WM. JAMES.
With respect to the next letter, and others to James's sister, which follow, it should now be explained that Miss Alice James had gone abroad in 1885. The illness which was the cause of her journey developed more and more serious complications. Being near her brother Henry in England, she stayed on there during the remaining six yearsof her life. In spite of much suffering, she never let herself adopt an invalidish tone,[80]but kept her attention turned toward things outside her sick-room, and was apt to greet expressions of commiseration in a way to discourage their repetition—as the following letter testifies. "K. P. L." was a devoted friend, Miss Katharine P. Loring of Boston; "A. K." was the Aunt Kate mentioned in early letters.
CAMBRIDGE,Feb. 5, 1887.
DEARESTALICE,—Your card and, a day or two later, K. P. L.'s letter to A. K., have made us acquainted with your sad tumble-down, for which I am sorrier than I can express, and can only take refuge in the hope, incessantlyspringing up again from its ashes, that you will "recuperate" more promptly than of late has been the case. I'm glad, at any rate, that it has got you into Harry's lodgings for a while, and hope your next permanent arrangement will prove better than the last. When, as occasionally happens, I have a day of headache, or of real sickness like that of last summer at Mrs. Dorr's, I think of you whose whole life is woven of that kind of experience, and my heart sinks at the horizon that opens, and wells over with pity. But when all is over, the longest life appears short; and we had better drink the cup, whatever it contains, for itislife. But I will not moralize or sympathize, for fear of awakening more "screams of laughter" similar to those which you wrote of as greeting my former attempts.
We have had but one letter from Harry—soon after his arrival at Florence. I hope he has continued to get pleasure and profit from his outing. I haven't written to him since he left London, nor do I now write him a special letter, but the rest of this is meant for him as well as you, and if he is still to be away, you will forward it to him. We are getting along very well, on the whole, I keeping very continuously occupied, but not seeming to get ahead much,for the days grow so shortwith each advancing year. A day is now about a minute—hardly time to turn round in. Mrs. Gibbens arrived from Chicago last night, and in ten days she and Margaret will start, with our little Billy, for Aiken, S.C., to be gone till May. B. is asthmatic, she is glad to go south for her own sake, and the open-air life all day long will be much better for him than our arduous winter and spring. He is the most utterly charming little piece of human nature you ever saw, so packed with life, impatience, and feeling, that I think Father must have been just like him at his age....
I have been paying ten or eleven visits to a mind-cure doctress, a sterling creature, resembling the "Venus of Medicine," Mrs. Lydia E. Pinkham,[81]made solid and veracious-looking. I sit down beside her and presently drop asleep, whilst she disentangles the snarls out of my mind. She says she never saw a mind with so many, so agitated, so restless, etc. She said myeyes, mentally speaking, kept revolving like wheels in front of each other and in front of my face, and it was four or five sittings ere she could get themfixed. I am now,unconsciously to myself, much better than when I first went, etc. I thought it might please you to hear an opinion of my mind so similar to your own. Meanwhile what boots it to be made unconsciously better, yet all the while consciously to lie awake o' nights, as I still do?
Lectures are temporarily stopped and examinations begun. I seized the opportunity to go to my Chocorua place and see just what was needed to make it habitable for the summer. It is a goodly little spot, but we may not, after all, fit up the buildings till we have spent a summer in the place and "studied" the problem a little more closely. The snow was between two and three feet deep on a level, in spite of the recent thaws. The day after I arrived was one of the most crystalline purity, and the mountain simply exquisite in gradations of tint. I have a tenant in the house, one Sanborn, who owes me a dollar and a half a month, but can't pay it, being of a poetic and contemplative rather than of an active nature, and consequently excessively poor. He has a sign out "Attorney and Pension Agent," and writes and talks like one of the greatest of men. He was working the sewing machine when I was there, and talkingof his share in the war, and why he didn't go to live in Boston, etc. (namely that he wasn't known), and my heart was heavy in my breast that so rich a nature, fitted to inhabit a tropical dreamland, should have nothing but that furnitureless cabin within and snow and sky without, to live upon. For, however spotlessly pure and dazzlingly lustrous snow may be, pure snow, always snow, and naught but snow, for four months on end, is, it must be confessed, a rather lean diet for the human soul—deficient in variety, chiaroscuro, and oleaginous and medieval elements. I felt as I was returning home that some intellectual inferiorityoughtto accrue to all populations whose environment for many months in the year consisted of pure snow.—You are better off, better off than you know, in that great black-earthed dunghill of an England. I say naught of politics, war, strikes, railroad accidents or public events, unless the departure of C. W. Eliot and his wife for a year in Europe be a public event....
Well, dear old Alice, I hope and pray for you. Lots of love to Harry, and if Katharine is with you, to her. Yours ever,
W. J.
CAMBRIDGE,6 Feb., 1887.
My dear Stumpf,—Your two letters from Rügen of Sept. 8th, and from Halle of Jan. 2 came duly, and I can assure you that their contents was most heartily appreciated, and not by me alone. I fairly squealed with pleasure over the first one and its rich combination of good counsel and humorous commentary, and read the greater part of it to my friend Royce, assistant professor of philosophy here, who enjoyed it almost as much as I. There is a heartiness and solidityabout your letters which is truly German, and makes them as nutritious as they are refreshing to receive. YourKater-Gefühl,[82]however, in your second letter, about yourAuslassungen[83]on the subject of Wundt, amused me by its speedy evolution intoAuslassungenmore animated still. I can well understand why Wundt should make his compatriots impatient. Foreigners can afford to be indifferent for he doesn'tcrowdthem so much. He aims at being a sort of Napoleon of the intellectual world. Unfortunately he will never have a Waterloo, for he is a Napoleon without genius and with no central idea which, if defeated, brings down the whole fabric in ruin. You remember what Victor Hugo says of Napoleon in the Miserables—"Il gênait Dieu"; Wundt onlygênershisconfrères; and whilst they make mincemeat of some one of his views by their criticism, he is meanwhile writing a book on an entirely different subject. Cut him up like a worm, and each fragment crawls; there is nonœud vitalin his mental medulla oblongata, so that you can't kill him all at once.
But surely you must admit that, since there must be professors in the world, Wundt is the most praiseworthy and never-too-much-to-be-respected type of the species. He isn't a genius, he is aprofessor—a being whose duty is to know everything, and have his own opinion about everything, connected with hisFach. Wundt has the most prodigious faculty of appropriating and preserving knowledge, and as for opinions, he takesau grand sérieuxhis duties there. He says of each possible subject, "Here I must have an opinion. Let's see! What shall it be? How many possible opinions are there? three? four? Yes!just four! Shall I take one of these? It will seem more original to take a higher position, a sort ofVermittelungsansicht[84]between them all. That I will do, etc., etc." So he acquires a complete assortment of opinions of his own; and, as his memory is so good, he seldom forgets which they are! But this is not reprehensible; it is admirable—from the professorial point of view. To be sure, one gets tired of that point of view after a while. But was there ever, since Christian Wolff's time, such a model of the German Professor? He has utilized to the uttermost fibre every gift that Heaven endowed him with at his birth, and made of it all that mortal pertinacity could make. He is the finished example of how much mereeducationcan do for a man. Beside him, Spencer is an ignoramus as well as a charlatan. I admit that Spencer is occasionally moreamusingthan Wundt. His "Data of Ethics" seems to me incomparably his best book, because it is a more or less frank expression of the man's personalideal of living—which has of course little to do with science, and which, in Spencer's case, is full of definiteness and vigor. Wundt's "Ethics" I have not yet seen, and probably shall not "tackle" it for a good while to come.
I was much entertained by your account of F——, of whom you have seen much more than I have. I am eager to see him, to hear about his visit to Halle, and to get his account of you. But [F.'s place of abode] and Boston are ten hours asunder by rail, and I never go there and he never comes here. He seems a very promising fellow, with a good deal of independence of character; and if you knew the conditions of education in this country, and of the preparation to fill chairs of philosophy in colleges, you would not express any surprise at his, or mine, or any otherAmerican's small amount of "Information über die philosophische Literatur." Times are mending, however, and within the past six or eight years it has been possible, in three or four of our colleges, to get really educated for philosophy as a profession. The most promising man we have in this country is, in my opinion, the above-mentioned Royce, a young Californian of thirty, who is really built for a metaphysician, and who is, besides that, a very complete human being, alive at every point. He wrote a novel last summer, which is now going through the press, and which I am very curious to see. He has just been in here, interrupting this letter, and I have told him he must send a copy of his book, the "Religious Aspect of Philosophy," to you, promising to urge you to read it when you had time. The first half is ethical, and very readable and full of profound and witty details, but to my mind not of vast importance philosophically. The second half is a new argument for monistic idealism, an argument based on the possibility of truth and error in knowledge, subtle in itself, and rather lengthily expounded, but seeming to me to be one of the few big original suggestions of recent philosophical writing. I have vainly tried to escape from it. I still suspect it of inconclusiveness, but I frankly confess that I amunableto overthrow it. Since you too are an anti-idealist, I wish very much you would try your critical teeth upon it. I can assure you that, if you come to close quarters with it, you will say its author belongs to the genuine philosophic breed.
I am myself doing very well this year, rather light work, etc., but still troubled with bad sleep so as to advance very slowly with private study and writing. However, few days without a line at least. I found to my surprise and pleasure that Robertson was willing to print my chapter on Spacein "Mind," even though it should run through all four numbers of the year.[85]So I sent it to him. Most of it was written six or even seven years ago. To tell the truth, I amoffof Space now, and can probably carry my little private ingenuity concerning it no farther than I have already done in this essay; and fearing that some evil fiend might put it into Helmholtz's mind to correct all his errors and tell the full truth in the new edition of his "Optics," I felt it was high time that what I had written should see the light and not be lost. It is dry stuff to read, and I hardly dare to recommend it to you; but if you do read it, there is no one whose favorable opinion I should more rejoice to hear; for, as you know, you seem to me, of all writers on Space, the one who, on the whole, has thought out the subject mostphilosophically. Of course, the experimental patience, and skill and freshness of observation of the Helmholtzes and Herings are altogether admirable, and perhaps at bottomworthmore than philosophic ability. Space is really a direfully difficult subject! The third dimension bothers me very much still.
I have this very day corrected the proofs of an essay on the Perception of Time,[86]which I will send you when it shall appear in the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" for October last. (The number of "July, 1886" is not yet out!) I rather enjoyed the writing of it. I have just begun a chapter on "Discrimination and Comparison," subjects which have been long stumbling-blocks in my path. Yesterday it seemed to me that I could perhaps do nothing better than just translate 6 and 7 of the firstAbschnittof your "Tonpsychologie," which is worth more than everything elseput together which has been written on the subject. But I will stumble on and try to give it a more personal form. I shall, however, borrow largely from you....
Have you seen [Edmund] Gurney's two bulky tomes, "Phantasms of the Living," an amazingly patient and thorough piece of work? I should not at all wonder if it were the beginning of a new department of natural history. But even if not, it is an important chapter in the statistics ofVölkerpsychologie, and I think Gurney worthy of the highest praise for his devotion to this unfashionable work. He is not the kind of stuff which the ordinary pachydermatous fanatic and mystic is made of....
[Post-card]
CAMBRIDGE,Mar. 26[1887].
My live-stock is increased by aTöchterchen, modest, tactful, unselfish, quite different from a boy, and in fact a reallyepochmachendes Erzeugniss.[87]I shall begin to save for her dowry and perhaps your Harold will marry her. Their ages are suitable.
Grüsse an die gnädige Frau.
W. J.
CAMBRIDGE,Apr. 12, 1887.
My dear Harry,—...I got back yesterday from five days spent at my sylvan home at Lake Chocorua, whither I had gone to see about getting the buildings in order for the summer. The winter has been an exceptionally snowy one back of the coast, and I found, when I arrived, four feet of snow on a level and eight feet where it had drifted.The day before yesterday the heat became summer-like, and I took a long walk in my shirt-sleeves, going through the snow the whole length of my leg when the crust broke. It was a queer combination—not exactly agreeable. The snow-blanket keeps the ground from freezing deep; so that very few days after the snow is gone the soil is dry, and spring begins in good earnest. I tried snow-shoes but found them clumsy. They were making the maple-sugar in the woods; I had excellent comfort at the hotel hard by; with whose good landlord and still better landlady I am good friends; I rested off the fumes of my lore-crammed brain, and altogether I smile at the pride of Greece and Rome—from the height of my New Hampshire home. I'm afraid it will cost nearer $2000 than $800 to finish all the work. But we shall have ten large rooms (two of them 24 x 24), and three small ones—not counting kitchen, pantries, etc., and if you want some real, roomy, rustic happiness, you had better come over and spend all your summers with us. I can see that the thought makes you sick, so I'll say no more about it, but my permanent vision of your future is that your pen will fail you as a means of support, and, having laid up no income, you will return like the prodigal son to my roof. You will then find that, with a wood-pile as large as an ordinary house, a hearth four feet wide, and the American sun flooding the floor, even a New Hampshire winter is not so bad a thing. With house provided, two or three hundred dollars a year will support a man comfortably enough at Tamworth Iron Works, which is the name of our township. But, enough! My vulgarity makes you shudder....
College begins tomorrow, and there are seven weeks more of lectures. I never did my work so easily as this year, and hope to write two more chapters of psychology ere thevacation. That immortal work is now more than two thirds done. To you, who throw off two volumes a year, I must seem despicable for my slowness. But the truth is that (leaving other impediments out of account) the "science" is in such a confused and imperfect state that every paragraph presents some unforeseen snag, and I often spend many weeks on a point that I didn't foresee as a difficulty at all. American scholarship is looking up in that line. Three first-class works, in point both of originality and of learning, have appeared here within four months. Stanley Hall's and mine will make five. Meanwhile in England they are doing little or nothing. The "psychical researchers" seem to be the only active investigators....
Chocorua, N.H.,July 2, 1887.
DEARESTSISTER,—It is an unconscionable time since I have written either to you or to Harry. Too little eyesight, and too much use thereof, is the reason. I thought I should go wild during the examination period. I have now got some presbyopic spectacles and hope for an improvement. I think I've been straining my eyes for three or four months past by not having them on.
A short dictated letter from you came the other day, and has been sent back to Alice in Cambridge, so I cannot give its date. I am grieved in the extreme to hear of another breakdown in your health.... But I make no sympathetic comment, as you would probably "roar" over it. There is this to be said, that it is probably less tragic to be sick all the time than to be sometimes well and incessantly tumbling down again.
I thought of the difference in our lots yesterday as I was driving home in the evening with a wagon in tow, which Ihad started at six-thirty to get at a place called Fryeburg, 19 miles away. All day in the open air, talking with the country people, trying horses which they had to swap, but concluding to stick to my own—a most blessed feeling of freedom, and change from Cambridge life. I never knew before how much freedom came with having a horse of one's own. I am becoming quite an expert jockey, having examined and tried at least two dozen horses in the last six weeks; and I don't know a more fascinating occupation. The day before yesterday, I spent most of both forenoon and afternoon in the field under the blazing sun, sprinkling my potato plants with Paris green. The house comes on slowly, but in a fortnight we shall surely be inside of the larger half of it, and the rest can then drag on. Three or four men can't get ahead very fast. It has some delightful rooms, and, I have no doubt, will make us all happy for several years to come. Not for eternity, for everything fades, and I can see that some day we shall be glad to sell out and move on, to something grander, perhaps. For simple harmonious loveliness, however, this can't be beat....
What a grotesque sort of time you have been having with your Queen's jubilee! What a chance for a woman to give some human shove to things, by the smallestrealword or act, and what incapacity to guess its existence or to profit by it! One can see the ground for Bonaparte-worship, when one contemplates the results of the orthodox and conservative crowned-head education. He, at least, could have dropped an unconventional word, done something to pierce the cuticle. But the density of British unintellectuality is a spectacle for gods. One can't imagine it or describe it. One can onlyseeit....
W. J.
Such enterprises as the horse-swapping just alluded to were not always conducted with that circumspection which marks your true horse-trader. The companion of one search for a horse reported James as accosting a man whom he met driving along the road and asking, "Do you know anyone who wants to sell a horse?" At Chocorua everyone was willing to sell a horse, and accordingly the man answered that he "didn't know as he did," but what might James be ready to pay? James replied that he was looking for a horse "for about $150, butmightpay $175." There was a pause before the man spoke: "I've got a horse in my barn that would be just what you want—for one hundred and seventy five."
The buyer was ready enough to laugh over such an incident; but he could not mend his trustful ways. The great thing was to have the fun of poking about the country-side and of talking business, or anything else, with its people whenever occasion offered; and, after all, the horses James bought usually turned out to be sound and serviceable enough. Perhaps it was because he looked at every living creature with a discriminating eye, and had not been a comparative anatomist for nothing. In the end, too, he was suited by any horse that pulled willingly and was safe for man, woman, and child to drive. There were no motor-cars then, and few other summer residents or visitors at Chocorua. James's two-seated "democrat" wagon, full of family and guests, and often followed by a child on the pony and by one or two other riders, used to travel quietly along the secluded and hilly roads for many hours a day.
During this summer, and yearly during the next four, James found real rest and refreshment on his Chocorua farm. The conditions were simple and the place yielded him all the joys of proprietorship without involving himin responsibilities to cattle and fields. Anyone who knows central New Hampshire will realize how rudimentary "farming" in one of the most barren parts of rocky New England necessarily was. The glacial soil produced nothing naturally except woods and apple trees. But the country was very beautiful, and on his own acres James was lord of part of the Earth. Clearing away bushes and stones from one of the little fields near the house; causing something to be planted which, during those first years, always seemed as if itmustbe responsive enough to grow; cutting out trees to improve the look of the woods or to open an interesting view; dragging stones out of the bathing-hole in the brook; buying a horse or two and a cow on some lonely roadside at the beginning of each summer—these were fascinating adventures.
James was an insatiable lover of landscape, and particularly of wide "views." His inclination was to "open" the view, to cut down obstructing trees, even at the expense of the foreground. In drives and walks about Chocorua he usually made for some high hill that commanded the Ossipee Valley or the peaks of the Sandwich Range and White Mountains. Most hills in the neighborhood were topped by granite ledges and deserted pastures, and each commanded a different prospect. So the expedition often took the form of a picnic on one of these ledges. Axes were taken along; permission was sometimes obtained to cut down any worthless tree that had sprung up to shut off the horizon.
Before the end of such an afternoon James was more than likely to have fallen in love with the spot and to be talking of buying it. Indeed he was forever playing with projects for buying this or that hill-top or high farm and establishing a new dwelling-place of some sort on it. He was usually restrained by the price or by remembering thehousekeeping cares with which his wife was already over-burdened. But he actually did buy two—one near Chocorua and one on a shoulder of Mt. Hurricane in the Adirondacks; and about the Chocorua region there is hardly a high-perched pasture which he did not at some time nourish the hope of possessing.
Another consideration that usually deterred him from buying was the difficulty of combining hill-tops with brooks. He used often to bewail this dispensation of nature; for a vacation without a brook or a pond to bathe in was as unthinkable as a summer dwelling-place that did not command a splendid view was "inferior." The little house at Chocorua stood at no great elevation, but it was near the Lake, and the place boasted its own brook, with a little pool, overhung by trees, into which the cold water splashed noisily over a natural dam. Thither, rain or shine, James used to walk across the meadow for an early morning dip; and after a walk or a drive or a couple of hours of chopping, or a warm half-day with a book in the woods, he used to plunge into it again.
A few lines, through which breathes the happiest Chocorua mood, may be added here, although they were written during a later summer.
CHOCORUA,July 10.
...I have been up here for ten days reveling in the deliciousness of the country, dressed in a single layer of flannel, shirt, breeches and long stockings, exercising my arms as well as my legs several hours a day, and already feeling that bodily and spiritual freshness that comes of health, and of which no other good on earth is worthy to unlatch the shoe....
The next letter also rejoices over Chocorua, although it turns first to academic amenities. The correspondent addressed, now Sir Charles Walston, and Henry Jackson, both of the English Cambridge, had sent James two cases of audit ale.
CAMBRIDGE,July 20, 1887.
My dear Waldstein,—It never rains but it pours. The case of beer fromyoualso came duly. Day after day I wondered about itsprovenance, but your letter dispels the mystery. I had begun to believe that all the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford were going to vie with each other in wooing my appreciation of their respective brews. The dream is shattered but the reality remains. Five dozen is enough for me to fall back upon—in the immediate present, at all events.
As for that unknown but thrice-blest Jackson, Henry Jackson of Trinity (dulcissimum mundi nomen)—is that the way he always acts, or is he only so towardsme? I thank him from the bottom of my heart, and swear an eternal friendship with him. If ever he is in need of meat, drink, advice or defence, let him henceforth know to whom to apply—purse, house, life, all shall be at his disposal. Such a magnanimous heart as his was ne'er known before.
I wish I knew hisFach! But my ignorance is too encyclopedic. He must be a very great philosopher. Goddard shall have some of the stuff.—Of course you mean George Goddard—I know him well.
This has been written in the midst of interruptions. I am back in Cambridge for only a couple of days, to send furniture up to my New Hampshire farmlet. You may play the swell, but I play the yeoman. Which is the betterand more godly life? Surely the latter. The mother earth is in my finger-nails and my back is aching and my skin sweating with the ache and sweat of Father Adam and all hisnormaldescendants. No matter! Swells and artists have their place too. Farewell! I am called off again by the furniture. Remember me! And as for the divine Henry Jackson, thank him again and again. His ale is royal stuff. I will make no comparisons between his and yours. Ever affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
In explanation of the next letters, it should be said that in 1888 it seemed advisable to get the children into a warmer winter climate than that of Cambridge. Accordingly Mrs. James carried the three ("Harry," "Billy," and "Margaret Mary," aged respectively eight, five, and two years), and a German governess off to Aiken, South Carolina, for three months. James was thus left in the Garden Street house with no other member of the family except—for he counted as one—a small pug-dog named Jap. Dr. Hildreth, who is referred to, was a next-door neighbor, whose children were somewhat older than the James children.
CAMBRIDGE,Mar. 1, 1888.
BELOVEDHEINRICH,—You lazy old scoundrel, why don't you write a letter to your old Dad? Tell me how you enjoy your riding on horseback, what Billy does for a living, and which things you like best of all the new kinds of things you have to do with in Aiken. How do you like the darkeys being so numerous? Everything goes on quietly here. The house so still that you can hear a pin drop, and so clean that everything makes a mark on it. All because there areno brats and kids around. Jap is my only companion, and he sneezes all over me whenever I pick him up. Mrs. Hildreth and the children are gone to Florida. The Emmets seem very happy. I will close with a fable. A donkey felt badly because he was not so great a favorite as a lap-dog. He said, I must act like the lap-dog, and then my mistress will like me. So he came into the house and began to lick his mistress, and put his paws on her, and tried to get into her lap. Instead of kissing him for this, she screamed for the servants, who beat him and put him out of the house. Moral: It's no use to try to be anything but a donkey if you are one. But neither you nor Billy are one.
Good-night! you blessed boy. Stick to your three R's and your riding, so as to get onfast. The ancient Persians only taught their boys to ride, to shoot the bow and to tell the truth. Good-night!
Kiss your dear old Mammy and that belly-ache of a Billy, and little Margaret Mary for her Dad. Good-night.
YOURFATHER.
CAMBRIDGE,Mar. 27[1888].
BELOVEDHEINRICH,—Your long letter came yesterdayP.M.Much the best you ever writ, and the address on the envelope so well written that I wondered whose hand it was, and never thought it might be yours. Your tooth also was a precious memorial—I hope you'll get a better one in its place. Send me the other as soon as it is tookin out. They ought to go into the Peabody Museum. If any of George Washington's baby-teeth had been kept till now, they would be put somewhere in a public museum for the world to wonder at. I will keep this tooth, so that, if yougrow up to be a second Geo. Washington, I may sell it to a Museum. When Washington was only eight years old his mother didn't know he was going to be Washington. But he did be it, when the time came.
I will now tell you about what Dr. Hildreth is doing. The family is in Florida, and he is building himself a new house. They are just starting the foundation. The fence is taken down between our yard and his, by the stable, and teams are driving through with lumber. Our back yard is filled with lumber for the frame of the house. It is to be cut, squared, mortised, etc., in our yard and then carried through to his.
I dined last night at the Dibblees'. The boys had been to dancing-school. I like their looks. All the boys and girls together kept up such a talking that I seemed to be in a boiler factory where they bang the iron with the hammers so. It's just so with them every day. But they're very good-natured, even if they don't let the old ones speak.
Say to Fräulein that "ich lasse Sie grüssen von Herzensgrund!"[88]
Thump Bill for me and ask him if he likes it so nicely.
Jap's nose is all dry and brown with holding it so everlastingly towards the fire.
We are having ice-cream and the Rev. George A. Gordon to lunch today. The ice-cream is left over from the Philosophical Club last night.
Now pray, old Harry, stick to your books and let me see you do sums and readfastwhen you get back.
The best of all of us is your mother, though.
Good-bye!
Your loving Dad.W. J.
18 GARDENSTREET,Apr. 29, 1888.9:30A.M.
BELOVEDWILLIAMSON,—This is Sunday, the sabbath of the Lord, and it has been very hot for two days. I think of you and Harry with such longing, and of that infant whom I know so little, that I cannot help writing you some words. Your Mammy writes me that she can't getyoutoworkmuch, though Harry works. Youmustwork a little this summer in our own place. How nice it will be! I have wished that both you and Harry were by my side in some amusements which I have had lately. First, the learned seals in a big tank of water in Boston. The loveliest beasts, with big black eyes, poking their heads up and down in the water, and then scrambling out on their bellies like boys tied up in bags. They play the guitar and banjo and organ, and one of them saves the life of a child who tumbles in the water, catching him by the collar with its teeth, and swimming him ashore. They are both, child and seal, trained to do it. When they have done well, their master gives them a lot of fish. They eat an awful lot, scales, and fins, and bones and all, without chewing. That is the worst thing about them. He says he never beats them. They are full of curiosity—more so than a dog for far-off things; for when a man went round the room with a pole pulling down the windows at the top, all their heads bobbed out of the water and followed him about with their eyesaus lauter[89]curiosity. Dogs would hardly have noticed him, I think. Now, speaking of dogs, Jap wasnauseatedtwo days ago. I thought, from his licking his nose, that he was going to be sick, and got him out of doors just in time. He vomited most awfully on the grass. He then acted as if he thought I was going topunish him, poor thing. He can't discriminate between sickness and sin. He leads a dull life, without you and Margaret Mary. I tell him if it lasts much longer, he'll grow into a common beast; he hates to be a beast, but unless he has human companionship, he will sink to the level of one. So you must hasten back and make much of him.
I also went to the panorama of the battle of Bunker Hill, which is as good as that of Gettysburg. I wished Harry had been there, because he knows the story of it. You and he shall go soon after your return. It makes you feel just as if you lived there.
Well, I will now stop. On Monday morning the 14th or Sunday night the 13th of May, I will take you into my arms; that is, I will meet you with a carriage on the wharf, when the boat comes in. And I tell you I shall be glad to see the whole lot of you come roaring home. Give my love to your Mammy, to Aunt Margaret, to Fräulein, to Harry, to Margaret Mary, and to yourself. Your loving Dad,
WM. JAMES.
Chochura, N.H.,July 11, 1888.
My dear Harry,—Your note announcing Edmund Gurney's death came yesterday, and was a most shocking surprise. It seems one of Death's stupidest strokes, for I know of no one whose life-task was begun on a more far-reaching scale, or from whom one expected with greater certainty richer fruit in the ripeness of time. I pity his lovely wife, to whom I wrote a note yesterday; and also a brief notice for the "Nation."[90]To me it will be a cruelloss; for he recognized me more than anyone, and in all my thoughts of returning to England he was the Englishman from whom I awaited the most nourishing communion. We ran along on very similar lines of interest. He was very profound, subtle, and voluminous, and bound for an intellectual synthesis of things much solider and completer than anyone I know, except perhaps Royce. Well! such is life! all these deaths make what remains here seem strangely insignificant and ephemeral, as if the weight of things, as well as the numbers, was all on the other side.[91]
I have to thank you for a previous letter three or four weeks old, which, having sent to Aunt Kate, I cannot now date. I must also thank for "Partial Portraits" and "The Reverberator." The former, I of course knew (except the peculiarly happy Woolson one), but have read several of 'em again with keen pleasure, especially the Turguenieff. "The Reverberator" is masterly and exquisite. I quite squealed through it, and all the household has amazingly enjoyed it. It shows the technical ease you have attained, that you can handle so delicate and difficult a fancy so lightly. It is simply delicious. I hope your other magazine things, which I am following your advice and not reading [in magazine form], are only half as good. How you can keep up such a productivity and live, I don't see. All your time is your own, however, barring dinner-parties, and that makes a great difference.
Most of my time seems to disappear in college duties, not to speak of domestic interruptions. Our summer starts promisingly. How with my lazy temperament I managedto start all the things we put through last summer, now makes me wonder. The place has yet a good deal to be done with it, but it can be taken slowly, and Alice is a mostvaillantepartner. We have a trump of a hired man.... Some day I'll send you a photograph of the little place. Please send this to Alice, for whose letters I'm duly grateful. I only hope she'll keep decently well for a little while. Yours ever,
W. J.
P.S. I have just been downstairs to get an envelope, and there on the lawn saw a part of the family which I will describe, for you to insert in one of your novels as a picture of domestic happiness. On the newly made lawn in the angle of the house and kitchen ell, in the shadow of the hot afternoon sun, lies a mattress taken out of our spare-room for an airing against Richard Hodgson's arrival tomorrow. On it the madonna and child—the former sewing in a nice blue point dress, and smiling at the latter (named Peggy), immensely big and fat for her years, and who, with quite a vocabulary of adjectives, proper names, and a mouthful of teeth, shows as yet, although in her sixteenth month, no disposition to walk. She is rolling and prattling to herself, now on mattress and now on grass, and is an exceedingly good-natured, happy, and intelligent child. It conduces to her happiness to have a hard cracker in her fist, at which she mumbles more or less all day, and of which she is never known to let go, even taking it into her bath with her and holding it immersed till that ceremony is o'er. A man is papering and painting one of our parlors, a carpenter putting up a mantelpiece in another. Margaret and Harry's tutor are off on the backs of the two horses to the village seven miles off, to have 'em shod. I, with naught on but gray flannel shirt, breeches, belt, stockingsand shoes, shall now proceed across the Lake in the boat and up the hill, to get and carry the mail. Harry will probably ride along the shore on the pony which Aunt Kate has given him, and where Billy and Fräulein are, Heaven only knows. Returning, I shall have a bath either in lake or brook—doesn't it sound nice? On the whole it is nice, but very hot.
[Post-card]
[CHOCORUA,]Aug. 12, 1888.
It would take G[uy] de M[aupassant] himself to just fill a post-card chock-full and yet leave naught to be desired, with an account of "Pierre et Jean." It is a little cube of bronze; or like the body of the Capitaine Beausire, "plein comme un oeuf, dur comme une balle"—dur surtout! Fifteen years ago, I might have beenenthusedby such art; but I'm growing weak-minded, and the charm of this admirable precision and adequacy of art to subject leaves me too cold. It is like these modern tools and instruments, so admirably compact, and strong, and reduced to their fighting weight. One of those little metallic pumps,e.g., so oily and powerful, with a handle about two feet long, which will throw a column of water about four inches thick 100 feet. Unfortunately, G. de M.'s pump only throws dirty water—and I ambeginningto be old fogy eno' to like even an old shackly wooden pump-handle, if the water it fetches only carries all the sweetness of the mountain-side. Yrs. ever,
W.J.
The dying fish on p[in]s stick most in my memory. Is that right in a novel of human life?
Oct. 7, 1888.
...I am teaching ethics and the philosophy of religion for the first time, with that dear old duffer Martineau's works as a text. It gives me lots to do, as I only began my systematic reading in that line three weeks ago, having wasted the summer in farming (if such it can be called) and philosophizing. My "Psychology" will therefore have to be postponed until another year; for with as much college work as I have this year, I can't expect to write a line of it....
Oct. 14, 1888.
...The Cambridge year begins with much vehemence—I with a big class in ethics, and seven graduates from other colleges in advanced psychology, giving me a good deal of work. But I feel uncommonly hearty, and shall no doubt come out of it all in good shape.... I am to have lots of reading and no writing to speak of this year and expect to enjoy it hugely. It does one good to read classic books. For a month past I've done nothing else, in behalf of my ethics class—Plato, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Butler, Paley, Spinoza, etc., etc. No book is celebrated without deserving it for some quality, and recenter books, certain never to be celebrated, have an awfully squashy texture....
CAMBRIDGE,Apr. 15, 1889.
My dear Godkin,—Harry's address is 34 De Vere Gardens, W. I imagine that he will be there till midsummer.
I hope 'tis yourself that's going! You must need itawfully. I fully meant to call on you when I was in N. Y. a fortnight ago. But I was so dead tired that I slept on my hotel bed all the only afternoon I had, went to Daly's theatre in the evening and then had to come away. You are the noblest Roman of them all; and what a man shall do for a newspaper with sanity, intellect and backbone in it, when your editorial pen has ceased to trickle, I don't know. There must be plenty of morals in the world, plenty of brains, plenty of education, plenty of literary skill, but was there ever a time or country when they seemed less to coalesce, in the field of journalism? In the earlier years I may say that my whole political education was due to the "Nation"; later came a time when I thought you looked on the doings of Terence Powderly and Co. too much from without and too little from within; now I turn to you again as my only solace in a world where nothing stands straight. You have the most curious way of always beingright, so I never dare to trust myself now when you're agin me. I read my "Nation" rather quicker than I used, but I depend on it perhaps more than ever, and cannot forbear seizing this passing occasion to tell you so.
I hope, once more, that you're going abroad yourself. It will do you no end of good totake inafter your daily giving out for so long. Harry will be delighted to see you. Poor Alice is stranded at Leamington, unable to use her legs or brain to any account, but never complaining, and living apparently on the Irish question, being a violent Parnellite. I settle the affairs of the Universe in my College courses, and have got so far ahead as to be building a big new house on that part of it known as the Norton estate.[92]A new street passes before your old house, now Grace Norton's. I am a little north of it, facing it, and squatting right across the old Norton Avenue. Four other houses aregoing up there immediately, two of 'em actually under way. No answer to this is expected, from a man as busy as you. Please give my best respects to Mrs. Godkin, and believe me ever affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
CAMBRIDGE,May 12, 1889.
My dear Harry,—I have been feeling so dead-tired all this spring that I believe a long break from my usual scenes is necessary. It is like the fagged state that drove me abroad the last two times. I have been pretty steadily busy for six years and the result isn't wonderful, considering what a miserable nervous system I have anyhow. The upshot of it is that I have pretty much made up my mind to invest $1000 (if necessary) of Aunt Kate's legacy in my constitution, and spend the summer abroad. This will give me the long-wished opportunity of seeing you and Alice, and enable me to go to an international congress of "physiological psychologists" which I have had the honor of an invitation to attend in the capacity of "honorary committee"-man for the U. S. It will be instructive and inspiring, no doubt, and won't last long, and [will] give me an opportunity to meet a number of eminent men. But for these three reasons, I think I should start for the Pacific coast as being more novel. I confess I find myself caring more for landscapes than for men—strange to say, and doubtless shameful; so my stay in London will probably be short.
I learn from Godkin that he is to be with you about the same time that I shall be in London. I don't suppose you have room for both of us, but pray don't let that trouble you. I can easily find a lodging somewhere for a few days, which are all that I shall stay. I am heartily glad Godkin is about to go abroad; I know of no one who so richly deservesa vacation. My heart is warming up again to the "Nation," as it hasn't for many years.
I long to have a good long talk with you about yourself, Alice, and 10,000 old things. Alice used to be so perturbed atexpectingthings that in my ignorance of her present condition I don't venture to announce to her my arrival. But do you use your discretion as to where and how she shall be informed. Send her this, if it is the best way.
It's a bad summer for me to be gone, with the house-building here, the Chocorua place unfinished, and the crowds set in motion by the Paris exhibition; andperhaps, if I find myself unexpectedly hearty when lectures end two weeks hence, I may not go after all. But I can't help feeling in my bones that Ioughtto go, so I probably shall. It will then be the Cephalonia, sailing June 22, and I shall get off at Queenstown, as I am on the whole more curious to see the Emerald Isle than any other part of Europe, except Scotland, which I probably shan't see at all. The "Congress" in Paris begins Aug. 5.
How good it will be to see poor Alice again, and to hear you discourse! Ever affectly, yours,
W.J.
In late June James did, in fact, sail on the Cephalonia and disembark at Queenstown. Thence he proceededviaCork to Killarney and on to Dublin, where he spent a day at Trinity College before going to Glasgow and Oban. Having, in the briefest time and at first sight, fallen "dead in love wi' Scotland both land and people" he traveled onviaEdinburgh, and reached London by the 17th of July. There he stayed with Henry James for ten days and saw his sister. A letter from London to Mrs. James may be included in part.
34 De Vere Gardens, London,July 29, 1889.
... [After seeing Mrs. Gurney I went] to Brighton, where I spent a night at Myers's lodgings, and the evening with him and the Sidgwicks trying thought-transference experiments which, however, on that occasion did not succeed.... The best thing by far which I saw in Brighton, and a thing the impression of which will perhaps outlast everything else on this trip, was four cuttle-fish (octopus) in the Aquarium. I wish we had one of them for a child—such flexible intensity of life in a form so inaccessible to our sympathy. Next day to Haslemere to the Pearsall Smiths, where I spent a reallygemüthlichevening and morning. Pearsall himself as engaging as of yore. The place and country wonderfully rich and beautiful. Returning yesterday, went with H. to National Gallery in the afternoon, and read Brownell on France in theP.M.Yesterday, Sunday, Harry went to the country after breakfast, whilst I wrote a lot of notes and read Zola's "Germinal," a story of mines and miners, and a truly magnificent work, if successfully to reproduce the horror and pity of certain human facts and make you see them as if real can make a book magnificent.
Towards four o'clock (the weather fine) I mounted the top of a bus and went (with thousands of others similarly enthroned) to Hampton Court, through Kew, Richmond, Bushey Park, etc.; about 30 miles there and back, all for 4s.6d.I strolled for an hour or more in the Hampton Court Gardens, and overlooked the Thames allbizarréewith row-boats and male and female rowers, and got back,perdu dans la foule, at10 P.M.—a most delightful and interesting six hours, with but the usual drawback, thatyouwere not along. How you would have enjoyed every bit of it, especially the glimpses, between Richmond and Hampton, over the high brick walls and between the bars of the iron gates, of these extraordinary English gardens and larger grounds, all black with their tufted vegetation. More different things can grow in a square foot here, if they're taken care of, than I've ever seen elsewhere, and one of these high ivy-walled gardens is something thelikeof which is altogether unknown to us. Like all human things (except wives) they grow banal enough, if one stays long in their company, but the first acquaintance between Alice Gibbens and them is something which I would fain see. The crowd was immense and the picturesqueness of everything quite medieval, as were also the good manners and the tendency to a certain hearty sociability, shown in the chaffing from vehicle to vehicle along the road. I'm glad I had this sight of the greatness of the English people, and glad I had no social duties to perform....
Harry is as nice and simple and amiable as he can be. He has covered himself, like some marine crustacean, with all sorts of material growths, rich sea-weeds and rigid barnacles and things, and lives hidden in the midst of his strange heavy alien manners and customs; but these are all but "protective resemblances," under which the same dear old, good, innocent and at bottom very powerless-feeling Harry remains, caring for little but his writing, and full of dutifulness and affection for all gentle things....
From London James crossed to Paris, to attend the International Congress of Physiological Psychology which had been arranged to coincide with the International Exposition of that year. He found between 60 and 120 colleagues, most of them European, of course, in attendanceat its sessions. This incident in his life may be summarized in a few sentences from his own report of the Congress, in "Mind": "The most striking feature of the discussions was, perhaps, their tendency to slope off to some one or other of those shady horizons with which the name of "psychic-research" is now associated.... The open results were, however (as always happens at such gatherings), secondary in real importance to the latent ones—the friendships made, the intimacies deepened, and the encouragement and inspiration which came to everyone from seeing before them in flesh and blood so large a portion of that little army of fellow students from whom and for whom all contemporary psychology exists. The individual worker feels much less isolated in the world after such an experience." To Stumpf he wrote similarly (Aug. 15): "The sight of 120 men all actively interested in psychology has made me feel much less lonely in the world, and ready to finish my book this year with a great deal moreentrain. A book hanging so long on one's hands at last gets outgrown, and even disgusting to one."
On his way home James went again to see his sister, and her account of him is not to be omitted.
"William, instead of going to Switzerland, came suddenly back from Paris and went home, having, as usual, exhausted Europe in a few weeks, finding it stale, flat and unprofitable. The only necessity being to get home, the first letter after his arrival, was, of course, full of plans for his returnpluswife and infants; he is just like a blob of mercury—you can't put a mental finger upon him. H. and I were laughing over him, and recalling Father, and William's resemblance (in his ways) to him. Tho' the results are the same, they seem to come from such a different nature in the two; in W., an entire inability or indifferenceto 'stick to a thing for the sake of sticking,' as some one said of him once; whilst Father, the delicious infant! couldn't submit even to the thralldom of his own whim; and then the dear being was such a prey to the demon homesickness.... But to return to our mutton, William: he came with H. on August 14 on his way to Liverpool. He told all about his Paris experience, where he was a delegate to the Psychological Congress, which was a most brilliant success. The French most polite and hospitable. They invited W. to open the Congress, and they always had a foreigner in the Chair at the different meetings. I extracted with great difficulty from him that 'Monsieur Willyam James' was frequently referred to by the speakers. He liked the Henry Sidgwicks and Fred. Myers. Mrs. Myers paid him the following enigmatic compliment: 'We are so glad that you areasyou are.'"
Francis James Child. Caricature from a Pocket Note-Book.Francis James Child.Caricature from a Pocket Note-Book.
On getting back to Cambridge in the autumn, James moved his family into a house which he had just built in Irving Street—a street which had been newly opened through what used to be called Norton's Woods. He had planned this house with such eager interest in all its details that he had even designed doors and windows and had practically been his own architect with respect to everything except structural specifications. The result was a detached wooden house of pleasantly square outer appearance, covered with shingles which soon weathered brown, and having dark green trimmings. Inside there was one room which deserves particular mention. James loved to have "space" about him[93]and he planned a library thatwas the largest and sunniest room the house could provide. It was about 22½ feet wide and 27 feet long. The walls were lined with book-shelves from floor to ceiling, except where James hung a portrait of his father over the open fireplace. On the southern side there was a triple window whose total width was nearly half the length of the room, and which let in a flood of sunlight. Through it one looked out upon a small lawn overhung by a large elm, and upon more grass and trees beyond. This was his study and living-room for the rest of his life. Here most of the Cambridge letters that follow may be assumed to have been written.
After James moved to 95 Irving Street, several people referred to in the letters became his very near neighbors. Josiah Royce, Francis J. Child, C. E. Norton, Miss Theodora Sedgwick were all within three minutes walk of his door. Miss Grace Norton lived across the way.
CAMBRIDGE,Dec. 25, 1889.
Dear Miss Norton,—Will you accept, as a Christmas offering, the accompanying bottles of California Champagne,extremelysalubrious in its after-effects, quite as intoxicating, almost as good-tasting and only half as "cost-playful" as French Champagne—in short, a beverage which no household should be without.
I should gladly have sought out something more sentimental,—though after a bottle or so, this seems rosy with sentiment,—but I have no gifts of invention in thepresentline, and took something useful, merely to testify to the affection and admiration with which I am ever yours,
WM. JAMES.
Undated [1889].
MY DEARMR. NORTON,—This introduces to you Mr. X——, from South Abington, a workman in a tack factory since boyhood, who has nevertheless gone quite deeply into studies philosophic, mathematical and sociological. He will tell you more about himself, and I wish if convenient that you would "draw him out"—I should like much to hear your impression. I want, if possible, to help him to a start in life here. Palmer has invited him to stay with him for a week. And we are busy studying him and trying to cast his horoscope, to feel whether we can conscientiously recommend him to some millionaire to support in college for a year (as unmatriculated), and so give him a chance to make himself known and find some better avocation for himself than the making of tacks ten hours a day. He knows nothing of our plan, thinks this a mere spree, so please don't let it out! Very truly yours,
WM. JAMES.
The workman from the tack factory, like more than one other lame duck before and after him, had aroused what Professor Palmer once aptly called James's "inclination toward the under-dog and his insistence on keeping the door open for every species of human experiment." It made no difference what X——'s doctrines were, or whether or not they were akin to James's way of thinking. And if such a man was unfitted to arouse other people's sympathies, James's own were the more readily challenged. The erratics of the philosophical world were significant phenomena, and sometimes interested him most just when they were most "queer"—when they were perhaps aberrant to the point of being pathological specimens. Itmattered as little to James where such people sprang from, or by what strange processes they had arrived at their ideas, as it matters to a naturalist that beetles have to be hunted for in all sorts of places. He filled the "Varieties of Religious Experience" with the records of abnormal cases and with accounts of the mental and emotional adventures of people whom the everyday world called cranks and fanatics. He was not only curious about such men, but endlessly patient and helpful to them. To some indeed his encouragement was more comforting than profitable, and among them must be numbered the X—— of this letter—an uncouth and helpless creature, who has since achieved his only immortality in another sphere of being. The poor man never got over this "spree," but withdrew from the tack factory forever, spent many years in a Mills Hotel working over an unsalablemagnum opus, and every now and then appealing for funds. A letter on a later page recurs to this case.
In the spring of 1890 James finished the remaining chapters of the "Psychology." The next letters were written during the final weeks of work on the book.
CAMBRIDGE,May 9, 1890.
My dear Holt,—I was in hopes that you would propose to break away from the famous "Series" and publish the book independently, in two volumes. An abridgement could then be prepared for the Series. If there be anything which I loathe it is a mean overgrown page in small type, and I think the author's feelings ought to go for a good deal in the case of the enormousratwhich his ten years gestation has brought forth.
In any event, I dread the summer and next year, with two new courses to teach, and, I fear, no vacation. What I wrote you, if you remember, was to send you the "heft" of the MS. by May 1st, the rest to be done in the intervals of proof-correcting. You however insisted on having the entire MS. in your hands before anything should be done. It seems to me that this delay is,nowat any rate, absurd. There is certainly less than two weeks' work on the MS. undone. And every day got behind us now means a day of travel and vacation for me next September. I really think, considering the sort of risk I am running by the delay, that I mustinsiston getting to press now as soon as the page is decided on.
No one could be more disgusted than I at the sight of the book.Nosubject is worth being treated of in 1000 pages! Had I ten years more, I could rewrite it in 500; but as it stands it is this or nothing—a loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two facts:1st, that there is no such thing as ascienceof psychology, and2nd, that W. J. is an incapable.
Yours provided you hurry up things,
WM. JAMES.
When Mrs. James took the children to Chocorua for the summer, James remained in Cambridge to finish the book.
CAMBRIDGE,May 17, 7:50P.M.
...Wrote hard pretty much all day, lectured on Ansel Bourne, etc., had three students to lunch, Chubb being gone to Milton. Visit thisA.M.from Bishop Keane of the New Catholic University at Washington, to get advice about psycho-physic laboratory. Feel very well, though Idrink coffee daily. "Psychology" will certainly be finished by Sunday noon!...
Sunday, May[18], 9:50P.M.
...The job is done! All but some paging and half a dozen little footnotes, the work is completed, and as I see it as a unit, I feel as if it might be rather a vigorous and richly colored chunk—for that kind of thing at least!...
May 22, 5:45P.M.
...I sot up till two last night putting the finishing touches on the MS., which now goes to Holt in irreproachable shape, woodcuts and all. I insured it for $1000.00 in giving it to the express people thisA.M.That will make them extra careful at a cost of $1.50. This morning a great feeling of weariness came over me at 10 o'clock, and I was taking down a volume of Tennyson intending to doze off in my chair, when X—— arrived....
May 24.
...I came home very weary, and lit a fire, and had a delicious two hours all by myself, thinking of the bigétapeof my life which now lay behind me (I mean that infernal book done), and of the possibilities that the future yielded of reading and living and loving out from the shadow of that interminable black cloud.... At any rate, it does give me some comfort to think that I don't livewhollyin projects, aspirations and phrases, but now and then have something done to show for all the fuss. The joke of it is that I, who have always considered myself a thing of glimpses, of discontinuity, ofaperçus, with no power of doing a big job, suddenly realize at theendof this task that it is the biggest book on psychology in any language except Wundt's, Rosmini's and Daniel Greenleaf Thompson's! Still, if it burns up at the printing-office, I shan't much care, for I shan't ever write it again!!
CHOCORUA,June 4, 1890.
My dear Harry, ...The great event for me is the completion at last of my tedious book. I have been at my desk with it every day since I got back from Europe, and up at four in the morning with it for many a day of the last month. I have written every page four or five times over, and carried it "on my mind" for nine years past, so you may imagine the relief. Besides, I am glad to appear at last as a man who has done something more than make phrases and projects. I will send you a copy, in the fall, I trust, though [the printer] is so inert about starting the proofs that we may not get through till midwinter or later. As "Psychologies" go, it is a good one, but psychology is in such an ante-scientific condition that the whole present generation of them is predestined to become unreadable old medieval lumber, as soon as the first genuine tracks of insight are made. The sooner the better, for me!...
CAMBRIDGE,July 24, 1890.
My dear Mrs. Whitman,—How good a way to begin the day, with a letter from you, and a composition of yours to correct!
To take the latter first, I trembled a little when, after looking over the printed document, I found you beginning so sympathetically to stroke down Mr. Jay; but you made it all right ere the end. Since the movement is on foot, it is time that rational people like yourself should get an influence in it. I doubt whether the earth supports a more genuine enemy of all that the Catholic Churchinwardlystands for than I do—écrasez l'infâmeis the onlyway I can feel about it. But the concrete Catholics, including the common priests in this country, are an entirely different matter. Their wish to educate their own, and to do what proselytizing they can, is natural enough; so is their wish to get state money. "Destroying American institutions" is a widely different matter; and instead of this vague phrase, I should like to hear one specification laid down of an "institution" which they are now threatening. The only way to resist them is absolute firmness and impartiality, and continuing in the line which you point out, bless your 'art! Down with demagogism!—this document is not quite free therefrom....
As for the style, I see in it nothing but what is admirable. A pedant might object (near the end) to adropof (even Huguenot) bloodbeating high; but how can I object to anything from your pen?
And now 10,000 thanks for your kind words about the proofs. The pages I sent you are probably the mostcontinuouslyamusing in the book—though occasionally there is a passing gleam elsewhere. If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more. I take you at your word and send you some more sheets—only, to get something pithy and real, I go back to some practical remarks at the end of a chapter on Habit, composed with a view of benefiting theyoung. May they accordingly be an inspiration toyou!
Most of the book is altogether unreadable from any human point of view, as I feel only too well in my deluge of proofs. My dear wife will come down next week (Ithink) to help me through. Thank you once more, and believe me, with warm regards to your husband, Yours always,
WM. JAMES.