To Edmund Gosse

The reference in the following is to W. E. Henley's provocative article in the Pall Mall Magazine on Mr. Graham Balfour's recently published Life of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Lamb House, Rye.
November 20th, 1901.

My dear Gosse,

I have been very sorry to hear from you of renewed upsets on quitting these walls—the same fate having, I remember, overtaken you most of the other times you've been here. I trust it isn't the infection of the walls themselves, nor of the refection (so scant last time) enjoyed within them. Is it some baleful effluence of your host? He will try and exercise next time some potent counter-charm—and meanwhile he rejoices that your devil is cast out.

All thanks for your so vivid news of the overflow of Henley's gall. Ça ne pouvait manquer—ça devait venir. I have sent for the article and will write you when I've read it. I gather from you that it's really rather a striking and lurid—and so far interesting case—of long discomfortable jealousy and ranklement turned at last to posthumous (as it were!) malignity, and making the man do, coram publico, his ugly act, risking the dishonour for the assuagement. That is, on the part of a favourite of the press etc., a remarkable "psychologic" incident—or perhaps I'm talking in the air, from not having read the thing. I dare say, moreover, at all events, that H. did very seriously—I mean sincerely—deplore all the graces that had crept into Louis's writing—all the more that they had helped it so to be loved: he honestly thinks that L. should have written like—well, like who but Henley's self? But the whole business illustrates how life takes upon itself to give us more true and consistent examples of human unpleasantness than expectation could suggest—makes a given man, I mean, live up to his ugliness. This one's whole attitude in respect to these recent amiable commemorations of Louis—the having (I, "self-conscious and alone") nothing to do with them, contained singularly the promise of some positive aggression. I have, however, this a.m., a letter from Graham Balfour (in answer to one I had written him on reading his book,) in which, speaking of Henley's paper, he says it's less bad than he expected. He apparently feared more. It's since you were here, by the way, that I've read his record, in which, as to its second volume, I found a good deal of fresh interest and charm. It seems to me, the whole thing, very neatly and tactfully done for an amateur, a non-expert. But, I see now that a really curious thing has happened, a "case" occurred much more interesting than the cas Henley. Insistent publicity, so to speak, has done its work (I only knew it was doing it, but G. B.'s book's a settler,) and Louis, qua artist, is now, definitely, the victim thereof. That is, he has superseded, personally, his books, and this last re-placement of himself so en scène (so largely by his own aid, too) has killed the literary baggage. Out of no mystery now do they issue, the creations in question—and they couldn't afford to lose it. Louis himself never understood that; he too publicly caressed and accounted for them—but I needn't insist on what I mean. As I see it, at all events, it's a strange little evolution and all taking place here, quite compactly, under one's nose.

I don't come up to town, alas, for more than a few necessary hours, till I've finished my book, and that will be when God pleases. I pray for early in January. But then I shall stay as long as ever I can. All thanks for your news of Norris, to whom I shall write. I envy your Venetian newses—but I myself have written for some. I rain good wishes on your house and am yours always,

HENRY JAMES.