Bad-Nauheim,Sept. 11, 1899.
Dear Mackintire,—The incredible has happened, and Dreyfus, without one may say a single particle ofpositiveevidence that he was guilty, has been condemned again. The French Republic, which seemed about to turn the most dangerous corner in her career and enter on the line of political health, laying down the finest set of political precedents in her history to serve as standards for future imitation and habit, has slipped Hell-ward and all the forces of Hell in the country will proceed to fresh excesses of insolence. But I don't believe the game is lost. "Les intellectuels," thanks to the Republic, are now aggressively militant as they never were before, and will grow stronger and stronger; so we may hope. I have sent you the "Figaro" daily; but of course the reports are too long for you to have read through. The most grotesque thing about the whole trial is the pretension of awful holiness, of semi-divinity in the diplomatic documents and waste-paper-basket scraps from the embassies—a farce kept up to the very end—these same documents being, so far as they were anything (and most of them were nothing), mere records of treason, lying, theft, bribery, corruption, and every crime on the part of the diplomatic agents. Either the German and Italian governments will now publish or not publish all the details of their transactions—give the exact documents meant by thebordereauxand the exact names of the French traitors. If they do not, there will be onlytwo possible explanations: either Dreyfus's guilt, or the pride of their own sacrosanct etiquette. As it is scarcely conceivable that Dreyfus can have been guilty, their silences will be due to the latter cause. (Of course it can't be due to what they owe in honor to Esterhazy and whoever their other allies and servants may have been. E. is safe over the border, and a pension for his services will heal all his wounds. Any other person can quickly be put in similar conditions of happiness.) And they and Esterhazy will then be exactly on a par morally, actively conspiring to have an innocent man bear the burden of their own sins. By their carelessness with the documents they got Dreyfus accused, and now they abandon him, for the sake of their own divine etiquette.
The breath of the nostrils of all these big institutions is crime—that is the long and short of it. We must thank God for America; and hold fast to every advantage of our position. Talk about our corruption! It is a mere fly-speck of superficiality compared with the rooted and permanent forces of corruption that exist in the European states. The only serious permanent force of corruption in America is party spirit. All the other forces are shifting like the clouds, and have no partnerships with any permanently organized ideal. Millionaires and syndicates have their immediate cash to pay, but they have no intrenched prestige to work with, like the church sentiment, the army sentiment, the aristocracy and royalty sentiment, which here can be brought to bear in favor of every kind of individual and collective crime—appealing not only to the immediate pocket of the persons to be corrupted, but to the ideals of their imagination as well.... My dear Mack, we "intellectuals" in America must all work to keep our precious birthright of individualism, and freedom fromthese institutions.Everygreat institution is perforce a means of corruption—whatever good it may also do. Only in the free personal relation is full ideality to be found.—I have vomited all this out upon you in the hope that it may wake a responsive echo. One must dosomethingto work off the effect of the Dreyfus sentence.
I rejoice immensely in the purchase [on our behalf] of the two pieces of land [near Chocorua], and pine for the day when I can get back to see them. If all the same to you, I wish that you would buy Burke's in your name, and Mother-in-law Forrest's in her name. But let this be exactly as each of you severally prefers.
We leave here in a couple of days, I imagine. I am better; but I can't tell how much better for a few weeks yet. I hope that you will smite the ungodly next winter. What a glorious gathering together of the forces for the great fight there will be. It seems to me as if the proper tactics were to pound McKinley—put the whole responsibility on him. It is he who by his purely drifting "non-entanglement" policy converted a splendid opportunity into this present necessity of a conquest of extermination. It is he who has warped us from our continuous national habit, which, if we repudiate him, it will not be impossible to resume.
Affectionately thine, Mary's, Aleck's, Dinah's, Augusta's,[24]and everyone's,
W. J.
P.S. Damn it, America doesn't know the meaning of the word corruption compared with Europe! Corruption is so permanently organized here that it isn't thought of as such—it is so transient and shifting in America as to make an outcry whenever it appears.
Bad-Nauheim,Sept. 17, 1899.
...In two or three days more I shall be discharged (in very decent shape, I trust) and after ten days or so of rigorously prescribed "Nachkur" in the cold and rain of Switzerland (we have seen the sun only in short but entrancing glimpses since Sept. 1, and you know what bad weather is when it once begins in Europe), we shall pick up our Peggy at Vevey, and proceed to Lamb House, Rye,überParis, with all possible speed. God bless the American climate, with its transparent, passionate, impulsive variety and headlong fling. There are deeper, slower tones of earnestness and moral gravity here, no doubt, but ours is more like youth and youth's infinite and touching promise. God bless America in general!ConspuezMcKinley and the Republican party and the Philippine war, and the Methodists, and the voices, etc., as much as you please, but bless the innocence. Talk of corruption! We don't know what the word corruption means at home, with our improvised and shifting agencies of crude pecuniary bribery, compared with the solidly intrenched and permanently organized corruptive geniuses of monarchy, nobility, church, army, that penetrate the very bosom of the higher kind as well as the lower kind of people in all the European states (except Switzerland) and sophisticate their motives away from the impulse to straightforward handling of any simple case.Temointhe Dreyfus case! But no matter! Of all the forms of mental crudity, that of growing earnest over international comparisons is probably the most childish. Every nation has its ideals which are a dead secret to other nations, and it has to develop in its own way, in touch with them. It can only be judged by itself. If each of us does as well as he can in his own sphere at home, he will do allhecando; that is why I hate to remain so long abroad....
We have been having a visit from an extraordinary Pole named Lutoslawski, 36 years old, author of philosophical writings in seven different languages,—"Plato's Logic," in English (Longmans) being his chief work,—and knower of several more, handsome, and to the last degree genial. He has a singular philosophy—the philosophy of friendship. He takes in dead seriousness what most people admit, but only half-believe, viz., that we areSouls(Zoolss, he pronounces it), that souls are immortal, and agents of the world's destinies, and that the chief concern of a soul is to get ahead by the help of other souls with whom it can establish confidential relations. So he spends most of his time writing letters, and will send 8 sheets of reply to a post-card—that is the exact proportion of my correspondence with him. Shall I rope you in, Fanny? He has a great chain of friends and correspondents in all the countries of Europe. The worst of them is that they think a secret imparted to one may at his or her discretion become,de proche en proche, the property of all. He is awunderlicher Mensch: abstractly his scheme is divine, but there is something on which I can't yet just lay my defining finger that makes one feel that there is some need of the corrective and critical and arresting judgment in his manner of carrying it out. These Slavs seem to be the great radical livers-out of their theories. Good-bye, dearest Fanny....
Your affectionate
W. J.
Lamb House, Rye,Oct. 5, 1899.
Dear Mrs. Whitman,—You see where at last we have arrived, at the end of the firstétapeof this pilgrimage—thesecond station of the cross, so to speak—with the Continent over, and England about to begin. The land is bathed in greenish-yellow light and misty drizzle of rain. The little town, with its miniature brick walls and houses and nooks and coves and gardens, makes a curiously vivid and quaint picture, alternately suggesting English, Dutch, and Japanese effects that one has seen in pictures—all exceedingly tiny (so that one wonders howfamiliesever could have been reared in most of the houses) and neat andzierlichto the last degree.Refinementin architecture certainly consists in narrow trim and the absence of heavy mouldings. Modern Germany is incredibly bad from that point of view—much worse, apparently, than America. But the German people are a good safe fact for great powers to be intrusted to—earnest and serious, and pleasant to be with, as we found them, though it was humiliating enough to find how awfully imperfect were one's powers of conversing in their language. French not much better. I remember nothing of this extreme mortification in old times, and am inclined to think that it is due less to loss of ability to speak, than to the fact that, as you grow older, you speak better English, and expect more of yourself in the way of accomplishment. I am sureyouspoke no such English as now, in the seventies, when you came to Cambridge! And how could I, as yet untrained by conversation with you?
Seven mortal weeks did we spend at theCurort, Nauheim, for an infirmity of the heart which I contracted, apparently, not much more than a year ago, and which now must be borne, along with the rest of the white man's burden, until additional visits to Nauheim have removed it altogether for ordinary practical purposes. N. was a sweetly pretty spot, but I longed for more activity. A glorious week in Switzerland, solid in its sometimes awful, sometimes beefybeauty; two days in Paris, where I could gladly have stayed the winter out, merely for the fun of the sight of the intelligent and interesting streets; then hither, where H. J. has a real littlebijouof a house and garden, and seems absolutely adapted to his environment, and very well and contented in the leisure to write and to read which the place affords.
In a few days we go almost certainly to the said H. J.'s apartment, still unlet, in London, where we shall in all probability stay till January, the world forgetting, by the world forgot, or till such later date as shall witness the completion of the awful Gifford job, at which I have not been able to write one line since last January. I long for the definitive settlement and ability to get to work. I am very glad indeed, too, to be in an English atmosphere again. Of course it will conspire better with my writing tasks, and after all it is more congruous with one's nature and one's inner ideals. Still, one loves America above all things, for her youth, her greenness, her plasticity, innocence, good intentions, friends, everything. Je veux que mes cendres reposent sur les bords du Charles, au milieu de ce bon peuple de Harvarr Squerre que j'ai tant aimé. That is what I say, and what Napoleon B. would have said, had his life been enriched by your and my educational and other experiences—poor man, he knew too little of life, had never even heard of us, whilst we have heard of him!
Seriously speaking, though, I believe that international comparisons are a great waste of time—at any rate, international judgments and passings of sentence are. Every nation has ideals and difficulties and sentiments which are an impenetrable secret to one not of the blood. Let them alone, let each one work out its own salvation on its own lines. They talk of the decadence of France. The hatreds,and thecoups de gueuleof the newspapers there are awful. But I doubt if the better ideals were ever so aggressively strong; and I fancy it is the fruit of the much decried republican régime that they have become so. My brother represents English popular opinion as less cock-a-whoop for war than newspaper accounts would lead one to imagine; but I don't know that he is in a good position for judging. I hope if they do go to war that the Boers will give them fits, and I heartily emit an analogous prayer on behalf of the Philippinos.
I have had pleasant news of Beverly, having had letters both from Fanny Morse and Paulina Smith. I hope that your summer has been a good one, that work has prospered and that Society has been lessénervanteand more nutritious for the higher life of the Soul than it sometimes is.Wehave met but one person of any accomplishments or interest all summer. But I have managed to read a good deal about religion, and religious people, and care less for accomplishments, except where (as in you) they go with a sanctified heart. Abundance of accomplishments, in an unsanctified heart, only make one a more accomplished devil.
Good bye, angelic friend! We both send love and best wishes, both to you and Mr. Whitman, and I am as ever yours affectionately,
W. J.
34De Vere Gardens,London,Nov. 2, 1899.
DEAR OLDT. D.,—A recent letter from Margaret Gibbens says that you have gone to New York in order to undergo a most "radical operation." I need not say that my thoughts have been with you, and that I have felt anxietymixed with my hopes for you, ever since. I do indeed hope that, whatever the treatment was, it has gone off with perfect success, and that by this time you are in the durable enjoyment of relief, and nerves and everything upon the upward track. It has always seemed to me that, were I in a similar plight, I should choose a kill-or-cure operation rather than anything merely palliative—so poisonous to one's whole mental and moral being is the irritation and worry of the complaint. It would truly be a spectacle for the Gods to see you rising like a phœnix from your ashes again, and shaking off even the memory of disaster like dew-drops from a lion's mane, etc.—and I hope the spectacle will be vouchsafed to us men also, and that you will be presiding over Glenmore as if nothing had happened, different from the first years, save a certain softening of your native ferocity of heart, and gentleness towards the shortcomings of weaker people. Dear old East Hill![25]I shall never forget the beauty of the morning (it had rained the night before) when I took my bath in the brook, before driving down to Westport one day last June.
We got your letter at Nauheim, a sweet safe little place, made for invalids, to which it took long to reconcile me on that account. But nous en avons vu bien d'autres depuis, and from my present retirement in my brother's still unlet flat (he living at Rye), Nauheim seems to me like New York for bustle and energy. My heart, in short, has gone back upon me badly since I was there, and my doctor, Bezley Thorne, the first specialist here, and a man who inspires me with great confidence, is trying to tide me over the crisis, by great quiet, in addition to a dietary of thestrictest sort, and more Nauheim baths,à domicile. Provided I can only get safely out of the Gifford scrape, the deluge has leave to come.—Write, dear old T. D., and tell how you are, and let it be good news if possible. Give much love to the Warrens, and believe me always affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
The woman thou gavest unto me comes out strong as a nurse, and treats me much better than I deserve.
[Dictated to Mrs. James]
London,Nov. 23, 1899.
Dear John,—A week ago I learnt from the "Nation"—strange to have heard it in no directer way!—that dear old John Ropes had turned his back on us and all this mortal tragi-comedy. No sooner does one get abroad than that sort of thing begins. I am deeply grieved to think of never seeing or hearing old J. C. R. again, with his manliness, good-fellowship, and cheeriness, and idealism of the right sort, and can't hold in any longer from expression. You, dear John, seem the only fitting person for me to condole with, for you will miss him most tremendously. Pray write and tell me some details of the manner of his death. I hope he didn't suffer much. Write also of your own personal and family fortunes and give my love to the members of our dining club collectively and individually, when you next meet.
I have myself been shut up in a sick room for five weeks past, seeing hardly anyone but my wife and the doctor, a bad state of the heart being the cause. We shall be at West Malvern in ten days, where I hope to begin to mend.
Hurrah for Henry Higginson and his gift[26]to the University!I think the Club cannot fail to be useful if they make it democratic enough.
I hope that Roland is enjoying Washington, but not so far transubstantiated into a politician as to think that McKinley & Co. are the high-water mark of human greatness up to date.
John Ropes, more than most men, seems as if he would be natural to meet again.
Please give our love to Mrs. Gray, and believe me, affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
Lamb House,Dec. 23, 1899.
Dearest Fanny,—About a week ago I found myself thinking a good deal about you.
I may possibly have begun by wondering how it came that, after showing such a spontaneous tendency towards that "clandestine correspondence" early in the season, you should recently, in spite of pathetic news about me, and direct personal appeals, be showing such great epistolary reserve. I went on to great lengths about you; and ended by realizing your existence, and its significance, as it were, very acutely. I composed a letter to you in my mind, whilst lying awake, dwelling in a feeling manner on the fact that human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies, and soon their places will know them no more, and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia; they contribute nothing empirical to the relation, treating it as something transcendental and metaphysical altogether; whereas in truthit deserves from hour to hour the most active care and nurture and devotion. "There's that Fanny," thought I, "the rarest and most precious, perhaps, of all the phenomena that enter into the circle of my experience. I take her for granted; I seldom see her—shehas never passed a night in our house![27]and yet of all things she is the one that probably deserves the closest and most unremitting attention on my part. This transcendental relation of persons to each other in the absolute won't do! I must write to Fanny and tell her, in spite of her deprecations, just how perfect and rare and priceless a fact I know her existence in this Universe eternally to be. This very morrow I will dictate such a letter to Alice." The morrow came, and several days succeeded, and brought each its impediment with it, so that letter doesn't get written till today. And now Alice, who had suddenly to take Peggy (who is with us for ten days) out to see a neighbor's little girl, comes in; so I will give the pen to her.
[Remainder of letter dictated to Mrs. James]
Sunday, 24th.
Brother Harry and Peggy came in with Alice last evening, so my letter got postponed till this morning. What I was going to say was this. The day before yesterday we received in one bunch seven letters from you, dating from the 20th of October to the 8th of December, and showing that you, at any rate, had been alive to the duty of actively nourishing friendship by deeds.... Your letters were sent to Baring Brothers, instead of Brown, Shipley and Co., and it was a mercy that we ever got them at all. You are a great letter-writer inasmuch as your pen flows on, giving out easily such facts and feelings and thoughts as form theactual contents of your day, so that one gets a live impression of concrete reality.Myletters, I find, tend to escape into humorisms, abstractions and flights of fancy, which are not nutritious things to impart to friends thousands of miles away who wish to realize the facts of your private existence. We are now received into the shelter of H. J.'s "Lamb House," where we have been a week, having found West Malvern (where the doctor sent me after my course of baths) rather too bleak a retreat for the drear-nighted December. (Heaven be praised! we have just lived down the solstice after which the year always seems a brighter, hopefuller thing.) Harry's place is a most exquisite collection of quaint little stage properties, three quarters of an acre of brick-walled English garden, little brick courts and out-houses, old-time kitchen and offices, paneled chambers and tiled fire-places, but all very simple and on a small scale. Its host, soon to become its proprietor, leads a very lonely life but seems in perfect equilibrium therewith, placing apparently his interest more and more in the operations of his fancy. His health is good, his face calm, his spirits equable, and he will doubtless remain here for many years to come, with an occasional visit to London. He has spoken of you with warm affection and is grateful for the letters which you send him in spite of the lapse of years....
I have resigned my Gifford lectureship, but they will undoubtedly grant me indefinite postponement. I have also asked for a second year of absence from Harvard, which of course will be accorded. If I improve, I may be able to give my first Gifford course next year. I can do no work whatsoever at present, but through the summer and half through the fall was able to do a good deal of reading in religious biography. Since July, in fact, my only companions have been saints, most excellent, though sometimesrather lop-sided company. In a general manner I can see my way to a perfectly bully pair of volumes, the first an objective study of the "Varieties of Religious Experience," the second, my own last will and testament, setting forth the philosophy best adapted to normal religious needs. I hope I may be spared to get the thing down on paper. So far my progress has been rather downhill, but the last couple of days have shown a change which possibly may be the beginning of better things. I mean to take great care of myself from this time on. In another week or two we hope to move to a climate (possibly near Hyères) where I may sit more out of doors. Gathering some strength there, I trust to make for Nauheim in May. If I am benefited there, we shall stay over next winter; otherwise we return by midsummer. Were Alice not holding the pen, I should celebrate her unselfish devotion, etc., and were I not myself dictating, I should celebrate my own uncomplaining patience and fortitude. As it is, I leave you to imagine both. Both are simply beautiful!
...There, dear Fanny, this is all I can do today in return for your seven glorious epistles. Take a heartful of love and gratitude from both of us. Remember us most affectionately to your Mother and Mary. Write again soon, I pray you, but always toBrown, Shipley and Co.Stir up Jim Putnam to write when he can, and believe me, lovingly yours,
WM. JAMES.
[Dictated to Mrs. James]
Costebelle, Hyères,Jan. 17, 1900.
Dear Bessie,—Don't think that this is the first time that my spirit has turned towards you since our departure.Away back in Nauheim I began meaning to write to you, and although that meaning was "fulfilled" long before you were born, in Royce's Absolute, yet there was a hitch about it in the finite which gave me perplexity. I think that the real reason why I kept finding myself able to dictate letters to other persons—not many, 't is true—and yet postponing ever until next time my letter unto you, was that my sense of your value was so much greater than almost anybody else's—though I wouldn't have anything in this construed prejudicial to Fanny Morse. Bowed as I am by the heaviest of matrimonial chains, ever dependent for expression on Alice here, how can my spirit move with perfect spontaneity, or "voice itself" with the careless freedom it would wish for in the channels of its choice? I am sure you understand, and under present conditions of communication anything more explicit might be imprudent.
She has told you correctly all the outward facts. I feel within a week past as if I might really be taking a turn for the better, and I know you will be glad.
I have, in the last days, gone so far as to read Royce's book[28]from cover to cover, a task made easy by the familiarity of the thought, as well as the flow of the style. It is a charming production—it is odd that the adjectives "charming" and "pretty" emerge so strongly to characterize my impression. R. has got himself much more organically together than he ever did before, the result being, in itsensemble, a highly individual and originalWeltanschauung, well-fitted to be the storm-centre of much discussion, and to form a wellspring of suggestion and education for the next generation of thought in America. But it makes youthful anew the paradox of philosophy—so trivial and so ponderous at once. The book leaves a total effect on you likea picture—a summary impression of charm and grace as light as a breath; yet to bring forth that light nothing less than Royce's enormous organic temperament and technical equipment, and preliminary attempts, were required. The book consolidates an impression which I have never before got except by glimpses, that Royce's system is through and through to be classed as a light production. It is a charming, romantic sketch; and it is only by handling it after the manner of a sketch, keeping it within sketch technique, that R. can make it very impressive. In the few places where he tries to grip and reason close, the effect is rather disastrous, to my mind. But I do think of Royce now in a more or less settled way as primarily a sketcher in philosophy. Of course the sketches of some masters are worth more than the finished pictures of others. But stop! if this was the kind of letter I meant to write to you, it is no wonder that I found myself unable to begin weeks ago. My excuse is that I only finished the book two hours ago, and my mind was full to overflowing.
Next Monday we are expecting to move into the neighboring Château de Carqueiranne, which my friend Professor Richet of Paris has offered conjointly to us and the Fred Myerses, who will soon arrive. A whole country house in splendid grounds and a perfect Godsend under the conditions. If I can only bear the talking to the Myerses without too much fatigue! But that also I am sure will come. Our present situation is enviable enough. A large bedroom with a balcony high up on the vast hotel façade; a terrace below it graveled with white pebbles containing beds of palms and oranges and roses; below that a downward sloping garden full of plants and winding walks and seats; then a wide hillside continuing southward to the plain below, with its gray-green olive groves bordered bygreat salt marshes with salt works on them, shut in from the sea by the causeways which lead to a long rocky island, perhaps three miles away, that limits the middle of our view due south, and beyond which to the East and West appears the boundless Mediterranean. But delightful as this is, there is no place like home; Otis Place is better than Languedoc and Irving Street than Provence. And I am sure, dear Bessie, that there is no maid, wife or widow in either of these countries that is half as good as you. But here I must absolutely stop; so with a good-night and a happy New Year to you, I am as ever, affectionately your friend,
WM. JAMES.
[Dictated to Mrs. James]
Hotel D' Albion,Costebelle, Hyères,Jan. 18, 1900.
Darling Miller,—Last night arrived your pathetically sympathetic letter in comment on the news you had just received of my dropping out for the present from the active career. I want you to understand how deeply I value your unflagging feeling of friendship, and how much we have been touched by this new expression of it.... My strength and spirits are coming back to me with the open-air life, and I begin to feel quite differently towards the future. Even if this amelioration does not develop fast, it is a check to the deterioration, and shows that curative forces are still there. I look perfectly well at present, and that of itself is a very favorable sign. In a couple of weeks I mean to begin the Gifford lectures, writing, say, a page a day, and having all next year before me empty, am very likely to get, at any rate, the first course finished. A letterfrom Seth last night told me that the Committee [on the Gifford Lectureship] had refused my resignation and simply shoved my appointment forward by one year. So be of good cheer, Miller; we shall yet fight the good fight, sometimes side by side, sometimes agin one another, as merrily as if no interruption had occurred. Show this to Harry, to whom his mother will write today.
We enjoyed Royce's visit very much, and yesterday I finished reading his book, which I find perfectly charming as a composition, though as far as cogent reasoning goes, it leaks at every joint. It is, nevertheless, a big achievement in the line of philosophic fancy-work, perhaps the most important of all except religious fancy-work. He has got himself together far more intricately than ever before, and ought, after this, to be recognized by the world according to the measure of his real importance. To me, however, the book has brought about a curious settlement in my way of classing Royce. In spite of the great technical freight he carries, and his extraordinary mental vigor, he belongs essentially among the lighter skirmishers of philosophy. A sketcher and popularizer, not a pile-driver, foundation-layer, or wall-builder. Within his class, of course, he is simply magnificent. It all goes with his easy temperament and rare good-nature in discussion. The subject is not really vital to him, it is just fancy-work. All the same I do hope that this book and its successor will prove a great ferment in our philosophic schools. Only with schools and living masters can philosophybloomin a country, in a generation.
No more, dear Miller, but endless thanks. All you tell me of yourself deeply interests me. I am deeply sorry about the eyes. Are you sure it is not a matter for glasses? With much love from both of us. Your ever affectionate,
W. J.
[Dictated to Mrs. James]
Château de Carqueiranne,Jan. 31, 1900.
Dear old Friend,—Every day for a month past I have said to Alice, "Today we must get off a letter to Mr. Boott"; but every day the available strength was less than the call upon it. Yours of the 28th December reached us duly at Rye and was read at the cheerful little breakfast table. I must say that you are the only person who has caught the proper tone for sympathizing with an invalid's feelings. Everyone else says, "We are glad to think that you are by this time in splendid condition, richly enjoying your rest, and having a great success at Edinburgh"—this, where what one craves is mere pity for one's unmerited sufferings!Yousay, "it is a great disappointment, more I should think than you can well bear. I wish you could give up the whole affair and turn your prow toward home." That, dear Sir, is the proper note to strike—la voix du coeur qui seul au coeur arrive; and I thank you for recognizing that it is a case of agony and patience. I, for one, should be too glad to turn my prow homewards, in spite of all our present privileges in the way of simplified life, and glorious climate. What wouldn't I give at this moment to be partaking of one of your recherchés déjeuners à la fourchette, ministered to by the good Kate. From the bed on which I lie I can "sense" it as if present—the succulent roast pork, the apple sauce, the canned asparagus, the cranberry pie, the dates, the "To Kalon,"[29]—above all therire en barbeof the ever-youthful host. Will they ever come again?
Don't understand me to be disparaging our present meals which, cooked by a broadbuilt sexagenarian Provençale,leave nothing to be desired. Especially is the fish good and the artichokes, and the stewed lettuce. Ourcommensaux, the Myerses, form a good combination. The house is vast and comfortable and the air just right for one in my condition, neither relaxing nor exciting, and floods of sunshine.
Do you care much about the war? For my part I think Jehovah has run the thing about right, so far; though on utilitarian grounds it will be very likely better if the English win. When we were at Rye an interminable controversy raged about a national day of humiliation and prayer. I wrote to the "Times" to suggest, in my character of traveling American, that both sides to the controversy might be satisfied by a service arranged on principles suggested by the anecdote of the Montana settler who met a grizzly so formidable that he fell on his knees, saying, "O Lord, I hain't never yet asked ye for help, and ain't agoin' to ask ye for none now. But for pity's sake, O Lord, don't help the bear." The solemn "Times" never printed my letter and thus the world lost an admirable epigram. You, I know, will appreciate it.
Mrs. Gibbens speaks with great pleasure of your friendly visits, and I should think you might find Mrs. Merriman good company. I hope you are getting through the winter without any bronchial trouble, and I hope that neither the influenza nor the bubonic plague has got to Cambridge yet. The former is devastating Europe. If you see dear Dr. Driver, give him our warmest regards. One ought to stay among one's own people. I seem to be mending—though very slowly, and the least thing knocks me down. This noon I am still in bed, a little too much talking with the Myerses yesterday giving me a strong pectoral distress which is not yet over. This dictation begins to hurt me,so I will stop. My spirits now are first-rate, which is a great point gained.
Good-bye, dear old man! We both send our warmest love and are, ever affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
Carqueianne,March 13, 1900.
Dear Münsterberg,—Your letter of the 7th "ult." was a most delightful surprise—all but the part of it which told of your being ill again—and of course the news of poor Solomons's death was a severe shock.... As regards Solomons, it is pathetically tragic, and I hope that you will send me full details. There was something so lonely and self-sustaining about poor little S., that to be snuffed out like this before he had fairly begun to live in the eyes of the world adds a sort of tragic dramatic unity to his young career. Certainly thekeenestintellect we ever had, and one of the loftiest characters! But there was always a mysterious side to me about his mind: he appeared so critical and destructive, and yet kept alluding all the while to ethical and religious ideals of his own which he wished to live for, and of which he never vouchsafed a glimpse to anyone else. He was the only student I have ever had of whose criticisms I felt afraid: and that was partly because I never quite understood the region from which they came, and with the authority of which he spoke. His surface thoughts, however, of a scientific order, were extraordinarilytreffendand clearly expressed; in fact, the way in which he went to the heart of a subject in a few words was masterly. Of course he must have left, apart from his thesis, a good deal of MS. fit for publication. I have not seen our philosophical periodicals since leaving home. Have any parts of histhesis already appeared? If not, the whole thing should be published as "Monograph Supplement" to the "Psychological Review," and his papers gone over to see what else there may be. An adequate obituary of him ought also to be written. Who knew him most intimately? I think the obituary and a portrait ought also to be posted in the laboratory. Can you send me the address of his mother?—I think his father is dead. I should also like to write a word about him to Miss S——, if you can give me her address. If we had foreseen this early end to poor little Solomons, how much more we should have made of him, and how considerate we should have been!
It pleases me much to think of so many other good young fellows, as you report them, in the laboratory this year. How many candidates for Ph.D.? How glad I am to be clear of those examinations, certainly the most disagreeable part of the year's work....
Carqueiranne,Apr. 2, 1900.
Glorious old Palmer,—I had come to the point of feeling that my next lettermustbe to you, when in comes your delightful "favor" of the 18th, with all its news, its convincing clipping, and its enclosures from Bakewell and Sheldon. I have had many impulses to write to Bakewell, but they have all aborted—my powers being so small and so muchin Anspruch genommenby correspondence already under way. I judge him to be well and happy. What think you of his wife? I suppose she is no relation of yours. I shouldn't think any of your three candidates would do for that conventional Bryn Mawr. She stoneth the prophets, and I wish she would get X—— and get stung. He made adeplorableimpression on me many years ago. Theonly commentIheard when I gave my address there lately (the last one in my "Talks") was that A—— had hoped for something more technical and psychological! Nevertheless, some good girls seem to come out at Bryn Mawr. I am awfully sorry that Perry is out of place. Unless he gets something good, it seems to me that we ought to get him for a course in Kant. He is certainly the soundest, most normal all-round man of our recent production. Your list for next year interests me muchly. I am glad of Münsterberg's and Santayana's new courses, and hope they'll be good. I'm glad you're back in Ethics and glad that Royce has "Epistemology"—portentous name, and small result, in my opinion, but a substantivedisciplinewhich ought,par le temps qui court, to be treated with due formality. I look forward with eagerness to his new volume.[30]What a colossal feat he has performed in these two years—all thrown in by the way, as it were.
Certainly Gifford lectures are a good institution for stimulating production. They have stimulated me so far to produce two lectures of wishy-washy generalities. What is that for a "showing" in six months of absolute leisure? The second lecture used me up so that I must be off a good while again.
No! dear Palmer, the best I can possibly hope for at Cambridge after my return is to be able to carry one half-course. So make all calculations accordingly. As for Windelband, how can I ascertain anything except by writing to him? I shall see no one, nor go to any University environment. My impression is that we must go in for budding genius, if we seek a European. If an American, we can get asommité! But who? ineither case? Verily there is room at the top. S—— seems to be the only Britisher worth thinking of. I imagine we had better train up our own men. A——, B——, C——, either would no doubt do, especially A—— if his health improves. D—— is our last card, from the point of view of policy, no doubt, but from that of inner organization it seems to me that he may have too many points of coalescence with both Münsterberg and Royce, especially the latter.
The great event in my life recently has been the reading of Santayana's book.[31]Although I absolutely reject the platonism of it, I have literally squealed with delight at the imperturbable perfection with which the position is laid down on page after page; and grunted with delight at such a thickening up of our Harvard atmosphere. If our students now could begin really to understand what Royce means with his voluntaristic-pluralistic monism, what Münsterberg means with his dualistic scientificism and platonism, what Santayana means by his pessimistic platonism (I wonder if he and Mg. have had any close mutually encouraging intercourse in this line?), what I mean by my crass pluralism, what you mean by your ethereal idealism, that these are so many religions, ways of fronting life, and worth fighting for, we should have a genuine philosophic universe at Harvard. The best condition of it would be an open conflict and rivalry of the diverse systems. (Alas! that I should be out of it, just as my chance begins!) The world might ring with the struggle, if we devoted ourselves exclusively to belaboring each other.
I now understand Santayana, the man. I never understood him before. But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy! I don't think I ever knew the anti-realistic view to be propounded with so impudently superior an air.It is refreshing to see a representative of moribund Latinity rise up and administer such reproof to us barbarians in the hour of our triumph. I imagine Santayana'sstyleto be entirely spontaneous. But it has curious classic echoes. Whole pages of pure Hume in style; others of pure Renan. Nevertheless, how fantastic a philosophy!—as if the "world of values"wereindependent of existence. It is only asbeing, that one thing is better than another. The idea of darkness is as good as that of light, as ideas. There is more value in light'sbeing. And the exquisite consolation, when you have ascertained the badness of all fact, in knowing that badness is inferior to goodness, to the end—it only rubs the pessimism in. A man whose egg at breakfast turns out always bad says to himself, "Well, bad and good are not the same, anyhow." That is just the trouble! Moreover, when you come down to the facts, what do your harmonious and integral ideal systems prove to be? in the concrete? Always things burst by the growing content of experience. Dramatic unities; laws of versification; ecclesiastical systems; scholastic doctrines. Bah! Give me Walt Whitman and Browning ten times over, much as the perverse ugliness of the latter at times irritates me, and intensely as I have enjoyed Santayana's attack. The barbarians are in the line of mental growth, and those who do insist that the ideal and the real are dynamically continuous are those by whom the world is to be saved. But I'm nevertheless delighted that the other view, always existing in the world, should at last have found so splendidly impertinent an expression among ourselves. I have meant to write to Santayana; but on second thoughts, and to save myself, I will just ask you to send him this. It saves him from what might be the nuisance of having to reply, and on my part it has the advantage of being more free-spokenand direct. He is certainly anextraordinarily distinguéwriter. Thank him for existing!
As a contrast, read Jack Chapman's "Practical Agitation." The other pole of thought, and a style all splinters—but a gospel for our rising generation—I hope it will have its effect.
Send me your Noble lectures. I don't see how you could risk it without a MS. If you did fail (which I doubt) you deserved to. Anyhow the printed page makes everything good.
I can no more! Adieu! How is Mrs. Palmer this winter? I hope entirely herself again. You are impartially silent of her and of my wife! The "Transcript" continues to bless us. We move from this hospitable roof to the hotel at Costebelle today. Thence after a fortnight to Geneva, and in May to Nauheim once more, to be reëxamined and sentenced by Schott. Affectionately yours,
W. J.
Costebelle,Apr. 12, 1900.
Dearest Fanny,—Your letters continue to rain down upon us with a fidelity which makes me sure that, however it may once have been,now, on the principle of the immortal Monsieur Perrichon, we must be firmly rooted in your affections. You can never "throw over" anybody for whom you have made such sacrifices. All qualms which I might have in the abstract about the injury we must be inflicting on so busy a Being by making her, through our complaints of poverty, agony, and exile, keep us so much "on her mind" as to tune us up every two or three days by a long letter to which she sacrifices all her duties to the family and state, disappear, moreover, when I consider the character of theletters themselves. They are so easy, the facts are so much the immediate out-bubblings of the moment, and the delicious philosophical reflexions so much like the spontaneous breathings of the soul, that theeffortis manifestly at the zero-point, and into the complex state of affection which necessarily arises in you for the objects of so much loving care, there enter none of those curious momentary arrows of impatience and vengefulness which might make others say, if they were doing what you do for us, that they wished we were dead or in some way put beyond reach, so that our eternal "appeal" might stop. No, Fanny! we have no repinings and feel no responsibilities towards you, but accept you and your letters as the gifts you are. The infrequency of our answering proves this fact; to which you in turn must furnish the correlative, if the occasion comes. On the day when you temporarily hate us, or don't "feel like" the usual letter, don't let any thought of inconsistency with your past acts worry you about not taking up the pen. Let us go; though it be for weeks and months—I shall know you will come round again. "Neither heat nor frost nor thunder shall ever do away, I ween, the marks of that which once hath been." And to think that you should never have spent a night, and only once taken a meal, in our house! When we get back, we must see each other daily, and may the days of both of us be right long in the State of Massachusetts! Bless her!
I got a letter from J. J. Chapman praising her strongly the other day. And sooth to say the "Transcript" and the "Springfield Republican," the reception of whose "weeklies" has become one of the solaces of my life, do make a first-rate showing for her civilization. One can't just say what "tone" consists in, but these papers hold their own excellently in comparison with the English papers. Thereis far less alertness of mind in the general make-up of the latter; and the "respectability" of the English editorial columns, though it shows a correcter literary drill, is apt to be due to a remorseless longitude of commonplace conventionality that makes them deadly dull. (The "Spectator" appears to be the only paper with a nervous system, in England—that of acarnassierat present!) The English people seem to have positively a passionate hunger for this mass of prosy stupidity, never less than a column and a quarter long. The Continental papers of course are "nowhere." As for our yellow papers—every country has its criminal classes, and with us and in France, they have simply got into journalism as part of their professional evolution, and they must be got out. Mr. Bosanquet somewhere says that so far from the "dark ages" being over, we are just at the beginning of a new dark-age period. He means that ignorance and unculture, which then were merely brutal, are now articulate and possessed of a literary voice, and the fight is transferred from fields and castles and town walls to "organs of publicity"; but it is the same fight, of reason and goodness against stupidity and passions; and it must be fought through to the same kind of success. But it means the reëducating of perhaps twenty more generations; and by that time some altogether new kind of institutional opportunity for the Devil will have been evolved.
April13th. I had to stop yesterday.... Six months ago, I shouldn't have thought it possible that a life deliberately founded on pottering about and dawdling through the day would be endurable or even possible. I have attained such skill that I doubt if my days ever at any time seemed to glide by so fast. But it corrodes one's soul nevertheless. I scribble a little in bed every morning, and havereached page 48 of my third Gifford lecture—though Lecture II, alas! must be rewritten entirely. The conditions don't conduce to an energetic grip of the subject, and I am afraid that what I write is pretty slack and not what it would be if my vital tone were different. The problem I have set myself is a hard one:first, to defend (against all the prejudices of my "class") "experience" against "philosophy" as being the real backbone of the world's religious life—I mean prayer, guidance, and all that sort of thing immediately and privately felt, as against high and noble general views of our destiny and the world's meaning; andsecond, to make the hearer or reader believe, what I myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind's most important function. A task well-nigh impossible, I fear, and in which I shall fail; but to attempt it ismyreligious act.
We got a visit the other day from [a Scottish couple here who have heard that I am to give the Gifford lectures]; and two days ago went to afternoon tea with them at their hotel, next door.Sheenclosed a tract (by herself) in the invitation, and proved to be a [mass] of holy egotism and conceit based on professional invalidism and self-worship. I wish my sister Alice were there to "react" on her with a description! Her husband, apparently weak, and the slave of her. No talk but evangelical talk. It seemed assumed that a Gifford lecturer must be one of Moody's partners, and it gave me rather a foretaste of what the Edinburgh atmosphere may be like. Well, I shall enjoy sticking a knife into its gizzard—if atmospheres have gizzards? Blessed be Boston—probably the freest place on earth, that isn't merely heathen and sensual.
I have been supposing, as one always does, that you "ranin" to the Putnams' every hour or so, and likewise they to No. 12. But your late allusion to the telephone and the rarity of your seeing Jim [Putnam] reminded me of the actual conditions—absurd as they are. (Really you and we are nearer together now at this distance than we have ever been.) Well, let Jim see this letter, if you care to, flattering him by saying that it is more written for him than for you (which it certainly has not been till this moment!), and thanking him for existing in this naughty world. His account of the Copernican revolution (studento-centric) in the Medical School is highly exciting, and I am glad to hear of the excellent little Cannon becoming so prominent a reformer. Speaking of reformers, do you see Jack Chapman's "Political Nursery"? of which the April number has just come. (I have read it and taken my bed-breakfast during the previous page of this letter, though you may not have perceived the fact.) If not,dosubscribe to it; it is awful fun. He just looks at things, and tells the truth about them—a strange thing even totryto do, and he doesn't always succeed. Office 141 Broadway, $1.00 a year.
Fanny, you won't be reading as far as this in this interminable letter, so I stop, though 100 pent-up things are seeking to be said. The weather has still been so cold whenever the sun is withdrawn that we have delayed our departure for Geneva to the 22nd—a week later. We make a short visit to our friends the Flournoys (a couple of days) and then proceed towards NauheimviaHeidelberg, where I wish to consult the great Erb about the advisability of more baths in view of my nervous complications, before the great Schott examines me again. I do wish I could send for Jim for a consultation. Good-bye, dearest and best of Fannys. I hope your Mother is wholly well again.Much love to her and to Mary Elliot. It interested me to hear of Jack E.'s great operation. Yours ever,
W. J.
[Geneva,circa May 3, 1900.]
Dear François,—Here we are in Geneva, at the Flournoys'—dear people and splendid children. I wish Harry could marry Alice, Billy marry Marguerite, and you marry Ariane-Dorothée—the absolutely jolliest and beautifullest 3-year old I ever saw. I am trying to get you engaged! I enclose pictures of the dog. Ariane-Dorothée r-r-r-olls her r-r-r's like fury. I got your picture of the elephant—very good. Draw everything you see, no matter how badly, trying to notice how the lines run—one line every day!—just notice it and draw it, no matter how badly, and at the end of the year you'll be s'prised to see how well you can draw. Tell Billy to get you a big blank book at the Coöp., and every day take one page, just drawing down on it something, ordog, orhorse, ormanorwoman, orpartof a man or woman, which you have looked at that day just for the purpose, to see how the lines run. I bet the last page of that book will be better than the first! Do this for my sake. Kiss your dear old Grandma. P'r'aps, we shall get home this summer after all. In two or three days I shall see a doctor and know more about myself. Will let you know. Keep motionless and listen as much as you can. Take in things without speaking—it'll make you a better man. Your Ma thinks you'll grow up into a filosopher like me and write books. It is easy enuff, all but the writing. You just get it out of other books, and write it down. Always your loving,
Dad.
At this time James's thirteen-year-old daughter was living with family friends—the Joseph Thatcher Clarkes—in Harrow, and was going to an English school with their children. She had been passing through such miseries as a homesick child often suffers, and had written letters which evoked the following response.
Villa Luise,Bad-Nauheim,May 26, 1900.
Darling Peg,—Your letter came last night and explained sufficiently the cause of your long silence. You have evidently been in a bad state of spirits again, and dissatisfied with your environment; and I judge that you have been still more dissatisfied with the inner state of trying to consume your own smoke, and grin and bear it, so as to carry out your mother's behests made after the time when you scared us so by your inexplicable tragic outcries in those earlier letters. Well! I believe you have been trying to do the manly thing under difficult circumstances, but one learns only gradually to do thebestthing; and the best thing for you would be to write at least weekly, if only a post-card, and say just how things are going. If you are in bad spirits, there is no harm whatever in communicating that fact, and defining the character of it, or describing it as exactly as you like. The bad thing is to pour out thecontentsof one's bad spirits on others and leave them with it, as it were, on their hands, as if it was for them to do something about it. That was what you did in your other letter which alarmed us so, for your shrieks of anguish were so excessive, and so unexplained by anything you told us in the way of facts, that we didn't know but what you had suddenly gone crazy. That is theworstsort of thing youcan do. The middle sort of thing is what you do this time—namely, keep silent for more than a fortnight, and when you do write, still write rather mysteriously about your sorrows, not being quite open enough.
Now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when the inward life develops and when some people (and on the whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is not a bed of roses. Among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; and dissatisfaction with one's self, and irritation at others, and anger at circumstances and stony insensibility, etc., etc., which taken together form a melancholy. Now, painful as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. It always passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to learn a great many good things if we react on it rightly. [From margin.] (For instance, you learn how good a thing your home is, and your country, and your brothers, and you may learn to be more considerate of other people, who, you now learn, may have their inner weaknesses and sufferings, too.) Many persons take a kind of sickly delight in hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. Such persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. That is the worst possible reaction on it. It is usually a sort of disease, when we get it strong, arising from the organism having generated some poison in the blood; and we mustn't submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or comic or take part in anything active that will divert us from our mean, pining inward state of feeling. When it passes off, as I said, we know more than we did before. And we must try to make it last as short a time as possible. The worst of it often is that, while we are in it, we don'twantto get out of it. We hate it, and yet we prefer staying in it—that is a part of the disease. If we find ourselves like that, we must make ourselves do something different, go with people, speak cheerfully, set ourselves to some hard work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. The disease makes you think ofyourselfall the time; and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking ofthingsand ofother people—no matter what's the matter with our self.
I have no doubt you are doing as well as you know how, darling little Peg; but we have to learn everything, and I also have no doubt that you'll manage it better and better if you ever have any more of it, and soon it will fade away, simply leaving you with more experience. The great thing for younow, I should suppose, would be to enter as friendlily as possible into the interest of the Clarke children. If you like them, or acted as if you liked them, you needn't trouble about the question of whether they like you or not. They probably will, fast enough; and if they don't, it will be their funeral, not yours. But this is a great lecture, so I will stop. The great thing about it is that it is all true.
The baths are threatening to disagree with me again, so I may stop them soon. Will let you know as quick as anything is decided. Good news from home: the Merrimans have taken the Irving Street house for another year, and the Wambaughs (of the Law School) have taken Chocorua, though at a reduced rent. The weather here is almost continuously cold and sunless. Your mother is sleeping, and will doubtless add a word to this when she wakes. Keep a merry heart—"time and the hour run through the roughest day"—and believe me ever your most loving
W. J.
[Post-card]
Altdorf, Lake Luzern,July 20, [1900].
Your last letter was, if anything, a more unmitigated blessing than its predecessors; and I, with my curious inertia to overcome, sitthinking of letters, and of the soul-music with which they might be filled if my tongue could only utter the thoughts that arise in me to youward, the beauty of the world, the conflict of life and death and youth and age and man and woman and righteousness and evil, etc., and Europe and America! but it stays all caked within and gets no articulation, the power of speech being so non-natural a function of our race. We are staying above Luzern, near a big spruce wood, at "Gutsch," and today being hot and passivity advisable, we came down and took the boat, for a whole day on the Lake. The works both of Nature and of Man in this region seem too perfect to be credible almost, and were I not a bitter Yankee, I would, without a moment's hesitation, be a Swiss, and probably then glad of the change. Thegoodlinessof this land is one of the things I ache to utter to you, but can't. Some day I will write, also to Jim P. My condition baffles me. I have lately felt better, but been bad again, and altogether candonothing without repentance afterwards. We have just lunched in this bowery back verandah, water trickling, beautiful old convent sleeping up the hillside. Love to you all!
W. J.
Bad-Nauheim,Sept. 16, 1900.
Dearest Fanny,— ...Here I am having a little private picnic all by myself, on this effulgent Sunday morning—realAmerican September weather, by way of a miracle. I ordered my bath-chair man to wheel me out to the "Hochwald," where, he having been dismissed for three hours, until two o'clock, I am lying in the said luxurious throne, writing this on my knee, with nothing between but a number of Kuno Fischer's "Hegel's Leben, Werke und Lehre," now in process of publication, and the flexibility of which accounts for the poor handwriting. I am alone, save for the inevitable restaurant which hovers on the near horizon, in a beautiful grove of old oak trees averaging some 16 or 18 feet apart, through whose leaves the sunshine filters and dapples the clear ground or grass that lies between them. Alice is still in England, having finally at my command had to give up her long-cherished plan of a run home to see her mother, the children, you, and all the otherdulcissima mundi nominathat make of life a thing worth living for. Ifunkedthe idea of being alone so long when I came to the point. It is not that I am worse, but there will be cold weather in the next couple of months; and, unable to sit out of doors then, as here and now, I shall probably either have to over-walk or over-read, and both things will be bad for me.
As things arenow, I get on well enough, for the bath business (especially the "bath-chair") carries one through a good deal of the day. The great Schott has positively forbidden me to go to England as I did last year; so, early in October, our faces will be turned towards Italy, and by Nov. 1 we shall, I hope, be ensconced in apensionclose to the Pincian Garden in Rome, to see how longthatresource will last. I confess I am in the mood of it, and that there is a suggestion of more richness about the name of Rome than about that of Rye, which, until Schott's veto, was the plan. How the Gifford lectures will fare, remains to beseen. I have felt strong movings towards home this fall, but reflection says: "Stay another winter," and I confess that now that October is approaching, it feels like the home-stretch and as if the time were getting short and the limbs of "next summer" in America burning through the veil which seems to hide them in the shape of the second European winter months. Who knows? perhaps I may be spry and active by that time! I have still one untried card up my sleeve, that may work wonders. All I can say of this third course of baths is that so far it seems to be doing me no harm. That it will do me any substantial good, after the previous experiences, seems decidedly doubtful. But one must suffer some inconvenience to please the doctors! Just as in most women there is a wife that craves to suffer and submit and be bullied, so in most men there is apatientthat needs to have a doctor and obey his orders, whether they be believed in or not....
Damn the Absolute!"Damn the Absolute!"Chocorua, September, 1903. One morning James and Royce strolled into the road and sat down on a wall in earnest discussion. When James heard the camera click, as his daughter took the upper snap-shot, he cried, "Royce, you're being photographed! Look, out! I sayDamn the Absolute!"
Don't take the Malwida book[32]too seriously. I sent itfaute de mieux. I don't think I ever told you how much I enjoyed hearing the Lesley volume[33]read aloud by Alice. We were just in the exactly right condition for enjoying that breath of old New England. Good-bye, dearest Fanny. Give my love to your mother, Mary, J. J. P., and all your circle.Leb' wohlyourself, and believe me, your ever affectionate,
W. J.
Nauheim,Sept. 26, 1900.
Beloved Royce,—Great was my, wasourpleasure in receiving your long and delightful letter last night. Likethe lioness in Æsop's fable, you give birth to one young one only in the year, but that one is a lion. I give birth mainly to guinea-pigs in the shape of post-cards; but despite such diversities of epistolary expression, the heart of each of us is in the right place. I need not say, my dear old boy, how touched I am at your expressions of affection, or how it pleases me to hear that you have missed me. I too miss you profoundly. I do not find in the hotel waiters, chambermaids and bath-attendants with whom my lot is chiefly cast, that unique mixture of erudition, originality, profundity and vastness, and human wit and leisureliness, by accustoming me to which during all these years you have spoilt me for inferior kinds of intercourse. You are still the centre of my gaze, the pole of my mental magnet. When I write, 'tis with one eye on the page, and one on you. When I compose my Gifford lectures mentally, 'tis with the design exclusively of overthrowing your system, and ruining your peace. I lead a parasitic life upon you, for my highest flight of ambitious ideality is to become your conqueror, and go down into history as such, you and I rolled in one another's arms and silent (or rather loquacious still) in one last death-grapple of an embrace. How then, O my dear Royce, can I forget you, or be contented out of your close neighborhood? Different as our minds are, yours has nourished mine, as no other social influence ever has, and in converse with you I have always felt that my life was being lived importantly. Our minds, too, are not different in theObjectwhich they envisage. It is the whole paradoxical physico-moral-spiritual Fatness, of which most people single out some skinny fragment, which we both cover with our eye. We "aim at him generally"—and most others don't. I don't believe that we shall dwell apart forever, though our formulas may.
Home and Irving Street look very near when seen through these few winter months, and tho' it is still doubtful what I may be able to do in College, for social purposes I shall be available for probably numerous years to come. I haven't got at work yet—only four lectures of the first course written (strange to say)—but I am decidedly better today than I have been for the past ten months, and the matter is all ready in my mind; so that when, a month hence, I get settled down in Rome, I think the rest will go off fairly quickly. The second course I shall have to resign from, and write it out at home as a book. It must seem strange to you that the way from the mind to the pen should be as intraversable as it has been in this case of mine—you in whom it always seems so easily pervious. But Miller will be able to tell you all about my condition, both mental and physical, so I will waste no more words on that to me decidedly musty subject.
I fully understand your great aversion to letters and other off-writing. You have done a perfectly Herculean amount of the most difficult productive work, and I believe you to be much more tired than you probably yourself suppose or know. Both mentally and physically, I imagine that a long vacation, in other scenes, with no sense of duty, would do you a world of good. I don't say the full fifteen months—for I imagine that one summer and one academic half-year would perhaps do the business better—you could preserve the relaxed and desultory condition as long as that probably, whilst later you'd begin to chafe, andthenyou'd better be back in your own library. Ifmycontinuing abroad is hindering this, my sorrow will be extreme. Of course I must some time come to a definite decision about my own relations to the College, but I am reserving that till the end of 1900, when I shall write to Eliot in full. There is still a therapeuticcard to play, of which I will say nothing just now, and I don't want to commit myself before that has been tried.
You say nothing of the second course of Aberdeen lectures, nor do you speak at all of the Dublin course. Strange omissions, like your not sending me your Ingersoll lecture! I assume that the publication of [your] Gifford Volume II will not be very long delayed. I am eager to read them. I can read philosophy now, and have just read the first threeLieferungenof K. Fischer's "Hegel." I must say I prefer the original text. Fischer's paraphrases always flatten and dry things out; and he gives no rich sauce of his own to compensate. I have been sorry to hear from Palmer that he also has been very tired. One can't keep going forever! P. has been like an archangel in his letters to me, and I am inexpressibly grateful. Well! everybody has been kinder than I deserve....