Part of a collection of letters from Henry James to Dr. William W. Baldwin between 1887 and 1900 (MA 8732.1-75). This collection is part of a much larger collection of letters to Dr. Baldwin from authors, English royalty and other luminaries of the period, including Samuel Clemens, William Dean Howells, Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry Cabot Lodge, Booth Tarkington, Edith Wharton and Constance Fenimore Woolson. See MA 3564 for more information on the complete Baldwin collection.
Typed on stationery embossed "34, De Vere Gardens. / W." with the word "Dictated." typed in the upper left corner above the address.
Addressing Baldwin as "Caro dottore mio;" and continuing "Don't think I type-write you out of coldness or remoteness, at the very moment when your charming letter makes me glow with the sense of Tuscany and the love --to put it comprehensively--of Via Palestro. It is only that I have, at last, succumbed to a state of the wrist which you would diagnose as rheumatic, but which I must beg you to accept this final result of in the spirit of lucidity, legibility and rapidity with which I accept it myself. I like this substitute for my old horrid hand so much that even if it were not imposed I should be tempted -- having tasted blood, the blood of the Remington -- to pretend to an infirmity. But let me not talk of infirmities in the presence of your welcome and your hospitality. They only make me feel well and feel eager. But I must ask you still to be patient with me for I have a stiff little piece of work to finish before I can cross the Alps. That will not be till some time next month. Receive meanwhile this little stop-gap assurance of my intense desire to be with you. One may think, for a vain moment, that one is a stoic and a chilled Cockney; but at the straight breath of Florence, such a fragrance as exhales from your note, all one's pulses stir again, and one feels a fool and a criminal to lose an hour of such a chance. I shall lose as little of it as possible, and shall as soon as possible sit as long as possible, in charming converse with the sweet-smiling Luigi, at whatever door of whatever patient in whatever dear old shady, smelly Florentine street, your victoria, after you have vanished under a dark portone, lets me luxuriously wait at. To evoke this picture already makes me curse the fate that prevents me from calling my cab. Pazienza. Only get as well and keep as well as possible meantime. I will give you the earliest sign of my real approach, and only wish I felt sure enough of my summer to ask you to secure for me even now, in advance, the nearest other perch to whatever perch in the Appenines you yourself, from July on, may this year have an eye to. Give my love, please, to the whole villino, beginning with its genial lady and ending with the 'firstrate' Antonio, on whom I congratulate you, or whatever has been left of you, as a victim of 'valeting', by the remorseless Raphael. I embrace you on both cheeks, in the manner of Cosmo de Medici, and am, my dear Baldwin, impatiently and constantly yours, Henry James."