 De Vere Gardens, W.
March 11th, 1898.

My dear Arthur,

I suppose that in the mysterious scheme of providence and fate such an inspiration as your charming note—out of the blue!—of a couple of days ago, is intended somehow to make up to me for the terror with which my earlier—in fact all my past—productions inspire me, and for the insurmountable aversion I feel to looking at them again or to considering them in any way. This morbid state of mind is really a blessing in disguise—for it has for happy consequences that such an incident as your letter becomes thereby extravagantly pleasant and gives me a genial glow. All thanks and benedictions—I shake your hand very hard—or would do so if I could attribute to you anything so palpable, personal and actual as a hand. Yet I shall never write a sequel to the P. of an L.—admire my euphonic indefinite article. It's all too faint and far away—too ghostly and ghastly—and I have bloodier things en tête. I can do better than that!

But à propos, precisely, of the ghostly and ghastly, I have a little confession to make to you that has been on my conscience these three months and that I hope will excite in your generous breast nothing but tender memories and friendly sympathies.

On one of those two memorable—never to be obliterated—winter nights that I spent at the sweet Addington, your father, in the drawing-room by the fire, where we were talking a little, in the spirit of recreation, of such things, repeated to me the few meagre elements of a small and gruesome spectral story that had been told him years before and that he could only give the dimmest account of—partly because he had forgotten details and partly—and much more—because there had been no details and no coherency in the tale as he received it, from a person who also but half knew it. The vaguest essence only was there—some dead servants and some children. This essence struck me and I made a note of it (of a most scrappy kind) on going home. There the note remained till this autumn, when, struck with it afresh, I wrought it into a fantastic fiction which, first intended to be of the briefest, finally became a thing of some length and is now being "serialised" in an American periodical. It will appear late in the spring (chez Heinemann) in a volume with one other story, and then I will send it to you. In the meanwhile please think of the doing of the thing on my part as having sprung from that kind old evening at Addington—quite gruesomely as my unbridled imagination caused me to see the inevitable development of the subject. It was all worth mentioning to you. I am very busy and very decently fit and very much yours, always, my dear Arthur,

HENRY JAMES.