accepting my half-invitation, half-suggestion, be with us in this
uncared-for-nature, so different from Switzerland, and you getting
strengthened and refreshed by the change. _Dieu dispose_, indeed! The
fact that _is_ never entered into our imagination! I give up all hope of
you this year, unless it be for Cambridge, where, however, the
conditions of repose will be less favorable for you.... I am myself
going down to Cambridge on the fifth of October for two days of
"inauguration" ceremonies of our new president, Lawrence Lowell....
There are so many rival universities in our country that advantage has
to be taken of such changes to make the newspaper talk, and keep the
name of Harvard in the public ear, so the occasion is to be almost as
elaborate as a "Jubilee"; but I shall keep as much out of it as is
officially possible, and come back to Chocorua on the 8th, to stay as
late into October as we can, though probably not later than the 20th,
after which the Cambridge winter will begin. It hasn't gone well with my
health this summer, and beyond a little reading, I have done no work at
all. I have, however, succeeded during the past year in preparing a
volume on the "Meaning of Truth"--already printed papers for the most
part--which you will receive in a few days after getting this letter,
and which I think may help you to set the "pragmatic" account of
Knowledge in a clearer light. I will also send you a magazine article on
the mediums, which has just appeared, and which may divert you.[86]
Eusapia Paladino, I understand, has just signed a contract to come to
New York to be at the disposition of Hereward Carrington, an expert in
medium's tricks, and author of a book on the same, who, together with
Fielding and Bagally, also experts, formed the Committee of the London
S. P. R., who saw her at Naples.... After Courtier's report on Eusapia,
I don't think any "investigation" here will be worth much
"scientifically"--the only advantage of her coming may possibly be to
get some scientific men to believe that there is really a problem. Two
other cases have been reported to me lately, which are worth looking up,
and I shall hope to do so.
How much your interests and mine keep step with each other, dear
Flournoy. "Functional psychology," and the twilight region that
surrounds the clearly lighted centre of experience! Speaking of
"functional" psychology, Clark University, of which Stanley Hall is
president, had a little international congress the other day in honor of
the twentieth year of its existence. I went there for one day in order
to see what Freud was like, and met also Yung of Zürich, who professed
great esteem for you, and made a very pleasant impression. I hope that
Freud and his pupils will push their ideas to their utmost limits, so
that we may learn what they are. They can't fail to throw light on
human nature; but I confess that he made on me personally the impression
of a man obsessed with fixed ideas. I can make nothing in my own case
with his dream theories, and obviously "symbolism" is a most dangerous
method. A newspaper report of the congress said that Freud had condemned
the American religious therapy (which has such extensive results) as
very "dangerous" because so "unscientific." Bah!
Well, it is pouring rain and so dark that I must close. Alice joins me,
dear Flournoy, in sending you our united love, in which all your
children have a share. Ever yours,
W. J.
_To Shadworth H. Hodgson._
Cambridge, _Jan._ 1, 1910.
A happy New Year to you, dear Hodgson, and may it bring a state of mind
more recognizant of truth when you see it! Your jocose salutation of my
account of truth is an epigrammatic commentary on the cross-purposes of
philosophers, considering that on the very day (yesterday) of its
reaching me, I had replied to a Belgian student writing a thesis on
pragmatism, who had asked me to name my sources of inspiration, that I
could only recognize two, Peirce, as quoted, and "S. H. H." with his
method of attacking problems, by asking what their terms are "Known-as."
Unhappy world, where grandfathers can't recognize their own
grandchildren! Let us love each other all the same, dear Hodgson, though
the grandchild be in your eyes a "prodigal." Affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
* * * * *
The news of James's election as _Associé étranger_ of the Académie des
Sciences Morales et Politiques, which had appeared in the Boston
"Journal" a day or two before the next letter, had, of course, reached
the American newspapers directly from Paris. The unread book by Bergson
of which Mr. Chapman was to forward his manuscript-review was obviously
"Le Rire," and Mr. Chapman's review may be found, not where the next
letter but one might lead one to seek it, but in the files of the
"Hibbert Journal."
_To John Jay Chapman._
Cambridge, _Jan._ 30, 1910.
DEAR JACK,--Invincible epistolary laziness and a conscience humbled to
the dust have conspired to retard this letter. God sent me straight to
you with my story about Bergson's cablegram--the only other person to
whom I have told it was Henry Higginson. _One_ of you must have put it
into the Boston "Journal" of the next day,--_you_ of course, to
humiliate me still the more,--so now I lie in the dust, spurning all the
decorations and honors under which the powers and principalities are
trying to bury me, and seeking to manifest the naked truth in my
uncomely form. Never again, never again! Naked came I into life, and
this world's vanities are not for me! You, dear Jack, are the only
reincarnation of Isaiah and Job, and I praise God that he has let me
live in your day. _Real_ values are known only to _you_!
As for Bergson, I think your change of the word "comic" into the word
"tragic" throughout his book is _impayable_, and I have no doubt it is
true. I have only read half of him, so don't know how he is coming out.
Meanwhile send me your own foolishness on the same subject, commend me
to your liege lady, and believe me, shamefully yours,
W. J.
_To John Jay Chapman._
Cambridge, _Feb._ 8, 1910.
DEAR JACK,--Wonderful! wonderful! Shallow, incoherent, obnoxious to its
own criticism of Chesterton and Shaw, off its balance, accidental,
whimsical, false; but with central fires of truth "blazing fuliginous
mid murkiest confusion," telling the reader nothing of the Comic except
that it's smaller than the Tragic, but _readable_ and splendid, showing
that the _man who wrote it_ is more than anything he can write!
Pray patch some kind of a finale to it and send it to the "Atlantic"!
Yours ever fondly,
W. J.
(Membre de I'Institut!)
* * * * *
The "specimen" which was enclosed with the following note has been lost.
It was perhaps a bit of adulatory verse. What is said about "Harris and
Shakespeare," as also in a later letter to Mr. T. S. Perry on the same
subject, was written apropos of a book entitled "The Man Shakespeare,
His Tragic Life-Story."[87]
_To John Jay Chapman._
Cambridge, _Feb._ 15, 1910.
DEAR JACK,--Just a word to say that it pleases me to hear you write this
about Harris and Shakespeare. H. is surely false in much that he claims;
yet 'tis the only way in which Shakespeare ought to be handled, so his
_is_ the best book. The trouble with S. was his intolerable fluency. He
improvised so easily that it kept down his level. It is hard to see how
the man that wrote his best things could possibly have let himself do
ranting bombast and complication on such a large scale elsewhere. 'T is
mighty fun to read him through in order.
I send you a specimen of the kind of thing that tends to hang upon me as
the ivy on the oak. When will the day come? Never till, like me, you
give yourself out as a poetry-hater. Thine ever,
[Illustration: signature
my new signature]
_To Dickinson S. Miller._
Cambridge, _Mar. 26, 1910_.
DEAR MILLER,--Your study of me arrives! and I have pantingly turned the
pages to find the eulogistic adjectives, and find them in such abundance
that my head swims. Glory to God that I have lived to see this day! to
have so much said about me, and to be embalmed in literature like the
great ones of the past! I didn't know I was so much, was all these
things, and yet, as I read, I see that I was (or am?), and shall boldly
assert myself when I go abroad.
To speak in all dull soberness, dear Miller, it touches me to the quick
that you should have hatched out this elaborate description of me with
such patient and loving incubation. I have only spent five minutes over
it so far, meaning to take it on the steamer, but I get the impression
that it is almost unexampled in our literature as a piece of profound
analysis of an individual mind. I'm sorry you stick so much to my
psychological phase, which I care little for, now, and never cared much.
This epistemological and metaphysical phase seems to me more original
and important, and I haven't lost hopes of converting you entirely yet.
Meanwhile, thanks! thanks! [Émile] Boutroux, who is a regular angel, has
just left our house. I've written an account of his lectures which the
"Nation" will print on the 31st. I should like you to look it over,
hasty as it is.
...I hope that all these lectures on contemporaries (What a live place
Columbia is!) will appear together in a volume. I can't easily believe
that any will compare with yours as a thorough piece of interpretative
work.
We sail on Tuesday next. My thorax has been going the wrong way badly
this winter, and I hope that Nauheim may patch it up.
Strength to your elbow! Affectionately and gratefully yours,
Wm. James.
XVII
1910
_Final Months--The End_
SEVERAL reasons combined to take James to Europe in the early spring of
1910. His heart had been giving him more discomfort. He wished to
consult a specialist in Paris from whom an acquaintance of his,
similarly afflicted, had received great benefit. He believed that
another course of Nauheim baths would be helpful. Last, and not least,
he wished to be within reach of his brother Henry, who was ill and
concerning whose condition he was much distressed. In reality it was he,
not his brother, who already stood in the shadow of Death's door.
Accordingly he sailed for England with Mrs. James, and went first to
Lamb House. Thence he crossed alone to Paris, and thence went on to
Nauheim, leaving Mrs. James to bring his brother to Nauheim to join him.
The Parisian specialist could do nothing but confirm previous diagnoses.
Too much "sitting up and talking" with friends in Paris exhausted him
seriously, and, after leaving Paris, he failed for the first time to
shake off his fatigue. The immediate effect of the Nauheim baths proved
to be very debilitating, and, again, he failed to rally and improve when
he had finished them. By July, after trying the air of Lucerne and
Geneva, only to find that the altitude caused him unbearable distress,
he despaired of any relief beyond what now looked like the incomparable
consolations of being at rest in his own home. So he turned his face
westward.
The next letters bid good-bye for the summer to two tried friends. Five
months later it seemed as if James had been at more pains to make his
adieus than he usually put himself to on account of a summer's absence.
When Mrs. James returned to the Cambridge house in the autumn, after he
had died, and had occasion to open his desk copy of the Harvard
Catalogue, she found these words jotted at the head of the Faculty List:
"A thousand regrets cover every beloved name." It grieved him that life
was too short and too full for him to see many of them as often as he
wanted to. One day before he sailed, his eye had been caught by the
familiar names and, as a throng of comradely intentions filled his
heart, he had had a moment of foreboding, and he had let his hand trace
the words that cried this needless "Forgive me!" and recorded an
incommunicable Farewell.
_To Henry L. Higginson._
Cambridge, _Mar. 28, 1910_.
BELOVED HENRY,--I had most positive hopes of driving in to see you ere
the deep engulfs us, but the press is too great here, and it remains
impossible. This is just a word to say that you are not forgotten, or
ever to be forgotten, and that (after what Mrs. Higginson said) I am
hoping you may sail yourself pretty soon, and have a refreshing time,
and cross our path. We go straight to Rye, expecting to be in Paris for
the beginning of April for a week, and then to Nauheim, whence Alice,
after seeing me safely settled, will probably return to Rye for the heft
of the summer. It would pay you to turn up both there and at Nauheim and
see the mode of life.
Hoping you'll have a good [Club] dinner Friday night, and never need any
surgery again, I am ever thine,
W. J.
_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
Cambridge, _March 29, 1910_.
DEAREST FANNY,--Your beautiful roses and your card arrived duly--the
roses were not deserved, not at least by W. J. I have about given up all
visits to Boston this winter, and the racket has been so incessant in
the house, owing to foreigners of late, that we haven't had the strength
to send for you. I sail on the 29th in the Megantic, first to see Henry,
who has been ill, not dangerously, but very miserably. Our Harry is with
him now. I shall then go to Paris for a certain medical experiment, and
after that report at Nauheim, where they probably will keep me for some
weeks. I hope that I may get home again next fall with my organism in
better shape, and be able to see more of my friends.
After Thursday, when the good Boutrouxs go, I shall try to arrange a
meeting with you, dear Fanny. At present we are "contemporaries," that
is all, and the one of us who becomes survivor will have regrets that we
were no more!
What a lugubrious ending! With love to your mother, and love from Alice,
believe me, dearest Fanny, most affectionately yours,
W. J.
_To T, S. Perry._
BAD-NAUHEIM, _May 22, 1910_.
BELOVED THOS.,--I have two letters from you--one about ... Harris on
Shakespeare. _Re_ Harris, I did think you were a bit supercilious _a
priori_, but I thought of your youth and excused you. Harris himself is
horrid, young and crude. Much of his talk seems to me absurd, but
nevertheless _that's the way to write about Shakespeare_, and I am sure
that, if Shakespeare were a Piper-control, he would say that he
relished Harris far more than the pack of reverent commentators who
treat him as a classic moralist. He seems to me to have been a
professional _amuser_, in the first instance, with a productivity like
that of a Dumas, or a Scribe; but possessing what no other amuser has
possessed, a lyric splendor added to his rhetorical fluency, which has
made people take him for a more essentially serious human being than he
was. Neurotically and erotically, he was hyperæsthetic, with a playful
graciousness of character never surpassed. He could be profoundly
melancholy; but even then was controlled by the audience's needs. A cork
in the rapids, with no ballast of his own, without religious or ethical
ideals, accepting uncritically every theatrical and social convention,
he was simply an æolian harp passively resounding to the stage's call.
Was there ever an author of such emotional importance whose reaction
against false conventions of life was such an absolute zero as his? I
know nothing of the other Elizabethans, but could they have been as
soulless in this respect?--But _halte-la_! or I shall become a Harris
myself!... With love to you all, believe me ever thine,
W. J.
Read Daniel Halévy's exquisitely discreet "Vie de Nietzsche," if you
haven't already done so. Do you know G. Courtelines' "Les Marionettes de
la Vie" (Flammarion)? It beats Labiche.
_To François Pillon._
BAD-NAUHEIM, _May 25, 1910_.
MY DEAR PILLON,--I have been here a week, taking the baths for my
unfortunate cardiac complications, and shall probably stay six weeks
longer. I passed through Paris, where I spent a week, partly with my
friend the philosopher Strong, partly at the Fondation Thiers with the
Boutrouxs, who had been our guests in America when he lectured a few
months ago at Harvard. Every day I said: "I will get to the Pillons this
afternoon"; but every day I found it impossible to attempt your four
flights of stairs, and finally had to run away from the Boutrouxs' to
save my life from the fatigue and pectoral pain which resulted from my
seeing so many people. I have a dilatation of the aorta, which causes
anginoid pain of a bad kind whenever I make any exertion, muscular,
intellectual, or social, and I should not have thought at all of going
through Paris were it not that I wished to consult a certain Dr. Moutier
there, who is strong on arteries, but who told me that he could do
nothing for my case. I hope that these baths may arrest the disagreeable
tendency to _pejoration_ from which I have suffered in the past year.
This is why I didn't come to see the dear Pillons; a loss for which I
felt, and shall always feel, deep regret.
The sight of the new "Année Philosophique" at Boutroux's showed me how
valiant and solid you still are for literary work. I read a number of
the book reviews, but none of the articles, which seemed uncommonly
varied and interesting. Your short notice of Schinz's really _bouffon_
book showed me to my regret that even you have not yet caught the true
inwardness of my notion of Truth. You speak as if I allowed no _valeur
de connaissance proprement dite_, which is a quite false accusation.
When an idea "works" successfully among _all the other ideas_ which
relate to the object of which it is our mental substitute, associating
and comparing itself with them harmoniously, the workings are wholly
inside of the intellectual world, and the idea's value purely
intellectual, for the time, at least. This is my doctrine and
Schiller's, but it seems very hard to express it so as to get it
understood!
I hope that, in spite of the devouring years, dear Madame Pillon's state
of health may be less deplorable than it has been so long. In particular
I wish that the neuritis may have ceased. I wish! I wish! but what's the
use of wishing, against the universal law that "youth's a stuff will not
endure," and that we must simply make the best of it? Boutroux gave some
beautiful lectures at Harvard, and is the gentlest and most lovable of
characters. Believe me, dear Pillon, and dear Madame Pillon, your ever
affectionate old friend,
Wm. James.
_To Theodore Flournoy._
BAD-NAUHEIM, _May 29, 1910_.
...Paris was splendid, but fatiguing. Among other things I was
introduced to the Académie des Sciences Morales, of which you may likely
have heard that I am now an _associé étranger_(!!). Boutroux says that
Renan, when he took his seat after being received at the Académie
Française, said: "Qu'on est bien dans ce fauteuil" (it is nothing but a
cushioned bench with no back!). "Peut-être n'y a-t-il que cela de vrai!"
Delicious Renanesque remark!...
W. J.
* * * * *
The arrangement by which Mrs. James and Henry James were to have arrived
at Nauheim had been upset. The two, who were to come from England
together, were delayed by Henry's condition; and for a while James was
at Nauheim alone.
_To his Daughter._
_Bad-Nauheim_, _May 29, 1910_.
BELOVED PÉGUY,--The very _fust_ thing I want you to do is to look in the
drawer marked "Blood" in my tall filing case in the library closet, and
find the _date_ of a number of the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy"
there that contains an article called "Philosophic Reveries." Send this
_date_ (not the article) to the Revd. Prof. L. P. Jacks, 28 Holywell,
Oxford, if you find it, _immediately_. He will understand what to do
with it. If you don't find the article, do nothing! Jacks is notified. I
have just corrected the proofs of an article on Blood for the "Hibbert
Journal," which, I think, will make people sit up and rub their eyes at
the apparition of a new great writer of English. I want Blood himself to
get it as a surprise.
_I_ got as a surprise your finely typed copy of the rest of my MS., the
other day. I thank you for it; also for your delightful letters. The
type-writing seems to set free both your and Aleck's genius more than
the pen. (If you need a new ribbon it must be got from the agency in
Milk St. just above Devonshire--but you'll find it hard work to get it
into its place.) You seem to be leading a very handsome and domestic
life, avoiding social excitements, and hearing of them only from the
brethren. It is good sometimes to face the naked ribs of reality as it
reveals itself in homes. I face them _here_ with no one but the
blackbirds and the trees for my companions, save some rather odd
Americans at the _Mittagstisch_ and _Abendessen_, and the good smiling
_Dienstmädchen_ who brings me my breakfast in the morning.... I went to
my bath at 6 o'clock this morning, and had the Park all to the
blackbirds and myself. This was because I am expecting a certain Prof.
Goldstein from Darmstadt to come to see me this morning, and I had to
get the bath out of the way. He is a powerful young writer, and is
translating my "Pluralistic Universe." But the weather has grown so
threatening that I hope now that he won't come till next Sunday. It is a
shame to converse here and not be in the open air. I would to Heaven
_thou_ wert _mit_--I think thou wouldst enjoy it very much for a week
or more. The German civilization is _good_! Only this place would give a
very false impression of our wicked earth to a Mars-_Bewohner_ who
should descend and leave and see nothing else. Not a dark spot (save
what the patients' hearts individually conceal), no poverty, no vice,
nothing but prettiness and simplicity of life. I snip out a
concert-program (the afternoon one unusually good) which I find lying on
my table. The like is given free in the open air every day. The baths
weaken one so that I have little brain for reading, and must write
letters to all kinds of people every day. A big quarrel is on in Paris
between my would-be translators and publishers. I wish translators would
let my books alone--they are written for my own people exclusively! You
will have received Hewlett's delightful "Halfway House," sent to our
steamer by Pauline Goldmark, I think. I have been reading a charmingly
discreet life of Nietzsche by D. Halévy, and have invested in a couple
more of his (N.'s) books, but haven't yet begun to read them. I am half
through "Waffen-nieder!" a _first-rate_ anti-war novel by Baroness von
Suttner. It has been translated, and I recommend it as in many ways
instructive. How are Rebecca and Maggie [the cook and house-maid]? You
don't say how you enjoy ordering the bill of fare every day. You can't
vary it properly unless you make a _list_ and keep it. A good sweet dish
is _rothe Grütze_, a form of fine sago consolidated by currant-jelly
juice, and sauced with custard, or, I suppose, cream.
Well! no more today! Give no end of love to the good boys, and to your
Grandam, and believe me, ever thy affectionate,
W. J.
_To Henry P. Bowditch._
BAD-NAUHEIM, _June 4, 1910_.
DEAREST HEINRICH,--The envelope in which this letter goes was addrest in
Cambridge, Mass., and expected to go towards you with a letter in it,
long before now. But better late than never, so here goes! I came over,
as you may remember, for the double purpose of seeing my brother Henry,
who had been having a sort of nervous breakdown, and of getting my
heart, if possible, tuned up by foreign experts. I stayed upwards of a
month with Henry, and then came hither _über_ Paris, where I stayed ten
days. I have been here two and a half weeks, taking the baths, and
enjoying the feeling of the strong, calm, successful, new German
civilization all about me. Germany is _great_, and no mistake! But what
a contrast, in the well-set-up, well-groomed, smart-looking German man
of today, and his rather clumsily drest, dingy, and unworldly-looking
father of forty years ago! But something of the old _Gemüthlichkeit_
remains, the friendly manners, and the disposition to talk with you and
take you seriously and to respect the serious side of whatever comes
along. But I can write you more interestingly of physiology than I can
of sociology.... The baths may or may not arrest for a while the
downward tendency which has been so marked in the past year--but at any
rate it is a comfort to know that my sufferings have a respectable
organic basis, and are not, as so many of my friends tell me, due to
pure "nervousness." Dear Henry, you see that you are not the only pebble
on the beach, or toad in the puddle, of senile degeneration! I admit
that the form of your tragedy beats that of that of most of us; but
youth's a stuff that won't endure, in any one, and to have had it, as
you and I have had it, is a good deal gained anyhow, while to see the
daylight still under _any_ conditions is perhaps also better than
nothing, and meanwhile the good months are sure to bring the final
relief after which, "when you and I behind the veil are passed, Oh, but
the long, long time the world shall last!" etc., etc. Rather gloomy
moralizing, this, to end an affectionate family letter with; but the
circumstances seem to justify it, and I know that you won't take it
amiss.
Alice is staying with Henry, but they will both be here in a fortnight
or less. I find it pretty lonely all by myself, and the German language
doesn't run as trippingly off the tongue as it did forty years ago.
Passage back is taken for August 12th....
Well, I must stop! Pray give my love to Selma, the faithful one. Also to
Fanny, Harold, and Friedel. With Harold's engagement you are more and
more of a patriarch. Heaven keep you, dear Henry.
Believe me, ever your affectionately sympathetic old friend,
Wm. James.
_To François Pillon._
BAD-NAUHEIM, _June 8, 1910_.