1910

Final Months—The End

Several reasons combined to take James to Europe in the early spring of 1910. His heart had been giving him more discomfort. He wished to consult a specialist in Paris from whom an acquaintance of his, similarly afflicted, had received great benefit. He believed that another course of Nauheim baths would be helpful. Last, and not least, he wished to be within reach of his brother Henry, who was ill and concerning whose condition he was much distressed. In reality it was he, not his brother, who already stood in the shadow of Death's door.

Accordingly he sailed for England with Mrs. James, and went first to Lamb House. Thence he crossed alone to Paris, and thence went on to Nauheim, leaving Mrs. James to bring his brother to Nauheim to join him. The Parisian specialist could do nothing but confirm previous diagnoses.

Too much "sitting up and talking" with friends in Paris exhausted him seriously, and, after leaving Paris, he failed for the first time to shake off his fatigue. The immediate effect of the Nauheim baths proved to be very debilitating, and, again, he failed to rally and improve when he had finished them. By July, after trying the air of Lucerne and Geneva, only to find that the altitude caused him unbearable distress, he despaired of any relief beyond what now looked like the incomparable consolations of being at rest in his own home. So he turned his face westward.

The next letters bid good-bye for the summer to two tried friends. Five months later it seemed as if James had been at more pains to make his adieus than he usually put himself to on account of a summer's absence. When Mrs. James returned to the Cambridge house in the autumn, after he had died, and had occasion to open his desk copy of the Harvard Catalogue, she found these words jotted at the head of the Faculty List: "A thousand regrets cover every beloved name." It grieved him that life was too short and too full for him to see many of them as often as he wanted to. One day before he sailed, his eye had been caught by the familiar names and, as a throng of comradely intentions filled his heart, he had had a moment of foreboding, and he had let his hand trace the words that cried this needless "Forgive me!" and recorded an incommunicable Farewell.

To Henry L. Higginson.

CAMBRIDGE, Mar. 28, 1910.

Beloved Henry,—I had most positive hopes of driving in to see you ere the deep engulfs us, but the press is too great here, and it remains impossible. This is just a word to say that you are not forgotten, or ever to be forgotten, and that (after what Mrs. Higginson said) I am hoping you may sail yourself pretty soon, and have a refreshing time, and cross our path. We go straight to Rye, expecting to be in Paris for the beginning of April for a week, and then to Nauheim, whence Alice, after seeing me safely settled, will probably return to Rye for the heft of the summer. It would pay you to turn up both there and at Nauheim and see the mode of life.

Hoping you'll have a good [Club] dinner Friday night, and never need any surgery again, I am ever thine,

W. J.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

CAMBRIDGE, March 29, 1910.

Dearest Fanny,—Your beautiful roses and your card arrived duly—the roses were not deserved, not at least by W. J. I have about given up all visits to Boston this winter, and the racket has been so incessant in the house, owing to foreigners of late, that we haven't had the strength to send for you. I sail on the 29th in the Megantic, first to see Henry, who has been ill, not dangerously, but very miserably. Our Harry is with him now. I shall then go to Paris for a certain medical experiment, and after that report at Nauheim, where they probably will keep me for some weeks. I hope that I may get home again next fall with my organism in better shape, and be able to see more of my friends.

After Thursday, when the good Boutrouxs go, I shall try to arrange a meeting with you, dear Fanny. At present we are "contemporaries," that is all, and the one of us who becomes survivor will have regrets that we were no more!

What a lugubrious ending! With love to your mother, and love from Alice, believe me, dearest Fanny, most affectionately yours,

W. J.

To T, S. Perry.

Bad-Nauheim, May 22, 1910.

Beloved Thos.,—I have two letters from you—one about ... Harris on Shakespeare. Re Harris, I did think you were a bit supercilious a priori, but I thought of your youth and excused you. Harris himself is horrid, young and crude. Much of his talk seems to me absurd, but nevertheless that's the way to write about Shakespeare, and I am sure that, if Shakespeare were a Piper-control, he would say that he relished Harris far more than the pack of reverent commentators who treat him as a classic moralist. He seems to me to have been a professional amuser, in the first instance, with a productivity like that of a Dumas, or a Scribe; but possessing what no other amuser has possessed, a lyric splendor added to his rhetorical fluency, which has made people take him for a more essentially serious human being than he was. Neurotically and erotically, he was hyperÆsthetic, with a playful graciousness of character never surpassed. He could be profoundly melancholy; but even then was controlled by the audience's needs. A cork in the rapids, with no ballast of his own, without religious or ethical ideals, accepting uncritically every theatrical and social convention, he was simply an Æolian harp passively resounding to the stage's call. Was there ever an author of such emotional importance whose reaction against false conventions of life was such an absolute zero as his? I know nothing of the other Elizabethans, but could they have been as soulless in this respect?—But halte-la! or I shall become a Harris myself!... With love to you all, believe me ever thine,

W. J.

Read Daniel HalÉvy's exquisitely discreet "Vie de Nietzsche," if you haven't already done so. Do you know G. Courtelines' "Les Marionettes de la Vie" (Flammarion)? It beats Labiche.

To FranÇois Pillon.

Bad-Nauheim, May 25, 1910.

My Dear Pillon,—I have been here a week, taking the baths for my unfortunate cardiac complications, and shall probably stay six weeks longer. I passed through Paris, where I spent a week, partly with my friend the philosopher Strong, partly at the Fondation Thiers with the Boutrouxs, who had been our guests in America when he lectured a few months ago at Harvard. Every day I said: "I will get to the Pillons this afternoon"; but every day I found it impossible to attempt your four flights of stairs, and finally had to run away from the Boutrouxs' to save my life from the fatigue and pectoral pain which resulted from my seeing so many people. I have a dilatation of the aorta, which causes anginoid pain of a bad kind whenever I make any exertion, muscular, intellectual, or social, and I should not have thought at all of going through Paris were it not that I wished to consult a certain Dr. Moutier there, who is strong on arteries, but who told me that he could do nothing for my case. I hope that these baths may arrest the disagreeable tendency to pejoration from which I have suffered in the past year. This is why I didn't come to see the dear Pillons; a loss for which I felt, and shall always feel, deep regret.

The sight of the new "AnnÉe Philosophique" at Boutroux's showed me how valiant and solid you still are for literary work. I read a number of the book reviews, but none of the articles, which seemed uncommonly varied and interesting. Your short notice of Schinz's really bouffon book showed me to my regret that even you have not yet caught the true inwardness of my notion of Truth. You speak as if I allowed no valeur de connaissance proprement dite, which is a quite false accusation. When an idea "works" successfully among all the other ideas which relate to the object of which it is our mental substitute, associating and comparing itself with them harmoniously, the workings are wholly inside of the intellectual world, and the idea's value purely intellectual, for the time, at least. This is my doctrine and Schiller's, but it seems very hard to express it so as to get it understood!

I hope that, in spite of the devouring years, dear Madame Pillon's state of health may be less deplorable than it has been so long. In particular I wish that the neuritis may have ceased. I wish! I wish! but what's the use of wishing, against the universal law that "youth's a stuff will not endure," and that we must simply make the best of it? Boutroux gave some beautiful lectures at Harvard, and is the gentlest and most lovable of characters. Believe me, dear Pillon, and dear Madame Pillon, your ever affectionate old friend,

WM. JAMES.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Bad-Nauheim, May 29, 1910.

...Paris was splendid, but fatiguing. Among other things I was introduced to the AcadÉmie des Sciences Morales, of which you may likely have heard that I am now an associÉ Étranger(!!). Boutroux says that Renan, when he took his seat after being received at the AcadÉmie FranÇaise, said: "Qu'on est bien dans ce fauteuil" (it is nothing but a cushioned bench with no back!). "Peut-Être n'y a-t-il que cela de vrai!" Delicious Renanesque remark!...

W. J.

The arrangement by which Mrs. James and Henry James were to have arrived at Nauheim had been upset. The two, who were to come from England together, were delayed by Henry's condition; and for a while James was at Nauheim alone.

To his Daughter.

Bad-Nauheim, May 29, 1910.

Beloved PÉguy,—The very fust thing I want you to do is to look in the drawer marked "Blood" in my tall filing case in the library closet, and find the date of a number of the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" there that contains an article called "Philosophic Reveries." Send this date (not the article) to the Revd. Prof. L. P. Jacks, 28 Holywell, Oxford, if you find it, immediately. He will understand what to do with it. If you don't find the article, do nothing! Jacks is notified. I have just corrected the proofs of an article on Blood for the "Hibbert Journal," which, I think, will make people sit up and rub their eyes at the apparition of a new great writer of English. I want Blood himself to get it as a surprise.

I got as a surprise your finely typed copy of the rest of my MS., the other day. I thank you for it; also for your delightful letters. The type-writing seems to set free both your and Aleck's genius more than the pen. (If you need a new ribbon it must be got from the agency in Milk St. just above Devonshire—but you'll find it hard work to get it into its place.) You seem to be leading a very handsome and domestic life, avoiding social excitements, and hearing of them only from the brethren. It is good sometimes to face the naked ribs of reality as it reveals itself in homes. I face them here with no one but the blackbirds and the trees for my companions, save some rather odd Americans at the Mittagstisch and Abendessen, and the good smiling DienstmÄdchen who brings me my breakfast in the morning.... I went to my bath at 6 o'clock this morning, and had the Park all to the blackbirds and myself. This was because I am expecting a certain Prof. Goldstein from Darmstadt to come to see me this morning, and I had to get the bath out of the way. He is a powerful young writer, and is translating my "Pluralistic Universe." But the weather has grown so threatening that I hope now that he won't come till next Sunday. It is a shame to converse here and not be in the open air. I would to Heaven thou wert mit—I think thou wouldst enjoy it very much for a week or more. The German civilization is good! Only this place would give a very false impression of our wicked earth to a Mars-Bewohner who should descend and leave and see nothing else. Not a dark spot (save what the patients' hearts individually conceal), no poverty, no vice, nothing but prettiness and simplicity of life. I snip out a concert-program (the afternoon one unusually good) which I find lying on my table. The like is given free in the open air every day. The baths weaken one so that I have little brain for reading, and must write letters to all kinds of people every day. A big quarrel is on in Paris between my would-be translators and publishers. I wish translators would let my books alone—they are written for my own people exclusively! You will have received Hewlett's delightful "Halfway House," sent to our steamer by Pauline Goldmark, I think. I have been reading a charmingly discreet life of Nietzsche by D. HalÉvy, and have invested in a couple more of his (N.'s) books, but haven't yet begun to read them. I am half through "Waffen-nieder!" a first-rate anti-war novel by Baroness von Suttner. It has been translated, and I recommend it as in many ways instructive. How are Rebecca and Maggie [the cook and house-maid]? You don't say how you enjoy ordering the bill of fare every day. You can't vary it properly unless you make a list and keep it. A good sweet dish is rothe GrÜtze, a form of fine sago consolidated by currant-jelly juice, and sauced with custard, or, I suppose, cream.

Well! no more today! Give no end of love to the good boys, and to your Grandam, and believe me, ever thy affectionate,

W. J.

To Henry P. Bowditch.

Bad-Nauheim, June 4, 1910.

Dearest Heinrich,—The envelope in which this letter goes was addrest in Cambridge, Mass., and expected to go towards you with a letter in it, long before now. But better late than never, so here goes! I came over, as you may remember, for the double purpose of seeing my brother Henry, who had been having a sort of nervous breakdown, and of getting my heart, if possible, tuned up by foreign experts. I stayed upwards of a month with Henry, and then came hither Über Paris, where I stayed ten days. I have been here two and a half weeks, taking the baths, and enjoying the feeling of the strong, calm, successful, new German civilization all about me. Germany is great, and no mistake! But what a contrast, in the well-set-up, well-groomed, smart-looking German man of today, and his rather clumsily drest, dingy, and unworldly-looking father of forty years ago! But something of the old GemÜthlichkeit remains, the friendly manners, and the disposition to talk with you and take you seriously and to respect the serious side of whatever comes along. But I can write you more interestingly of physiology than I can of sociology.... The baths may or may not arrest for a while the downward tendency which has been so marked in the past year—but at any rate it is a comfort to know that my sufferings have a respectable organic basis, and are not, as so many of my friends tell me, due to pure "nervousness." Dear Henry, you see that you are not the only pebble on the beach, or toad in the puddle, of senile degeneration! I admit that the form of your tragedy beats that of that of most of us; but youth's a stuff that won't endure, in any one, and to have had it, as you and I have had it, is a good deal gained anyhow, while to see the daylight still under any conditions is perhaps also better than nothing, and meanwhile the good months are sure to bring the final relief after which, "when you and I behind the veil are passed, Oh, but the long, long time the world shall last!" etc., etc. Rather gloomy moralizing, this, to end an affectionate family letter with; but the circumstances seem to justify it, and I know that you won't take it amiss.

Alice is staying with Henry, but they will both be here in a fortnight or less. I find it pretty lonely all by myself, and the German language doesn't run as trippingly off the tongue as it did forty years ago. Passage back is taken for August 12th....

Well, I must stop! Pray give my love to Selma, the faithful one. Also to Fanny, Harold, and Friedel. With Harold's engagement you are more and more of a patriarch. Heaven keep you, dear Henry.

Believe me, ever your affectionately sympathetic old friend,

WM. JAMES.

To FranÇois Pillon.

Bad-Nauheim, June 8, 1910.

My dear Pillon,—I have your good letter of the 4th—which I finally had to take a magnifying-glass to read (!)—and remained full of admiration for the nervous centres which, after 80 years of work, could still guide the fingers to execute, without slipping or trembling, that masterpiece of microscopic calligraphy! Truly your nervous centres are "well preserved"—the optical ones also, in spite of the cataracts and loss of accommodation! How proud I should be if now, at the comparatively youthful age of 68, I could flatter myself with the hope of doing what you have done, and living down victoriously twelve more devouring enemies of years! With a fresh volume produced, to mark each year by! I give you leave, as a garland and reward, to misinterpret my doctrine of truth ad libitum and to your heart's content, in all your future writings. I will never think the worse of you for it.

What you say of dear Madame Pillon awakens in me very different feelings. She has led, indeed, a life of suffering for many years, and it seems to me a real tragedy that she should now be confined to the house so absolutely. If only you might inhabit the country, where, on fine days, with no stairs to mount or descend, she could sit with flowers and trees around her! The city is not good when one is confined to one's apartment. Pray give Madame Pillon my sincerest love—I never think of her without affection—I am almost ashamed to accept year after year your "AnnÉe Philosophique," and to give you so little in return for it. I am expecting my wife and brother to arrive here from England this afternoon, and we shall probably all return together through Paris, by the middle of July. I will then come and see you, with the wife, so please keep the "AnnÉe" till then, and put it into my hands. I can read nothing serious here—the baths destroy one's strength so. Whether they will do any good to my circulatory organs remains to be seen—there is no good effect perceptible so far. Believe me, dear old friend, with every message of affection to you both, yours ever faithfully,

WM. JAMES.

The letters which follow concern Henry Adams's "Letter to American Teachers," originally printed for private circulation, but recently published, with a preface by Mr. Brooks Adams, under the title: "The Degradation of Democratic Dogma."

To Henry Adams.

Bad-Nauheim, June 17, 1910.

Dear Henry Adams,—I have been so "slim" since seeing you, and the baths here have so weakened my brain, that I have been unable to do any reading except trash, and have only just got round to finishing your "letter," which I had but half-read when I was with you at Paris. To tell the truth, it doesn't impress me at all, save by its wit and erudition; and I ask you whether an old man soon about to meet his Maker can hope to save himself from the consequences of his life by pointing to the wit and learning he has shown in treating a tragic subject. No, sir, you can't do it, can't impress God in that way. So far as our scientific conceptions go, it may be admitted that your Creator (and mine) started the universe with a certain amount of "energy" latent in it, and decreed that everything that should happen thereafter should be a result of parts of that energy falling to lower levels; raising other parts higher, to be sure, in so doing, but never in equivalent amount, owing to the constant radiation of unrecoverable warmth incidental to the process. It is customary for gentlemen to pretend to believe one another, and until some one hits upon a newer revolutionary concept (which may be tomorrow) all physicists must play the game by holding religiously to the above doctrine. It involves of course the ultimate cessation of all perceptible happening, and the end of human history. With this general conception as surrounding everything you say in your "letter," no one can find any fault—in the present stage of scientific conventions and fashions. But I protest against your interpretation of some of the specifications of the great statistical drift downwards of the original high-level energy. If, instead of criticizing what you seem to me to say, I express my own interpretation dogmatically, and leave you to make the comparison, it will doubtless conduce to brevity and economize recrimination.

To begin with, the amount of cosmic energy it costs to buy a certain distribution of fact which humanly we regard as precious, seems to me to be an altogether secondary matter as regards the question of history and progress. Certain arrangements of matter on the same energy-level are, from the point of view of man's appreciation, superior, while others are inferior. Physically a dinosaur's brain may show as much intensity of energy-exchange as a man's, but it can do infinitely fewer things, because as a force of detent it can only unlock the dinosaur's muscles, while the man's brain, by unlocking far feebler muscles, indirectly can by their means issue proclamations, write books, describe Chartres Cathedral, etc., and guide the energies of the shrinking sun into channels which never would have been entered otherwise—in short, make history. Therefore the man's brain and muscles are, from the point of view of the historian, the more important place of energy-exchange, small as this may be when measured in absolute physical units.

The "second law" is wholly irrelevant to "history"—save that it sets a terminus—for history is the course of things before that terminus, and all that the second law says is that, whatever the history, it must invest itself between that initial maximum and that terminal minimum of difference in energy-level. As the great irrigation-reservoir empties itself, the whole question for us is that of the distribution of its effects, of which rills to guide it into; and the size of the rills has nothing to do with their significance. Human cerebration is the most important rill we know of, and both the "capacity" and the "intensity" factor thereof may be treated as infinitesimal. Yet the filling of such rills would be cheaply bought by the waste of whole sums spent in getting a little of the down-flowing torrent to enter them. Just so of human institutions—their value has in strict theory nothing whatever to do with their energy-budget—being wholly a question of the form the energy flows through. Though the ultimate state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be the millennium—in other words a state in which a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its exchanges so skillfully canalisÉs that a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer." You don't believe this and I don't say I do. But I can find nothing in "Energetik" to conflict with its possibility. You seem to me not to discriminate, but to treat quantity and distribution of energy as if they formed one question.

There! that's pretty good for a brain after 18 Nauheim baths—so I won't write another line, nor ask you to reply to me. In case you can't help doing so, however, I will gratify you now by saying that I probably won't jaw back.—It was pleasant at Paris to hear your identically unchanged and "undegraded" voice after so many years of loss of solar energy. Yours ever truly,

WM. JAMES.

[Post-card]

Nauheim, June 19, 1910.

P. S. Another illustration of my meaning: The clock of the universe is running down, and by so doing makes the hands move. The energy absorbed by the hands and the mechanical work they do is the same day after day, no matter how far the weights have descended from the position they were originally wound up to. The history which the hands perpetrate has nothing to do with the quantity of this work, but follows the significance of the figures which they cover on the dial. If they move from O to XII, there is "progress," if from XII to O, there is "decay," etc. etc.

W. J.

Facsimile of Post-card addressed to Henry Adams.
Facsimile of Post-card addressed to Henry Adams.

To Henry Adams.

[Post-card]

Constance, June 26, [1910].

Yours of the 20th, just arriving, pleases me by its docility of spirit and passive subjection to philosophic opinion. Never, never pretend to an opinion of your own! that way lies every annoyance and madness! You tempt me to offer you another illustration—that of the hydraulic ram (thrown back to me in an exam, as a "hydraulic goat" by an insufficiently intelligent student). Let this arrangement of metal, placed in the course of a brook, symbolize the machine of human life. It works, clap, clap, clap, day and night, so long as the brook runs at all, and no matter how full the brook (which symbolizes the descending cosmic energy) may be, it works always to the same effect, of raising so many kilogrammeters of water. What the value of this work as history may be, depends on the uses to which the water is put in the house which the ram serves.

W. J.

To Benjamin Paul Blood.

Constance, June 25, 1910.

My dear Blood,—About the time you will receive this, you will also be surprised by receiving the "Hibbert Journal" for July, with an article signed by me, but written mainly by yourself.[88] Tired of waiting for your final synthetic pronunciamento, and fearing I might be cut off ere it came, I took time by the forelock, and at the risk of making ducks and drakes of your thoughts, I resolved to save at any rate some of your rhetoric, and the result is what you see. Forgive! forgive! forgive! It will at any rate have made you famous, for the circulation of the H. J. is choice, as well as large (12,000 or more, I'm told), and the print and paper the best ever yet, I seem to have lost the editor's letter, or I would send it to you. He wrote, in accepting the article in May, "I have already 40 articles accepted, and some of the writers threaten lawsuits for non-publication, yet such was the exquisite refreshment Blood's writing gave me, under the cataract of sawdust in which editorially I live, that I have this day sent the article to the printer. Actions speak louder than words! Blood is simply great, and you are to be thanked for having dug him out. L. P. Jacks." Of course I've used you for my own purposes, and probably misused you; but I'm sure you will feel more pleasure than pain, and perhaps write again in the "Hibbert" to set yourself right. You're sure of being printed, whatever you may send. How I wish that I too could write poetry, for pluralism is in its Sturm und Drang period, and verse is the only way to express certain things, I've just been taking the "cure" at Nauheim for my unlucky heart—no results so far!

Sail for home again on August 12th. Address always Cambridge, Mass.; things are forwarded. Warm regards, fellow pluralist. Yours ever,

WM. JAMES.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Geneva, July 9, 1910.

Dearest Flournoy,—Your two letters, of yesterday, and of July 4th sent to Nauheim, came this morning. I am sorry that the Nauheim one was not written earlier, since you had the trouble of writing it at all. I thank you for all the considerateness you show—you understand entirely my situation. My dyspnoea gets worse at an accelerated rate, and all I care for now is to get home—doing nothing on the way. It is partly a spasmodic phenomenon I am sure, for the aeration of my tissues, judging by the color of my lips, seems to be sufficient. I will leave Geneva now without seeing you again—better not come, unless just to shake hands with my wife! Through all these years I have wished I might live nearer to you and see more of you and exchange more ideas, for we seem two men particularly well faits pour nous comprendre. Particularly, now, as my own intellectual house-keeping has seemed on the point of working out some good results, would it have been good to work out the less unworthy parts of it in your company. But that is impossible!—I doubt if I ever do any more writing of a serious sort; and as I am able to look upon my life rather lightly, I can truly say that "I don't care"—don't care in the least pathetically or tragically, at any rate.—I hope that Ragacz will be a success, or at any rate a wholesome way of passing the month, and that little by little you will reach your new equilibrium. Those dear daughters, at any rate, are something to live for—to show them Italy should be rejuvenating. I can write no more, my very dear old friend, but only ask you to think of me as ever lovingly yours,

W. J.

After leaving Geneva James rested at Lamb House for a few days before going to Liverpool to embark. Walking, talking and writing had all become impossible or painful. The short northern route to Quebec was chosen for the home voyage. When he and Mrs. James and his brother Henry landed there, they went straight to Chocorua. The afternoon light was fading from the familiar hills on August 19th, when the motor brought them to the little house, and James sank into a chair beside the fire, and sobbed, "It's so good to get home!"

A change for the worse occurred within forty-eight hours and the true situation became apparent. The effort by which he had kept up a certain interest in what was going on about him during the last weeks of his journey, and a certain semblance of strength, had spent itself. He had been clinging to life only in order to get home.

Death occurred without pain in the early afternoon of August 26th.

His body was taken to Cambridge, where there was a funeral service in the College Chapel. After cremation, his ashes were placed beside the graves of his parents in the Cambridge Cemetery.

THE END