take the London "Chronicle." Pray send the "Nation" and the "Literary
Digest." _Don't_ send the "Sciences" as heretofore. Let them accumulate.
I think that after reception of this you had better address us care of
H. J., Rye, Sussex. We shall probably be off by the 10th or 12th of
Sept. I hope that public opinion is gathering black against the
Philippine policy--in spite of my absence! I hope that Salter will pitch
in well in the fall. The still blacker nightmare of a Dreyfus case hangs
over us; and there is little time in the day save for reading the
"Figaro's" full reports of the trial. Like all French happenings, it is
as if they were edited expressly for literary purpose. Every "witness"
so-called has a power of statement equal to that of a first-class
lawyer; and the various human types that succeed each other, exhibiting
their several peculiarities in full blossom, make the thing like a
novel. Esterhazy seems to me the _great_ hero. How Shakespeare would
have enjoyed such a fantastic scoundrel,--knowing all the secrets,
saying what he pleases, mystifying all Europe, leading the whole French
army (except apparently Picquart) by the nose,--a regular Shakespearean
type of villain, with an insane exuberance of rhetoric and fancy about
his vanities and hatreds, that literature has never given yet. It would
seem incredible that the Court-Martial should condemn. Henry was
evidently the spy, employed by Esterhazy, and afterwards Du Paty helped
their machinations, in order not to stultify his own record at the
original trial--at least this seems the plausible theory. The older
generals seem merely to have been passive connivers, stupidly and
obstinately holding to the original official mistake rather than
surrender under fire. And such is the prestige of caste-opinion, such
the solidity of the professional spirit, that, incredible as it may
seem, it is still quite probable that the officers will obey the lead of
their superiors, and condemn Dreyfus again. The President, Jouaust, who
was supposed to be impartial, is showing an apparently bad animus
against Picquart. P. is a real _hero_--a precious possession for any
country. He ought to be made Minister of War; though that would
doubtless produce a revolution. I suppose that Loubet will pardon
Dreyfus immediately if he is recondemned. Then Dreyfus, and perhaps
Loubet, will be assassinated by some Anti-Semite, and who knows what
will follow? But before you get this, you will know far more about the
trial than I can tell you.
We long for news from the boys--not a word from Billy since he left
Tacoma. I am glad their season promises to be shorter! Enough is as good
as a feast! What a scattered lot we are! I hope that Margaret will be
happy in Montreal. As for you in your desolation, I could almost weep
for you. My only advice is that you should cling to Aleck as to a
life-preserver. I trust you got the $200 I told Higginson to send you. I
am mortified beyond measure by that overdrawn bank account, and do not
understand it at all.
Oceans of love from your affectionate son,
WILLIAM.
_To William M. Salter._
BAD-NAUHEIM, _Sept. 11, 1899_.
DEAR MACKINTIRE,--The incredible has happened, and Dreyfus, without one
may say a single particle of _positive_ evidence 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 the
_bordereaux_ and the exact names of the French traitors. If they do not,
there will be only two 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 from these institutions. _Every_ great
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 do _something_ to 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.
_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
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, _über_ Paris, 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! _Conspuez_ McKinley 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. _Temoin_ the 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 all he _can_ do; 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 are _Souls_ (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 a _wunderlicher
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.
_To Mrs. Henry Whitman._
LAMB HOUSE, RYE, _Oct. 5, 1899_.
DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--You see where at last we have arrived, at the end of
the first _étape_ of this pilgrimage--the second 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 how
_families_ ever could have been reared in most of the houses) and neat
and _zierlich_ to the last degree. _Refinement_ in 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 sure _you_ spoke 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 the _Curort_, 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 beefy beauty; 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 little _bijou_ of 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 the _coups de gueule_
of 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 less _énervante_ and
more nutritious for the higher life of the Soul than it sometimes is.
_We_ have 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.
_To Thomas Davidson._
34 DE VERE GARDENS,
LONDON, _Nov. 2, 1899_.
DEAR OLD T. 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
anxiety mixed 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
phoenix 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 the strictest 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.
_To John C. Gray._
[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.
_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
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 truth it
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--she _has 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 the
actual contents of your day, so that one gets a live impression of
concrete reality. _My_ letters, 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 sometimes rather 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!