To Miss Jessie Allen

The "hideous American episode" was the recent assassination of President McKinley, on which Mr. Roosevelt succeeded to the Presidency. The "heavenly mansion" was the Palazzo Barbaro (referred to in the preceding letter to Mr. Gosse), where H. J. had stayed in company with Miss Allen.

Lamb House, Rye.
September 19th, 1901.

Dear bountiful and beautiful lady!

It is equally impossible to respond to you adequately and not to respond to you somehow. You flash your many-coloured lantern, over my small grey surface, from every corner of these islands, and I sit blinking, gaping, clapping my hands, at the purple and orange tints to such a tune that I've scarce presence of mind left for an articulate "Thank you." How you keep it up, and how exactly you lead the life that, long years ago, when I was young, I used to believe a very, very few fantastically happy mortals on earth could lead, and could survive the bliss of leading—the waltz-like, rhythmic rotation from great country-house to great country-house, to the sound of perpetual music and the acclamation of the "house-parties" that gather to await you. You are the dream come true—you really do it, and I get the side-wind of the fairy-tale—which is more than I can really quite believe of myself—such a living—almost—near the rose! You make me feel near, at any rate, when you write me so kindly about the hideous American episode—almost the worst feature of which is that I don't either like or trust the new President, a dangerous and ominous Jingo—of whom the most hopeful thing to say is that he may be rationalized by this sudden real responsibility. Speriamo, as we used to say in the golden age, in the heavenly mansion, along with the ministering angel, long, long ago. And all thanks meanwhile for your sympathetic thought. It must indeed—the base success of the act—cause a sinking of the heart among the potentates in circulation. One wonders, for instance, just now, who is most nervous, the poor little Tsar for himself or M. Loubet for him. Let us thank our stars that we are not travelling stars, I not even a Loubet, nor you a Loubette, and that though we have many annoyances we are probably not marked for the dagger of the assassin.

20th, p.m. I had to break off last night, and I resume—perhaps a trifle precariously at this midnight hour of what is just no longer Friday, but about to be Saturday. I have seen, as it were, my two guests, and my tardy servants, to bed, and I put in again this illegible little talk with (poor) you! It has been a more convivial 24 hours than my general scheme of life often permits.... Such are the modest annals of Lamb House—or rather its daily and nightly chronicle. But don't let it depress you—for everything passes, and I bow my head to the whirlwind. But I hate the care of even a tiny and twopenny house and wish I could farm out the same. If some one would only undertake it—and the backgarden—at so much a year I would close with the offer and ask no questions. I may still have to try Whiteley. But I shall try a winter in town first. I blush for my meagreness of response to all your social lights and shadows, your rich record of adventures.... But it's now—as usual over my letters—tomorrow a.m. (I mean 1 a.m.) and I am, dear Miss Allen, very undecipherably but constantly yours,

HENRY JAMES.