The Letters of William James Volume I Part 14

I got a note from Hillebrand saying Schiff would gladly let me work in his laboratory if I liked. I suppose I ought if I can, but I hanker after home even at the price of a February voyage, and I hate to spend so much money here on my mere gizzard and cheeks.--There, my sweet sister, I hope that is a sufficiently spirited epistle for 10.30 P.M.

When, oh, when, will you write me another like the solitary one I got from you in Florence? Seven weeks and one letter! C'est tres caracteristique de vous! I wrote two days ago to Annie Ashburner. Tell the adorable Sara Sedgwick [Mrs. W. E. Darwin] that I can't possibly refrain much longer--in spite of my just resentment--from writing to her. Love to all.... Your

W. J.

After his return his college duties proved both absorbing and stimulating. Beginning, as the reader has seen, as an instructor in the Department of Natural History, charged with teaching the comparative anatomy and physiology of vertebrates, he added a course on physiological psychology in 1876, and organized the beginnings of the psychological laboratory.[55] The next year this course was transferred to the Department of Philosophy and given under the t.i.tle "Psychology."

He contributed numerous reviews of scientific and philosophic literature, along with a few anonymous articles, to the columns of the "Atlantic Monthly" and the "Nation," and in 1878 appeared in the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" and the "Critique Philosophique,"

with three important papers ent.i.tled "Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence," "Brute and Human Intellect," and "Quelques Considerations sur la Methode Subjective."

Meanwhile his correspondence diminished to its minimum. When his brother Henry also came home to America in 1874, it ceased almost entirely. It did not begin to flow freely again, at least so far as letters are now recoverable, until after 1878.

_To Henry James._

CAMBRIDGE, _June 25, 1874_.

A few days ago came your letter from Florence of June 3, speaking of the glare on the _piazza_ and the coolness and s.p.a.ce of your rooms, of your late dinners and your solitude, and of the progress of your novel, and, finally, of your expected departure about the 20th; so that I suppose you are today percolating the cool arcades of Bologna or the faded beauties of Verona, or haply [are] at Venice.... As the weeks glide by, my present life and my last year's life at home seem to glide together across the five months breach that Italy made in them, and to become continuous; while those months step out of the line and become a sort of side-decoration or picture hanging vaguely in my memory. As this happens more and more, I take the greater pleasure in it. Especially does the utter friendliness of Florence, Rome, etc., grow dear to me, and get strangely mixed up with still earlier and more faded impressions, derived I know not whence, which infused into the places when I first saw them that strange thread of familiarity. The thought of the Florentine places you name in your letters like "leiser Nachhall langst verklungner Lieder, zieht mit Errinnerungsschauer durch die Brust." I hope you'll pa.s.s through Dresden if you sail from Germany. I forgot to say that the Eagle line from Hamburg has now the largest and finest ships and the newest....

Miss Theodora Sedgwick, to whom the next letter is addressed, was a member of the Stockbridge and New York family of that name, and a sister of Mrs. Charles Eliot Norton and Mrs. William Darwin, to whom reference has already been made. At this time she was living with two maiden aunts named Ashburner, friends of James's parents, in a house on Kirkland Street, Cambridge, not far from Mr. Norton's "Shady Hill." The letter of November 14, 1866, contained an allusion to this household, and others will occur as the letters proceed.

_To Miss Theodora Sedgwick._

CAMBRIDGE, _Aug. 8, 1874_.

MISS THEODORA SEDGWICK

to WILLIAM JAMES, Dr.

Aug. 6, to 1 Orchestra Seat in Hippodrome [Barnum's Circus] $1.00 " " " 2 carriage fares at 50c. $1.00 " " " 1 gla.s.s vanilla cream sodawater $ .10 " " " 1 plate of soup lost $ .25 " " " 4 hours time at 12-1/2 cents $ .50 " " " Sundries $ .05 ----- Total $2.90

Rec'd on account. $2.00

WM. JAMES

HONORED MISS,--I hope you will find the aforesaid charges moderate. When you transmit me the 90 cents still due, please send back at the same time whatever letters of mine you may still have in your possession, and the diamonds, silks, etc., which you may have at different times been glad to receive from me. Likewise both pieces of the collar stud I so recently lavished upon you. We can then remain as strangers.

I come of a race sensitive in the extreme; more accustomed to treat than to be treated, especially in this manner; and caring for its money as little as for its life. What wonder then that the mercenary conduct of One whom I have ever fostered without hope of pecuniary reward should work like madness in my brain?

On the point of closing I see with rapture that a way of accommodation is still open! O joy! The salmon, blackberries, etc., I consumed, had a market value. By charging me for the tea 90 cents, you will make the thing reciprocal, and I will call the account square. Perhaps even then the dreadful feeling of wounded pride and Barnum-born resentment may with time fade away. Amen. Respectfully yours,

W. J.

_To Henry James._

CAMBRIDGE, _Jan._ [2], 1876.

...Your letter No. 2 speaking of your visit to Turguenieff was received by me duly and greatly enjoyed. I never heard you speak so enthusiastically of any human being. It is too bad he is to leave Paris; but if he gives you the "run" of Flaubert and eke George Sand, it will be so much gained. I don't think you know Miss A----, but if you did, you would thank me for pointing out to you the parallelism between her and George Sand which overwhelmed me the other day when I was calling on her, and she (who has just lost her sister B---- and had her father go through an attack of insanity) was snuggling down so hyper-comfortably into garrulity about B----, and her poor dead T---- and her dead mother, that I was fairly suffocated, just as I am by the _comfort_ George Sand takes in telling you of the loves of servant men for ladies, and other things _contra naturam_.

Christmas pa.s.sed off here in a rather wan and sallow manner. I got a gold scarf-ring from Mother and a gold watch-chain from Aunt Kate. Let me, by the way, advise you to get a scarf-ring; 't is one of the greatest inventions of modern times, in saving labor, silk and shirt fronts. Alice got a desk, and from me a Scotch terrier pup only seven weeks old, whom we call Bunch, who has almost doubled his size in a week, who is a perfect lion in determination and courage, and who don't seem to care a jot for any human society but that of Jane in the kitchen, whose person is, I suppose, pervaded by a greasy and smoky smell agreeable to his nostrils. He has a perfect pa.s.sion for the dining-room; whenever he is left to himself, he travels thither and lies down under the table and takes no notice of you when you go to call him.

He does not sleep half as much as Dido, never utters a sound when shut up for the night in the kitchen, and altogether fills us with a sort of awe for the Roman firmness and independence of his character. He is "animated" by a colliquative diarrhoea or cholera, which keeps us all sponging over his tracks, but which don't affect his strength or spirits a bit. He is in short a very queer subst.i.tute for poor, dear Dido....

_To Henry James._

NEWPORT, _June 3, 1876_.

MY DEAR H.,--I write you after [a] considerable interval filled with too much work and weariness to make letter-writing convenient.... I ran away three days ago, the recitations being over for the year, in order to break from the studious a.s.sociations of home. I have been staying at the Tweedies with Mrs. Chapman, and James Sturgis and his wife, and enjoying extremely, not the conversation indoors, but the lonely lying on the gra.s.s on the cliffs at Lyly Pond, and four or five hours yesterday at the Dumplings, feeling the moving air and the gentle living sea. There is a purity and mildness about the elements here which purges the soul of one. And I have been as if I had taken opium, not wanting to do anything else than the particular thing I happened to be doing at the moment, and feeling equally good whether I stood or walked or lay, or spoke or was silent. It's a splendid relief from the overstrain and stimulus of the past few scholastic months. I go the day after tomorrow (Monday) with the Tweedies to New York, a.s.sist at Henrietta Temple's wedding on Tuesday, and then pa.s.s on to the Centennial for a couple of days. I suppose it will be pretty tiresome, but I want to see the English pictures, which they say are a good show.... I fancy my vacationizing will be confined to visits of a week at a time to different points, perhaps the pleasantest way after all of spending it.

Newport as to its villas, and all that, is most repulsive to me. I really didn't know how little charm and how much shabbiness there was about the place. There are not more than three or four houses out of the whole lot that are not offensive, in some way, externally. But the mild nature grows on one every day. This afternoon, G.o.d willing, I shall spend on Paradise.[56]

The Tweedies keep no horses, which makes one walk more or pay more than one would wish. The younger Seabury told me yesterday that he was just reading your "Roderick Hudson," but offered no [comment]. Colonel Waring said of your "American" to me: "I'm not a blind admirer of H.

James, Jr., but I said to my wife after reading that first number, 'By Jove, I think he's. .h.i.t it this time!'" I think myself the thing opens very well indeed, you have a first-rate datum to work up, and I hope you'll do it well.

Your last few letters home have breathed a tone of contentment and domestication in Paris which was very agreeable to get.... Your accounts of Ivan Sergeitch are delightful, and I envy you the possession of the young painter's intimacy. Give my best love to Ivan. I read his book which you sent home (foreign books sent by mail pay duty now, though; so send none but good ones), and although the vein of "morbidness" was so p.r.o.nounced in the stories, yet the mysterious depths which his plummet sounds atone for all. It is the amount of life which a man feels that makes you value his mind, and Turguenieff has a sense of worlds within worlds whose existence is unsuspected by the vulgar. It amuses me to recommend his books to people who mention them as they would the novels of Wilkie Collins. You say we don't notice "Daniel Deronda." I find it extremely interesting. Gwendolen and her spouse are masterpieces of conception and delineation. Her ideal figures are much vaguer and thinner. But her "sapience," as you excellently call it, pa.s.ses all decent bounds. There is something essentially womanish in the irrepressible garrulity of her moral reflections. Why is it that it makes women feel so good to moralize? Man philosophizes as a matter of business, because he must,--he does it to a purpose and then lets it rest; but women don't seem to get over being tickled at the discovery that they have the faculty; hence the tedious iteration and restlessness of George Eliot's commentary on life. The La Farges are absent. Yours always,

W. J.

Under the t.i.tle "Bain and Renouvier," James contributed a review containing a brief discussion of free will and determinism to the "Nation" of June 8, 1876. He of course sent a copy to Renouvier. The following letter begins with a reference to Renouvier's acknowledgment.

James had been acquainted with Renouvier's work since 1868, when, as the reader will recall, he read a number of the "Annee Philosophique,"

Renouvier's annual survey of contemporary philosophy, for the first time. The diary entry already quoted from the year 1870 has shown what effect Renouvier's essays then had on his mind. His admiration for the elder philosopher was great and he cherished it loyally for the rest of his life. Indeed, in the unfinished ma.n.u.script, which was published posthumously as "Some Problems of Philosophy," James looked back at the formative period of his own philosophical thinking and wrote: "Renouvier was one of the greatest of philosophic characters, and but for the decisive impression made on me in the seventies by his masterly advocacy of pluralism I might never have got free from the monistic superst.i.tion under which I had grown up." In time he made Renouvier's acquaintance in France and wrote to him often. He examined and discussed his writings with college cla.s.ses. Occasionally he reported these discussions and read Renouvier's answers to the students. On the other side, Renouvier paid James the compliment of printing or translating several of his papers in the "Critique Philosophique," and thus brought him early to the notice of French readers.

_To Charles Renouvier._

CAMBRIDGE, _July 29, 1876_.

MY DEAR SIR,--I am quite overcome by your appreciation of my poor little article in the "Nation." It gratifies me extremely to hear from your own lips that my apprehension of your thoughts is accurate. In so despicably brief a s.p.a.ce as that which a newspaper affords, I could hardly hope to attain any other quality than that, and perhaps clearness. I had written another paragraph of pure eulogy of your powers, which the editor suppressed, to my great regret, for want of room. I need not repeat to you again how grateful I feel to you for all I have learned from your admirable writings. I do what lies in my feeble power to a.s.sist the propagation of your works here, but _students_ of philosophy are rare here as everywhere. It astonishes me, nevertheless, that you have had to wait so long for general recognition. Only a few months ago I had the pleasure of introducing to your "Essais" two _professors_ of philosophy, able and learned men, who hardly knew your name!! But I am perfectly convinced that it is a mere affair of time, and that you will take your place in the general History of Speculation as the cla.s.sical and finished representative of the tendency which was begun by Hume, and to which writers before you had made only fragmentary contributions, whilst you have fused the whole matter into a solid, elegant and definitive system, perfectly consistent, and capable, by reason of its moral vitality, of becoming popular, so far as that is permitted to philosophic systems. After your Essays, it seems to me that the only important question is the deepest one of all, the one between the principle of contradiction, and the _Sein und Nichts_.[57] You have brought it to that clear issue; and extremely as I value your logical att.i.tude, it would be uncandid of me (after what I have said) not to confess that there are certain psychological and moral facts, which make me, as I stand today, unable wholly to commit myself to your position, to burn my ships behind me, and proclaim the belief in the _one_ and the many to be the Original Sin of the mind. I long for leisure to study up these questions. I have been teaching anatomy and physiology in Harvard College here. Next year, I add a course of physiological psychology, using, for certain practical reasons, Spencer's "Psychology" as a textbook. My health is not strong; I find that laboratory work and study, too, are more than I can attend to. It is therefore not impossible that I may in 1877-8 be transferred to the philosophical department, in which there is likely to be a vacancy. If so, you may depend upon it that the name of Renouvier will be as familiar as that of Descartes to the Bachelors of Arts who leave these walls. Believe me with the greatest respect and grat.i.tude, faithfully yours,