Volume 1

The letters of William James / edited by his son, Henry James.

  • William James
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The letters of William James / edited by his son, Henry James. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    367/392 page 329
    Aet. so] TO MISS GRACE ASHBURNER 3^9 of writing to you again ever since. That “point” as you well know, is one to which somehow one seems long to cleave without jumping off. But at last here goes — irrev¬ ocably! I did not expect that in your condition you would be either so conscientious or so energetic as to send so imme¬ diate and full a return, and I must expressly stipulate, my dear old friend, that the sole condition upon which I write now is that you shall not feel that I expect a single word of answer. (Needless to say, however, how much any in¬ fringement of this condition on your part will be enjoyed.) Well! Cold and wet drove us out of Switzerland that first week in September, though, as it turned out, we should have had a fine rest of the month if we had stayed. We crossed the Simplon to Pallanza on Lake Maggiore, where we stayed ten days, till the bad fare made us sick; and then came straight to Florence by the 21st. As almost no strangers had arrived, we had the pick of all the furnished apartments, most of which threatened great bleakness or gloominess for the winter, with their high ceilings, and some rooms in all of them lit from court or well. Our family seems to be of the maximum size for which apartments are made! We found but this one into all the rooms of which the sun can come either before- or after-noon. It is clean, and abundantly furnished with sofas and chairs, but not a “convenience for housekeeping” of any kind whatsoever. No oven in which to make the macaroni au gratin, no place to keep more than a week’s supply of charcoal, or I fear more than three or four days’ supply of wood for the fire when the cold weather comes, as come it will with a vengeance, from all accounts. I hope our children won’t freeze! Harry and Billy started school at last two days ago, and
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