The Letters of William James Volume I Part 33

[3] See _Literary Remains_, p. 149.

[4] If the reader were familiar, as he cannot be presumed to have been, with the elder Henry James or his writings, he would be in no danger of finding anything cold or qualifying in these words, but would discern a true adoration expressing itself in a way that was peculiarly characteristic of their writer. For Henry James, Senior, a spiritual democracy deeper than that of our political jargon was not a mere conception: it was an unquestioned reality. The outer wrappings in which people swathed their souls excited him to anger and ridicule more often than praise; but when men or women seemed to him beautiful or adorable he thought it was because they betrayed more naturally than others the inward possession of that humble "social" spirit which he wanted to think of as truly a common possession--G.o.d's equal gift to each and all.

To say of his mother that _that_ could be felt in her, that she was _merely_ that, was his purest praise. The reader may find this habit of his thought expressing itself anew in William James by turning to a letter on page 210 below. That letter might have been written by Henry James, Senior.

[5] The places of two of the eleven who died early were taken by their orphaned children.

[6] According to the Rev. Hugh Walsh of Newburgh, who has worked out the Walsh genealogy. _A Small Boy and Others_ (page 6) says "Killyleagh."

[7] _A Small Boy and Others_, p. 8.

[8] _Literary Remains of Henry James_, Introduction, p. 9.

[9] See, further, _Notes of a Son and Brother_, pp. 181 _et seq._

[10] _Society of the Redeemed Form of Man_, quoted in the Introduction to _Literary Remains_, p. 57, _et seq._

[11] Letter to Shadworth H. Hodgson, p. 241 _infra_.

[12] _A Small Boy and Others_, p. 216.

[13] _Vide_ also a pa.s.sage in the _Literary Remains_, at p. 104.

[14] _Life of E. L. G.o.dkin_, vol. II, p. 218. New York, 1907.

[15] _Early Years of the Sat.u.r.day Club_; E. W. Emerson's chapter on Henry James, Senior, p. 328. There follows a delightful account of a "Conversation" at R. W. Emerson's house in Concord, at which Henry James, Senior, upset a prepared discourse of Alcott's and launched himself into an attack on "Morality." Whereupon Miss Mary Moody Emerson, "eighty-four years old and dressed underneath without doubt, in her shroud," seized him by the shoulders and shook him and rebuked him. "Mr.

James beamed with delight and spoke with most chivalrous courtesy to this Deborah bending over him."

[16] Some pa.s.sages in William James's early letters to his family might seem labored. They should be read with this in mind. An especially high-sounding phrase or a flight into a grand style was understood as a signal meaning "fun," and such pa.s.sages are never to be taken as serious.

[17] _A Small Boy and Others_, p. 207.

[18] "I have fully decided to try being a painter. I shall know in a year or two whether I am made to be one. If not, it will be easy to retreat. There's nothing in the world so despicable as a bad artist."

(1860.)

[19] For James's use of Touchstone's question, see p. 190 _infra_.

[20] _Cf._ Henry James's _Life of W. W. Story_, vol. II, p. 204, where there is a pa.s.sage which sounds reminiscent of the author's father and brother.

[21] The following entries occur among some "notes on his students"

which President Eliot made at the time--

"First term, '61-'62, James, W., entered this term, pa.s.sed examination on qualitative a.n.a.lysis well."

"Second term, '61-'62, James, W., studied quant.i.tative a.n.a.lysis.

Irregular in attendance at laboratory, pa.s.sed examination on Fownes's Organic Chemistry, mark 85."

"First term, '62-'63, James, W., studied quant.i.tative a.n.a.lysis and was tolerably punctual at recitations till Thanksgiving, when he began an investigation of the effects of different bread-raising materials on the urine. He worked steadily on this until the end of the term, mastering the processes, and studying the effect of yeast on bicarbonate of sodium and bitartrate of potash." The investigation referred to consisted of experiments of which he himself was the subject.

There is no record for the second term of 1862-63.

President Eliot has generously supplied the Editor with a memorandum on William James's connection with the College, from which these, and several statements below, have been drawn.

[22] The expression was undoubtedly recognized in Kay Street as borrowed from the Lincolns.h.i.+re boor, in Fitzjames Stephen's Essay on Spirit-Rapping, who ended his life with the words, "What with faith, and what with the earth a-turning round the sun, and what with the railroads a-fuzzing and a-whizzing, I'm clean stonied, muddled and beat."

[23] A diary of Mr. T. S. Perry's has fixed the date of this visit as Oct. 31-Nov. 4.

[24] W. J. could make much better drawings than the ones which he enclosed in this letter.

[25] A horse.

[26] N. S. Shaler, _Autobiography_, pp. 105 _ff._

[27] _Harvard Advocate_, Oct. 1, 1874.

[28] The "great anthropomorphological collection" consisted of photographs of authors, scientists, public characters, and also people whose only claim upon his attention was that their physiognomies were in some way typical or striking. James never arranged the collection or preserved it carefully, but he filled at least one alb.u.m in early days, and he almost always kept some drawer or box at hand and dropped into it portraits cut from magazines or obtained in other ways. He seemed to crave a visual image of everybody who interested him at all.

[29]

All theory is gray, dear friend, But the golden tree of life is green.

[30] See _Memories and Studies_, pp. 6, 8, and 9; and the address on Aga.s.siz, _pa.s.sim_.

[31] The case of small-pox left no scar whatever. Indeed James afterward regarded it as having been perhaps no small-pox at all, but only varioloid, and by October he described himself as being in better health than ever before. During several weeks of convalescence that followed his distressing experience in quarantine he was, however, quite naturally, "blue and despondent."

[32] This house has since been enlarged and converted into the Colonial Club.

[33] John A. Allen, another of the Brazilian party.

[34] Miss Dixwell became Mrs. O. W. Holmes; the other two, Mrs. E. W.

Gurney and Mrs. William E. Darwin respectively.

[35] Miss Kate Havens of Stamford, Conn., a fellow _pensionnaire_ at Frau Spannenberg's, has kindly supplied a helpful memorandum.

[36] An accompanying drawing presented a telescopic exaggeration of features, which are hardly appropriate to the Christian Stra.s.se.

[37] The notice of Grimm's _Unuberwindliche Machte_ appeared under the t.i.tle "A German-American Novel" in the _Nation_, 1867; vol. V, p. 432.

[38] The Herr Professor was later identified as W. Dilthey.

[39] I send you a thousand kisses.

[40] "When in his grotesque moods [the elder Henry James] maintained that, to a right-minded man, a crowded Cambridge horse-car 'was the nearest approach to Heaven upon earth.'" E. L. G.o.dkin, _Life_, vol. II, p. 117.

[41] An allusion to a picture in the parlor which had formerly belonged to the Thieses.

[42] A devoted family servant.

[43] A daughter of Henry James, Senior's, English friend J. J. Garth Wilkinson. "Wilky" James had been named after Mr. Wilkinson. See _Notes of a Son and Brother_, p. 196.