Marriage—Contract for the Psychology—European Colleagues—Death of his Parents

EARLY in 1876 James had been introduced by their common friend Thomas Davidson (that ardent and lovable man whom he sketched with incomparable strokes in "A Knight Errant of the Intellectual Life") to Miss Alice H. Gibbens, and the next day he wrote to his brother Wilky that he had met "the future Mrs. W. J." Miss Gibbens had grown up in Weymouth, a pleasant little Massachusetts town in which several generations of her ancestors had lived comfortably and which was then still untouched by the "development" that later converted it and its neighbour, Quincy, into unseemly stone-quarriers' suburbs. In 1876 she had just returned, with her widowed mother and two younger sisters, from a five-years' residence in Europe and was teaching in a school for girls in Boston. On July 10, 1878, after a short engagement, he and Miss Gibbens were married by the Reverend Rufus Ellis at the house of the bride's grandmother in Boston.

It must be left to a later day and a less intimate and partial hand to do adequate justice to a marriage which was happy in the rarest and fullest sense, and which was soon to work an abiding transformation in James's health and spirits. No mere devotion could have achieved the skill and care with which his wife understood and helped him. Family duties and responsibilities, often grave and worrisome enough, weighed lightly in the balance against the tranquillity and confidence that his new domesticity soon brought him. During the twenty-one years that immediately followed his marriage he accomplished an amount of teaching, college committee-service and administration, friendly and helpful personal intercourse with his students, reading and book-writing, original research, not to speak of his initial excursions into the field of psychical research, and a good deal of popular lecturing to eke out his income, that would have astonished anyone who had known him only during the early seventies, and that would have honored the capacity and endurance of any man. The serener tone of his letters soon contrasts itself with much that has gone before. The occasional references to fatigue, insomnia, and eye-strain, which still occur in his correspondence are explained by the amount of work he imposed upon himself rather than by the lack of strength with which he met his tasks.

Meanwhile his wife, who entered into all his plans and undertakings with unfailing understanding and high spirit, stood guard over his library door, protected him from interruptions and distractions, managed the household and the children and the family business, helped him to order his day and to see and entertain his friends at convenient times, sped him off on occasional much-needed vacations, and encouraged him to all his major undertakings, with a sustaining skill and cheer which need not be described to anyone who knew his household. To the importance of her companionship it is still, happily, impossible to do justice. If consulted, she would not tolerate even this allusion; yet to gloss over her sustaining influence entirely would be to do injustice to James himself.

The summer of 1878 was momentous in James's life for another reason. In June, one month before his marriage, he contracted with Messrs. Henry Holt & Company to write a volume on Psychology for the "American Science Series" that they were beginning to publish. He was asked by Mr. Holt, in the course of preliminary correspondence, whether he could deliver the manuscript in a year's time. James replied (June, 1878): "My other engagements and my health both forbid the attempt to execute the work rapidly. Its quality too might then suffer. I don't think I could finish it inside of two years—say the fall of 1880." Thus he proposed to throw the book off rapidly. He doubtless conceived of it in the beginning as a more or less literary survey of the subject as it was then known, and he certainly did not foresee that he was going to devote twelve years of critical study and original research to its preparation.

Meanwhile, immediately after their marriage, James took his wife to the upper end of Keene Valley in the Adirondacks for the rest of the summer. They both knew and loved the region already. Indeed, although there has been no occasion to mention it before, Keene Valley had already become for James the playground toward which he turned most eagerly when summer came. It never lost its charm for him; he managed to spend a week or two of almost every year there or nearby; and allusions to the region will appear in a number of later letters.

At the head of these valleys, in the basin of the Ausable Lakes and on the surrounding slopes of the most interesting group of mountains in the Adirondacks, a great tract of forest has been preserved. Giant, Noonmark, Colvin, and the Gothics raise their splendid ridges and summits to the enclosing horizon, and Dix, Haystack, and Marcy, the last the highest mountain of the Adirondack range, are within a day's walk of the little community that used to be known as "Beede's." Where the Ausable Club's picturesque golf-course is now laid out, the fields of Smith Beede's farm then surrounded his primitive, white-painted hotel. Half a mile to the eastward, in a patch of rocky pasture beside Giant Brook, stood the original Beede farm-house, and this Henry P. Bowditch, Charles and James Putnam, and William James had bought for a few hundred dollars (subject to Beede's cautious proviso in the deed that "the purchasers are to keep no boarders"). They had adapted the little story-and-a-half dwelling to their own purposes and converted its surrounding sheds and pens into habitable shanties of the simplest kind. So they established a sort of camp, with the mountains for their climbing, the brook to bathe in, and the primeval forest fragrant about them.

With a friend or native guide,—or often alone, with a book and lunch in his light rÜcksack,—James would go off for a long day's walk on one of the mountain trails. He liked to start early and to spend several hours at mid-day stretched out on the sheltered side of an open ridge or summit. In this way he would combine a day of outdoor exercise with fifty to eighty pages of professional reading, the daily stint to which he often held himself in his holidays.

In the summer of seventy-eight he planned to combine this sort of refreshment with work on the "Psychology." The plan seemed a little innocent to at least one friend,—Francis J. Child,—who said in a letter to James Russell Lowell: "William has already begun a Manual of Psychology—in the honeymoon;—but they are both writing it."

To Francis J. Child.

[Dictated to Mrs. James]

KEENE VALLEY, Aug. 16 [1878].

CARISSIMO,—Daily since the first instant have we trembled with joyous expectancy of your holiday face arriving at our door. Daily have we dashed the teardrop of disappointment from our common eye! And now to get a letter instead of your revered form! It is shameful. We are dying with the tedium of each other's society and you would make the wheels of life go round again. Your excursion to Scarborough is simply criminal under the circumstances. You know we longed to see you. It is not too late to repair your fault, for although we shall not outstay the 1st of September, you would find the Putnams and the best thirty-five-year-old medical society in Boston to keep you company after we go. You had better come from Scarborough through Portland direct to Burlington by the White Mt. R.R. From Burlington take boat to Westport, whence stage to Beede's and our beating heart. But such is the crassitude of your malignity that after this we hardly dare expect you. Seriously, how could you be so insane?

As for the remaining matter of your somewhat illegible letter, what is this mythological and poetical talk about psychology and Psyche and keeping back a manuscript composed during a honeymoon? The only Psyche now recognized by science is a decapitated frog whose writhings express deeper truths than your weakminded poets ever dreamed. She (not Psyche but the bride) loves all these doctrines which are quite novel to her mind, hitherto accustomed to all sorts of mysticism and superstitions. She swears entirely by reflex action now, and believes in universal Nothwendigkeit. Hope not with your ballad-mongering ever to gain an influence.

We have spent, however, a ballad-like summer in this delicious cot among the hills. We only needed crooks and a flock of sheep. I need not say that our psychic reaction has been one of content—perhaps as great as ever enjoyed by man.

So farewell, false friend, till such near time as your ehrwÜrdig person decorate our hearth at Mrs. Hanks's in Harvard St.

Communicate our hearty love to Mrs. Child and believe us your always doting

(W. and A.) J.

And for Heaven's sake come while yet there is time!

Wm.

When the College opened in the autumn of seventy-eight James and his wife returned to Cambridge and lived for a few months in lodgings at 387 Harvard Street. The next letter begins a series from which a number of later letters will be given. One of the warmest of James's lifelong friendships was with Miss Frances R. Morse of Boston. The "exquisite Mary" referred to near the end is her sister, later Mrs. John W. Elliot.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

[Dictated to Mrs. James]

CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 26, 1878.

Our dear Fanny,—I (W.) shield myself under my wife's handwriting to drop that formal style of address which has so long cast its cold shadow over our intercourse, and for which, now that I have become an old fogy whilst you still remain a blooming child, there seems no further good reason. Are you willing that henceforward we should call each other by our first names? If so, respond in kind. I have got into the habit of dictating to her all that I write, in order to save my eyes. This letter is from both of us.

Your letter from Brighton of Oct. 15th was duly and gladly received. You have since then seen a great many things, and we have heard of you occasionally, latest of your ascent of the Nile with the Longfellows. They will be pleasant companions and I hope the long rest, delicious climate and beautiful outlook of that voyage will do —— a world of good. It is too pitiful to think of her breaking down just at a time when one's active faculties have so much incitement to exert themselves. I am glad your mother is so much better. And how you will enjoy the sights of the winter! Don't you wish you had taken history instead of English literature!

We are very happily "boarding" on the corner of Harvard and Ware Street, next door to old Mrs. Cary's, where the Tappans used to live. We have absolutely no housekeeping trouble; we live surrounded by our wedding presents, and can devote all our energies to studying our lessons, dining with our respective mothers-in-law, receiving and repaying our "calls," which average one a day, and anxiously keeping our accounts in a little book so as to see where the trouble is if both ends don't meet.

We meant to have sent you this letter on Christmas day, but it was crowded out by many interruptions. We had, considering the age of the world and the hard times, quite a show of Xmas gifts and mild festivities.

...I suppose you get your "Nation" regularly on the Nile, so I make no comments on public affairs. We all feel sorry for poor old England just now. It really seems as if with us things were settling down upon a solid and orderly basis of general frugality. Keen cold weather, bare ground, and clear sky, west wind filling the air with clouds of frozen dust, and an engagement at the dentist's in an hour from this will seem to you on the Nile like tales told by an idiot. Still they are true for me. Pray write again and let us hear that you are all well, especially the exquisite Mary, to whom give lots of love, and with plenty to your parents and self, believe me, yours faithfully,

WM. JAMES.

The passage which follows is taken from a letter to Mrs. James, of about this time. It is so unusual a bit of self-analysis that it is included here. James himself never failed to recognize that every man's thought is biased by his temperament as well as guided by purely rational considerations.

To Mrs. James.

...I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: "This is the real me!" And afterwards, considering the circumstances in which the man is placed, and noting how some of them are fitted to evoke this attitude, whilst others do not call for it, an outside observer may be able to prophesy where the man may fail, where succeed, where be happy and where miserable. Now as well as I can describe it, this characteristic attitude in me always involves an element of active tension, of holding my own, as it were, and trusting outward things to perform their part so as to make it a full harmony, but without any guaranty that they will. Make it a guaranty—and the attitude immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless. Take away the guaranty, and I feel (provided I am Überhaupt in vigorous condition) a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter willingness to do and suffer anything, which translates itself physically by a kind of stinging pain inside my breast-bone (don't smile at this—it is to me an essential element of the whole thing!), and which, although it is a mere mood or emotion to which I can give no form in words, authenticates itself to me as the deepest principle of all active and theoretic determination which I possess....

W. J.

The next letter contains the first reference to work on the "Psychology." It also introduces into this volume the name and personality of a colleague-to-be with whom James's relations were destined to be close and permanent.

Josiah Royce was then a young man "from the intellectual barrens of California" whose brilliant work was still to be done, and whose philosophic genius had not yet been disclosed to the public, although it may fairly be said to have been announced by every line of his engagingly Socrates-like face and figure. He had been born and brought up among the most primitive surroundings in Grass Valley, California, and won his way to a brief period of study in Germany and to a degree at Johns Hopkins in 1878. While yet a student there, he paid a visit to Cambridge, and he has left his own quotable record of the meeting which resulted, and of what followed.

"My real acquaintance with [James] began one summer-day in 1877, when I first visited him in [his father's] house on Quincy Street, and was permitted to pour out my soul to somebody who really seemed to believe that a young man might rightfully devote his life to philosophy if he chose. I was then a student at the Johns Hopkins University. The opportunities for a life-work in philosophy in this country were few. Most of my friends and advisers had long been telling me to let the subject alone. Perhaps, so far as I was concerned, their advice was sound; but in any case I was, so far, incapable of accepting that advice. Yet if somebody had not been ready to tell me that I had a right to work for truth in my own way, I should ere long have been quite discouraged. I do not know what I then could have done. James found me at once—made out what my essential interests were at our first interview, accepted me with all my imperfections, as one of those many souls who ought to be able to find themselves in their own way, gave a patient and willing ear to just my variety of philosophical experience, and used his influence from that time on, not to win me as a follower, but to give me my chance. It was upon his responsibility that I was later led to get my first opportunities here at Harvard."[58]

The opportunities did not ripen until 1882-83, however; and in the meanwhile Royce returned to the young University of California as an instructor in logic and rhetoric. Letters written to him there will show how cordially James continued to sympathize with the aspirations of his young friend, and how eagerly he fostered the possibility of an appointment to the Harvard philosophical department. When the opportunity arose, James seized it. Thereafter he and Royce saw each other so constantly in Cambridge that there were not many occasions for either to write letters to the other. Instead, allusions to Royce appear frequently in the letters to other people.

The philosophical club which is alluded to at the end of the letter was presided over by Dr. W. T. Harris and held informal meetings in Boston during this one winter. Its purpose was to read and discuss Hegel. Dr. C. C. Everett, Prof. G. H. Palmer, and Thomas Davidson were among the members.

To Josiah Royce.

CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 16 [1879].

My dear Royce,—Your letter was most welcome. I had often found myself wondering how you were getting on, and your wail as the solitary philosopher between Behrings' Strait and Tierra del Fuego has a grand, lonesome picturesqueness about it. I am sorry your surroundings are not more mentally congenial. But recollect your extreme youth and the fact that you are making a living and practising yourself in the pedagogic art, Überhaupt. You might be forced to do something much farther away from your chosen line, and even then not make a living. I think you are a lucky youth even as matters stand. Unexpected chances are always turning up. A fortnight ago President Eliot was asked to recommend some one for a $5000 professorship of philosophy in the New York City College. One Griffin of Amherst was finally appointed. I imagine that Gilman [of Johns Hopkins] is keeping his eye on you and only waiting for the disgrace of youth to fade from your person.

I liked your article on Schiller very much, and hope you will send more to Harris. That most villainous of editors, as I am told, has himself been to Baltimore lately as an office-seeker. But the rumor may be false. In some respects he might be a useful man for the Johns Hopkins University, but I would give no more for his judgment than for that of a Digger Indian. I hope you will write something about Hodgson. He is quite as worthy as Kant of supporting any number of parasites and partial assimilators of his substance. My sentence, I perceive, has a rather uncomplimentary sound. I meant only to say that you should not be deterred from treating him in your own way from fear of inadequacy. All his commentators must undoubtedly be inadequate for some time to come; but they will all help each other out. He seems to me the wealthiest mine of thought I ever met with.

With me, save for my eyes, things are jogging along smoothly. I am writing (very slowly) what may become a text-book of psychology. A proposal from Gilman to teach in Baltimore three months yearly for the next three years had to be declined as incompatible with work here. I will send you a corrected copy of Harris's journal with my article on Space, which was printed without my seeing the proof.

I suppose you subscribe to "Mind." The only decent thing I have ever written will, I hope, appear in the July number of that sheet.[59] The delays of publication are fearful. Most of this was written in 1877. If it ever sees the light, I hope you will let me know what you think of it, and how it tallies with your own theory of the Concept, which latter I would fain swallow and digest. I wish you belonged to our philosophic club here. It is very helpful to the uprooting of weeds from one's own mind as well as the detection of beams in one's neighbor's eyes. Write often and believe me faithfully yours,

WM. JAMES.

To Josiah Royce.

CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 3, 1880.

Beloved Royce!—So far was I from having forgotten you that I had been revolving in my mind, on the very day when your letter came, the rhetorical formulas of objurgation with which I was to begin a page of inquiries of you: whether you were dead and buried or had become an idiot or were sick or blind or what, that you sent no word of yourself. I am blind as ever, which may excuse my silence.

First of all GlÜckwÜnsche as to your Verlobung! which, like the true philosopher that you are, you mention parenthetically and without names, dates, numbers of dollars, etc., etc. I think it shows great sense in her, and no small amount of it in you, whoe'er she be. I have found in marriage a calm and repose I never knew before, and only wish I had done the thing ten years earlier. I think the lateness of our usual marriages is a bad thing, and hope your engagement will not last very long.

It is refreshing to hear your account of philosophic work.... I'm sorry you've given up your article on Hodgson. He is obscure enough, and makes me sometimes wonder whether the ignotum does not pass itself off for the magnifico in his pages. I enclose his photograph as a loan, trusting you will return it soon. I will never write again for Harris's journal. He refused an article of mine a year ago "for lack of room," and has postponed the printing of two admirable original articles by T. Davidson and Elliot Cabot for the last ten months or more, in order to accommodate Mrs. Channing's verses and Miss——'s drivel about the school of Athens, etc., etc. It is too loathsome. Harris has resigned his school position in St. Louis and will, I am told, come East to live. I know not whether he means to lay siege to the Johns Hopkins professorship. My ignorant prejudice against all Hegelians, except Hegel himself, grows wusser and wusser. Their sacerdotal airs! and their sterility! Contemplating their navels and the syllable oum! My dear friend Palmer, assistant professor of philosophy here, is already one of the white-winged band, having been made captive by Caird in two summers of vacation in Scotland.... The ineffectiveness and impotence of the ending of [Caird's] work on Kant seem to me simply scandalous, after its pretentious (and able) beginning. What do you think of Carveth [Reid]'s Essay on Shadworth [Hodgson]? I haven't read it. Our Philosophic Club here is given up this year—I think we're all rather sick of each other's voices. My teaching is small in numbers, though my men are good. I've tried Renouvier as a text-book—for the last time! His exposition offers too many difficulties. I enjoyed your Rhapsody on Space, and hereby pledge myself to buy two copies of your work ten years hence, and to devote the rest of my life to the propagation of its doctrines. I despise my own article,[60] which was dashed off for a momentary purpose and published for another. But I don't see why its main doctrine, from a psychologic and sublunary point of view, is not sound; and I think I can, if my psychology ever gets writ, set it down in decently clear and orderly form. All deducers of space are, I am sure, mythologists. You are, after all, not so very much isolated in California. We are all isolated—"columns left alone of a temple once complete," etc. Books are our companions more than men. But I wish nevertheless, and firmly expect, that somehow or other you will get a call East, and within my humble sphere of power I will do what I can to further that end. My accursed eye-sight balks me always about study and production. Ora pro me! With most respectful and devout regards to the fair Object, believe me always your

WM. JAMES.

To Charles Renouvier.

CAMBRIDGE, June 1, 1880.

My dear Monsieur Renouvier,—My last lesson in the course on your "Essais" took place today. The final examination occurs this week. The students have been profoundly interested, though their reactions on your teaching seem as diverse as their personalities; one (the maturest of all) being yours body and soul, another turning out a strongly materialistic fatalist! and the rest occupying positions of mixed doubt and assent; all however (but one) being convinced by your treatment of freedom and certitude.

As for myself, I must frankly confess to you that I am more unsettled than I have been for years. I have read several times over your reply to Lotze, and your reply to my letter. The latter was fully discussed in the class. The former seems to me a perfectly masterly expression of a certain intellectual position, and with the latter, I think it makes it perfectly clear to me where our divergence lies. I can formulate all your reasonings for myself, but—dare I say it?—they fail to awaken conviction. It seems as if, the simpler the point, the more hopeless the disagreement in philosophy. But I will enter into no further discussion now. I think it will be profitable for me, for some time to come, inwardly to digest the matters in question and your utterances before trying to articulate any more opinions.

I am overwhelmed with duties at present, and shall very shortly sail for England to pass part of the vacation; maybe I shall get to the Continent and see you. If we meet, I hope you will treat my heresies on the question of the Infinite with the indulgence and magnanimity which your doctrine of freedom in theoretic affirmations exacts!! I will send you in a day or two an essay which develops your psychology of the voluntary process, and which I hope will give you pleasure.

Pray excuse the haste and superficiality of this note, which is only meant to explain why I do not write at greater length and to announce my hope of soon grasping you by the hand and assuring you in person of my devotion and indebtedness. Always yours,

WM. JAMES.

James sailed in June a good deal fagged by his year's work, and got back by the first week of September, having spent most of the interval seeking solitude and refreshment in the Alps and Northern Italy. On his way home he paid his respects to Renouvier at Avignon, but otherwise made no effort to meet his European colleagues.

To Charles Renouvier.

CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 27, 1880.

My dear Monsieur Renouvier,—Your note and the conclusion of my article in the "Critique" came together this morning. It gives me almost a feeling of pain that you, at your age and with your achievements, should be spending your time in translating my feeble words, when by every principle of right I should be engaged in turning your invaluable writings into English. The state of my eyes is, as you know, my excuse for this as for all other shortcomings. I have not even read the whole of your translation of [my] "Feeling of Effort," though the passages I have perused have seemed to me excellently well done. My exposition strikes me as rather complicated now. It was written in great haste and, were I to rewrite it, it should be simpler. The omissions of which you speak are of no importance whatever.

I have read your discussion with Lotze in the "Revue Philosophique" and agree with Hodgson that you carry off there the honors of the battle. Quant au fond de la question, however, I am still in doubt and wait for the light of further reflexion to settle my opinion. The matter in my mind complicates itself with the question of a universal ego. If time and space are not in se, do we not need an enveloping ego to make continuous the times and spaces, not necessarily coincident, of the partial egos? On this question, as I told you, I will not fail to write again when I get new light, which I trust may decide me in your favor.

My principal amusement this winter has been resisting the inroads of Hegelism in our University. My colleague Palmer, a recent convert and a man of much ability, has been making an active propaganda among the more advanced students. It is a strange thing, this resurrection of Hegel in England and here, after his burial in Germany. I think his philosophy will probably have an important influence on the development of our liberal form of Christianity. It gives a quasi-metaphysic backbone which this theology has always been in need of, but it is too fundamentally rotten and charlatanish to last long. As a reaction against materialistic evolutionism it has its use, only this evolutionism is fertile while Hegelism is absolutely sterile.

I think often of the too-short hours I spent with you and Monsieur Pillon and wish they might return. Believe me with the warmest thanks and regards, yours faithfully,

WM. JAMES.

In August of 1882 James arranged with the College for a year's leave of absence, and sailed for Europe again, this time with the double purpose of giving himself a vacation and of meeting some of the European investigators who were working on the problems in which he had become absorbed.

He landed in England, and paused there just long enough to throw his brother Henry into the state of half-resentful bewilderment that invariably resulted from their first European reunions. Henry, to whom Europe, and England in particular, had already become an absorbing passion and for whom American reactions upon Europe were still an unexhausted theme, greeted every arriving American with eager curiosity and a confident expectation that the stranger would "register" impressions of the most charming enchantment and pleasure for his edification. William, on the other hand, was always most under the European spell when in America; and—whether moved by the constitutional restlessness that seized him so soon as ever he began to travel, or by the perversity that was a fascinating trait in his character and was usually provoked by his younger brother's admiring neighborhood—he was always most ardently American when on European soil. Thus his first words of greeting to Henry on stepping out of the steamer-train were: "My!—how cramped and inferior England seems! After all, it's poor old Europe, just as it used to be in our dreary boyhood! America may be raw and shrill, but I could never live with this as you do! I'm going to hurry down to Switzerland [or wherever] and then home again as soon as may be. It was a mistake to come over! I thought it would do me good. Hereafter I'll stay at home. You'll have to come to America if you want to see the family."

The effect on Henry can better be imagined than described. Time never accustomed him to these collisions, even though he learned to expect them. England inferior! A mistake to come abroad! Horror and consternation are weak terms by which to describe his feelings; and nothing but a devotion seldom existing between brothers, and a lively interest in the astonishing phenomenon of such a reaction, ever carried him through the hour. He usually ended by hurrying William onward—anywhere—within the day if possible—and remained alone to ejaculate, to exclaim and to expatiate for weeks on the rude and exciting cyclone that had burst upon him and passed by.

On this occasion it took only two days for William to start on from London for the Rhine, NÜremburg, and Vienna; then to Venice, where he idled for the first half of October. After this short pause he returned to Prague; and then, working northward, consumed the autumn in visiting the universities of Dresden, Berlin, Leipzig, LiÈge and Paris. Intimate letters to his wife, who had remained in Cambridge with their two little boys, are almost the only ones that survive. A few passages from these will therefore be included.

To Mrs. James.

VIENNA, Sept. 24, 1882.

...I wish you could have been with me yesterday to see some French pictures at the "Internationale Kunst Ausstellung"; they gave an idea of the vigor of France in that way just now. One, a peasant woman, in all her brutish loutishness sitting staring before her at noonday on the grass she's been cutting, while the man lies flat on his back with straw hat over face. She with such a look of infinite unawakenedness, such childlike virginity under her shapeless body and in her face, as to make it a poem.[61] Dear, perhaps the deepest impression I've got since I've been in Germany is that made on me by the indefatigable beavers of old wrinkled peasant women, striding like men through the streets, dragging their carts or lugging their baskets, minding their business, seeming to notice nothing, in the stream of luxury and vice, but belonging far away, to something better and purer. Their poor, old, ravaged and stiffened faces, their poor old bodies dried up with ceaseless toil, their patient souls make me weep. "They are our conscripts." They are the venerable ones whom we should reverence. All the mystery of womanhood seems incarnated in their ugly being—the Mothers! the Mothers! Ye are all one! Yes, Alice dear, what I love in you is only what these blessed old creatures have; and I'm glad and proud, when I think of my own dear Mother with tears running down my face, to know that she is one with these.[62] Good-night, good-night!...

To Mrs. James.

Aussig, Bohemia, Nov. 2, 1882.

...As for Prague, veni, vidi, vici. I went there with much trepidation to do my social-scientific duty. The mighty Hering in especial intimidated me beforehand; but having taken the plunge, the cutaneous glow and "euphoria" (vide dictionary) succeeded, and I have rarely enjoyed a forty-eight hours better, in spite of the fact that the good and sharp-nosed Stumpf (whose book "Über die Raumvorstellungen" I verily believe thou art capable of never having noticed the cover of!) insisted on trotting me about, day and night, over the whole length and breadth of Prague, and that [Ernst] Mach (Professor of Physics), genius of all trades, simply took Stumpf's place to do the same. I heard [Ewald] Hering give a very poor physiology lecture and Mach a beautiful physical one. I presented them with my visiting card, saying that I was with their "Schriften sehr vertraut und wollte nicht eher Prague verlassen als bis ich wenigstens ein Paar Worte mit ihnen umtauschte," etc.[63] They received me with open arms. I had an hour and a half's talk with Hering, which cleared up some things for me. He asked me to come to his house that evening, but I gave an evasive reply, being fearful of boring him. Meanwhile Mach came to my hotel and I spent four hours walking and supping with him at his club, an unforgettable conversation. I don't think anyone ever gave me so strong an impression of pure intellectual genius. He apparently has read everything and thought about everything, and has an absolute simplicity of manner and winningness of smile when his face lights up, that are charming.

With Stumpf I spent five hours on Monday evening (this is Thursday), three on Wednesday morning and four in the afternoon; so I feel rather intimate. A clear-headed and just-minded, though pale and anxious-looking man in poor health. He had another philosopher named Marty [?] to dine with me yesterday—jolly young fellow. My native GeschwÄtzigkeit[64] triumphed over even the difficulties of the German tongue; I careered over the field, taking the pitfalls and breastworks at full run, and was fairly astounded myself at coming in alive. I learned a good many things from them, both in the way of theory and fact, and shall probably keep up a correspondence with Stumpf. They are not so different from us as we think. Their greater thoroughness is largely the result of circumstances. I found that I had a more cosmopolitan knowledge of modern philosophic literature than any of them, and shall on the whole feel much less intimidated by the thought of their like than hitherto.

My letters will hereafter, I feel sure, have a more jocund tone. Damn Italy! It isn't a good thing to stay with one's inferiors. With the nourishing breath of the German air, and the sort of smoky and leathery German smell, vigor and good spirits have set in. I have walked well and slept well and eaten well and read well, and in short begin to feel as I expected I should when I decided upon this arduous pilgrimage. Prague is a —— city—the adjective is hard to find; not magnificent, but everything is too honest and homely,—we have in fact no English word for the peculiar quality that good German things have, of depth, solidity, picturesqueness, magnitude and homely goodness combined. They have worked out a really great civilization. "Dienst ist Dienst"![65] said the gateman of a certain garden yesterday afternoon whom Stumpf was trying to persuade to let me in, as an American, to see the view five minutes after the closing hour had struck. Dienst ist Dienst. That is really the German motto everywhere—and I should like to know what American would ever think of justifying himself by just that formula. I say German of Prague, for it seems to me, in spite of the feverish nationalism of the natives, to be outwardly a pure German city....

BERLIN, Nov. 9, 1882.

...Yesterday I went to the veterinary school to see H. Munk, the great brain vivisector. He was very cordial and poured out a torrent of talk for one and a half hours, though he could show me no animals. He gave me one of his new publications and introduced me to Dr. Baginsky (Professor Samuel Porter's favorite authority on the semicircular canals, whose work I treated superciliously in my article). So we opened on the semicircular canals, and Baginsky's torrent of words was even more overwhelming than Munk's. I never felt quite so helpless and small-boyish before, and am to this hour dizzy from the onslaught. In the evening at the house of Gizycki (a Docent on Ethics), to a "privatissimum" with a supper after it. Good, square, deep-chested talk again, which I couldn't help contrasting with the whining tones of our students and of some of the members of the Hegel Club—I hate to leave the wholesome, tonic atmosphere, the land where one talks best when he talks manliest—slowest, distinctest, with most deliberate emphasis and strong voice....

LEIPZIG, Nov. 11, 1882.

...Jones spoilt my incipient nap this afternoon and I adjourned to his room to meet Smith and Brown[66] again, with another American wild-cat reformer. Jones is too many for me—I'm glad I'm to get far off. Religion is well, moral regeneration is well, so is improvement of society, so are the courage, disinterestedness, ideality of all sorts, these men show in their lives; but I verily believe that the condition of being a man of the world, a gentleman, etc., carries something with it, an atmosphere, an outlook, a play, that all these things together fail to carry, and that is worth them all. I got so suffocated with their everlasting spiritual gossip! The falsest views and tastes somehow in a man of fashion are truer than the truest in a plebeian cad. And when I told the new man there that a "materialist" would have no difficulty in keeping his place in Harvard College provided he was well-bred, I said what was really the highest test of the College excellence. I suppose he thought it sounded cynical. Their sphere is with the masses struggling into light, not with us at Harvard; though I'm glad I can meet them cordially for a while now and then. Thou see'est I have some "spleen" on me today....

LEIPZIG, Nov. 13, 1882.

...Yesterday was a splendid day within and without.... The old town delightful in its blackness and plainness. I heard several lecturers. Old Ludwig's lecture in the afternoon was memorable for the extraordinary impression of character he made on me. The traditional German professor in its highest sense. A rusty brown wig and broad-skirted brown coat, a voluminous black neckcloth, an absolute unexcitability of manner, a clean-shaven face so plebeian and at the same time so grandly carved, with its hooked nose and gentle kindly mouth and inexhaustible patience of expression, that I never saw the like. Then to Wundt, who has a more refined elocution than any one I've yet heard in Germany. He received me very kindly after the lecture in his laboratory, dimly trying to remember my writings, and I stay over today, against my intention, to go to his psychologische Gesellschaft tonight. Have been writing psychology most all day....

In train for LIÈGE, Nov. 18, 1882.

...I believe I didn't tell you, in the bustle of traveling, much about Wundt. He made a very pleasant and personal impression on me, with his agreeable voice and ready, tooth-showing smile. His lecture also was very able, and my opinion of him is higher than before seeing him. But he seemed very busy and showed no desire to see more of me than the present interview either time. The psychologische Gesellschaft I stayed over to see was postponed, but he did not propose to me to do anything else—to the gain of my ease, but to the loss of my vanity. Dear old Stumpf has been the friendliest of these fellows. With him I shall correspond....

LIÈGE, Nov. 20, 1882.

...I am still at Delboeuf's, aching in every joint and muscle, weary in every nerve-cell, but unable to get away till tomorrow noon. I was to have started today.... The total lesson of what I have done in the past month is to make me quieter with my home-lot and readier to believe that it is one of the chosen places of the Earth. Certainly the instruction and facilities at our university are on the whole superior to anything I have seen; the rawnesses we mention with such affliction at home belong rather to the century than to us (witness the houses here); we are not a whit more isolated than they are here. In all Belgium there seem to be but two genuine philosophers; in Berlin they have little to do with each other, and I really believe that in my way I have a wider view of the field than anyone I've seen (I count out, of course, my ignorance of ancient authors). We are a sound country and my opinion of our essential worth has risen and not fallen. We only lack abdominal depth of temperament and the power to sit for an hour over a single pot of beer without being able to tell at the end of it what we've been thinking about. Also to reform our altogether abominable, infamous and infra-human voices and way of talking. (What further fatal defects hang together with that I don't know—it seems as if it must carry something very bad with it.) The first thing to do is to establish in Cambridge a genuine German plebeian Kneipe club, to which all instructors and picked students shall be admitted. If that succeeds, we shall be perfect, especially if we talk therein with deeper voices....

To Henry James.

PARIS, Nov. 22, 1882.

Dear H.,—Found at Hottinguer's this A.M. your letter with all the enclosures—and a wail you had sent to Berlin. Also six letters from my wife and seven or eight others, not counting papers and magazines. I will mail back yours and father's letter to me. Alice [Mrs. W. J.] speaks of father's indubitable improvement in strength, but our sister Alice apparently is somewhat run down.—Paris looks delicious—I shall try to get settled as soon as possible and meanwhile feel as if the confusion of life was recommencing. I saw in Germany all the men I cared to see and talked with most of them. With three or four I had a really nutritious time. The trip has amply paid for itself. I found third-class Nichtraucher almost always empty and perfectly comfortable. The great use of such experiences is less the definite information you gain from anyone, than a sort of solidification of your own foothold on life. Nowhere did I see a university which seems to do for all its students anything like what Harvard does. Our methods throughout are better. It is only in the select "Seminaria" (private classes) that a few German students making researches with the professor gain something from him personally which his genius alone can give. I certainly got a most distinct impression of my own information in regard to modern philosophic matters being broader than that of any one I met, and our Harvard post of observation being more cosmopolitan. Delboeuf in LiÈge was an angel and much the best teacher I've seen....[67] "The Century," with your very good portrait, etc., was at Hottinguer's this A.M., sent by my wife. I shall read it presently. I'm off now to see if I can get your leather trunk, sent from London, arrested by inundations, and ordered to be returned to Paris. I never needed its contents a second. And in your little American valise and my flabby black hand-bag and shawl-straps and a small satchel, I carried not only everything I used, but collected a whole library of books in Leipsig, some pieces of Venetian glass in their balky bolsters of seaweed, a quart bottle of eau de Cologne, and a lot of other acquisitions. I feel remarkably tough now, and fairly ravenous for my psychologic work. Address Hottinguer's.

W. J.

James's mother had died during the preceding winter. Now, just after his arrival in Paris, he received news that his father was dangerously ill.

He went to London immediately, with the intention of getting home as soon as possible. On arriving at his brother Henry's lodgings, he found that Henry had already sailed. He also received a despatch advising him that the danger was not immediate and that he should wait. He remained, but with misgivings which the next news intensified.

To his Father.

Bolton St., London, Dec. 14, 1882.

Darling old Father,—Two letters, one from my Alice last night, and one from Aunt Kate to Harry just now, have somewhat dispelled the mystery in which the telegrams left your condition; and although their news is several days earlier than the telegrams, I am free to suppose that the latter report only an aggravation of the symptoms the letters describe. It is far more agreeable to think of this than of some dreadful unknown and sudden malady.

We have been so long accustomed to the hypothesis of your being taken away from us, especially during the past ten months, that the thought that this may be your last illness conveys no very sudden shock. You are old enough, you've given your message to the world in many ways and will not be forgotten; you are here left alone, and on the other side, let us hope and pray, dear, dear old Mother is waiting for you to join her. If you go, it will not be an inharmonious thing. Only, if you are still in possession of your normal consciousness, I should like to see you once again before we part. I stayed here only in obedience to the last telegram, and am waiting now for Harry—who knows the exact state of my mind, and who will know yours—to telegraph again what I shall do. Meanwhile, my blessed old Father, I scribble this line (which may reach you though I should come too late), just to tell you how full of the tenderest memories and feelings about you my heart has for the last few days been filled. In that mysterious gulf of the past into which the present soon will fall and go back and back, yours is still for me the central figure. All my intellectual life I derive from you; and though we have often seemed at odds in the expression thereof, I'm sure there's a harmony somewhere, and that our strivings will combine. What my debt to you is goes beyond all my power of estimating,—so early, so penetrating and so constant has been the influence. You need be in no anxiety about your literary remains. I will see them well taken care of, and that your words shall not suffer for being concealed. At Paris I heard that Milsand, whose name you may remember in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" and elsewhere, was an admirer of the "Secret of Swedenborg," and Hodgson told me your last book had deeply impressed him. So will it be; especially, I think, if a collection of extracts from your various writings were published, after the manner of the extracts from Carlyle, Ruskin, & Co. I have long thought such a volume would be the best monument to you.—As for us; we shall live on each in his way,—feeling somewhat unprotected, old as we are, for the absence of the parental bosoms as a refuge, but holding fast together in that common sacred memory. We will stand by each other and by Alice, try to transmit the torch in our offspring as you did in us, and when the time comes for being gathered in, I pray we may, if not all, some at least, be as ripe as you. As for myself, I know what trouble I've given you at various times through my peculiarities; and as my own boys grow up, I shall learn more and more of the kind of trial you had to overcome in superintending the development of a creature different from yourself, for whom you felt responsible. I say this merely to show how my sympathy with you is likely to grow much livelier, rather than to fade—and not for the sake of regrets.—As for the other side, and Mother, and our all possibly meeting, I can't say anything. More than ever at this moment do I feel that if that were true, all would be solved and justified. And it comes strangely over me in bidding you good-bye how a life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note. It is so much like the act of bidding an ordinary good-night. Good-night, my sacred old Father! If I don't see you again—Farewell! a blessed farewell! Your

WILLIAM.

The elder Henry James died on the nineteenth of December. A cablegram was sent to London; and on learning of his father's death, James wrote a letter to his wife from which the following extract is taken.

To Mrs. James.

...Father's boyhood up in Albany, Grandmother's house, the father and brothers and sister, with their passions and turbulent histories, his burning, amputation and sickness, his college days and ramblings, his theological throes, his engagement and marriage and fatherhood, his finding more and more of the truths he finally settled down in, his travels in Europe, the days of the old house in New York and all the men I used to see there, at last his quieter motion down the later years of life in Newport, Boston and Cambridge, with his friends and correspondents about him, and his books more and more easily brought forth—how long, how long all these things were in the living, but how short their memory now is! What remains is a few printed pages, us and our children and some incalculable modifications of other people's lives, influenced this day or that by what he said or did. For me, the humor, the good spirits, the humanity, the faith in the divine, and the sense of his right to have a say about the deepest reasons of the universe, are what will stay by me. I wish I could believe I should transmit some of them to our babes. We all of us have some of his virtues and some of his shortcomings. Unlike the cool, dry thin-edged men who now abound, he was full of the fumes of the ur-sprÜnglich human nature; things turbid, more than he could formulate, wrought within him and made his judgments of rejection of so much of what was brought [before him] seem like revelations as well as knock-down blows.... I hope that rich soil of human nature will not become more rare!...

Two months later James said in a letter to Mrs. Gibbens: "It is singular how I'm learning every day now how the thought of his comment on my experiences has hitherto formed an integral part of my daily consciousness, without my having realized it at all. I interrupt myself incessantly now in the old habit of imagining what he will say when I tell him this or that thing I have seen or heard."

James remained in London until mid-February of 1883, and took advantage of the opportunity to see more of certain men there—among them Shadworth Hodgson, Edmund Gurney, Croom Robertson, Frederick Pollock, Leslie Stephen, Carveth Reid, and Francis Galton. His eyes were troubling him again, but he did some writing on psychology. After paying another short visit to Paris, he sailed for home in March.