Chapter IX (3)

MY DEAR GODKIN,--Harry's address is 34 De Vere Gardens, W. I imagine that he will be there till midsummer.

I hope 'tis yourself that's going! You must need it awfully. I fully meant to call on you when I was in N. Y. a fortnight ago. But I was so dead tired that I slept on my hotel bed all the only afternoon I had, went to Daly's theatre in the evening and then had to come away. You are the noblest Roman of them all; and what a man shall do for a newspaper with sanity, intellect and backbone in it, when your editorial pen has ceased to trickle, I don't know. There must be plenty of morals in the world, plenty of brains, plenty of education, plenty of literary skill, but was there ever a time or country when they seemed less to coalesce, in the field of journalism? In the earlier years I may say that my whole political education was due to the "Nation"; later came a time when I thought you looked on the doings of Terence Powderly and Co. too much from without and too little from within; now I turn to you again as my only solace in a world where nothing stands straight. You have the most curious way of always being _right_, so I never dare to trust myself now when you're agin me. I read my "Nation" rather quicker than I used, but I depend on it perhaps more than ever, and cannot forbear seizing this passing occasion to tell you so.

I hope, once more, that you're going abroad yourself. It will do you no end of good to _take in_ after your daily giving out for so long. Harry will be delighted to see you. Poor Alice is stranded at Leamington, unable to use her legs or brain to any account, but never complaining, and living apparently on the Irish question, being a violent Parnellite. I settle the affairs of the Universe in my College courses, and have got so far ahead as to be building a big new house on that part of it known as the Norton estate.[92] A new street passes before your old house, now Grace Norton's. I am a little north of it, facing it, and squatting right across the old Norton Avenue. Four other houses are going up there immediately, two of 'em actually under way. No answer to this is expected, from a man as busy as you. Please give my best respects to Mrs. Godkin, and believe me ever affectionately yours,

WM. JAMES.

_To Henry James._

CAMBRIDGE, _May 12, 1889_.

MY DEAR HARRY,--I have been feeling so dead-tired all this spring that I believe a long break from my usual scenes is necessary. It is like the fagged state that drove me abroad the last two times. I have been pretty steadily busy for six years and the result isn't wonderful, considering what a miserable nervous system I have anyhow. The upshot of it is that I have pretty much made up my mind to invest $1000 (if necessary) of Aunt Kate's legacy in my constitution, and spend the summer abroad. This will give me the long-wished opportunity of seeing you and Alice, and enable me to go to an international congress of "physiological psychologists" which I have had the honor of an invitation to attend in the capacity of "honorary committee"-man for the U. S. It will be instructive and inspiring, no doubt, and won't last long, and [will] give me an opportunity to meet a number of eminent men. But for these three reasons, I think I should start for the Pacific coast as being more novel. I confess I find myself caring more for landscapes than for men--strange to say, and doubtless shameful; so my stay in London will probably be short.

I learn from Godkin that he is to be with you about the same time that I shall be in London. I don't suppose you have room for both of us, but pray don't let that trouble you. I can easily find a lodging somewhere for a few days, which are all that I shall stay. I am heartily glad Godkin is about to go abroad; I know of no one who so richly deserves a vacation. My heart is warming up again to the "Nation," as it hasn't for many years.

I long to have a good long talk with you about yourself, Alice, and 10,000 old things. Alice used to be so perturbed at _expecting_ things that in my ignorance of her present condition I don't venture to announce to her my arrival. But do you use your discretion as to where and how she shall be informed. Send her this, if it is the best way.

It's a bad summer for me to be gone, with the house-building here, the Chocorua place unfinished, and the crowds set in motion by the Paris exhibition; and _perhaps_, if I find myself unexpectedly hearty when lectures end two weeks hence, I may not go after all. But I can't help feeling in my bones that I _ought_ to go, so I probably shall. It will then be the Cephalonia, sailing June 22, and I shall get off at Queenstown, as I am on the whole more curious to see the Emerald Isle than any other part of Europe, except Scotland, which I probably shan't see at all. The "Congress" in Paris begins Aug. 5.

How good it will be to see poor Alice again, and to hear you discourse! Ever affectly, yours,

W.J.

* * * * *

In late June James did, in fact, sail on the Cephalonia and disembark at Queenstown. Thence he proceeded _via_ Cork to Killarney and on to Dublin, where he spent a day at Trinity College before going to Glasgow and Oban. Having, in the briefest time and at first sight, fallen "dead in love wi' Scotland both land and people" he traveled on _via_ Edinburgh, and reached London by the 17th of July. There he stayed with Henry James for ten days and saw his sister. A letter from London to Mrs. James may be included in part.

_To Mrs. James._

34 DE VERE GARDENS, LONDON, _July 29, 1889_.

... [After seeing Mrs. Gurney I went] to Brighton, where I spent a night at Myers's lodgings, and the evening with him and the Sidgwicks trying thought-transference experiments which, however, on that occasion did not succeed.... The best thing by far which I saw in Brighton, and a thing the impression of which will perhaps outlast everything else on this trip, was four cuttle-fish (octopus) in the Aquarium. I wish we had one of them for a child--such flexible intensity of life in a form so inaccessible to our sympathy. Next day to Haslemere to the Pearsall Smiths, where I spent a really _gemüthlich_ evening and morning. Pearsall himself as engaging as of yore. The place and country wonderfully rich and beautiful. Returning yesterday, went with H. to National Gallery in the afternoon, and read Brownell on France in the P.M. Yesterday, Sunday, Harry went to the country after breakfast, whilst I wrote a lot of notes and read Zola's "Germinal," a story of mines and miners, and a truly magnificent work, if successfully to reproduce the horror and pity of certain human facts and make you see them as if real can make a book magnificent.

Towards four o'clock (the weather fine) I mounted the top of a bus and went (with thousands of others similarly enthroned) to Hampton Court, through Kew, Richmond, Bushey Park, etc.; about 30 miles there and back, all for 4_s._ 6_d._ I strolled for an hour or more in the Hampton Court Gardens, and overlooked the Thames all _bizarrée_ with row-boats and male and female rowers, and got back, _perdu dans la foule_, at 10 P.M.--a most delightful and interesting six hours, with but the usual drawback, that _you_ were not along. How you would have enjoyed every bit of it, especially the glimpses, between Richmond and Hampton, over the high brick walls and between the bars of the iron gates, of these extraordinary English gardens and larger grounds, all black with their tufted vegetation. More different things can grow in a square foot here, if they're taken care of, than I've ever seen elsewhere, and one of these high ivy-walled gardens is something the _like_ of which is altogether unknown to us. Like all human things (except wives) they grow banal enough, if one stays long in their company, but the first acquaintance between Alice Gibbens and them is something which I would fain see. The crowd was immense and the picturesqueness of everything quite medieval, as were also the good manners and the tendency to a certain hearty sociability, shown in the chaffing from vehicle to vehicle along the road. I'm glad I had this sight of the greatness of the English people, and glad I had no social duties to perform....

Harry is as nice and simple and amiable as he can be. He has covered himself, like some marine crustacean, with all sorts of material growths, rich sea-weeds and rigid barnacles and things, and lives hidden in the midst of his strange heavy alien manners and customs; but these are all but "protective resemblances," under which the same dear old, good, innocent and at bottom very powerless-feeling Harry remains, caring for little but his writing, and full of dutifulness and affection for all gentle things....

* * * * *

From London James crossed to Paris, to attend the International Congress of Physiological Psychology which had been arranged to coincide with the International Exposition of that year. He found between 60 and 120 colleagues, most of them European, of course, in attendance at its sessions. This incident in his life may be summarized in a few sentences from his own report of the Congress, in "Mind": "The most striking feature of the discussions was, perhaps, their tendency to slope off to some one or other of those shady horizons with which the name of "psychic-research" is now associated.... The open results were, however (as always happens at such gatherings), secondary in real importance to the latent ones--the friendships made, the intimacies deepened, and the encouragement and inspiration which came to everyone from seeing before them in flesh and blood so large a portion of that little army of fellow students from whom and for whom all contemporary psychology exists. The individual worker feels much less isolated in the world after such an experience." To Stumpf he wrote similarly (Aug. 15): "The sight of 120 men all actively interested in psychology has made me feel much less lonely in the world, and ready to finish my book this year with a great deal more _entrain_. A book hanging so long on one's hands at last gets outgrown, and even disgusting to one."

On his way home James went again to see his sister, and her account of him is not to be omitted.

"William, instead of going to Switzerland, came suddenly back from Paris and went home, having, as usual, exhausted Europe in a few weeks, finding it stale, flat and unprofitable. The only necessity being to get home, the first letter after his arrival, was, of course, full of plans for his return _plus_ wife and infants; he is just like a blob of mercury--you can't put a mental finger upon him. H. and I were laughing over him, and recalling Father, and William's resemblance (in his ways) to him. Tho' the results are the same, they seem to come from such a different nature in the two; in W., an entire inability or indifference to 'stick to a thing for the sake of sticking,' as some one said of him once; whilst Father, the delicious infant! couldn't submit even to the thralldom of his own whim; and then the dear being was such a prey to the demon homesickness.... But to return to our mutton, William: he came with H. on August 14 on his way to Liverpool. He told all about his Paris experience, where he was a delegate to the Psychological Congress, which was a most brilliant success. The French most polite and hospitable. They invited W. to open the Congress, and they always had a foreigner in the Chair at the different meetings. I extracted with great difficulty from him that 'Monsieur Willyam James' was frequently referred to by the speakers. He liked the Henry Sidgwicks and Fred. Myers. Mrs. Myers paid him the following enigmatic compliment: 'We are so glad that you are _as_ you are.'"

* * * * *

Caricature from a Pocket Note-Book.]

On getting back to Cambridge in the autumn, James moved his family into a house which he had just built in Irving Street--a street which had been newly opened through what used to be called Norton's Woods. He had planned this house with such eager interest in all its details that he had even designed doors and windows and had practically been his own architect with respect to everything except structural specifications. The result was a detached wooden house of pleasantly square outer appearance, covered with shingles which soon weathered brown, and having dark green trimmings. Inside there was one room which deserves particular mention. James loved to have "space" about him[93] and he planned a library that was the largest and sunniest room the house could provide. It was about 22-1/2 feet wide and 27 feet long. The walls were lined with book-shelves from floor to ceiling, except where James hung a portrait of his father over the open fireplace. On the southern side there was a triple window whose total width was nearly half the length of the room, and which let in a flood of sunlight. Through it one looked out upon a small lawn overhung by a large elm, and upon more grass and trees beyond. This was his study and living-room for the rest of his life. Here most of the Cambridge letters that follow may be assumed to have been written.

* * * * *

After James moved to 95 Irving Street, several people referred to in the letters became his very near neighbors. Josiah Royce, Francis J. Child, C. E. Norton, Miss Theodora Sedgwick were all within three minutes walk of his door. Miss Grace Norton lived across the way.

_To Miss Grace Norton._

CAMBRIDGE, _Dec. 25, 1889_.

DEAR MISS NORTON,--Will you accept, as a Christmas offering, the accompanying bottles of California Champagne, _extremely_ salubrious in its after-effects, quite as intoxicating, almost as good-tasting and only half as "cost-playful" as French Champagne--in short, a beverage which no household should be without.

I should gladly have sought out something more sentimental,--though after a bottle or so, this seems rosy with sentiment,--but I have no gifts of invention in the _present_ line, and took something useful, merely to testify to the affection and admiration with which I am ever yours,

WM. JAMES.

_To Charles Eliot Norton._

Undated [1889].

MY DEAR MR. NORTON,--This introduces to you Mr. X----, from South Abington, a workman in a tack factory since boyhood, who has nevertheless gone quite deeply into studies philosophic, mathematical and sociological. He will tell you more about himself, and I wish if convenient that you would "draw him out"--I should like much to hear your impression. I want, if possible, to help him to a start in life here. Palmer has invited him to stay with him for a week. And we are busy studying him and trying to cast his horoscope, to feel whether we can conscientiously recommend him to some millionaire to support in college for a year (as unmatriculated), and so give him a chance to make himself known and find some better avocation for himself than the making of tacks ten hours a day. He knows nothing of our plan, thinks this a mere spree, so please don't let it out! Very truly yours,

WM. JAMES.

* * * * *

The workman from the tack factory, like more than one other lame duck before and after him, had aroused what Professor Palmer once aptly called James's "inclination toward the under-dog and his insistence on keeping the door open for every species of human experiment." It made no difference what X----'s doctrines were, or whether or not they were akin to James's way of thinking. And if such a man was unfitted to arouse other people's sympathies, James's own were the more readily challenged. The erratics of the philosophical world were significant phenomena, and sometimes interested him most just when they were most "queer"--when they were perhaps aberrant to the point of being pathological specimens. It mattered as little to James where such people sprang from, or by what strange processes they had arrived at their ideas, as it matters to a naturalist that beetles have to be hunted for in all sorts of places. He filled the "Varieties of Religious Experience" with the records of abnormal cases and with accounts of the mental and emotional adventures of people whom the everyday world called cranks and fanatics. He was not only curious about such men, but endlessly patient and helpful to them. To some indeed his encouragement was more comforting than profitable, and among them must be numbered the X---- of this letter--an uncouth and helpless creature, who has since achieved his only immortality in another sphere of being. The poor man never got over this "spree," but withdrew from the tack factory forever, spent many years in a Mills Hotel working over an unsalable _magnum opus_, and every now and then appealing for funds. A letter on a later page recurs to this case.

* * * * *

In the spring of 1890 James finished the remaining chapters of the "Psychology." The next letters were written during the final weeks of work on the book.

_To Henry Holt._

CAMBRIDGE, _May 9, 1890_.

MY DEAR HOLT,--I was in hopes that you would propose to break away from the famous "Series" and publish the book independently, in two volumes. An abridgement could then be prepared for the Series. If there be anything which I loathe it is a mean overgrown page in small type, and I think the author's feelings ought to go for a good deal in the case of the enormous _rat_ which his ten years gestation has brought forth.

In any event, I dread the summer and next year, with two new courses to teach, and, I fear, no vacation. What I wrote you, if you remember, was to send you the "heft" of the MS. by May 1st, the rest to be done in the intervals of proof-correcting. You however insisted on having the entire MS. in your hands before anything should be done. It seems to me that this delay is, _now_ at any rate, absurd. There is certainly less than two weeks' work on the MS. undone. And every day got behind us now means a day of travel and vacation for me next September. I really think, considering the sort of risk I am running by the delay, that I must _insist_ on getting to press now as soon as the page is decided on.

No one could be more disgusted than I at the sight of the book. _No_ subject is worth being treated of in 1000 pages! Had I ten years more, I could rewrite it in 500; but as it stands it is this or nothing--a loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two facts: _1st_, that there is no such thing as a _science_ of psychology, and _2nd_, that W. J. is an incapable.

Yours provided you hurry up things,

WM. JAMES.

* * * * *

When Mrs. James took the children to Chocorua for the summer, James remained in Cambridge to finish the book.

_To Mrs. James._

CAMBRIDGE, _May 17_, 7:50 P.M.

...Wrote hard pretty much all day, lectured on Ansel Bourne, etc., had three students to lunch, Chubb being gone to Milton. Visit this A.M. from Bishop Keane of the New Catholic University at Washington, to get advice about psycho-physic laboratory. Feel very well, though I drink coffee daily. "Psychology" will certainly be finished by Sunday noon!...

* * * * *

_Sunday, May_ [18], 9:50 P.M.

...The job is done! All but some paging and half a dozen little footnotes, the work is completed, and as I see it as a unit, I feel as if it might be rather a vigorous and richly colored chunk--for that kind of thing at least!...

* * * * *

_May 22_, 5:45 P.M.

...I sot up till two last night putting the finishing touches on the MS., which now goes to Holt in irreproachable shape, woodcuts and all. I insured it for $1000.00 in giving it to the express people this A.M. That will make them extra careful at a cost of $1.50. This morning a great feeling of weariness came over me at 10 o'clock, and I was taking down a volume of Tennyson intending to doze off in my chair, when X---- arrived....

* * * * *

_May 24._

...I came home very weary, and lit a fire, and had a delicious two hours all by myself, thinking of the big _étape_ of my life which now lay behind me (I mean that infernal book done), and of the possibilities that the future yielded of reading and living and loving out from the shadow of that interminable black cloud.... At any rate, it does give me some comfort to think that I don't live _wholly_ in projects, aspirations and phrases, but now and then have something done to show for all the fuss. The joke of it is that I, who have always considered myself a thing of glimpses, of discontinuity, of _aperçus_, with no power of doing a big job, suddenly realize at the _end_ of this task that it is the biggest book on psychology in any language except Wundt's, Rosmini's and Daniel Greenleaf Thompson's! Still, if it burns up at the printing-office, I shan't much care, for I shan't ever write it again!!

_To Henry James._

CHOCORUA, _June 4, 1890_.

MY DEAR HARRY, ...The great event for me is the completion at last of my tedious book. I have been at my desk with it every day since I got back from Europe, and up at four in the morning with it for many a day of the last month. I have written every page four or five times over, and carried it "on my mind" for nine years past, so you may imagine the relief. Besides, I am glad to appear at last as a man who has done something more than make phrases and projects. I will send you a copy, in the fall, I trust, though [the printer] is so inert about starting the proofs that we may not get through till midwinter or later. As "Psychologies" go, it is a good one, but psychology is in such an ante-scientific condition that the whole present generation of them is predestined to become unreadable old medieval lumber, as soon as the first genuine tracks of insight are made. The sooner the better, for me!...

_To Mrs. Henry Whitman._

CAMBRIDGE, _July 24, 1890_.

MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--How good a way to begin the day, with a letter from you, and a composition of yours to correct!

To take the latter first, I trembled a little when, after looking over the printed document, I found you beginning so sympathetically to stroke down Mr. Jay; but you made it all right ere the end. Since the movement is on foot, it is time that rational people like yourself should get an influence in it. I doubt whether the earth supports a more genuine enemy of all that the Catholic Church _inwardly_ stands for than I do--_écrasez l'infâme_ is the only way I can feel about it. But the concrete Catholics, including the common priests in this country, are an entirely different matter. Their wish to educate their own, and to do what proselytizing they can, is natural enough; so is their wish to get state money. "Destroying American institutions" is a widely different matter; and instead of this vague phrase, I should like to hear one specification laid down of an "institution" which they are now threatening. The only way to resist them is absolute firmness and impartiality, and continuing in the line which you point out, bless your 'art! Down with demagogism!--this document is not quite free therefrom....

As for the style, I see in it nothing but what is admirable. A pedant might object (near the end) to a _drop_ of (even Huguenot) blood _beating high_; but how can I object to anything from your pen?

And now 10,000 thanks for your kind words about the proofs. The pages I sent you are probably the most _continuously_ amusing in the book--though occasionally there is a passing gleam elsewhere. If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more. I take you at your word and send you some more sheets--only, to get something pithy and real, I go back to some practical remarks at the end of a chapter on Habit, composed with a view of benefiting the _young_. May they accordingly be an inspiration to _you_!

Most of the book is altogether unreadable from any human point of view, as I feel only too well in my deluge of proofs. My dear wife will come down next week (I think) to help me through. Thank you once more, and believe me, with warm regards to your husband, Yours always,

WM. JAMES.

_To W. D. Howells._

CHOCORUA, _Aug. 20, 1890_.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You've done it this time and no mistake! I've had a little leisure for reading this summer, and have just read, first your "Shadow of a Dream," and next your "Hazard of New Fortunes," and can hardly recollect a novel that has taken hold of me like the latter. Some compensations go with being a mature man, do they not? You couldn't possibly have done so solid a piece of work as that ten years ago, could you? The steady unflagging flow of it is something wonderful. Never a weak note, the number of characters, each intensely individual, the observation of detail, the everlasting wit and humor, and beneath all the bass accompaniment of the human problem, the entire Americanness of it, all make it a very great book, and one which will last when we shall have melted into the infinite azure. Ah! my dear Howells, it's worth something to be able to write such a book, and it is so peculiarly _yours_ too, flavored with your idiosyncrasy. (The book is so d--d humane!) Congratulate your wife on having brought up such a husband. _My_ wife had been raving about it ever since it came out, but I couldn't read it till I got the larger printed copy, and naturally couldn't credit all she said. But it makes one love as well as admire you, and so o'er-shadows the equally exquisite, though slighter "Shadow of a Dream," that I have no adjectives left for that. I hope the summer is speeding well with all of you. I have been in Cambridge six weeks and corrected 1400 pages of proof. The year which shall have witnessed the apparition of your "Hazard of New Fortunes," of Harry's "Tragic Muse," and of _my_ "Psychology" will indeed be a memorable one in American Literature!! Believe me, with warm regards to Mrs. Howells, yours ever affectionately,

WM. JAMES.

* * * * *

The "Principles of Psychology" appeared in the early autumn.