Part 28

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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.

KEENE VALLEY, Aug. 16 .

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.

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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.

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.

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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.