type-writer, what can I do better than express my pride in the same by
writing to you?[66]
I spent last night at George Dorr's and he read me several letters from
you, telling me also of your visit, and of how well you seemed. For
years past I have been on the point of writing to you to assure [you] of
my continued love and to express my commiseration for your poor wife,
who has had so long to bear the brunt of your temper--you see I have
been there already and I know how one's irritability is exasperated by
conditions of nervous prostration--but now I can write and congratulate
you on having recovered, temper and all. (As I write, it bethinks me
that in a previous letter I have made identical jokes about your temper
which, I fear, will give Mrs. Chapman a very low opinion of my
humoristic resources, and in sooth they are small; but we are as God
makes us and must not try to be anything else, so pray condone the
silliness and let it pass.) The main thing is that you seem practically
to have recovered, in spite of everything; and I am heartily glad.
I too am well enough for all practical purposes, but I have to go slow
and not try to do too many things in a day. Simplification of life and
consciousness I find to be the great thing, but a hard thing to compass
when one lives in city conditions. How our dear Sarah Whitman lived in
the sort of railroad station she made of her life--I confess it's a
mystery to me. If I lived at a place called Barrytown, it would probably
go better--don't you ever go back to New York to live!
Alice and I had a jovial time at sweet little Stanford University. It
was the simple life in the best sense of the term. I am glad for once to
have been part of the working machine of California, and a pretty deep
part too, as it afterwards turned out. The earthquake also was a
memorable bit of experience, and altogether we have found it
mind-enlarging and are very glad we ben there. But the whole
intermediate West is awful--a sort of penal doom to have to live there;
and in general the result with me of having lived 65 years in America is
to make me feel as if I had at least bought the right to a certain
capriciousness, and were free now to live for the remainder of my days
wherever I prefer and can make my wife and children consent--it is more
likely to be in rural than in urban surroundings, and in the maturer
than in the _rawrer_ parts of the world. But the first thing is to get
out of the treadmill of teaching, which I hate and shall resign from
next year. After that, I can use my small available store of energy in
writing, which is not only a much more economical way of working it, but
more satisfactory in point of quality, and more lucrative as well.
Now, J. C., when are you going to get at writing again? The world is
hungry for your wares. No one touches certain deep notes of moral truth
as you do, and your humor is _köstlich_ and _impayable_. You ought to
join the band of "pragmatistic" or "humanistic" philosophers. I almost
fear that Barrytown may not yet have begun to be disturbed by the rumor
of their achievements, the which are of the greatest, and seriously I du
think that the world of thought is on the eve of a renovation no less
important than that contributed by Locke. The leaders of the new
movement are Dewey, Schiller of Oxford, in a sense Bergson of Paris, a
young Florentine named Papini, and last and least worthy, W. J. H. G.
Wells ought to be counted in, and if I mistake not G. K. Chesterton as
well.[67] I hope you know and love the last-named writer, who seems to
me a great teller of the truth. His systematic preference for
contradictions and paradoxical forms of statement seems to me a
mannerism somewhat to be regretted in so wealthy a mind; but that is a
blemish from which some of our very greatest intellects are not
altogether free--the philosopher of Barrytown himself being not wholly
exempt. Join us, O Jack, and in the historic and perspective sense your
fame will be secure. All future Histories of Philosophy will print your
name.
But although my love for you is not exhausted, my type-writing energy
is. It communicates stiffness and cramps, both to the body and the mind.
Nevertheless I think I have been doing pretty well for a first attempt,
don't you? If you return me a good long letter telling me more
particularly about the process of your recovery, I will write again,
even if I have to take a pen to do it, and in any case I will do it much
better than this time.
Believe me, dear old J. C., with hearty affection and delight at your
recovery--all these months I have been on the brink of writing to find
out how you were--and with very best regards to your wife, whom some day
I wish we may be permitted to know better. Yours very truly,
Wm. James.
Everyone dead! Hodgson, Shaler, James Peirce this winter--to go no
further afield! _Resserrons les rangs!_
_To Henry James._
Cambridge, _Sept. 10, 1906_.
DEAREST H.,--I got back from the Adirondacks, where I had spent a
fortnight, the night before last, and in three or four hours Alice,
Aleck and I will be spinning towards Chocorua, it being now five A.M.
Elly [Temple] Hunter will join us, with Grenville, in a few days; but
for the most part, thank Heaven, we shall be alone till the end of the
month. I found two letters from you awaiting me, and two from Bill. They
all breathed a spirit of happiness, and brought a waft of the beautiful
European summer with them. It has been a beautiful summer here too; and
now, sad to say, it is counting the last beads of its chaplet of hot
days out--the hot days which are really the absolutely friendly ones to
man--you wish they would get cooler when you have them, and when they
are departed, you wish you could have their exquisite gentleness again.
I have just been reading in the volume by Richard Jefferies called the
"Life of the Fields" a wonderful rhapsody, "The Pageant of Summer." It
needs to be read twice over and very attentively, being nothing but an
enumeration of all the details visible in the corner of an old field
with a hedge and ditch. But rightly taken in, it is probably the highest
flight of human genius in the direction of nature-worship. I don't see
why it should not count as an immortal thing. You missed it, when here,
in not getting to Keene Valley, where I have just been, and of which the
sylvan beauty, especially by moonlight, is probably unlike aught that
Europe has to show. Imperishable freshness!...
This is definitely my last year of lecturing, but I wish it were my
first of non-lecturing. Simplification of the field of duties I find
more and more to be the _summum bonum_ for me; and I live in
apprehension lest the Avenger should cut me off before I get my message
out. Not that the message is particularly needed by the human race,
which can live along perfectly well without any one philosopher; but
objectively I hate to leave the volumes I have already published without
their logical complement. It is an esthetic tragedy to have a bridge
begun, and stopped in the middle of an arch.
But I hear Alice stirring upstairs, so I must go up and finish packing.
I hope that you and W. J., Jr., will again form a harmonious
combination. I hope also that he will stop painting for a time. He will
do all the better, when he gets home, for having had a fallow interval.
Good-bye! and my blessing upon both of you. Your ever loving,
W. J.
_To H. G. Wells._
CHOCORUA, _Sept. 11, 1906_.
DEAR MR. WELLS,--I've read your "Two Studies in Disappointment" in
"Harper's Weekly," and must thank you from the bottom of my heart. _Rem
acu tetegisti!_ Exactly that callousness to abstract justice is _the_
sinister feature and, to me as well as to you, the incomprehensible
feature, of our U. S. civilization. How you hit upon it so neatly and
singled it out so truly (and talked of it so tactfully!) God only knows:
He evidently created you to do such things! I never heard of the
MacQueen case before, but I've known of plenty of others. When the
ordinary American hears of them, instead of the idealist within him
beginning to "see red" with the higher indignation, instead of the
spirit of English history growing alive in his breast, he begins to
pooh-pooh and minimize and tone down the thing, and breed excuses from
his general fund of optimism and respect for expediency. "It's probably
right enough"; "Scoundrelly, as you say," but understandable, "from the
point of view of parties interested"--but understandable in onlooking
citizens only as a symptom of the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive
worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That--with the squalid cash
interpretation put on the word success--is our national disease. Hit it
hard! Your book _must_ have a great effect. Do you remember the glorious
remarks about success in Chesterton's "Heretics"? You will undoubtedly
have written _the_ medicinal book about America. And what good humor!
and what tact! Sincerely yours,
Wm. James.
_To Miss Theodora Sedgwick._
CHOCORUA, _Sept. 13, 1906_.
DEAR THEODORA,--Here we are in this sweet delicate little place, after a
pretty agitated summer, and the quiet seems very nice. Likewise the
stillness. I have thought often of you, and _almost_ written; but there
never seemed exactly to be time or place for it, so I let the sally of
the heart to-you-ward suffice. A week ago, I spent a night with H. L.
Higginson, whom I found all alone at his house by the Lake, and he told
me your improvement had been continuous and great, which I heartily hope
has really been the case. I don't see why it should not have been the
case, under such delightful conditions. What good things friends are!
And what better thing than lend it, can one do with one's house? I was
struck by Henry Higginson's high level of mental tension, so to call it,
which made him talk, incessantly and passionately about one subject
after another, never running dry, and reminding me more of myself when I
was twenty years old. It isn't so much a man's eminence of elementary
faculties that pulls him through. They may be rare, and he do nothing.
It is the steam pressure to the square inch behind that moves the
machine. The amount of that is what makes the great difference between
us. Henry has it high. Previous to seeing him I had spent ten days in
beautiful Keene Valley, dividing them between the two ends. The St.
Hubert's end is, I verily believe, one of the most beautiful things in
this beautiful world--too dissimilar to anything in Europe to be
compared therewith, and consequently able to stand on its merits all
alone. But the great [forest] fire of four years ago came to the very
edge of wiping it out! And any year it may go.
I also had a delightful week all alone on the Maine Coast, among the
islands.
Back here, one is oppressed by sadness at the amount of work waiting to
be done on the place and no one to be hired to do it. The entire meaning
and essence of "land" is something to be worked over--even if it be only
a wood-lot, it must be kept trimmed and cleaned. And for one who _can_
work and who _likes_ work with his arms and hands, there is nothing so
delightful as a piece of land to work over--it responds to every hour
you give it, and smiles with the "improvement" year by year. I neither
can work now, nor do I like it, so an irremediable bad conscience
afflicts my ownership of this place. With Cambridge as headquarters for
August, and a little lot of land there, I think I could almost be ready
to give up this place, and trust to the luck of hotels, and other
opportunities of rustication without responsibility. But perhaps we can
get this place [taken care of?] some day!
I don't know how much you read. I've taken great pleasure this summer in
Bielshowski's "Life of Goethe" (a wonderful piece of art) and in
Birukoff's "Life of Tolstoy."
Alice is very well and happy in the stillness here. Elly Hunter is
coming this evening, tomorrow the Merrimans for a day, and then Mrs.
Hodder till the end of the month.
Faithful love from both of us, dear Theodora. Your affectionate
W. J.
_To his Daughter._
Cambridge, _Jan. 20, 1907_, 6.15 P.M.
SWEET PEGLEIN,--Just before tea! and your Grandam, Mar, and I going to
hear the Revd. Percy Grant in the College chapel just after. We are
getting to be great church-goers. 'T will have to be Crothers next. He,
sweet man, is staying with the Brookses. After him, the Christian
Science Church, and after that the deluge!
I have spent all day preparing next Tuesday's lecture, which is my last
before a class in Harvard University, so help me God amen! I am almost
_afraid_ at so much freedom. Three quarters of an hour ago Aleck and I
went for a walk in Somerville; warm, young moon, bare trees, clearing in
the west, stars out, old-fashioned streets, not sordid--a beautiful
walk. Last night to Bernard Shaw's ex-_quis_-ite play of "Cæsar and
Cleopatra"--exquisitely acted too, by F. Robertson and Maxine Elliot's
sister Gert. Your Mar will have told you that, after these weeks of
persistent labor, culminating in New York, I am going to take sanctuary
on Saturday the 2nd of Feb. in your arms at Bryn Mawr. I do not want,
wish, or desire to "talk" to the crowd, but your mother pushing so, if
you and the philosophy club also pull, I mean pull _hard_, Jimmy[68]
will try to articulate something not too technical. But it will have to
be, if ever, on that Saturday night. It will also have to be very short;
and the less of a "reception," the better, after it.
Your two last letters were tiptop. I never seen such _growth_!
I go to N. Y., to be at the Harvard Club, on Monday the 28th. Kühnemann
left yesterday. A most dear man. Your loving
DAD.
_To Henry James and William James, Jr._
Cambridge, _Feb. 14, 1907_.
DEAR BROTHER AND SON,--I dare say that you will be together in Paris
when you get this, but I address it to Lamb House all the same. You
twain are more "blessed" than I, in the way of correspondence this
winter, for you give more than you receive, Bill's letters being as
remarkable for wit and humor as Henry's are for copiousness, considering
that the market value of what he either writes or types is so many
shillings a word. When _I_ write other things, I find it almost
impossible to write letters. I've been at it _stiddy_, however, for
three days, since my return from New York, finding, as I did, a great
stack of correspondence to attend to. The first impression of New York,
if you stay there not more than 36 hours, which has been my limit for
twenty years past, is one of repulsion at the clangor, disorder, and
permanent earthquake conditions. But this time, installed as I was at
the Harvard Club (44th St.) in the centre of the cyclone, I caught the
pulse of the machine, took up the rhythm, and vibrated _mit_, and found
it simply magnificent. I'm surprised at you, Henry, not having been more
enthusiastic, but perhaps that superbly powerful and beautiful subway
was not opened when you were there. It is an _entirely_ new New York, in
soul as well as in body, from the old one, which looks like a village in
retrospect. The courage, the heaven-scaling audacity of it all, and the
_lightness_ withal, as if there was nothing that was not easy, and the
great pulses and bounds of progress, so many in directions all
simultaneous that the coördination is indefinitely future, give a kind
of _drumming background_ of life that I never felt before. I'm sure that
once _in_ that movement, and at home, all other places would seem
insipid. I observe that your book,--"The American Scene,"--dear H., is
just out. I must get it and devour again the chapters relative to New
York. On my last night, I dined with Norman Hapgood, along with men who
were successfully and happily in the vibration. H. and his most
winning-faced young partner, Collier, Jerome, Peter Dunne, F. M. Colby,
and Mark Twain. (The latter, poor man, is only good for monologue, in
his old age, or for dialogue at best, but he's a dear little genius all
the same.) I got such an impression of easy efficiency in the midst of
their bewildering conditions of speed and complexity of adjustment.
Jerome, particularly, with the world's eyes on his court-room, in the
very crux of the Thaw trial, as if he had nothing serious to do. Balzac
ought to come to life again. His Rastignac imagination sketched the
possibility of it long ago. I lunched, dined, and sometimes breakfasted,
out, every day of my stay, vibrated between 44th St., seldom going
lower, and 149th, with Columbia University at 116th as my chief relay
station, the magnificent space-devouring Subway roaring me back and
forth, lecturing to a thousand daily,[69] and having four separate
dinners at the Columbia Faculty Club, where colleagues severally
compassed me about, many of them being old students of mine, wagged
their tongues at me and made me explain.[70] It was certainly the high
tide of my existence, so far as _energizing_ and being "recognized" were
concerned, but I took it all very "easy" and am hardly a bit tired.
Total abstinence from every stimulant whatever is the one condition of
living at a rapid pace. I am now going whack at the writing of the rest
of the lectures, which will be more original and (I believe) important
than my previous works....
_To Moorfield Storey._
Cambridge, _Feb._ 21, 1907.
DEAR MOORFIELD,--Your letter of three weeks ago has inadvertently lain
unnoticed--not because it didn't do me good, but because I went to New
York for a fortnight, and since coming home have been too druv to pay
any tributes to friendship. I haven't got many letters either of
condolence or congratulation on my retirement,--which, by the way,
doesn't take place till the end of the year,--the papers have railroaded
me out too soon.[71] But I confess that the thought is sweet to me of
being able to hear the College bell ring without any tendency to "move"
in consequence, and of seeing the last Thursday in September go by, and
remaining in the country careless of what becomes of its youth. It's the
_harness_ and the _hours_ that are so galling! I expect to shed truths
in dazzling profusion on the world for many years.
As for you, retire too! Let you, Eliot, Roosevelt and me, first relax;
then take to landscape painting, which has a very soothing effect; then
write out all the truths which a long life of intimacy with mankind has
recommended to each of us as most useful. I think we can use the ebb
tide of our energies best in that way. I'm sure that _your_
contributions would be the most useful of all. Affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
_To Theodore Flournoy._
Cambridge, _Mar._ 26, 1907.
DEAR FLOURNOY,--Your dilectissime letter of the 16th arrived this
morning and I must scribble a word of reply. That's the way to write to
a man! Caress him! flatter him! tell him that all Switzerland is hanging
on his lips! You have made me really _happy_ for at least twenty-four
hours! My dry and businesslike compatriots never write letters like
that. They write about themselves--you write about _me_. You know the
definition of an egotist: "a person who insists on talking about
_himself_, when you want to talk about _yourself_." Reverdin has told me
of the success of your lectures on pragmatism, and if you have been
communing in spirit with me this winter, so have I with you. I have
grown more and more deeply into pragmatism, and I rejoice immensely to
hear you say, "je m'y sens tout gagné." It is absolutely the only
philosophy with _no_ humbug in it, and I am certain that it is _your_
philosophy. Have you read Papini's article in the February "Leonardo"?
That seems to me really splendid. You say that my ideas have formed the
real _centre de ralliment_ of the pragmatist tendencies. To me it is the
youthful and _empanaché_ Papini who has best put himself at the centre
of equilibrium whence all the motor tendencies start. He (and Schiller)
has given me great confidence and courage. I shall dedicate my book,
however, to the memory of J. S. Mill.
I hope that you are careful to distinguish in my own work between the
pragmatism and the "radical empiricism" (Conception de Conscience,[72]
etc.) which to my own mind have no necessary connexion with each other.
My first proofs came in this morning, along with your letter, and the
little book ought to be out by the first of June. You shall have a very
early copy. It is exceedingly untechnical, and I can't help suspecting
that it will make a real impression. Münsterberg, who hitherto has been
rather pooh-poohing my thought, now, after reading the lecture on truth
which I sent you a while ago, says I seem to be ignorant that Kant ever
wrote, Kant having already said all that I say. I regard this as a very
good symptom. The third stage of opinion about a new idea, already
arrived: _1st_: absurd! _2nd_: trivial! _3rd_: _we_ discovered it! I
don't suppose you mean to print these lectures of yours, but I wish you
would. If you would translate my lectures, what could make me happier?
But, as I said apropos of the "Varieties," I hate to think of you doing
that drudgery when you might be formulating your own ideas. But, in one
way or the other, I hope you will join in the great strategic
combination against the forces of rationalism and bad abstractionism! A
good _coup de collier_ all round, and I verily believe that a new
philosophic movement will begin....
I thank you for your congratulations on my retirement. It makes me very
happy. A professor has two functions: (1) to be learned and distribute
bibliographical information; (2) to communicate truth. The _1st_
function is the essential one, officially considered. The _2nd_ is the
only one I care for. Hitherto I have always felt like a humbug as a
professor, for I am weak in the first requirement. Now I can live for
the second with a free conscience. I envy you now at the Italian Lakes!
But good-bye! I have already written you a long letter, though I only
_meant_ to write a line! Love to you all from
W. J.
_To Charles A. Strong._
Cambridge, _Apr._ 9, 1907.