The Letters of William James, Vol. 1

P.S. On reading this to Alice she says she doesn't see what call I had to write it, and that as for my obstructing the dinner, I hadn't made it more impossible than I always make everything. This with a sweet ironical smile which I can't give on paper....

To Francis Boott

FLORENCE, Jan. 30, 1893.

Dear Mr. Boott,—Your letter of Dec. 15th was very welcome, with its home gossip and its Florentine advice. Our winter has worn away, as you see, with very little discomfort from cold. It is true that I have been irritated at the immovable condition of my bed-room thermometer which, for five weeks, has been at 40°F., not shifting in all that time more than one degree either way, until I longed for a change; but how much better such steadfastness than the acrobatic performances of our American winter-thermometer. You and other sybarites scared us so, in the fall, about the arctic cold we should have, that I used daily to make vows to the Creator and the Saints that, if they would only carry us safely to the first of February, I never would ask them for another favor as long as I lived. With the impending winter once overcome I thought life would be one long vista of relief thenceforth. But practically there has been nothing to overcome. I am glad, however, that now that January disappears, we may have some warm days, coming more and more frequently. The spring must be really delicious. We are keeping as shy of "Society" as we can, but still we see a good many people, and the interruptions to study (from that, and the domestic causes which abound in our narrow quarters—narrow in winter-time, broad enough when fires go out) are very great.

Duveneck105 spent a most delightful evening here a while ago, and left a big portfolio of photos of Böcklin's pictures and a big bunch of cigars for me two days later. I wish I didn't always feel like a phrase-monger with honest artists like him. However there are some fellows who seem phrase-mongers to me, X–, e.g., so it's "square."… We have a cook, Raffaello, the most modest and faithful of his sex. Our manner of communication with him is awful; but he finishes all our sentences for us, and, strange to say, just as we would have finished them if we could. Alice swears we must bring him home to America. Should you think it safe? He seems to have no friends or diversions here, and no love except for his saucepans. But I dread the responsibility of being foster-father to him in our cold and uncongenial land. It would be different if I spoke his lingo.—What do you think?

And what a pretty lingo it is! Italian and German seem to me the languages. The mongrels French and English might drop out!

Apropos to English, I return your slip [about the teaching of English?] "as per request," having been amused at the manifestation of the ruling passion in you. I don't care how incorrect language may be if it only has fitness of epithet, energy and clearness. But I do pity the poor English Department. I see they are talking in England of more study of their own tongue in the schools being required.... Mark Twain dined with us last night, in company with the good Villari and the charming Mrs. Villari; but there was no chance then to ask him to sing Nora McCarty. He's a dear man, and there'll be a chance yet. He is in a delightful villa at Settignano, and says he has written more in the past four months than he could have done in two years at Hartford. Well! good-bye, dear old friend. Yours ever,

WM. JAMES.

To Henry James

FLORENCE, Mar. 17, 1893.

I don't wonder that it seems strange to you that we should be leaving here just in the glory of the year. Your view of Italy is that of the tourist; and that is really the only way to enjoy any place. Ours is that of the resident in whom the sweet decay breathed in for six months has produced a sort of physiological craving for a change to robuster air. One ends by craving one's own more permanent attitude, and a country whose language I can speak and where I can settle into my own necessary work (which has been awfully prevented here of late), without a guilty sense that I am neglecting the claims of pictures and monuments, is the better environment now. In short, Italy has well served its purpose by us and we shall be eternally grateful. But we have no farther use for it, and the spring is also beautiful in lands that will [be] fresher to our senses. There are moments when the Florentine debility becomes really hateful to one, and I don't see how the Lorings and others can come and make their home with it. You have done the best thing, in putting yourself in the strongest milieu to be found on earth. But Italy is incomparable as a refreshing refuge, and I am sorry that you are likely to lose it this year....

To François Pillon

[Post-card]LONDON, June 17, 1893.

You can hardly imagine how strong my disappointment was in losing you in Paris—when we might have found you by going to Alcan's on Monday, or by writing you before we came. It seems now sheer folly! But I didn't think of the possibility of your being gone so early in the summer. Our three young children are all in Switzerland, the older boy in Munich, and my wife and I are like middle-aged omnibus-horses let loose in a pasture. The first time we have had a holiday together for 15 years. I feel like a barrel without hoops! We shall be here in England for a month at least. After that everything is uncertain. I may not even pass through Paris again.

W. J.

To Shadworth H. Hodgson

LONDON, June 23, 1893.

My dear Hodgson,—I am more different kinds of an ass, or rather I am (without ceasing to be different kinds) the same kind more often than any other living man! This morning I knocked at your door, inwardly exultant with the certainty that I should find you, and learned that you had left for Saltburn just one hour ago! A week ago yesterday the same thing happened to me at Pillon's in Paris, and because of the same reason, my having announced my presence a day too late.

My wife and I have been here six days. As it was her first visit to England and she had a lot of clothes to get, having worn out her American supply in the past year, we thought we had better remain incog. for a week, drinking in London irresponsibly, and letting the dressmakers have their will with her time. I early asked at your door whether you were in town and visible, and received a reassuring reply, so I felt quite safe and devoted myself to showing my wife the sights, and enjoying her naïf wonder as she drank in Britain's greatness. Four nights ago at 9:30 P.M. I pointed out to her (as possibly the climax of greatness) your library windows with one of them open and bright with the inner light. She said, "Let's ring and see him." My heart palpitated to do so, but it was late and a hot night, and I was afraid you might be in tropical costume, safe for the night, and my hesitation lost us. We came home. It is too, too bad! I wanted much to see you, for though, my dear Hodgson, our correspondence has languished of late (the effect of encroaching eld), my sentiments to you-ward (as the apostle would say) are as lively as ever, and I recognize in you always the friend as well as the master. Are you likely to come back to London at all? Our plans didn't exactly lie through Yorkshire, but they are vague and may possibly be changed. But what I wanted my wife to see was S. H. H. in his own golden-hued library with the rumor of the cab-stand filling the air.... But write, you noble old philosopher and dear young man, to yours always,

WM. JAMES.

To Dickinson S. Miller

LONDON, July 8, 1893.

DARLING MILLER,—I must still for a while call you darling, in spite of your Toryism, ecclesiasticism, determinism, and general diabolism, which will probably result in your ruthlessly destroying me both as a man and as a philosopher some day. But sufficient unto that day will be its evil, so let me take advantage of the hours before "black-manhood comes" and still fondle you for a while upon my knee. And both you and Angell, being now colleagues and not students, had better stop Mistering or Professoring me, or I shall retaliate by beginning to "Mr." and "Prof." you....

What you say of Erdmann, Uphues and the atmosphere of German academic life generally, is exceedingly interesting. If we can only keep our own humaner tone in spite of the growing complication of interests! I think we shall in great measure, for there is nothing here in English academic circles that corresponds to the German savagery. I do hope we may meet in Switzerland shortly, and you can then tell me what Erdmann's greatness consists in....

I have done hardly any reading since the beginning of March. My genius for being frustrated and interrupted, and our unsettled mode of life have played too well into each other's hands. The consequence is that I rather long for settlement, and the resumption of the harness. If I only had working strength not to require these abominably costly vacations! Make the most of these days, my dear Miller. They will never exactly return, and will be looked back to by you hereafter as quite ideal. I am glad you have assimilated the German opportunities so well. Both Hodder and Angell have spoken with admiration of the methodical way in which you have forged ahead. It is a pity you have not had a chance at England, with which land you seem to have so many inward affinities. If you are to come here let me know, and I can give you introductions. Hodgson is in Yorkshire and I've missed him. Myers sails for the Chicago Psychic Congress, Aug. 2nd. Sidgwick may still be had, perhaps, and Bryce, who will give you an order to the Strangers' Gallery. The House of Commons, cradle of all free institutions, is really a wonderful and moving sight, and at bottom here the people are more good-natured on the Irish question than one would think to listen to their strong words. The cheery, active English temperament beats the world, I believe, the Deutschers included. But so cartilaginous and unsentimental as to the Gemüth! The girls like boys and the men like horses!

I shall be greatly interested in your article. As for Uphues, I am duly uplifted that such a man should read me, and am ashamed to say that amongst my pile of sins is that of having carried about two of his books with me for three or four years past, always meaning to read, and never actually reading them. I only laid them out again yesterday to take back to Switzerland with me. Such things make me despair. Paulsen's Einleitung is the greatest treat I have enjoyed of late. His synthesis is to my mind almost lamentably unsatisfactory, but the book makes a station, an étape, in the expression of things. Good-bye—my wife comes in, ready to go out to lunch, and thereafter to Haslemere for the night. She sends love, and so do I. Address us when you get to Switzerland to M. Cérésole, as above, "la Chiesaz sur Vevey (Vaud), and believe me ever yours,

WM. JAMES.

To Henry James

The Salters' Hill-top[near CHOCORUA], Sept. 22, 1893.

I am up here for a few days with Billy, to close our house for the winter, and get a sniff of the place. The Salters have a noble hill with such an outlook! and a very decent little house and barn. But oh! the difference from Switzerland, the thin grass and ragged waysides, the poverty-stricken land, and sad American sunlight over all—sad because so empty. There is a strange thinness and femininity hovering over all America, so different from the stoutness and masculinity of land and air and everything in Switzerland and England, that the coming back makes one feel strangely sad and hardens one in the resolution never to go away again unless one can go to end one's days. Such a divided soul is very bad. To you, who now have real practical relations and a place in the old world, I should think there was no necessity of ever coming back again. But Europe has been made what it is by men staying in their homes and fighting stubbornly generation after generation for all the beauty, comfort and order that they have got—we must abide and do the same.106 As England struck me newly and differently last time, so America now—force and directness in the people, but a terrible grimness, more ugliness than I ever realized in things, and a greater weakness in nature's beauty, such as it is. One must pitch one's whole sensibility first in a different key—then gradually the quantum of personal happiness of which one is susceptible fills the cup—but the moment of change of key is lonesome....

We had the great Helmholtz and his wife with us one afternoon, gave them tea and invited some people to meet them; she, a charming woman of the world, brought up by her aunt, Madame Mohl, in Paris; he the most monumental example of benign calm and speechlessness that I ever saw. He is growing old, and somewhat weary, I think, and makes no effort beyond that of smiling and inclining his head to remarks that are made. At least he made no response to remarks of mine; but Royce, Charles Norton, John Fiske, and Dr. Walcott, who surrounded him at a little table where he sat with tea and beer, said that he spoke. Such power of calm is a great possession.

I have been twice to Mrs. Whitman's, once to a lunch and reception to the Bourgets a fortnight ago. Mrs. G–, it would seem, has kept them like caged birds (probably because they wanted it so); Mrs. B. was charming and easy, he ill at ease, refusing to try English unless compelled, and turning to me at the table as a drowning man to a "hencoop," as if there were safety in the presence of anyone connected with you. I could do nothing towards inviting them, in the existent state of our ménage; but when, later, they come back for a month in Boston, I shall be glad to bring them into the house for a few days. I feel quite a fellow feeling for him; he seems a very human creature, and it was a real pleasure to me to see a Frenchman of B.'s celebrity look as ill at ease as I myself have often felt in fashionable society. They are, I believe, in Canada, and have only too much society.

I shan't go to Chicago, for economy's sake—besides I must get to work. But everyone says one ought to sell all one has and mortgage one's soul to go there; it is esteemed such a revelation of beauty. People cast away all sin and baseness, burst into tears and grow religious, etc., under the influence!! Some people evidently....

The people about home are very pleasant to meet.... Yours ever affectionately,

WM. JAMES.END OF VOLUME I

1

Literary Remains of Henry James, p. 151.

2

See Literary Remains, p. 149.

3

If the reader were familiar, as he cannot be presumed to have been, with the elder Henry James or his writings, he would be in no danger of finding anything cold or qualifying in these words, but would discern a true adoration expressing itself in a way that was peculiarly characteristic of their writer. For Henry James, Senior, a spiritual democracy deeper than that of our political jargon was not a mere conception: it was an unquestioned reality. The outer wrappings in which people swathed their souls excited him to anger and ridicule more often than praise; but when men or women seemed to him beautiful or adorable he thought it was because they betrayed more naturally than others the inward possession of that humble "social" spirit which he wanted to think of as truly a common possession—God's equal gift to each and all. To say of his mother that that could be felt in her, that she was merely that, was his purest praise. The reader may find this habit of his thought expressing itself anew in William James by turning to a letter on page 210 below. That letter might have been written by Henry James, Senior.

4

The places of two of the eleven who died early were taken by their orphaned children.

5

According to the Rev. Hugh Walsh of Newburgh, who has worked out the Walsh genealogy. A Small Boy and Others (page 6) says "Killyleagh."

6

A Small Boy and Others, p. 8.

7

Literary Remains of Henry James, Introduction, p. 9.

8

See, further, Notes of a Son and Brother, pp. 181 et seq.

9

Society of the Redeemed Form of Man, quoted in the Introduction to Literary Remains, p. 57, et seq.

10

Letter to Shadworth H. Hodgson, p. 241 infra.

11

A Small Boy and Others, p. 216.

12

Vide also a passage in the Literary Remains, at p. 104.

13

Life of E. L. Godkin, vol. II, p. 218. New York, 1907.

14

Early Years of the Saturday Club; E. W. Emerson's chapter on Henry James, Senior, p. 328. There follows a delightful account of a "Conversation" at R. W. Emerson's house in Concord, at which Henry James, Senior, upset a prepared discourse of Alcott's and launched himself into an attack on "Morality." Whereupon Miss Mary Moody Emerson, "eighty-four years old and dressed underneath without doubt, in her shroud," seized him by the shoulders and shook him and rebuked him. "Mr. James beamed with delight and spoke with most chivalrous courtesy to this Deborah bending over him."

15

Some passages in William James's early letters to his family might seem labored. They should be read with this in mind. An especially high-sounding phrase or a flight into a grand style was understood as a signal meaning "fun," and such passages are never to be taken as serious.

16

A Small Boy and Others, p. 207.

17

For James's use of Touchstone's question, see p. 190 infra.

18

Cf. Henry James's Life of W. W. Story, vol. II, p. 204, where there is a passage which sounds reminiscent of the author's father and brother.

19

The following entries occur among some "notes on his students" which President Eliot made at the time—

20

The expression was undoubtedly recognized in Kay Street as borrowed from the Lincolnshire boor, in Fitzjames Stephen's Essay on Spirit-Rapping, who ended his life with the words, "What with faith, and what with the earth a-turning round the sun, and what with the railroads a-fuzzing and a-whizzing, I'm clean stonied, muddled and beat."

21

A diary of Mr. T. S. Perry's has fixed the date of this visit as Oct. 31-Nov. 4.

22

W. J. could make much better drawings than the ones which he enclosed in this letter.

23

A horse.

24

N. S. Shaler, Autobiography, pp. 105 ff.

25

Harvard Advocate, Oct. 1, 1874.

26

The "great anthropomorphological collection" consisted of photographs of authors, scientists, public characters, and also people whose only claim upon his attention was that their physiognomies were in some way typical or striking. James never arranged the collection or preserved it carefully, but he filled at least one album in early days, and he almost always kept some drawer or box at hand and dropped into it portraits cut from magazines or obtained in other ways. He seemed to crave a visual image of everybody who interested him at all.

27

All theory is gray, dear friend,But the golden tree of life is green.

28

See Memories and Studies, pp. 6, 8, and 9; and the address on Agassiz, passim.

29

The case of small-pox left no scar whatever. Indeed James afterward regarded it as having been perhaps no small-pox at all, but only varioloid, and by October he described himself as being in better health than ever before. During several weeks of convalescence that followed his distressing experience in quarantine he was, however, quite naturally, "blue and despondent."

30

This house has since been enlarged and converted into the Colonial Club.

31

John A. Allen, another of the Brazilian party.

32

Miss Dixwell became Mrs. O. W. Holmes; the other two, Mrs. E. W. Gurney and Mrs. William E. Darwin respectively.

33

Miss Kate Havens of Stamford, Conn., a fellow pensionnaire at Frau Spannenberg's, has kindly supplied a helpful memorandum.

34

An accompanying drawing presented a telescopic exaggeration of features, which are hardly appropriate to the Christian Strasse.

35

The notice of Grimm's Unüberwindliche Mächte appeared under the title "A German-American Novel" in the Nation, 1867; vol. V, p. 432.

36

The Herr Professor was later identified as W. Dilthey.

37

I send you a thousand kisses.

38

"When in his grotesque moods [the elder Henry James] maintained that, to a right-minded man, a crowded Cambridge horse-car 'was the nearest approach to Heaven upon earth.'" E. L. Godkin, Life, vol. II, p. 117.

39

An allusion to a picture in the parlor which had formerly belonged to the Thieses.

40

A devoted family servant.

41

A daughter of Henry James, Senior's, English friend J. J. Garth Wilkinson. "Wilky" James had been named after Mr. Wilkinson. See Notes of a Son and Brother, p. 196.

42

A note-book in which there are many pages of titles, under dates between 1867 and 1872, appears to have been a record of reading; it was not kept systematically and is incomplete. The following entries were made between the date "June 21, '69—M.D."—the date of graduation from the Medical School—and the end of the year 1869. It will be understood that "R 2 M" signified the Revue des deux Mondes. The original entries stand in a column, without punctuation, and occupy two and a half pages. Amplifications are added in brackets:—

"A. Dumas, fils; Père prod[igue], ½ Monde; Fils naturel, Question D'Argent. / Jung; Stilling's Leben. [5 vols. 1806]. / J. S. Mill; Subjection of Women [1869]. / H[orace] Bushnell; Woman suffrage, etc. [1869]. / Balzac; Le curé de Tours. / Browning; The Ring and the Book. / Ravaison [Mollien]; Rapport s. l. Philosophie [La philosophie en France au xixe Siècle. Paris, 1868]. / Goethe; Aus meinem Leben. / Coquerel fils; [Perhaps Athanase Josué Coquerel, 1820-1875, author of "Libres études" (1867)]. / Em. Burnouf; [La] Sc[ience] des Relig[ions, vi. Les orthodoxies, comment elles se forment et déclinent] R2M. July 1, 69. / Leblais; Matérialisme and Sp[iri]t[ua]l[i]sme. [Paris, 1865]. / Littré; Paroles de [la] Philos[ophie] pos[itive, 1859]. / Caro; le Mat[érialis]me and la Science [1868]. / Comte and Littré; principes de Phil. pos. [Comte, Auguste. Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vols., 2nd ed. with preface by Littré. Paris, 1864]. / Littré, Bridges; replies to Mill. [Bridges, John Henry. Unity of Comte's life and doctrine; a reply to strictures on Comte's later writings, addressed to J. S. Mill. London, 1866]. / H. Spencer; Reasons for dissenting from Comte. / Secrétan; Preface to Phil. de la Liberté [1848]. / Schopenhauer; das Metaph. Bedürfniss. / H[enry] James [sen.]; Moralism and Christianity [N.Y. 1850]. / Jouffroy; Dist. ent. Psych. and Phys. [Part of the "Mélanges Philosophiques"?]. / Benedikt; Electrotherap[ie], first 100 pp. / Lecky; History of Morals [2 vols. 1869]. / Froude; Short Studies, etc. (skimmed). / Duke of Argyle; Primeval Man [1869]. / Turgeneff; Nouvelles Moscovites. / Lewes: [Biographical] Hist. of Phil., Prolegomena, Kant, Comte. / Geo. Sand; Constance Verrier. / Mérimée; Lokis. R2M. 15 Sept. 69. / J. Grote; Exploratio philosophica, [1865]. / H[enry] James [Sen.]; Lectures and Miscellanies. [1852]. / [K. J?] Simrock. / C. Reade; Griffith Gaunt. / G. Droz; Autour d'une Source. / O. Feuillet. / D. F. Strauss; Chr[istian] Marklin. Mannheim. 1851. / M. Müller; Chips [from a German workshop] vol. I and vol. II partly. / Lis [Elisa?] Maier; W. Humboldt's Leben. [1865]. / Lis Maier; Geo. Forster's [Leben, 1856]. / Schleiermacher; Correspondenz. vol. I. / Réville; Israelitic monotheism, R2M, 1er Sept. 69. [La religion primitive d'Israel et le développement du monothéisme]. / Deutsch; Islam. Quarterly Rev. Oct. '69. / Fichte; Best[immung] des Gelehrten. i and ii Vorlesungen. / Ste.-Beuve; Art[icle on] Leopardi, [in] Port[raits] cont[emporains] iii. / Westm[inster]: Rev[iew] Art. on Lecky. Oct. 69. / [T. G. von] Hippel; Selbstleben. / Vita de Leopardi. / Fichte; Bestim[mung] des Menschen. / Gwinner; Schopenhauer. /"