To W. D. Howells

Strether's outburst to little Bilham, in Book V. of The Ambassadors, during their colloquy in the Parisian garden, represents the germ from which the novel sprang, and which H. J. owed, as he here tells, to Mr. Howells. The development of the subject from this origin is described in the preface afterwards written for the book.

Lamb House, Rye.
August 10th, 1901.

My dear Howells,

Ever since receiving and reading your elegant volume of short tales—the arrival of which from you was affecting and delightful to me—I've meant to write to you, but the wish has struggled in vain with the daily distractions of a tolerably busy summer. I should blush, however, if the season were to melt away without my greeting and thanking you. I read your book with joy and found in it recalls from far far away—stray echoes and scents as from another, the American, the prehistoric existence. The thing that most took me was that entitled A Difficult Case, which I found beautiful and admirable, ever so true and ever so done. But I fear I more, almost, than anything else, lost myself in mere envy of your freedom to do, and, speaking vulgarly, to place, things of that particular and so agreeable dimension—I mean the dimension of most of the stories in the volume. It is sternly enjoined upon one here (where an agent-man does what he can for me) that everything—every hundred—above 6 or 7 thousand words is fatal to "placing"; so that I do them of that length, with great care, art and time (much reboiling,) and then, even then, can scarcely get them worked off—published even when they've been accepted.... So that (though I don't know why I inflict on you these sordid groans—except that I haven't any one else to inflict them on—and the mere affront—of being unused so inordinately long—is almost intolerable) I don't feel incited in that direction. Fortunately, however, I am otherwise immersed. I lately finished a tolerably long novel, and I've written a third of another—with still another begun and two or three more subjects awaiting me thereafter like carriages drawn up at the door and horses champing their bits. And àpropos of the first named of these, which is in the hands of the Harpers, I have it on my conscience to let you know that the idea of the fiction in question had its earliest origin in a circumstance mentioned to me—years ago—in respect to no less a person than yourself. At Torquay, once, our young friend Jon. Sturges came down to spend some days near me, and, lately from Paris, repeated to me five words you had said to him one day on his meeting you during a call at Whistler's. I thought the words charming—you have probably quite forgotten them; and the whole incident suggestive—so far as it was an incident; and, more than this, they presently caused me to see in them the faint vague germ, the mere point of the start, of a subject. I noted them, to that end, as I note everything; and years afterwards (that is three or four) the subject sprang at me, one day, out of my notebook. I don't know if it be good; at any rate it has been treated, now, for whatever it is; and my point is that it had long before—it had in the very act of striking me as a germ—got away from you or from anything like you! had become impersonal and independent. Nevertheless your initials figure in my little note; and if you hadn't said the five words to Jonathan he wouldn't have had them (most sympathetically and interestingly) to relate, and I shouldn't have had them to work in my imagination. The moral is that you are responsible for the whole business. But I've had it, since the book was finished, much at heart to tell you so. May you carry the burden bravely!—I hope you are on some thymy promontory and that the winds of heaven blow upon you all—perhaps in that simplified scene that you wrote to me from, with so gleaming a New England evocation, last year. The summer has been wondrous again in these islands—four or five months, from April 1st, of almost merciless fine weather—a rainlessness absolute and without precedent. It has made my hermitage, as a retreat, a blessing, and I have been able, thank goodness, to work without breaks—other than those of prospective readers' hearts.—It almost broke mine, the other day, by the way, to go down into the New Forest (where he has taken a house) to see Godkin, dear old stricken friend. He gave me, in a manner, news of you—told me he had seen you lately.... I am lone here just now with my sweet niece Peggy, but my brother and his wife are presently to be with me again for fifteen days before sailing (31st) for the U.S. He is immensely better in health, but he must take in sail hand over hand at home to remain so. Stia bene, caro amico, anche Lei (my Lei is my joke!) Tell Mrs. Howells and Mildred that I yearn toward them tenderly.

Yours always and ever,
HENRY JAMES.