Kitabı oku: «The Letters of William James, Vol. 1», sayfa 21

To his Son Henry (age 8)

CAMBRIDGE, Mar. 1, 1888.

BELOVED HEINRICH,—You lazy old scoundrel, why don't you write a letter to your old Dad? Tell me how you enjoy your riding on horseback, what Billy does for a living, and which things you like best of all the new kinds of things you have to do with in Aiken. How do you like the darkeys being so numerous? Everything goes on quietly here. The house so still that you can hear a pin drop, and so clean that everything makes a mark on it. All because there are no brats and kids around. Jap is my only companion, and he sneezes all over me whenever I pick him up. Mrs. Hildreth and the children are gone to Florida. The Emmets seem very happy. I will close with a fable. A donkey felt badly because he was not so great a favorite as a lap-dog. He said, I must act like the lap-dog, and then my mistress will like me. So he came into the house and began to lick his mistress, and put his paws on her, and tried to get into her lap. Instead of kissing him for this, she screamed for the servants, who beat him and put him out of the house. Moral: It's no use to try to be anything but a donkey if you are one. But neither you nor Billy are one.

Good-night! you blessed boy. Stick to your three R's and your riding, so as to get on fast. The ancient Persians only taught their boys to ride, to shoot the bow and to tell the truth. Good-night!

Kiss your dear old Mammy and that belly-ache of a Billy, and little Margaret Mary for her Dad. Good-night.

YOUR FATHER.

To his Son Henry

CAMBRIDGE, Mar. 27 [1888].

BELOVED HEINRICH,—Your long letter came yesterday P.M. Much the best you ever writ, and the address on the envelope so well written that I wondered whose hand it was, and never thought it might be yours. Your tooth also was a precious memorial—I hope you'll get a better one in its place. Send me the other as soon as it is tookin out. They ought to go into the Peabody Museum. If any of George Washington's baby-teeth had been kept till now, they would be put somewhere in a public museum for the world to wonder at. I will keep this tooth, so that, if you grow up to be a second Geo. Washington, I may sell it to a Museum. When Washington was only eight years old his mother didn't know he was going to be Washington. But he did be it, when the time came.

I will now tell you about what Dr. Hildreth is doing. The family is in Florida, and he is building himself a new house. They are just starting the foundation. The fence is taken down between our yard and his, by the stable, and teams are driving through with lumber. Our back yard is filled with lumber for the frame of the house. It is to be cut, squared, mortised, etc., in our yard and then carried through to his.

I dined last night at the Dibblees'. The boys had been to dancing-school. I like their looks. All the boys and girls together kept up such a talking that I seemed to be in a boiler factory where they bang the iron with the hammers so. It's just so with them every day. But they're very good-natured, even if they don't let the old ones speak.

Say to Fräulein that "ich lasse Sie grüssen von Herzensgrund!"⁸⁷

Thump Bill for me and ask him if he likes it so nicely.

Jap's nose is all dry and brown with holding it so everlastingly towards the fire.

We are having ice-cream and the Rev. George A. Gordon to lunch today. The ice-cream is left over from the Philosophical Club last night.

Now pray, old Harry, stick to your books and let me see you do sums and read fast when you get back.

The best of all of us is your mother, though.

Good-bye!

Your loving Dad.

W. J.

To his Son William

18 GARDEN STREET, Apr. 29, 1888.

9:30 A.M.

BELOVED WILLIAMSON,—This is Sunday, the sabbath of the Lord, and it has been very hot for two days. I think of you and Harry with such longing, and of that infant whom I know so little, that I cannot help writing you some words. Your Mammy writes me that she can't get you to work much, though Harry works. You must work a little this summer in our own place. How nice it will be! I have wished that both you and Harry were by my side in some amusements which I have had lately. First, the learned seals in a big tank of water in Boston. The loveliest beasts, with big black eyes, poking their heads up and down in the water, and then scrambling out on their bellies like boys tied up in bags. They play the guitar and banjo and organ, and one of them saves the life of a child who tumbles in the water, catching him by the collar with its teeth, and swimming him ashore. They are both, child and seal, trained to do it. When they have done well, their master gives them a lot of fish. They eat an awful lot, scales, and fins, and bones and all, without chewing. That is the worst thing about them. He says he never beats them. They are full of curiosity—more so than a dog for far-off things; for when a man went round the room with a pole pulling down the windows at the top, all their heads bobbed out of the water and followed him about with their eyes aus lauter⁸⁸ curiosity. Dogs would hardly have noticed him, I think. Now, speaking of dogs, Jap was nauseated two days ago. I thought, from his licking his nose, that he was going to be sick, and got him out of doors just in time. He vomited most awfully on the grass. He then acted as if he thought I was going to punish him, poor thing. He can't discriminate between sickness and sin. He leads a dull life, without you and Margaret Mary. I tell him if it lasts much longer, he'll grow into a common beast; he hates to be a beast, but unless he has human companionship, he will sink to the level of one. So you must hasten back and make much of him.

I also went to the panorama of the battle of Bunker Hill, which is as good as that of Gettysburg. I wished Harry had been there, because he knows the story of it. You and he shall go soon after your return. It makes you feel just as if you lived there.

Well, I will now stop. On Monday morning the 14th or Sunday night the 13th of May, I will take you into my arms; that is, I will meet you with a carriage on the wharf, when the boat comes in. And I tell you I shall be glad to see the whole lot of you come roaring home. Give my love to your Mammy, to Aunt Margaret, to Fräulein, to Harry, to Margaret Mary, and to yourself. Your loving Dad,

WM. JAMES.

To Henry James

Chochura, N.H., July 11, 1888.

My dear Harry,—Your note announcing Edmund Gurney's death came yesterday, and was a most shocking surprise. It seems one of Death's stupidest strokes, for I know of no one whose life-task was begun on a more far-reaching scale, or from whom one expected with greater certainty richer fruit in the ripeness of time. I pity his lovely wife, to whom I wrote a note yesterday; and also a brief notice for the "Nation."⁸⁹ To me it will be a cruel loss; for he recognized me more than anyone, and in all my thoughts of returning to England he was the Englishman from whom I awaited the most nourishing communion. We ran along on very similar lines of interest. He was very profound, subtle, and voluminous, and bound for an intellectual synthesis of things much solider and completer than anyone I know, except perhaps Royce. Well! such is life! all these deaths make what remains here seem strangely insignificant and ephemeral, as if the weight of things, as well as the numbers, was all on the other side.⁹⁰

I have to thank you for a previous letter three or four weeks old, which, having sent to Aunt Kate, I cannot now date. I must also thank for "Partial Portraits" and "The Reverberator." The former, I of course knew (except the peculiarly happy Woolson one), but have read several of 'em again with keen pleasure, especially the Turguenieff. "The Reverberator" is masterly and exquisite. I quite squealed through it, and all the household has amazingly enjoyed it. It shows the technical ease you have attained, that you can handle so delicate and difficult a fancy so lightly. It is simply delicious. I hope your other magazine things, which I am following your advice and not reading [in magazine form], are only half as good. How you can keep up such a productivity and live, I don't see. All your time is your own, however, barring dinner-parties, and that makes a great difference.

Most of my time seems to disappear in college duties, not to speak of domestic interruptions. Our summer starts promisingly. How with my lazy temperament I managed to start all the things we put through last summer, now makes me wonder. The place has yet a good deal to be done with it, but it can be taken slowly, and Alice is a most vaillante partner. We have a trump of a hired man.... Some day I'll send you a photograph of the little place. Please send this to Alice, for whose letters I'm duly grateful. I only hope she'll keep decently well for a little while. Yours ever,

W. J.

P.S. I have just been downstairs to get an envelope, and there on the lawn saw a part of the family which I will describe, for you to insert in one of your novels as a picture of domestic happiness. On the newly made lawn in the angle of the house and kitchen ell, in the shadow of the hot afternoon sun, lies a mattress taken out of our spare-room for an airing against Richard Hodgson's arrival tomorrow. On it the madonna and child—the former sewing in a nice blue point dress, and smiling at the latter (named Peggy), immensely big and fat for her years, and who, with quite a vocabulary of adjectives, proper names, and a mouthful of teeth, shows as yet, although in her sixteenth month, no disposition to walk. She is rolling and prattling to herself, now on mattress and now on grass, and is an exceedingly good-natured, happy, and intelligent child. It conduces to her happiness to have a hard cracker in her fist, at which she mumbles more or less all day, and of which she is never known to let go, even taking it into her bath with her and holding it immersed till that ceremony is o'er. A man is papering and painting one of our parlors, a carpenter putting up a mantelpiece in another. Margaret and Harry's tutor are off on the backs of the two horses to the village seven miles off, to have 'em shod. I, with naught on but gray flannel shirt, breeches, belt, stockings and shoes, shall now proceed across the Lake in the boat and up the hill, to get and carry the mail. Harry will probably ride along the shore on the pony which Aunt Kate has given him, and where Billy and Fräulein are, Heaven only knows. Returning, I shall have a bath either in lake or brook—doesn't it sound nice? On the whole it is nice, but very hot.

To Miss Grace Norton

[Post-card]

[CHOCORUA,] Aug. 12, 1888.

It would take G[uy] de M[aupassant] himself to just fill a post-card chock-full and yet leave naught to be desired, with an account of "Pierre et Jean." It is a little cube of bronze; or like the body of the Capitaine Beausire, "plein comme un oeuf, dur comme une balle"—dur surtout! Fifteen years ago, I might have been enthused by such art; but I'm growing weak-minded, and the charm of this admirable precision and adequacy of art to subject leaves me too cold. It is like these modern tools and instruments, so admirably compact, and strong, and reduced to their fighting weight. One of those little metallic pumps, e.g., so oily and powerful, with a handle about two feet long, which will throw a column of water about four inches thick 100 feet. Unfortunately, G. de M.'s pump only throws dirty water—and I am beginning to be old fogy eno' to like even an old shackly wooden pump-handle, if the water it fetches only carries all the sweetness of the mountain-side. Yrs. ever,

W.J.

The dying fish on p[in]s stick most in my memory. Is that right in a novel of human life?

To G. Croom Robertson

Oct. 7, 1888.

I am teaching ethics and the philosophy of religion for the first time, with that dear old duffer Martineau's works as a text. It gives me lots to do, as I only began my systematic reading in that line three weeks ago, having wasted the summer in farming (if such it can be called) and philosophizing. My "Psychology" will therefore have to be postponed until another year; for with as much college work as I have this year, I can't expect to write a line of it....

To Henry James

Oct. 14, 1888.

The Cambridge year begins with much vehemence—I with a big class in ethics, and seven graduates from other colleges in advanced psychology, giving me a good deal of work. But I feel uncommonly hearty, and shall no doubt come out of it all in good shape.... I am to have lots of reading and no writing to speak of this year and expect to enjoy it hugely. It does one good to read classic books. For a month past I've done nothing else, in behalf of my ethics class—Plato, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Butler, Paley, Spinoza, etc., etc. No book is celebrated without deserving it for some quality, and recenter books, certain never to be celebrated, have an awfully squashy texture....

To E. L. Godkin

CAMBRIDGE, Apr. 15, 1889.

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.⁹¹ 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 4s. 6d. 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.'"

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 him⁹² and he planned a library that was the largest and sunniest room the house could provide. It was about 22½ 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.