other before parting and the (on _my_ part) feigned expressions of joy
at not meeting you again for so many months, it was with the liveliest
regret that I left Newport before your return. But I was obliged in
order to get a room here--drove, literally drove to it. That you should
not have written to me for so long grieves me more than words can
tell--you who have nothing to do besides. It shows you to have little
affection and _that_ of a poor quality. I have, however, heard from
_others_ who tell me that Wilky is doing well, "improving daily," which
I am very glad indeed to hear. I am glad you had such a pleasant summer.
I am nicely established in a cosy little room, with a large recess with
a window in it, containing bed and washstand, separated from the main
apartment by a rich green silken curtain and a large gilt cornice. This
gives the whole establishment a splendid look.
I found when I got here that Miss Upham had changed her price to $5.00.
Great efforts were made by two of us to raise a club, but little
enthusiasm was shown by anyone else and it fell through. I then, with
that fine economical instinct which distinguishes me, resolved to take a
tea and breakfast of bread and milk in my room and only pay Miss Upham
for dinners. Miss U. is at Swampscott. So I asked to see [her sister]
Mrs. Wood, to learn the cost of seven dinners. She, with true motherly
instinct, said that I should only make a slop in my room, and that she
would rather let me keep on for $4.50, seeing it was me. I said she must
first consult Miss Upham. She returned from Swampscott saying that Miss
U. had sworn _she_ would rather pay _me_ a dollar a week than have me go
away. Ablaze with economic passion, I cried "Done!" trying to make it
appear as if she had made a formal offer to that effect. But she would
not admit it, and after much recrimination we were separated, it being
agreed that I should come for $4.50, _but tell no-one_. (Mind _you_
don't either.) I now lay my hand on my heart, and confidently look
towards my mother for that glance of approbation which she _must_
bestow. Have I not redeemed any weaknesses of the past? Though part of
my conception failed, yet it was boldly planned and would have been a
noble stroke.
I have been pretty busy this week. I have a filial feeling towards Wyman
already. I work in a vast museum, at a table all alone, surrounded by
skeletons of mastodons, crocodiles, and the like, with the walls hung
about with monsters and horrors enough to freeze the blood. But I have
no fear, as most of them are tightly bottled up. Occasionally solemn
men and women come in to see the museum, and sometimes timid little
girls (reminding me of thee, beloved, only they are less fashionably
dressed) who whisper: "Is folks allowed here?" It pains me to remark,
however, that not all the little girls are of this pleasing type, _most_
being boldfaced jigs. How does Wilky get on? Is Mayberry gone? How is he
nursed? Who holds his foot for the doctor? Tell me all about him.
Everyone here asks about him, and all without exception seem
enthusiastic about the darkeys. How has Aunt Kate's knee been since her
return? Sorry indeed was I to leave without seeing her. Give her my best
love. Is Kitty Temple as angelic as ever? Give my best love to her and
Minny and the little ones. (My little friend Elly, how often I think of
her!) Have your lessons with Bradford (the brandy-witness) begun? You
may well blush. Tell Harry Mr. [Francis J.] Child is here, just as
usual; Mrs. C. at Swampscott. [C. C.] Salter back, but morose. One or
two new students, and Prof. [W. W.] Goodwin, who is a very agreeable
man. Among other students, a son of Ed. Everett [William Everett], very
intelligent and a capital scholar, studying law. He took honors at
Cambridge, England. Tucks, _mère & fille_ away, _fils_ here....
I send a photograph of Gen. Sickles for yours and Wilky's amusement. It
is a part of a great anthropomorphological collection[28] which I am
going to make. So take care of it, as well as of all the photographs you
will find in the table drawer in my room. But isn't he a bully boy?
Harry's handwriting much better. Desecrate my room as little as
possible. Good-bye, much love to Wilky and all. If he wants nursing send
for me without hesitation. Love to the Tweedies. Haven't you heard yet
from Bobby?
Your aff. bro.,
WM.
[Illustration: Pencil Sketch from a Pocket Note-Book.]
III
1864-1866
_The Harvard Medical School--With Louis Agassiz to the Amazon_
IN 1864 the family moved from Newport to Boston, where Henry James,
Senior, took a house on Ashburton Place (No. 13) for two years, and
there was no more occasion for family letters. Although James began the
regular course at the Medical School, he had arrived at no clear
professional purpose and no selection of any particular field of study.
The School afforded him some measure of preparation for natural science
as well as for practice.
Philosophy had undoubtedly begun to beckon him, although its appealing
gesture lacked authority and did not enlist him in any regular course of
philosophic studies. In sixty-five he wrote to his brother Henry from
Brazil saying, "When I get home, I'm going to study philosophy all my
days." But in many respects his character and tastes matured slowly. The
instruction offered by Professor Francis Bowen in Harvard College does
not appear to have excited his interest at all. It cannot have failed to
excite the irony of his father,--as did everything of the sort that was
academic and orthodox,--and James would have been aware of this and
might have been influenced. On the other hand, it was obvious that, in
the case of his father, who had no connection with church, college or
school, the consideration and expression of theories and beliefs had
always been a totally unremunerative occupation; and James had to
consider how to earn a living. His prospective share of the property
that had sufficed for his parents was clearly not going to be enough to
support him in independent leisure. In the way of bread and butter,
biology and medicine offered more than metaphysical speculation. Last
and most important, the tide of contemporary inquiry, driven forward by
the storm of the Darwinian controversy, was setting strongly toward a
fresh examination of nature. Philosophy must embrace the new reality.
Everything that was stimulating in contemporary thought urged men to the
scrutiny of the phenomenal world. "Natural History," which has since
diversified and amplified itself beyond the use of that appellation, was
almost romantically "having its day."
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldener Baum.[29]
Thus Goethe, and Louis Agassiz, whose lectures James had already
followed, and with the abundance of whose inspiring activity no other
scientific energizing could then compare, was fond of quoting the lines.
Under such circumstances it was not strange that James should interrupt
his medical studies in order to join the expedition which Agassiz was
preparing to lead to the Amazon.
No richer or more instructive experience could well have offered itself
to him at twenty-three than this journey to Brazil seemed to promise. He
was no sooner on the Amazon, however, than it became clear to him that
he was not intended to be a field-naturalist; and he pictured the stages
of this self-discovery in long, diary-like letters which he sent home
to his family. On arriving at Rio he was forced to consider the question
of his going on or coming home, by an illness that kept him quarantined
for several uncomfortable weeks, and left him depressed and unable to
use his eyes during several weeks more. Although he decided in favor of
continuing with Agassiz, he revealed more and more clearly in his
letters that he was seeing Brazil with the eye of an adventurer and
lover of landscape rather than of a geologist or collector, and that the
months spent in fishing and pickling specimens were to count most for
him by teaching him what his vocation was _not_. He found that he was
essentially indifferent to the classification of birds, beasts, and
fishes, and that he was not made to deal with the riddle of the universe
from the only angle of approach that was possible in Agassiz's company.
It would be a mistake, however, to let it appear that nine months of
collecting with Louis Agassiz were nine months wasted. There are some
men whom it is an education to work under, even though the affair in
hand be foreign to one's ultimate concern. Agassiz was such an one,
"recognized by all as one of those naturalists in the unlimited sense,
one of those folio-copies of mankind, like Linnæus and Cuvier." Thirty
years after, James could still say of him: "Since Benjamin Franklin we
had never had among us a person of more popularly impressive type.... He
was so commanding a presence, so curious and enquiring, so responsive
and expansive, and so generous and reckless of himself and his own, that
everyone said immediately, Here is no musty _savant_, but a man, a great
man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice and
sin."[30]--"To see facts and not to argue or _raisonniren_ was what life
meant for Agassiz," and James, who was already incorrigibly interested
in the causes, values and purposes of things, and whose education had
been most unsystematic, profited by his corrective influence. "James,"
said Agassiz at this time, "some people perhaps consider you a bright
young man; but when you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of you
then, what they will say will be this: That James--oh, yes, I know him;
he used to be a very bright young man!" Such "cold-water therapeutics"
were gratefully accepted from one who was not only a teacher but a kind
friend; and James remembered them, and recorded later that "the hours he
spent with Agassiz so taught him the difference between all possible
abstractionists and all livers in the light of the world's concrete
fullness, that he was never able to forget it." Considering with what
passionate fidelity his own abstractions always face the concrete, this
is perhaps more of an acknowledgment than at first sight appears.
* * * * *
The Thayer Expedition set sail from New York April 1, 1865. The next
letter was written from ship-board, still in New York Harbor. The
"Professor" will be recognized as Louis Agassiz.
_To his Mother._
[_Mar. 30?_], 1865.
...We have been detained 48 hours on this steamer in port on account of
different accidents.... A dense fog is raging which will prevent our
going outside as long as it lasts. Sapristi! c'est embêtant....
The Professor has just been expatiating over the map of South America
and making projects as if he had Sherman's army at his disposal instead
of the ten novices he really has. He may get some students at Rio to
accompany the different parties, which will let them be more numerous.
I'm sure I hope he will, on account of the language. If each of us has a
Portuguese companion, he can do things twice as easily. The Prof. now
sits opposite me with his face all aglow, holding forth to the Captain's
wife about the imperfect education of the American people. He has talked
uninterruptedly for a quarter of an hour at least. I know not how she
reacts; I presume she feels somewhat flattered by the attention,
however. This morning he made a characteristic speech to Mr. Billings,
Mr. Watson's friend. Mr. B. had offered to lend him some books. Agassiz:
"May I enter your state-room and take them when I shall want them, sir?"
Billings, extending his arm said genially, "Sir, all that I have is
yours!" To which, Agassiz, far from being overcome, replied, shaking a
monitory finger at the foolishly generous wight, "Look out, sir, dat I
take not your skin!" That expresses very well the man. Offering your
services to Agassiz is as absurd as it would be for a South Carolinian
to invite General Sherman's soldiers to partake of some refreshment when
they called at his house....
At this moment Prof. passes behind me and says, "Now today I am going to
show you a little what I will have _you_ do." Hurray! I have not been
able to get a word out of the old animal yet about my fate. I'm only
sorry I can't tell _you_....
_To his Parents._
RIO, BRAZIL, _Apr. 21, 1865_.
MY DEAREST PARENTS,--Every one is writing home to catch the steamer
which leaves Rio on Monday. I do likewise, although, so far, I have very
little to say to you. You cannot conceive how pleasant it is to feel
that tomorrow we shall lie in smooth water at Rio and the horrors of
this voyage will be over. O the vile Sea! the damned Deep! No one has a
right to write about the "nature of Evil," or to have any opinion about
evil, who has not been at sea. The awful slough of despond into which
you are there plunged furnishes too profound an experience not to be a
fruitful one. I cannot yet say what the fruit is in my case, but I am
sure some day of an accession of wisdom from it. My sickness did not
take an actively nauseous form after the first night and second morning;
but for twelve mortal days I was, body and soul, in a more indescribably
hopeless, homeless and friendless state than I ever want to be in again.
We had a head wind and tolerably rough sea all that time. The trade
winds, which I thought were gentle zephyrs, are hideous moist gales that
whiten all the waves with foam....
_Sunday Evening._ Yesterday morning at ten o'clock we came to anchor in
this harbor, sailing right up without a pilot. No words of mine, or of
any man short of William the divine, can give any idea of the
magnificence of this harbor and its approaches. The boldest, grandest
mountains, far and near. The palms and other trees of such vivid green
as I never saw anywhere else. The town "realizes" my idea of an African
town in its architecture and effect. Almost everyone is a negro or a
negress, which words I perceive we don't know the meaning of with us; a
great many of them are native Africans and tattooed. The men have white
linen drawers and short shirts of the same kind over them; the women
wear huge turbans, and have a peculiar rolling gait that I have never
seen any approach to elsewhere. Their attitudes as they sleep and lie
about the streets are picturesque to the last degree.
Yesterday was, I think, the day of my life on which I had the most
outward enjoyment. Nine of us took a boat at about noon and went on
shore. The strange sights, the pleasure of walking on terra firma, the
delicious smell of land, compared with the hell of the last three weeks,
were perfectly intoxicating. Our Portuguese went beautifully,--every
visage relaxed at the sight of us and grinned from ear to ear. The
amount of fraternal love that was expressed by bowing and gesture was
tremendous. We had the best dinner I ever eat. Guess how much it cost.
140,000 reis--literal fact. Paid for by the rich man of the party. The
Brazilians are of a pale Indian color, without a particle of red and
with a very aged expression. They are very polite and obliging. _All_
wear black beaver hats and glossy black frock coats, which makes them
look like _des épiciers endimanchés_. We all returned in good order to
the ship at 11 P.M., and I lay awake most of the night on deck listening
to the soft notes of the vampire outside of the awning. (Not knowing
what it was, we'll call it the vampire.) This morning Tom Ward and I
took another cruise on shore, which was equally new and strange. The
weather is like Newport. I have not seen the thermometer....
Agassiz just in, delighted with the Emperor's simplicity and the
precision of his information; but apparently they did not touch upon our
material prospects. He goes to see the Emperor again tomorrow. Agassiz
is one of the most fascinating men personally that I ever saw. I could
listen to him talk by the hour. He is so childlike. Bishop Potter, who
is sitting opposite me writing, asks me to give his best regards to
father. I am in such a state of abdominal tumefaction from having eaten
bananas all day that I can hardly sit down to write. The bananas here
are no whit better than at home, but _so_ cheap and _so_ filling at the
price. My fellow "savans" are a very uninteresting crew. Except Tom
Ward I don't care if I never see one of 'em again. I like Dr. Cotting
very much and Mrs. Agassiz too. I could babble on all night, but must
stop somewhere.
Dear old Father, Mother, Aunt Kate, Harry and Alice! You little know
what thoughts I have had of you since I have been gone. And I have felt
more sympathy with Bob and Wilk than ever, from the fact of my isolated
circumstances being more like theirs than the life I have led hitherto.
Please send them this letter. It is written as much for them as for
anyone. I hope Harry is rising like a phoenix from his ashes, under
the new régime. Bless him. I wish he or some person I could talk to were
along. Thank Aunt Kate once more. Kiss Alice to death. I think Father is
the _wisest_ of all men whom I know. Give my love to the girls,
especially the Hoopers. Tell Harry to remember me to T. S. P[erry] and
to Holmes. Adieu.
Your loving
W. J.
Give my love to Washburn.
_To his Father._
RIO, _June 3, 1865_.
MY DEAREST OLD FATHER AND MY DEAREST OLD EVERYBODY AT HOME,--I've got so
much to say that I don't well know where to begin.--I sent a letter
home, I think about a fortnight ago, telling you about my small-pox,
etc., but as it went by a sailing vessel it is quite likely that this
may reach you first. That was written from the _maison de santé_ where I
was lying in the embrace of the loathsome goddess, and from whose hard
straw bed, eternal chicken and rice, and extortionate prices I was
released yesterday. The disease is over, and granting the necessity of
having it, I have reason to think myself most lucky. My face will not
be marked at all, although at present it presents the appearance of an
immense ripe raspberry.... My sickness began four weeks ago today. You
have no idea of the state of bliss into which I have been plunged in the
last twenty-four hours by the first draughts of my newly gained freedom.
To be dressed, to walk about, to see my friends and the public, to go
into the dining-room and order my own dinner, to feel myself growing
strong and smooth-skinned again, make a very considerable reaction. Now
that I know I am no longer an object of infection, I am perfectly
cynical as to my appearance and go into the dining-room here when it is
at its fullest, having been invited and authorized thereto by the good
people of the hotel. I shall stay here for a week before returning to my
quarters, although it is very expensive. But I need a soft bed instead
of a hammock, and an arm-chair instead of a trunk to sit upon for some
days yet....
In my last letter, I said something about coming home sooner than I
expected. Since then, I have thought the matter over seriously and
conscientiously every day, and it has resulted in my determining so to
do. My coming was a mistake, a mistake as regards what I anticipated,
and a pretty expensive one both for you, dear old Father, and for the
dear generous old Aunt Kate. I find that by staying I shall learn next
to nothing of natural history as I care about learning it. My whole work
will be mechanical, finding objects and packing them, and working so
hard at that and in traveling that no time at all will be found for
studying their structure. The affair reduces itself thus to so many
months spent in physical exercise. Can I afford this? _First_,
pecuniarily? No! Instead of costing the $600 or $700 Agassiz told me
twelve months of it would cost, the expense will be nearer to triple
that amount....
_Secondly_, I can't afford the excursion mentally (though that is not
exactly the adjective to use). I said to myself before I came away: "W.
J., in this excursion you will learn to know yourself and your resources
somewhat more intimately than you do now, and will come back with your
character considerably evolved and established." This has come true
sooner, and in a somewhat different way, than I expected. I am now
certain that my forte is not to go on exploring expeditions. I have no
inward spur goading me forwards on that line, as I have on several
speculative lines. I am convinced now, for good, that I am cut out for a
speculative rather than an active life,--I speak now only of my
_quality_; as for my _quantity_, I became convinced some time ago and
reconciled to the notion, that I was one of the very lightest of
featherweights. Now why not be reconciled with my deficiencies? By
accepting them your actions cease to be at cross-purposes with your
faculties, and you are so much nearer to peace of mind. On the steamer I
began to read Humboldt's Travels. Hardly had I opened the book when I
seemed to become illuminated. "Good Heavens, when such men are provided
to do the work of traveling, exploring, and observing for humanity, men
who gravitate into their work as the air does into our lungs, what need,
what _business_ have we outsiders to pant after them and toilsomely try
to serve as their substitutes? There are men to do all the work which
the world requires without the talent of any one being strained." Men's
activities are occupied in two ways: in grappling with external
circumstances, and in striving to set things at one in their own
topsy-turvy mind.
You must know, dear Father, what I mean, tho' I can't must[er] strength
of brain enough now to express myself with precision. The grit and
energy of some men are called forth by the resistance of the world. But
as for myself, I seem to have no spirit whatever of that kind, no pride
which makes me ashamed to say, "I can't do that." But I have a mental
pride and shame which, although they seem more egotistical than the
other kind, are still the only things that can stir my blood. These
lines seem to satisfy me, although to many they would appear the height
of indolence and contemptibleness: "Ne forçons point notre talent,--Nous
ne ferions rien avec grâce,--Jamais un lourdaud, quoi-qu'il fasse,--Ne
deviendra un galant." Now all the time I should be gone on this
expedition I should have a pining after books and study as I have had
hitherto, and a feeling that this work was not in my path and was so
much waste of life. I had misgivings to this effect before starting; but
I was so filled with enthusiasm, and the romance of the thing seemed so
great, that I stifled them. Here on the ground the romance vanishes and
the misgivings float up. I have determined to listen to them this time.
I said that my act was an expensive mistake as regards what I
anticipated, but I have got this other _edification_ from it. It has to
be got some time, and perhaps only through some great mistake; for there
are some familiar axioms which the individual only seems able to learn
the meaning of through his individual experience. I don't know whether I
have expressed myself so as to let you understand exactly how I feel. O
my dear, affectionate, wise old Father, how I longed to see you while I
lay there with the small-pox,[31] first revolving these things over! and
how I longed to confer with you in a more confiding way than I often do
at home! When I get there I can explain the gaps. As this letter does
not sail till next Saturday (this is Sunday), I will stop for the
present, as I feel quite tired out....
* * * * *
It was not feasible for James to leave the expedition and return home
immediately, and soon after the last letter was written, his returning
health and eyesight brought with them a more cheerful mood. He
determined to stay in Brazil for a few months longer.
_To his Father._
RIVER SOLIMOES (AMAZON),
_Sept. 12-15, 1865_.