Hang it all—sink it all and come back

In an earlier post, I talked about the connection between the authors Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson, who were literary and personal friends for years until Stevenson's death in 1894. In 1884, Stevenson moved to the South English seaside town of Bournemouth for health reasons, and it was there that the two writers often met. Already a regular visitor to Bournemouth as his sister lived there, James called on Stevenson many times during the early years of their friendship. He visited the Stevenson residence so often that an old chair, which once belonged to Stevenson's grandfather, was named "Henry James' chair".

Due to his declining health and in search of a better climate for his respiratory problems, Stevenson left Bournemouth and travelled to America with his wife and mother in August 1887, only to leave for the South Seas the following year. While the two authors were no longer able to meet in person, they continued to communicate through their letters. In July 1888, a year after Stevenson had left England, James wrote him the following letter from his London home, pleading with him to come back. In the end, Stevenson never returned; he spent the rest of his life in the South Seas and passed away on the island of Samoa, 44 years old.

34 De Vere Gardens, W.

July 31st [1888].

My dear Louis,

You are too far away—you are too absent—too invisible, inaudible, inconceivable. Life is too short a business and friendship too delicate a matter for such tricks—for cutting great gory masses out of 'em by the year at a time. Therefore come back. Hang it all—sink it all and come back. A little more and I shall cease to believe in you: I don't mean (in the usual implied phrase) in your veracity, but literally and more fatally in your relevancy—your objective reality. You have become a beautiful myth—a kind of unnatural uncomfortable unburied mort. You put forth a beautiful monthly voice, with such happy notes in it—but it comes from too far away, from the other side of the globe, while I vaguely know that you are crawling like a fly on the nether surface of my chair. Your adventures, no doubt, are wonderful; but I don't successfully evoke them, understand them, believe in them. I do in those you write, heaven knows—but I don't in those you perform, though the latter, I know, are to lead to new revelations of the former and your capacity for them is certainly wonderful enough. This is a selfish personal cry: I wish you back; for literature is lonely and Bournemouth is barren without you. Your place in my affection has not been usurped by another—for there is not the least little scrap of another to usurp it. If there were I would perversely try to care for him. But there isn't—I repeat, and I literally care for nothing but your return. I haven't even your novel to stay my stomach withal. The wan wet months elapse and I see no sign of it. The beautiful portrait of your wife shimmers at me from my chimney-piece—brought some months ago by the natural McClure—but seems to refer to one as dim and distant and delightful as a "toast" of the last century. I wish I could make you homesick—I wish I could spoil your fun. It is a very featureless time. The summer is rank with rheumatism—a dark, drowned, unprecedented season. The town is empty but I am not going away. I have no money, but I have a little work. I have lately written several short fictions—but you may not see them unless you come home. I have just begun a novel which is to run through the Atlantic from January 1st and which I aspire to finish by the end of this year. In reality I suppose I shall not be fully delivered of it before the middle of next. After that, with God's help, I propose, for a longish period, to do nothing but short lengths. I want to leave a multitude of pictures of my time, projecting my small circular frame upon as many different spots as possible and going in for number as well as quality, so that the number may constitute a total having a certain value as observation and testimony. But there isn't so much as a creature here even to whisper such an intention to. ....

Come, my dear Louis, grow not too thin. I can't question you—because, as I say, I don't conjure you up. You have killed the imagination in me—that part of it which formed your element and in which you sat vivid and near. Your wife and Mother and Mr. Lloyd suffer also—I must confess it—by this failure of breath, of faith. Of course I have your letter—from Manasquan (is that the idiotic name?) of the—ingenuous me, to think there was a date! It was terribly impersonal—it did me little good. A little more and I shan't believe in you enough to bless you. Take this, therefore, as your last chance. I follow all with an aching wing, an inadequate geography and an ineradicable hope. Ever, my dear Louis, yours, to the last snub—

HENRY JAMES.

Source letter:  The Letters of Henry James (1920), selected and edited by Percy Lubbock

Via: Project Gutenberg

Image: Robert Louis Stevenson, photographed by H.W. Barnett in 1893 (left), and Henry James in 1905

Source: Wikimedia Commons