lawn saw a part of the family which I will describe, for you to insert
in one of your novels as a picture of domestic happiness. On the newly
made lawn in the angle of the house and kitchen ell, in the shadow of
the hot afternoon sun, lies a mattress taken out of our spare-room for
an airing against Richard Hodgson's arrival tomorrow. On it the madonna
and child--the former sewing in a nice blue point dress, and smiling at
the latter (named Peggy), immensely big and fat for her years, and who,
with quite a vocabulary of adjectives, proper names, and a mouthful of
teeth, shows as yet, although in her sixteenth month, no disposition to
walk. She is rolling and prattling to herself, now on mattress and now
on grass, and is an exceedingly good-natured, happy, and intelligent
child. It conduces to her happiness to have a hard cracker in her fist,
at which she mumbles more or less all day, and of which she is never
known to let go, even taking it into her bath with her and holding it
immersed till that ceremony is o'er. A man is papering and painting one
of our parlors, a carpenter putting up a mantelpiece in another.
Margaret and Harry's tutor are off on the backs of the two horses to the
village seven miles off, to have 'em shod. I, with naught on but gray
flannel shirt, breeches, belt, stockings and shoes, shall now proceed
across the Lake in the boat and up the hill, to get and carry the mail.
Harry will probably ride along the shore on the pony which Aunt Kate has
given him, and where Billy and Fräulein are, Heaven only knows.
Returning, I shall have a bath either in lake or brook--doesn't it sound
nice? On the whole it is nice, but very hot.
_To Miss Grace Norton._
[Post-card]
[CHOCORUA,] _Aug. 12, 1888_.
It would take G[uy] de M[aupassant] himself to just fill a post-card
chock-full and yet leave naught to be desired, with an account of
"Pierre et Jean." It is a little cube of bronze; or like the body of the
Capitaine Beausire, "plein comme un oeuf, dur comme une balle"--dur
surtout! Fifteen years ago, I might have been _enthused_ by such art;
but I'm growing weak-minded, and the charm of this admirable precision
and adequacy of art to subject leaves me too cold. It is like these
modern tools and instruments, so admirably compact, and strong, and
reduced to their fighting weight. One of those little metallic pumps,
_e.g._, so oily and powerful, with a handle about two feet long, which
will throw a column of water about four inches thick 100 feet.
Unfortunately, G. de M.'s pump only throws dirty water--and I am
_beginning_ to be old fogy eno' to like even an old shackly wooden
pump-handle, if the water it fetches only carries all the sweetness of
the mountain-side. Yrs. ever,
W.J.
The dying fish on p[in]s stick most in my memory. Is that right in a
novel of human life?
_To G. Croom Robertson._
_Oct. 7, 1888._
...I am teaching ethics and the philosophy of religion for the first
time, with that dear old duffer Martineau's works as a text. It gives me
lots to do, as I only began my systematic reading in that line three
weeks ago, having wasted the summer in farming (if such it can be
called) and philosophizing. My "Psychology" will therefore have to be
postponed until another year; for with as much college work as I have
this year, I can't expect to write a line of it....
_To Henry James._
_Oct. 14, 1888._
...The Cambridge year begins with much vehemence--I with a big class in
ethics, and seven graduates from other colleges in advanced psychology,
giving me a good deal of work. But I feel uncommonly hearty, and shall
no doubt come out of it all in good shape.... I am to have lots of
reading and no writing to speak of this year and expect to enjoy it
hugely. It does one good to read classic books. For a month past I've
done nothing else, in behalf of my ethics class--Plato, Aristotle, Adam
Smith, Butler, Paley, Spinoza, etc., etc. No book is celebrated without
deserving it for some quality, and recenter books, certain never to be
celebrated, have an awfully squashy texture....
_To E. L. Godkin._
CAMBRIDGE, _Apr. 15, 1889_.
MY DEAR GODKIN,--Harry's address is 34 De Vere Gardens, W. I imagine
that he will be there till midsummer.
I hope 'tis yourself that's going! You must need it awfully. I fully
meant to call on you when I was in N. Y. a fortnight ago. But I was so
dead tired that I slept on my hotel bed all the only afternoon I had,
went to Daly's theatre in the evening and then had to come away. You are
the noblest Roman of them all; and what a man shall do for a newspaper
with sanity, intellect and backbone in it, when your editorial pen has
ceased to trickle, I don't know. There must be plenty of morals in the
world, plenty of brains, plenty of education, plenty of literary skill,
but was there ever a time or country when they seemed less to coalesce,
in the field of journalism? In the earlier years I may say that my whole
political education was due to the "Nation"; later came a time when I
thought you looked on the doings of Terence Powderly and Co. too much
from without and too little from within; now I turn to you again as my
only solace in a world where nothing stands straight. You have the most
curious way of always being _right_, so I never dare to trust myself now
when you're agin me. I read my "Nation" rather quicker than I used, but
I depend on it perhaps more than ever, and cannot forbear seizing this
passing occasion to tell you so.
I hope, once more, that you're going abroad yourself. It will do you no
end of good to _take in_ after your daily giving out for so long. Harry
will be delighted to see you. Poor Alice is stranded at Leamington,
unable to use her legs or brain to any account, but never complaining,
and living apparently on the Irish question, being a violent Parnellite.
I settle the affairs of the Universe in my College courses, and have got
so far ahead as to be building a big new house on that part of it known
as the Norton estate.[92] A new street passes before your old house, now
Grace Norton's. I am a little north of it, facing it, and squatting
right across the old Norton Avenue. Four other houses are going up
there immediately, two of 'em actually under way. No answer to this is
expected, from a man as busy as you. Please give my best respects to
Mrs. Godkin, and believe me ever affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
_To Henry James._
CAMBRIDGE, _May 12, 1889_.
MY DEAR HARRY,--I have been feeling so dead-tired all this spring that I
believe a long break from my usual scenes is necessary. It is like the
fagged state that drove me abroad the last two times. I have been pretty
steadily busy for six years and the result isn't wonderful, considering
what a miserable nervous system I have anyhow. The upshot of it is that
I have pretty much made up my mind to invest $1000 (if necessary) of
Aunt Kate's legacy in my constitution, and spend the summer abroad. This
will give me the long-wished opportunity of seeing you and Alice, and
enable me to go to an international congress of "physiological
psychologists" which I have had the honor of an invitation to attend in
the capacity of "honorary committee"-man for the U. S. It will be
instructive and inspiring, no doubt, and won't last long, and [will]
give me an opportunity to meet a number of eminent men. But for these
three reasons, I think I should start for the Pacific coast as being
more novel. I confess I find myself caring more for landscapes than for
men--strange to say, and doubtless shameful; so my stay in London will
probably be short.
I learn from Godkin that he is to be with you about the same time that I
shall be in London. I don't suppose you have room for both of us, but
pray don't let that trouble you. I can easily find a lodging somewhere
for a few days, which are all that I shall stay. I am heartily glad
Godkin is about to go abroad; I know of no one who so richly deserves a
vacation. My heart is warming up again to the "Nation," as it hasn't for
many years.
I long to have a good long talk with you about yourself, Alice, and
10,000 old things. Alice used to be so perturbed at _expecting_ things
that in my ignorance of her present condition I don't venture to
announce to her my arrival. But do you use your discretion as to where
and how she shall be informed. Send her this, if it is the best way.
It's a bad summer for me to be gone, with the house-building here, the
Chocorua place unfinished, and the crowds set in motion by the Paris
exhibition; and _perhaps_, if I find myself unexpectedly hearty when
lectures end two weeks hence, I may not go after all. But I can't help
feeling in my bones that I _ought_ to go, so I probably shall. It will
then be the Cephalonia, sailing June 22, and I shall get off at
Queenstown, as I am on the whole more curious to see the Emerald Isle
than any other part of Europe, except Scotland, which I probably shan't
see at all. The "Congress" in Paris begins Aug. 5.
How good it will be to see poor Alice again, and to hear you discourse!
Ever affectly, yours,
W.J.
* * * * *
In late June James did, in fact, sail on the Cephalonia and disembark at
Queenstown. Thence he proceeded _via_ Cork to Killarney and on to
Dublin, where he spent a day at Trinity College before going to Glasgow
and Oban. Having, in the briefest time and at first sight, fallen "dead
in love wi' Scotland both land and people" he traveled on _via_
Edinburgh, and reached London by the 17th of July. There he stayed with
Henry James for ten days and saw his sister. A letter from London to
Mrs. James may be included in part.
_To Mrs. James._
34 DE VERE GARDENS, LONDON,
_July 29, 1889_.
... [After seeing Mrs. Gurney I went] to Brighton, where I spent a night
at Myers's lodgings, and the evening with him and the Sidgwicks trying
thought-transference experiments which, however, on that occasion did
not succeed.... The best thing by far which I saw in Brighton, and a
thing the impression of which will perhaps outlast everything else on
this trip, was four cuttle-fish (octopus) in the Aquarium. I wish we had
one of them for a child--such flexible intensity of life in a form so
inaccessible to our sympathy. Next day to Haslemere to the Pearsall
Smiths, where I spent a really _gemüthlich_ evening and morning.
Pearsall himself as engaging as of yore. The place and country
wonderfully rich and beautiful. Returning yesterday, went with H. to
National Gallery in the afternoon, and read Brownell on France in the
P.M. Yesterday, Sunday, Harry went to the country after breakfast,
whilst I wrote a lot of notes and read Zola's "Germinal," a story of
mines and miners, and a truly magnificent work, if successfully to
reproduce the horror and pity of certain human facts and make you see
them as if real can make a book magnificent.
Towards four o'clock (the weather fine) I mounted the top of a bus and
went (with thousands of others similarly enthroned) to Hampton Court,
through Kew, Richmond, Bushey Park, etc.; about 30 miles there and back,
all for 4_s._ 6_d._ I strolled for an hour or more in the Hampton Court
Gardens, and overlooked the Thames all _bizarrée_ with row-boats and
male and female rowers, and got back, _perdu dans la foule_, at 10
P.M.--a most delightful and interesting six hours, with but the usual
drawback, that _you_ were not along. How you would have enjoyed every
bit of it, especially the glimpses, between Richmond and Hampton, over
the high brick walls and between the bars of the iron gates, of these
extraordinary English gardens and larger grounds, all black with their
tufted vegetation. More different things can grow in a square foot here,
if they're taken care of, than I've ever seen elsewhere, and one of
these high ivy-walled gardens is something the _like_ of which is
altogether unknown to us. Like all human things (except wives) they grow
banal enough, if one stays long in their company, but the first
acquaintance between Alice Gibbens and them is something which I would
fain see. The crowd was immense and the picturesqueness of everything
quite medieval, as were also the good manners and the tendency to a
certain hearty sociability, shown in the chaffing from vehicle to
vehicle along the road. I'm glad I had this sight of the greatness of
the English people, and glad I had no social duties to perform....
Harry is as nice and simple and amiable as he can be. He has covered
himself, like some marine crustacean, with all sorts of material
growths, rich sea-weeds and rigid barnacles and things, and lives hidden
in the midst of his strange heavy alien manners and customs; but these
are all but "protective resemblances," under which the same dear old,
good, innocent and at bottom very powerless-feeling Harry remains,
caring for little but his writing, and full of dutifulness and affection
for all gentle things....
* * * * *
From London James crossed to Paris, to attend the International Congress
of Physiological Psychology which had been arranged to coincide with the
International Exposition of that year. He found between 60 and 120
colleagues, most of them European, of course, in attendance at its
sessions. This incident in his life may be summarized in a few sentences
from his own report of the Congress, in "Mind": "The most striking
feature of the discussions was, perhaps, their tendency to slope off to
some one or other of those shady horizons with which the name of
"psychic-research" is now associated.... The open results were, however
(as always happens at such gatherings), secondary in real importance to
the latent ones--the friendships made, the intimacies deepened, and the
encouragement and inspiration which came to everyone from seeing before
them in flesh and blood so large a portion of that little army of fellow
students from whom and for whom all contemporary psychology exists. The
individual worker feels much less isolated in the world after such an
experience." To Stumpf he wrote similarly (Aug. 15): "The sight of 120
men all actively interested in psychology has made me feel much less
lonely in the world, and ready to finish my book this year with a great
deal more _entrain_. A book hanging so long on one's hands at last gets
outgrown, and even disgusting to one."
On his way home James went again to see his sister, and her account of
him is not to be omitted.
"William, instead of going to Switzerland, came suddenly back from Paris
and went home, having, as usual, exhausted Europe in a few weeks,
finding it stale, flat and unprofitable. The only necessity being to get
home, the first letter after his arrival, was, of course, full of plans
for his return _plus_ wife and infants; he is just like a blob of
mercury--you can't put a mental finger upon him. H. and I were laughing
over him, and recalling Father, and William's resemblance (in his ways)
to him. Tho' the results are the same, they seem to come from such a
different nature in the two; in W., an entire inability or indifference
to 'stick to a thing for the sake of sticking,' as some one said of him
once; whilst Father, the delicious infant! couldn't submit even to the
thralldom of his own whim; and then the dear being was such a prey to
the demon homesickness.... But to return to our mutton, William: he came
with H. on August 14 on his way to Liverpool. He told all about his
Paris experience, where he was a delegate to the Psychological Congress,
which was a most brilliant success. The French most polite and
hospitable. They invited W. to open the Congress, and they always had a
foreigner in the Chair at the different meetings. I extracted with great
difficulty from him that 'Monsieur Willyam James' was frequently
referred to by the speakers. He liked the Henry Sidgwicks and Fred.
Myers. Mrs. Myers paid him the following enigmatic compliment: 'We are
so glad that you are _as_ you are.'"
* * * * *
[Illustration: Francis James Child.
Caricature from a Pocket Note-Book.]
On getting back to Cambridge in the autumn, James moved his family into
a house which he had just built in Irving Street--a street which had
been newly opened through what used to be called Norton's Woods. He had
planned this house with such eager interest in all its details that he
had even designed doors and windows and had practically been his own
architect with respect to everything except structural specifications.
The result was a detached wooden house of pleasantly square outer
appearance, covered with shingles which soon weathered brown, and having
dark green trimmings. Inside there was one room which deserves
particular mention. James loved to have "space" about him[93] and he
planned a library that was the largest and sunniest room the house
could provide. It was about 22-1/2 feet wide and 27 feet long. The walls
were lined with book-shelves from floor to ceiling, except where James
hung a portrait of his father over the open fireplace. On the southern
side there was a triple window whose total width was nearly half the
length of the room, and which let in a flood of sunlight. Through it one
looked out upon a small lawn overhung by a large elm, and upon more
grass and trees beyond. This was his study and living-room for the rest
of his life. Here most of the Cambridge letters that follow may be
assumed to have been written.
* * * * *
After James moved to 95 Irving Street, several people referred to in the
letters became his very near neighbors. Josiah Royce, Francis J. Child,
C. E. Norton, Miss Theodora Sedgwick were all within three minutes walk
of his door. Miss Grace Norton lived across the way.
_To Miss Grace Norton._
CAMBRIDGE, _Dec. 25, 1889_.
DEAR MISS NORTON,--Will you accept, as a Christmas offering, the
accompanying bottles of California Champagne, _extremely_ salubrious in
its after-effects, quite as intoxicating, almost as good-tasting and
only half as "cost-playful" as French Champagne--in short, a beverage
which no household should be without.
I should gladly have sought out something more sentimental,--though
after a bottle or so, this seems rosy with sentiment,--but I have no
gifts of invention in the _present_ line, and took something useful,
merely to testify to the affection and admiration with which I am ever
yours,
WM. JAMES.
_To Charles Eliot Norton._
Undated [1889].
MY DEAR MR. NORTON,--This introduces to you Mr. X----, from South
Abington, a workman in a tack factory since boyhood, who has
nevertheless gone quite deeply into studies philosophic, mathematical
and sociological. He will tell you more about himself, and I wish if
convenient that you would "draw him out"--I should like much to hear
your impression. I want, if possible, to help him to a start in life
here. Palmer has invited him to stay with him for a week. And we are
busy studying him and trying to cast his horoscope, to feel whether we
can conscientiously recommend him to some millionaire to support in
college for a year (as unmatriculated), and so give him a chance to make
himself known and find some better avocation for himself than the making
of tacks ten hours a day. He knows nothing of our plan, thinks this a
mere spree, so please don't let it out! Very truly yours,
WM. JAMES.
* * * * *
The workman from the tack factory, like more than one other lame duck
before and after him, had aroused what Professor Palmer once aptly
called James's "inclination toward the under-dog and his insistence on
keeping the door open for every species of human experiment." It made no
difference what X----'s doctrines were, or whether or not they were akin
to James's way of thinking. And if such a man was unfitted to arouse
other people's sympathies, James's own were the more readily challenged.
The erratics of the philosophical world were significant phenomena, and
sometimes interested him most just when they were most "queer"--when
they were perhaps aberrant to the point of being pathological specimens.
It mattered as little to James where such people sprang from, or by
what strange processes they had arrived at their ideas, as it matters to
a naturalist that beetles have to be hunted for in all sorts of places.
He filled the "Varieties of Religious Experience" with the records of
abnormal cases and with accounts of the mental and emotional adventures
of people whom the everyday world called cranks and fanatics. He was not
only curious about such men, but endlessly patient and helpful to them.
To some indeed his encouragement was more comforting than profitable,
and among them must be numbered the X---- of this letter--an uncouth and
helpless creature, who has since achieved his only immortality in
another sphere of being. The poor man never got over this "spree," but
withdrew from the tack factory forever, spent many years in a Mills
Hotel working over an unsalable _magnum opus_, and every now and then
appealing for funds. A letter on a later page recurs to this case.
* * * * *
In the spring of 1890 James finished the remaining chapters of the
"Psychology." The next letters were written during the final weeks of
work on the book.
_To Henry Holt._
CAMBRIDGE, _May 9, 1890_.
MY DEAR HOLT,--I was in hopes that you would propose to break away from
the famous "Series" and publish the book independently, in two volumes.
An abridgement could then be prepared for the Series. If there be
anything which I loathe it is a mean overgrown page in small type, and I
think the author's feelings ought to go for a good deal in the case of
the enormous _rat_ which his ten years gestation has brought forth.
In any event, I dread the summer and next year, with two new courses to
teach, and, I fear, no vacation. What I wrote you, if you remember, was
to send you the "heft" of the MS. by May 1st, the rest to be done in the
intervals of proof-correcting. You however insisted on having the entire
MS. in your hands before anything should be done. It seems to me that
this delay is, _now_ at any rate, absurd. There is certainly less than
two weeks' work on the MS. undone. And every day got behind us now means
a day of travel and vacation for me next September. I really think,
considering the sort of risk I am running by the delay, that I must
_insist_ on getting to press now as soon as the page is decided on.
No one could be more disgusted than I at the sight of the book. _No_
subject is worth being treated of in 1000 pages! Had I ten years more, I
could rewrite it in 500; but as it stands it is this or nothing--a
loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to
nothing but two facts: _1st_, that there is no such thing as a _science_
of psychology, and _2nd_, that W. J. is an incapable.
Yours provided you hurry up things,
WM. JAMES.
* * * * *
When Mrs. James took the children to Chocorua for the summer, James
remained in Cambridge to finish the book.
_To Mrs. James._
CAMBRIDGE, _May 17_, 7:50 P.M.
...Wrote hard pretty much all day, lectured on Ansel Bourne, etc., had
three students to lunch, Chubb being gone to Milton. Visit this A.M.
from Bishop Keane of the New Catholic University at Washington, to get
advice about psycho-physic laboratory. Feel very well, though I drink
coffee daily. "Psychology" will certainly be finished by Sunday noon!...
* * * * *
_Sunday, May_ [18], 9:50 P.M.
...The job is done! All but some paging and half a dozen little
footnotes, the work is completed, and as I see it as a unit, I feel as
if it might be rather a vigorous and richly colored chunk--for that kind
of thing at least!...
* * * * *
_May 22_, 5:45 P.M.
...I sot up till two last night putting the finishing touches on the
MS., which now goes to Holt in irreproachable shape, woodcuts and all. I
insured it for $1000.00 in giving it to the express people this A.M.
That will make them extra careful at a cost of $1.50. This morning a
great feeling of weariness came over me at 10 o'clock, and I was taking
down a volume of Tennyson intending to doze off in my chair, when X----
arrived....
* * * * *
_May 24._
...I came home very weary, and lit a fire, and had a delicious two hours
all by myself, thinking of the big _étape_ of my life which now lay
behind me (I mean that infernal book done), and of the possibilities
that the future yielded of reading and living and loving out from the
shadow of that interminable black cloud.... At any rate, it does give me
some comfort to think that I don't live _wholly_ in projects,
aspirations and phrases, but now and then have something done to show
for all the fuss. The joke of it is that I, who have always considered
myself a thing of glimpses, of discontinuity, of _aperçus_, with no
power of doing a big job, suddenly realize at the _end_ of this task
that it is the biggest book on psychology in any language except
Wundt's, Rosmini's and Daniel Greenleaf Thompson's! Still, if it burns
up at the printing-office, I shan't much care, for I shan't ever write
it again!!
_To Henry James._
CHOCORUA, _June 4, 1890_.