The Letters of William James Volume Ii Part 10

in America must all work to keep our precious birthright of individualism, and freedom from these inst.i.tutions. _Every_ great inst.i.tution is perforce a means of corruption--whatever good it may also do. Only in the free personal relation is full ideality to be found.--I have vomited all this out upon you in the hope that it may wake a responsive echo. One must do _something_ to work off the effect of the Dreyfus sentence.

I rejoice immensely in the purchase [on our behalf] of the two pieces of land [near Chocorua], and pine for the day when I can get back to see them. If all the same to you, I wish that you would buy Burke's in your name, and Mother-in-law Forrest's in her name. But let this be exactly as each of you severally prefers.

We leave here in a couple of days, I imagine. I am better; but I can't tell how much better for a few weeks yet. I hope that you will smite the unG.o.dly next winter. What a glorious gathering together of the forces for the great fight there will be. It seems to me as if the proper tactics were to pound McKinley--put the whole responsibility on him. It is he who by his purely drifting "non-entanglement" policy converted a splendid opportunity into this present necessity of a conquest of extermination. It is he who has warped us from our continuous national habit, which, if we repudiate him, it will not be impossible to resume.

Affectionately thine, Mary's, Aleck's, Dinah's, Augusta's,[24] and everyone's,

W. J.

P.S. d.a.m.n it, America doesn't know the meaning of the word corruption compared with Europe! Corruption is so permanently organized here that it isn't thought of as such--it is so transient and s.h.i.+fting in America as to make an outcry whenever it appears.

_To Miss Frances R. Morse._

BAD-NAUHEIM, _Sept. 17, 1899_.

...In two or three days more I shall be discharged (in very decent shape, I trust) and after ten days or so of rigorously prescribed "Nachkur" in the cold and rain of Switzerland (we have seen the sun only in short but entrancing glimpses since Sept. 1, and you know what bad weather is when it once begins in Europe), we shall pick up our Peggy at Vevey, and proceed to Lamb House, Rye, _uber_ Paris, with all possible speed. G.o.d bless the American climate, with its transparent, pa.s.sionate, impulsive variety and headlong fling. There are deeper, slower tones of earnestness and moral gravity here, no doubt, but ours is more like youth and youth's infinite and touching promise. G.o.d bless America in general! _Conspuez_ McKinley and the Republican party and the Philippine war, and the Methodists, and the voices, etc., as much as you please, but bless the innocence. Talk of corruption! We don't know what the word corruption means at home, with our improvised and s.h.i.+fting agencies of crude pecuniary bribery, compared with the solidly intrenched and permanently organized corruptive geniuses of monarchy, n.o.bility, church, army, that penetrate the very bosom of the higher kind as well as the lower kind of people in all the European states (except Switzerland) and sophisticate their motives away from the impulse to straightforward handling of any simple case. _Temoin_ the Dreyfus case! But no matter!

Of all the forms of mental crudity, that of growing earnest over international comparisons is probably the most childish. Every nation has its ideals which are a dead secret to other nations, and it has to develop in its own way, in touch with them. It can only be judged by itself. If each of us does as well as he can in his own sphere at home, he will do all he _can_ do; that is why I hate to remain so long abroad....

We have been having a visit from an extraordinary Pole named Lutoslawski, 36 years old, author of philosophical writings in seven different languages,--"Plato's Logic," in English (Longmans) being his chief work,--and knower of several more, handsome, and to the last degree genial. He has a singular philosophy--the philosophy of friends.h.i.+p. He takes in dead seriousness what most people admit, but only half-believe, viz., that we are _Souls_ (Zoolss, he p.r.o.nounces it), that souls are immortal, and agents of the world's destinies, and that the chief concern of a soul is to get ahead by the help of other souls with whom it can establish confidential relations. So he spends most of his time writing letters, and will send 8 sheets of reply to a post-card--that is the exact proportion of my correspondence with him.

Shall I rope you in, f.a.n.n.y? He has a great chain of friends and correspondents in all the countries of Europe. The worst of them is that they think a secret imparted to one may at his or her discretion become, _de proche en proche_, the property of all. He is a _wunderlicher Mensch_: abstractly his scheme is divine, but there is something on which I can't yet just lay my defining finger that makes one feel that there is some need of the corrective and critical and arresting judgment in his manner of carrying it out. These Slavs seem to be the great radical livers-out of their theories. Good-bye, dearest f.a.n.n.y....

Your affectionate

W. J.

_To Mrs. Henry Whitman._

LAMB HOUSE, RYE, _Oct. 5, 1899_.

DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--You see where at last we have arrived, at the end of the first _etape_ of this pilgrimage--the second station of the cross, so to speak--with the Continent over, and England about to begin. The land is bathed in greenish-yellow light and misty drizzle of rain. The little town, with its miniature brick walls and houses and nooks and coves and gardens, makes a curiously vivid and quaint picture, alternately suggesting English, Dutch, and j.a.panese effects that one has seen in pictures--all exceedingly tiny (so that one wonders how _families_ ever could have been reared in most of the houses) and neat and _zierlich_ to the last degree. _Refinement_ in architecture certainly consists in narrow trim and the absence of heavy mouldings.

Modern Germany is incredibly bad from that point of view--much worse, apparently, than America. But the German people are a good safe fact for great powers to be intrusted to--earnest and serious, and pleasant to be with, as we found them, though it was humiliating enough to find how awfully imperfect were one's powers of conversing in their language.

French not much better. I remember nothing of this extreme mortification in old times, and am inclined to think that it is due less to loss of ability to speak, than to the fact that, as you grow older, you speak better English, and expect more of yourself in the way of accomplishment. I am sure _you_ spoke no such English as now, in the seventies, when you came to Cambridge! And how could I, as yet untrained by conversation with you?

Seven mortal weeks did we spend at the _Curort_, Nauheim, for an infirmity of the heart which I contracted, apparently, not much more than a year ago, and which now must be borne, along with the rest of the white man's burden, until additional visits to Nauheim have removed it altogether for ordinary practical purposes. N. was a sweetly pretty spot, but I longed for more activity. A glorious week in Switzerland, solid in its sometimes awful, sometimes beefy beauty; two days in Paris, where I could gladly have stayed the winter out, merely for the fun of the sight of the intelligent and interesting streets; then hither, where H. J. has a real little _bijou_ of a house and garden, and seems absolutely adapted to his environment, and very well and contented in the leisure to write and to read which the place affords.

In a few days we go almost certainly to the said H. J.'s apartment, still unlet, in London, where we shall in all probability stay till January, the world forgetting, by the world forgot, or till such later date as shall witness the completion of the awful Gifford job, at which I have not been able to write one line since last January. I long for the definitive settlement and ability to get to work. I am very glad indeed, too, to be in an English atmosphere again. Of course it will conspire better with my writing tasks, and after all it is more congruous with one's nature and one's inner ideals. Still, one loves America above all things, for her youth, her greenness, her plasticity, innocence, good intentions, friends, everything. Je veux que mes cendres reposent sur les bords du Charles, au milieu de ce bon peuple de Harvarr Squerre que j'ai tant aime. That is what I say, and what Napoleon B.

would have said, had his life been enriched by your and my educational and other experiences--poor man, he knew too little of life, had never even heard of us, whilst we have heard of him!

Seriously speaking, though, I believe that international comparisons are a great waste of time--at any rate, international judgments and pa.s.sings of sentence are. Every nation has ideals and difficulties and sentiments which are an impenetrable secret to one not of the blood. Let them alone, let each one work out its own salvation on its own lines. They talk of the decadence of France. The hatreds, and the _coups de gueule_ of the newspapers there are awful. But I doubt if the better ideals were ever so aggressively strong; and I fancy it is the fruit of the much decried republican regime that they have become so. My brother represents English popular opinion as less c.o.c.k-a-whoop for war than newspaper accounts would lead one to imagine; but I don't know that he is in a good position for judging. I hope if they do go to war that the Boers will give them fits, and I heartily emit an a.n.a.logous prayer on behalf of the Philippinos.

I have had pleasant news of Beverly, having had letters both from f.a.n.n.y Morse and Paulina Smith. I hope that your summer has been a good one, that work has prospered and that Society has been less _enervante_ and more nutritious for the higher life of the Soul than it sometimes is.

_We_ have met but one person of any accomplishments or interest all summer. But I have managed to read a good deal about religion, and religious people, and care less for accomplishments, except where (as in you) they go with a sanctified heart. Abundance of accomplishments, in an unsanctified heart, only make one a more accomplished devil.

Good bye, angelic friend! We both send love and best wishes, both to you and Mr. Whitman, and I am as ever yours affectionately,

W. J.

_To Thomas Davidson._

34 DE VERE GARDENS, LONDON, _Nov. 2, 1899_.

DEAR OLD T. D.,--A recent letter from Margaret Gibbens says that you have gone to New York in order to undergo a most "radical operation." I need not say that my thoughts have been with you, and that I have felt anxiety mixed with my hopes for you, ever since. I do indeed hope that, whatever the treatment was, it has gone off with perfect success, and that by this time you are in the durable enjoyment of relief, and nerves and everything upon the upward track. It has always seemed to me that, were I in a similar plight, I should choose a kill-or-cure operation rather than anything merely palliative--so poisonous to one's whole mental and moral being is the irritation and worry of the complaint. It would truly be a spectacle for the G.o.ds to see you rising like a phoenix from your ashes again, and shaking off even the memory of disaster like dew-drops from a lion's mane, etc.--and I hope the spectacle will be vouchsafed to us men also, and that you will be presiding over Glenmore as if nothing had happened, different from the first years, save a certain softening of your native ferocity of heart, and gentleness towards the shortcomings of weaker people. Dear old East Hill![25] I shall never forget the beauty of the morning (it had rained the night before) when I took my bath in the brook, before driving down to Westport one day last June.

We got your letter at Nauheim, a sweet safe little place, made for invalids, to which it took long to reconcile me on that account. But nous en avons vu bien d'autres depuis, and from my present retirement in my brother's still unlet flat (he living at Rye), Nauheim seems to me like New York for bustle and energy. My heart, in short, has gone back upon me badly since I was there, and my doctor, Bezley Thorne, the first specialist here, and a man who inspires me with great confidence, is trying to tide me over the crisis, by great quiet, in addition to a dietary of the strictest sort, and more Nauheim baths, _a domicile_.

Provided I can only get safely out of the Gifford sc.r.a.pe, the deluge has leave to come.--Write, dear old T. D., and tell how you are, and let it be good news if possible. Give much love to the Warrens, and believe me always affectionately yours,

Wm. James.

The woman thou gavest unto me comes out strong as a nurse, and treats me much better than I deserve.

_To John C. Gray._

[Dictated to Mrs. James]

LONDON, _Nov. 23, 1899_.

DEAR JOHN,--A week ago I learnt from the "Nation"--strange to have heard it in no directer way!--that dear old John Ropes had turned his back on us and all this mortal tragi-comedy. No sooner does one get abroad than that sort of thing begins. I am deeply grieved to think of never seeing or hearing old J. C. R. again, with his manliness, good-fellows.h.i.+p, and cheeriness, and idealism of the right sort, and can't hold in any longer from expression. You, dear John, seem the only fitting person for me to condole with, for you will miss him most tremendously. Pray write and tell me some details of the manner of his death. I hope he didn't suffer much. Write also of your own personal and family fortunes and give my love to the members of our dining club collectively and individually, when you next meet.

I have myself been shut up in a sick room for five weeks past, seeing hardly anyone but my wife and the doctor, a bad state of the heart being the cause. We shall be at West Malvern in ten days, where I hope to begin to mend.

Hurrah for Henry Higginson and his gift[26] to the University! I think the Club cannot fail to be useful if they make it democratic enough.

I hope that Roland is enjoying Was.h.i.+ngton, but not so far transubstantiated into a politician as to think that McKinley & Co. are the high-water mark of human greatness up to date.

John Ropes, more than most men, seems as if he would be natural to meet again.

Please give our love to Mrs. Gray, and believe me, affectionately yours,

Wm. James.