Manaos, to get a batch of letters from you.... I could do no more then
than merely "accuse" the reception. Now I can manage to sweat out a few
lines of reply. It is noon and the heat is frightful. We have all come
to the conclusion that, for _us_ at least, there will be no hell
hereafter. We have all become regular alembics, and the heat grows upon
you, I find. Nevertheless it is not the dead, sickening heat of home. It
is more like a lively baking, and the nights remain cool. We are just
entering on the mosquito country, and I suspect our suffering will be
great from them and the flies. While the steamboat is in motion we don't
have them, but when she stops you can hardly open your mouth without
getting it full of them. Poor Mr. Bourkhardt is awfully poisoned and
swollen up by bites he got ten days ago on a bayou. At the same time
with the mosquitoes, the other living things seem to increase; so it has
its good side. The river is much narrower--about two miles wide perhaps
or three (I'm no judge)--very darkly muddy and swirling rapidly down
past the beautiful woods and islands. We are all going up as far as
Tabatinga, when the Professor and Madam, with some others, go into Peru
to the Mountains, while Bourget and I will get a canoe and some men and
spend a month on the river between Tabatinga and Ega. Bourget is a very
dog, yapping and yelping at every one, but a very hard-working
collector, and I can get along very well with him. We shall have a very
gypsy-like, if a very uncomfortable time. The best of this river is that
you can't bathe in it on account of the numerous anthropophagous fishes
who bite mouthfuls out of you. Tom Ward _may_ possibly be out and at
Manaos by the time we get back there at the end of October. Heaven grant
he may, poor fellow! I'd rather see him than any one on this continent.
Agassiz is perfectly delighted with him, his intelligence and his
energy, thinks him in fact much the best man of the expedition.
I see no reason to regret my determination to stay. "On contrary," as
Agassiz says, as I begin to use my eyes a little every day, I feel like
an entirely new being. Everything revives within and without, and I now
feel sure that I shall learn. I have profited a great deal by hearing
Agassiz talk, not so much by what he says, for never did a man utter a
greater amount of humbug, but by learning the way of feeling of such a
vast practical engine as he is. No one sees farther into a
generalization than his own knowledge of details extends, and you have a
greater feeling of weight and solidity about the movement of Agassiz's
mind, owing to the continual presence of this great background of
special facts, than about the mind of any other man I know. He has a
great personal tact too, and I see that in all his talks with me he is
pitching into my loose and superficial way of thinking.... Now that I am
become more intimate with him, and can talk more freely to him, I
delight to be with him. I only saw his defects at first, but now his
wonderful qualities throw them quite in the background. I am convinced
that he is the man to do me good. He will certainly have earned a
holiday when he gets home. I never saw a man work so hard. Physically,
intellectually and socially he has done the work of ten different men
since he has been in Brazil; the only danger is of his overdoing it....
I am beginning to get impatient with the Brazilian sleepiness and
ignorance. These Indians are particularly exasperating by their laziness
and stolidity. It would be amusing if it were not so infuriating to see
how impossible it is to make one hurry, no matter how imminent the
emergency. How queer and how exhilarating all those home letters were,
with their accounts of what every one was doing, doing, doing. To me,
just awakening from my life of forced idleness and from an atmosphere of
Brazilian inanity, it seemed as if a little window had been opened and a
life-giving blast of one of our October nor'westers had blown into my
lungs for half an hour. I had no idea before of the real greatness of
American energy. They wood up the steamer here for instance at the rate
(accurately counted) of eight to twelve logs a minute. It takes them two
and one-half hours to put in as much wood as would go in at home in less
than fifteen minutes.
[Illustration: A Pencil Sketch from a Pocket Note-Book.]
Every note from home makes me proud of our country.... I have not been
able to look at the papers, but I have heard a good deal. I do hope our
people will not be such fools as to hang Jeff. Davis for treason. Can
any one believe in revenge now? And if not for that, for what else
should we hang the poor wretch? Lincoln's violent death did more to
endear him to those indifferent and unfriendly to him than the whole
prosperous remainder of his life could have done; and so will Jeff's
if he is hung. Poor old Abe! What is it that moves you so about his
simple, unprejudiced, unpretending, honest career? I can't tell why, but
albeit unused to the melting mood, I can hardly ever think of Abraham
Lincoln without feeling on the point of blubbering. Is it that he seems
the representative of pure simple human nature against all conventional
additions?...
_To his Parents._
TEFFÉ (AMAZON), _Oct. 21, 1865_.
...I left the party up at Saõ Paulo the 20th of last month and got here
the 16th of this, having gone up two rivers, the Içá and Jutay, and made
collections of fishes which were very satisfactory to the Prof. as they
contained almost one hundred new species. On the whole it was a most
original month, and one which from its strangeness I shall remember to
my dying day; much discomfort from insects and rain, much ecstasy from
the lovely landscape, much hard work and heat, a very disagreeable
companion, J---- [added to the party in Brazil], the very best of fare,
turtle and fresh fish every day, and running through all a delightful
savor of freedom and gypsy-hood which sweetened all that might have been
unpleasant. We slept on the beaches every night and fraternized with the
Indians, who are socially very agreeable, but mentally a most barren
people. I suppose they are the most exclusively practical race in the
world. When I get home I shall bore you with all kinds of stories about
them. I found the rest of the party at this most beautiful little place
in a wonderful picturesque house. It was right pleasant to meet them
again. The Prof. has been working himself out and is thin and nervous.
That good woman, Mrs. Agassiz, is perfectly well. The boys, poor
fellows, have all their legs in an awful condition from a kind of mite
called "muguim" which gets under the skin and makes dreadful sores. You
can't walk in the woods without getting them on you, and poor Hunney
[Hunnewell] is ulcerated very badly. They have no mosquitoes though
here.
Since last night we have had everything packed--our packing-work, its
volume, its dirtyness, and its misery is wonderful. Twenty-nine full
barrels of specimens from here, and hardly one tight barrel among them.
The burly execrations of the burly Dexter when at the cooper's work
would make your hair shiver. But when a good barrel presents itself,
then the calm joy almost makes amends for the past. Dexter says he has
the same feeling for a decent barrel that he has for a beautiful woman.
When the steamer comes we are going down to Manaos, where we expect the
gunboat which the government has promised the Prof. Dexter and Tal go up
the Rio Negro for a month. The rest of us are going to the Madeira River
in the steamer. I don't know what I shall do exactly, but there will
probably be some canoeing to be done, in which case I'm ready; tho' the
rainy season is beginning, which makes canoe traveling very
uncomfortable. We shall be at Parâ by the middle of December certainly.
I am very anxious to learn whether the New York and Brazilian steamers
are to run. We may learn at Manaos, where there is also a chance for
letters for us, and American papers. Why can't you send the "North
American," with Father's and Harry's articles? It would be worth any
price to me.
* * * * *
_22nd Oct._
On board the old homestead, viz., Steamer Icamiaba. The only haven of
rest we have in this country, and then only when she is in motion; for
when we stop at a place, the Prof. is sure to come around and say how
very desirable it would be to get a large number of fishes from this
place, and willy-nilly you must trudge. I wrote in my last letter
something about the possibility of my wishing to go down South again
with the Professor. I don't think there is any more probability of it
than of my wishing to explore Central Africa. If there is anything I
hate, it is collecting. I don't think it is suited to my genius at all;
but for that very reason this little exercise in it I am having here is
the better for me. I am getting to be very practical, orderly, and
businesslike. That fine disorder which used to prevail in my precincts,
and which used to make Mother heave a beautiful sigh when she entered my
room, is treated by the people with whom I am here as a heinous crime,
and I feel very sensitive and ashamed about it. The 22nd of
October!--what glorious weather you are having at home now, and how we
should all like to be wound up by one day of it! I have often longed for
a good, black, sour, sleety, sloshy winter's day in Washington Street.
Oh, the bliss of standing on such a day half way between Roxbury and
Boston and having all the horse-cars pass you full! It will be splendid
to get home in mid-winter and revel in the cold.
I am delighted to hear how well Wilky is, and to hear from him. I wish
Bob would write me a line--and only one letter from Alice in all this
time--shame! Oh, the lovely white child! How the red man of the forest
would like to hug her to his bosom once more! I proposed, beloved Alice,
to write thee a long letter by this steamer describing my wonderful
adventures with the wild Indians, and the tiger [jaguar?], and various
details which interest thy lovely female mind; but I feel so darned
heavy and seedy this morning that I cannot pump up the flow of words,
and the letter goes on with the steamer from Manaos this evening. This
expedition has been far less adventurous and far more picturesque than
I expected. I have not yet seen a single snake wild here. The adventure
with the tiger consisted in his approaching to within 30 paces of our
mosquito net, and roaring so as to wake us, and then keeping us awake
most of the rest of the night by roaring far and near. I confess I felt
some skeert, on being suddenly awoke by him, tho' when I had laid me
down I had mocked the apprehensions of Tal about tigers. The adventure
with the wild Indians consisted in our seeing two of them naked at a
distance on the edge of the forest. On shouting to them in Lingoa Geral
they ran away. It gave me a very peculiar and unexpected thrilling
sensation to come thus suddenly upon these children of Nature. But I now
tell you in confidence, my beloved white child, what you must not tell
any of the rest of the family (for it would spoil the adventure), that
we discovered a few hours later that these wild Indians were a couple of
mulattoes belonging to another canoe, who had been in bathing.
I shall have to stop now. Do you still go to school at Miss Clapp's? For
Heaven's sake write to me, Bal! Tell Harry if he sees [John] Bancroft to
tell him Bourkhardt is much better, having found an Indian remedy of
great efficacy. Please give my best love to the Tweedies, Temples,
Washburns, La Farges, Paine, Childs, Elly Van Buren and in fact
everybody who is in any way connected with me. Best of love to Aunt
Kate, Wilk and Bob, Harry and all the family. I pine for Harry's
literary _efforts_ and to see a number or so of the "Nation." You can't
send too many magazines or papers--Care of James B. Bond, Parâ.
W. J.
IV
1866-1867
_Medical Studies at Harvard_
JAMES returned from Brazil in March, 1866, and immediately entered the
Massachusetts General Hospital for a summer's service as undergraduate
interne. In the autumn he left the Hospital and resumed his studies in
the Harvard Medical School.
The Faculty of the School then included Dr. O. W. Holmes and Professor
Jeffries Wyman. Charles Ed. Brown-Séquard was lecturing on the pathology
of the nervous system. During the years of James's interrupted course a
number of men attended the school who were to be his friends and
colleagues for many years thereafter--among them William G. Farlow,
subsequently Professor of Cryptogamic Botany and a Cambridge neighbor
for forty years, and Charles P. Putnam and James J. Putnam--two brothers
in whose company he was later to spend many Adirondack vacations and to
whom he became warmly attached. Henry P. Bowditch, whose instinct for
physiological inquiry was already vigorous, and who was destined to
become a leader of research in America, and the teacher and inspirer of
a generation of younger investigators, was another Medical School
contemporary with whom he formed an enduring friendship.
The instruction given in the Harvard Medical School in the sixties was
as good as any obtainable in America, but it fell short of what is
nowadays reckoned as essential for a medical education to an extent that
none but a modern student of medicine can understand. The emphasis was
still on lectures, demonstrations and reading, and the pupil's rôle was
an almost completely passive one. James, according to the testimony of
one of his classmates, made a solitary exception to the practice of the
class by attempting to keep a graphic record of his microscopic studies
in histology and pathology. When questioned about this long after, he
admitted that he believed himself to have been the only student of his
time in the Medical School who took the trouble to make drawings from
the microscopic field with regularity.
The teaching of Pasteur and Lister had not then revolutionized medicine.
Modern bacteriology and the possibilities of aseptic surgery were yet to
be understood. Surgeons who operated in the amphitheatre of the
Massachusetts General Hospital could still take pride in appearing in
blood-soiled gowns, much as a fisherman scorns a brand-new outfit and
sports his weather-rusted old clothes. The demonstrations of even Dr.
Henry J. Bigelow, a skillful operator who was then a leader in his
profession, filled James with a horror which he never forgot.
On the other hand, the discovery of anesthesia, which made possible an
enlarged and humane use of animals for experimental inquiry, and such
illuminating reports and investigations as those of Claude Bernard,
Helmholtz, Virchow and Ludwig were giving a great impetus to the
investigation of bodily processes and functions, and a study of these
was a possible next step in James's evolution. He had already been
unusually well grounded in comparative anatomy by Agassiz and Jeffries
Wyman. He was gravitating surely, even if he did not yet realize it
clearly, toward philosophy. Whenever he more or less consciously
projected himself forward, it must have seemed to him that the
examination of processes in the living body, for which he was already
prepared, might be related, in an enlightening way, to the philosophic
pursuits that were beginning to invite him. Physiology therefore
commanded both his respect and his curiosity, and he turned in that
direction rather than toward what he then saw surgery and the practice
of internal medicine to be.
During the winter of 1866-67 he lived with his parents in the house[32]
in Quincy Street, Cambridge, in which they had settled themselves, and
worked regularly at the Medical School. He had come back from the year
of mere animal existence on the Amazon in excellent physical condition.
Of the four letters which follow, two were written to Thomas W. Ward,
who, it will be remembered, had been a member of the Amazon Expedition,
and who, after getting back to New York, had entered the great Baring
banking house of which his father, Samuel Ward, was the American
partner. O. W. Holmes, Jr., will be recognized as the present Associate
Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In no one did James find
more sympathetic philosophic companionship at this period.
_To Thomas W. Ward._
BOSTON, _Mar. 27, 1866_.
MEO CARO COMPADRE,--I have been intending to write you every night for
the last month, but the strange epistolary inertia which always weighs
down upon me has kept me from it until now. I have had news of you two
or three times from my father having met yours, and from Dexter, who
said he had met you in New York. I am very curious to know how you find
your occupation to suit you, and if you find the dust of daily drudgery
to obscure at all the visions of your far-off-future power. From what
Dexter said I am afraid they do a little. We had given up Allen[33] as
gone to the fishes; but the poor Devil arrived last week after a
98-days' passage!!! I never felt gladder for anything in my life. He had
a horrible time at sea, being within 160 miles of New York and then
blown back as far as St. Thomas. He says most of his collections arrived
at Bahia spoiled by the sun. He was sixteen days crossing a limestone
desert on which nothing grew but cacti; so there was no shade at noon,
and the thermometer at 98°. His health has been improved by the voyage,
however, and he thinks it is better now than when he left for Brazil.
Nevertheless he is going to give up natural history for the present and
adopt some out-of-door life till he gets decidedly better, which he says
he has been slowly but steadily doing for some years past. Poor Allen!
None of us have been sold as badly as he. If I had not been to Brazil, I
would go again to do what I have done, knowing beforehand what it would
be. Allen says _he_ would not, on any account.
I have been studying now for about two weeks, and think I shall be much
more interested in it than before. It was some time before I could get
settled down to reading. But now I do it quite naturally, and even
_thinking_ is beginning not to feel like a wholly abnormal process; all
which, as you may imagine, is very agreeable--altho' I confess that as
yet the philosophical _rouages_ of my mind have not attained even to the
degree of lubrication they had before I left. I shan't apologize for the
egotistical pronoun, for I suppose, my dear old Thomas, that you will be
interested to compare my experience since my return with yours, and
learn something from it if possible--even as I would with yours. I spent
the first month of my return in nothing but "social intercourse," having
the two Temple girls and Elly Van Buren in the house for a fortnight,
and being obliged to escort them about to parties, etc., nearly every
night. The consequences were a falling in love with every girl I
met--succeeded now by a reaction which makes me, and will make me for a
long time, decline every invitation. I feel now somehow as if I had
settled down upon a steady track that I shall not have much temptation
to slip off of, for a good many months at any rate. I am conscious of a
desire I never had before so strongly or so permanently, of narrowing
and deepening the channel of my intellectual activity, of economizing my
feeble energies and consequently treating with more _respect_ the few
things I shall devote them to. This temper may be a transient one; mais
pour peu qu'il dure un an ou deux, to fix the shorter term! I'm sure it
will give a tone to my mind it lacked before. As for the disrespect with
which you treat the worthy problems that you turn your back upon, I
don't see now exactly how you get over that; but something tells me
that, practically, my salvation depends for the present on following
some such plan. And, I am sure that, in the majority of men at any rate,
the process of growing into a calm mental state is not one of leveling,
but of going around, difficulties. The problem they solve is not one of
being, but of method. They reach a point from which the view within
certain limits is harmonious, and they keep within those limits; they
find as it were a centre of oscillation in which they may be at rest.
Now whether any other kind of solution is possible, I don't know. Many
men will say not; but I feel somehow, now, as if I had no right to an
opinion on any subject, no right to open my mouth before others until I
know some _one_ thing as thoroughly as it can be known, no matter how
insignificant it may be. After that I shall perhaps be able to think on
general subjects.--The only fellow here I care anything about is
Holmes, who is on the whole a first-rate article, and one which improves
by wear. He is perhaps too exclusively intellectual, but sees things so
easily and clearly and talks so admirably that it's a treat to be with
him. T. S. Perry is also flourishing in health and spirits. Ed[ward]
Emerson I have not yet seen. I made the acquaintance the other day of
Miss Fanny Dixwell of Cambridge (the eldest), do you know her? She is
decidedly AI, and (so far) the best girl I have known. I should like if
possible to confine my whole life to her, Ellen Hooper, Sara
Sedgwick,[34] Holmes, Harry, and the Medical School, for an indefinite
period, letting no breath of extraneous air enter.
There, I hope that's a confession of faith. I wish you would write me a
similar or even more "developed" one, for I really want to know how the
building up into flesh and blood of the wide-sweeping plans that the
solitudes of Brazil gave birth to seems to alter them. Write soon, and
I'll answer soon; for I think, Chéri de Thomas, que ce doux commerce que
nous avons mené tant d'années ought not all of a sudden to die out. I'd
give a great deal to see you, but see no prospect of getting to New York
for a long time. Our family spends six months at Swampscott from the
first of May. I shall have a room in town. What chance is there of your
being able to pay us a visit at Swampscott in my vacation (from July 15
to Sept. 15)? Ever your friend
WM. JAMES.
_To Thomas W. Ward._
BOSTON, _June 8, 1866_.
CHÉRI DE THOMAS,--I cannot exactly say I _hasten_ to reply to your
letter. I have thought of you about every day since I received it, and
given you a Brazilian hug therewith, and wanted to write to you; but
having been in a pretty unsettled theoretical condition myself, from
which I hoped some positive conclusions might emerge worthy to be
presented to you as the last word on the Kosmos and the human soul, I
deferred writing from day to day, thinking that better than to offer you
the crude and premature spawning of my intelligence. In vain! the
conclusions never have emerged, and I see that, if I am _ever_ to write
you, I must do it on the spur of the moment, with all my dullness thick
upon me.
I have just read your letter over again, and am grieved afresh at your
melancholy tone about yourself. You ask why I am quiet, while you are so
restless. Partly from the original constitution of things, I suppose;
partly because I am less quiet than you suppose; only I once heard a
proverb about a man consuming his own smoke, and I do so particularly in
your presence because you, being so much more turbid, produce a reaction
in me; partly because I am a few years older than you, and have not
solved, but grown callous (I hear your sneer) to, many of the problems
that now torture you. The _chief_ reason is the original constitution of
things, which generated me with fewer sympathies and wants than you, and
also perhaps with a certain tranquil confidence in the right ordering of
the Whole, which makes me indifferent in some circumstances where you
would fret. Yours the nobler, mine the happier part! I _think_, too,
that much of your uneasiness comes from that to which you allude in your
letter--your oscillatoriness, and your regarding each oscillation as
something final as long as it lasts. There is nothing more certain than
that every man's life (except perhaps Harry Quincy's) is a line that
continuously oscillates on every side of its direction; and if you
would be more confident that any state of tension you may at any time
find yourself in will inevitably relieve _itself_, sooner or later, you
would spare yourself much anxiety. I myself have felt in the last six
months more and more certain that each man's constitution limits him to
a certain amount of emotion and action, and that, if he insists on going
under a higher pressure than normal for three months, for instance, he
will pay for it by passing the next three months below par. So the best
way is to keep moving steadily and regularly, as your mind becomes thus
deliciously appeased (as you imagine mine to be; ah! Tom, what damned
fools we are!). If you feel below par now, don't think your life is
deserting you forever. You are just as sure to be up again as you are,
when elated, sure to be down again. Six months, or any given cycle of
time, is sure to see you produce a certain amount, and your fretful
anxiety when in a stagnant mood is frivolous. The good time will come
again, as it has come; and go too. I think we ought to be independent of
our moods, look on them as external, for they come to us unbidden, and
feel if possible neither elated nor depressed, but keep our eyes upon
our work and, if we have done the best we could _in that given
condition_, be satisfied.