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Appendix B - Extract from James’s Notebooks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2021

Nicola Bradbury
Affiliation:
University of Reading
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Summary

Henry James's notebooks are collected in Volume XXXIV of The Complete Fiction of Henry James. The editor of that volume, Philip Horne, has excerpted and prepared the text for this Appendix, and has supplied essential annotations; more extensive notes can be found in The Notebooks. The following passage is drawn from the fifth volume of James's notebooks in the Houghton Library, Harvard (MS Am 1094 (Vol. 5)). This volume of the notebooks runs from 8 September 1895 to 26 October 1896.

Torquay: Oct 31st 1895

I was struck last evening with something that Jonathan Sturges, who has been staying here 10 days, mentioned to me: it was only 10 words, but I seemed, as usual, to catch a glimpse of a sujet de nouvelle in it. We were talking ofW. D. H. and of his having seen him during a short & interrupted stay H. had made 18 months ago in Paris—called away—back to America, when he had just come & at the end of 10 days by the news of the death—or illness—of his father. He had scarcely been in Paris, ever—in former days, & he had come there to see his domiciled & initiated son, who was at the Beaux Arts. Virtually—in the evening, as it were, of life, it was all new to him: all, all, all. Sturges said he seemed sad—rather brooding; & I asked him what gave him (Sturges,) that impression. “Oh—somewhere—I forget,when I was with him—he laid his hand on my shoulder and said à propos of some remark of mine: ‘Oh, you are young, you are young—be glad of it: be glad of it & live. Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do—but live. This place makes it all come over me. I see it now. I haven't done so—& now I’m old. It's too late. It has gone pastme—I’ve lost it. You have time. You are young. Live!’” I amplify & improve a little—but that was the tone. It touches me—I can see him—I can hear him.

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The Ambassadors , pp. 541 - 544
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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