William Dean Howells
31 January 1880
ALS Houghton
bMS Am 1784 (253), folder 3, letter 26
3, Bolton Street, Piccadilly. W.
Jan. 31st
My dear Howells–
Your letter of Jan. 19th,
& its inclosure (your review of my Hawthorne) came to me last night,
& I must thank you without delay for each of then.
I am very happy to hear the effects of the fire were so minimized by the moment at which it took place; & evidently, both in your letter & in your article, you had been
writing in a smokeless-air. Your review of my book is very handsome &
friendly & commands my liveliest gratitude. Of course your graceful
strictures seem to yourself more valid than they do to me. The little book was
a tolerably deliberate & meditated performance, & I should be prepared
to do battle for most of the convictions expressed. It is quite true I use the
word provincial too many times–I hated myself for't, even while I did it (just
as I overdo the epithet "dusky".) But I don't at all agree with you in thinking
that "if it is not provincial for an Englishman to be English, a Frenchman
French &c, so it is not provinial for an American to be American." So it is
not provincial for a Russian, an Australian, a Portugese, a Dane, a Laplander,
to savour of their respective countries: that would be where this argument
would land you. I think it is extremely provincial for a Russian to be very
Russian, a Portugese very Portugese &c; for the sinple reason that certain
national types are essentially & intrinsically provinial. I sympathize even
less with your protest against the idea that it takes an old civilization to
set a novelist in motion–a proposition that seems to me so true as to be a
truism. It is on manners, customs, usages, habits, forms, upon all these things
matured & established, that a novelist lives–they are the very stuff his
work is made of; & in saying that in the absence of those "dreary &
worn-out paraphernalia" which I enumerate as being wanting in American society,
"we have simply the whole of human life left," you beg (to my sense) the
question. I should say we had just so much less of it as these same
"paraphernalia" represent, & I think they represent an enormous quantity of
it. I shall feel refuted only when we have produced (setting the present high
company–yourself & me–for obvious reasons, apart) a gentleman who strikes
me as a novelist–as belonging to the family of Balzac & Thackeray. Of
course, in the absence of this godsend, it is but a harmless amusement that we
should reason about it, & maintain that if right were right he should
already be here. I will freely admit that such a genius will get on only
by agreeing with your view of the case–to do something great he must feel as
you feel about it. But then I doubt whether such a genius–a man of the faculty
of Balzac & Thackeray–could agree with you! When he does I will lie
flat on my stomach & do him homage–in the very centre of the contributors'
club, or on the threshold of the Magazine, or in any public place you may
appoint!–But I didn't mean to wrangle with you–I meant only to thank you &
to express my sense of how happily you turn those things.–I am greatly amused
at your picture of the contributing blood-hounds whom you are holding in check.
I wish, immensely that you would let them fly at me–though there is no reason, crtainly,
that the decent public should be bespattered, periodically, with my
gore.–However my tender (or rather my very tough) flesh is prescient already of
the Higginsonian fangs. Happy man, to be going, like that, to see your plays
acted. It is a sensation I am dying, (though at yet not trying,) to cultivate.
What a tremendous quantity of work you must get through in these years! I am
impatient for the next Atlantic. What is your Cornhill novel
about? I am to precede it with a poorish story in three numbers–a tale purely
American, the writing of which made me feel acutely the want of the
"paraphernalia." I must add, however, (to returm for a moment to this)
that I applaud & esteem you highly for not feeling it; i.e. the want. You
are entirely right–magnificently & heroically right–to do so, & on the
day you make your readers–I mean the readers who know & appreciate the
paraphernalia–do the same, you will be the American Balzac. That's a great
mission–go in for it! Wherever you go, receive, & distribute among your
wife & children, the blessing of yours ever–H. James jr