James Poems: Only Different

For Seymour Kleinberg Who Reminds Me What Kate Croy Knew

I Hotel Del Coronado May 2, 1904

Papa dearest, please don’t think for a moment I’m finding fault— as things turned out, it was a piece of luck you left behind those two “late” books of his that Uncle Henry sent last year when you were at Palo Alto lecturing on Pragmatism and the Sense of Common Sense. You’ll soon see why we needed specimens of Uncle’s recent work (anything but thick on the ground in this locale), and lo! there they were in your old rooms at Stanford.   Bruce says it was Fate,

and I assure you it never occurred to either of us to attribute their preternatural existence in the Far West (wild or tame) to whether you had or hadn’t read them. The great thing is that books by Henry James are here! And now for the explanation: Poor Uncle complained—surely, Papa, you’ll recognize the tune—of being so “spent by the myriad claims of nine hundred members of a female culture club   in Los Angeles”

that with promises of quiet and cuisine we conveyed him to this hotel on Coronado Beach, the grandest in the State—or in the States!— where even Uncle could recuperate or, in his words, “lie awake nights listening to the languid lisp of the Pacific.” When the Manager showed us the Grand Suite which had been reserved for Uncle’s repose, he further revealed, in reverent tones befitting the Grandeur of it all, that    “another author,

quite a famous one, occupies (with his wife and his five sons) the matching rooms in the opposite wing, a Mr. Baum—L. Frank Baum is the name he uses,” we were informed, “for his books,” which books (there are but two so far) have won a fervent audience of young readers vast enough to constitute actual fame. It’s true—Bruce himself has given his niece the Oz books—and it occurred to us that after a fitting interval of   del Coronado

comforts, Uncle might like to invite the young author to lunch —he must be young to have those readers— and I, meanwhile, would obtain the Oz books to further ensure Uncle’s taking part in such regalement, convinced as I am that after a regular regimen of “900 cultured female members,” Baum might afford Uncle some refreshment. Bruce has already supplied that sort of enkindling company for him, and is   now determined to

sound out Mr. Baum, who might, for all we know, be a shy old recluse reluctant to meet anyone so august as Henry James. But five sons! wouldn’t any father enjoy some relief from all that filial life? . . . We’re leaving Uncle here for a week (with the Oz books), while I help Bruce pack, and then we all make our ways back to Chocorua: despite the lurid splendors of California   (Uncle claims they are

“solely vegetal: Italy without the castles”), I miss the shy glories of a New England spring; I’m so glad Mother wants the wedding at the Chocorua house—Bruce’s parents say they are thrilled to be visiting that part of the country, and I’m sure you’ll love them as we love Bruce, who says he’ll write after our historic luncheon with that famous author, Mr. L. Frank Baum.   Having actually

read The Land of Oz, Bruce claims it would be madness to suppose these two poles of American Romance —does What Maisie Knew fit at the North Pole? The Land of Oz at the South?—could even hypothesize each other’s existence . . . He says by bringing them together we might do our native literature some service by making antipodean extremities meet, or at least, meet us! I send all my love, and Bruce would send his   if he were here,     Peg

II Hotel Del Coronado May 7, 1904

Peggot, dearest niece, what could you have hoped to effect, in terms of collegial communion (if this was your initial goal?) or even the mere polite impingement of fellow-strangers in this...