Part 41

Harry is as nice and simple and amiable as he can be. He has covered himself, like some marine crustacean, with all sorts of material growths, rich sea-weeds and rigid barnacles and things, and lives hidden in the midst of his strange heavy alien manners and customs; but these are all but "protective resemblances," under which the same dear old, good, innocent and at bottom very powerless-feeling Harry remains, caring for little but his writing, and full of dutifulness and affection for all gentle things....

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From London James crossed to Paris, to attend the International Congress of Physiological Psychology which had been arranged to coincide with the International Exposition of that year. He found between 60 and 120 colleagues, most of them European, of course, in attendance at its sessions. This incident in his life may be summarized in a few sentences from his own report of the Congress, in "Mind": "The most striking feature of the discussions was, perhaps, their tendency to slope off to some one or other of those shady horizons with which the name of "psychic-research" is now associated.... The open results were, however (as always happens at such gatherings), secondary in real importance to the latent ones--the friendships made, the intimacies deepened, and the encouragement and inspiration which came to everyone from seeing before them in flesh and blood so large a portion of that little army of fellow students from whom and for whom all contemporary psychology exists. The individual worker feels much less isolated in the world after such an experience." To Stumpf he wrote similarly (Aug. 15): "The sight of 120 men all actively interested in psychology has made me feel much less lonely in the world, and ready to finish my book this year with a great deal more entrain. A book hanging so long on one's hands at last gets outgrown, and even disgusting to one."

On his way home James went again to see his sister, and her account of him is not to be omitted.

"William, instead of going to Switzerland, came suddenly back from Paris and went home, having, as usual, exhausted Europe in a few weeks, finding it stale, flat and unprofitable. The only necessity being to get home, the first letter after his arrival, was, of course, full of plans for his return plus wife and infants; he is just like a blob of mercury--you can't put a mental finger upon him. H. and I were laughing over him, and recalling Father, and William's resemblance (in his ways) to him. Tho' the results are the same, they seem to come from such a different nature in the two; in W., an entire inability or indifference to 'stick to a thing for the sake of sticking,' as some one said of him once; whilst Father, the delicious infant! couldn't submit even to the thralldom of his own whim; and then the dear being was such a prey to the demon homesickness.... But to return to our mutton, William: he came with H. on August 14 on his way to Liverpool. He told all about his Paris experience, where he was a delegate to the Psychological Congress, which was a most brilliant success. The French most polite and hospitable. They invited W. to open the Congress, and they always had a foreigner in the Chair at the different meetings. I extracted with great difficulty from him that 'Monsieur Willyam James' was frequently referred to by the speakers. He liked the Henry Sidgwicks and Fred. Myers. Mrs. Myers paid him the following enigmatic compliment: 'We are so glad that you are as you are.'"

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Caricature from a Pocket Note-Book.]

On getting back to Cambridge in the autumn, James moved his family into a house which he had just built in Irving Street--a street which had been newly opened through what used to be called Norton's Woods. He had planned this house with such eager interest in all its details that he had even designed doors and windows and had practically been his own architect with respect to everything except structural specifications. The result was a detached wooden house of pleasantly square outer appearance, covered with shingles which soon weathered brown, and having dark green trimmings. Inside there was one room which deserves particular mention. James loved to have "space" about him and he planned a library that was the largest and sunniest room the house could provide. It was about 22-1/2 feet wide and 27 feet long. The walls were lined with book-shelves from floor to ceiling, except where James hung a portrait of his father over the open fireplace. On the southern side there was a triple window whose total width was nearly half the length of the room, and which let in a flood of sunlight. Through it one looked out upon a small lawn overhung by a large elm, and upon more grass and trees beyond. This was his study and living-room for the rest of his life. Here most of the Cambridge letters that follow may be assumed to have been written.

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After James moved to 95 Irving Street, several people referred to in the letters became his very near neighbors. Josiah Royce, Francis J. Child, C. E. Norton, Miss Theodora Sedgwick were all within three minutes walk of his door. Miss Grace Norton lived across the way.

To Miss Grace Norton.

CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 25, 1889.

DEAR MISS NORTON,--Will you accept, as a Christmas offering, the accompanying bottles of California Champagne, extremely salubrious in its after-effects, quite as intoxicating, almost as good-tasting and only half as "cost-playful" as French Champagne--in short, a beverage which no household should be without.

I should gladly have sought out something more sentimental,--though after a bottle or so, this seems rosy with sentiment,--but I have no gifts of invention in the present line, and took something useful, merely to testify to the affection and admiration with which I am ever yours,

WM. JAMES.

To Charles Eliot Norton.

Undated .

MY DEAR MR. NORTON,--This introduces to you Mr. X----, from South Abington, a workman in a tack factory since boyhood, who has nevertheless gone quite deeply into studies philosophic, mathematical and sociological. He will tell you more about himself, and I wish if convenient that you would "draw him out"--I should like much to hear your impression. I want, if possible, to help him to a start in life here. Palmer has invited him to stay with him for a week. And we are busy studying him and trying to cast his horoscope, to feel whether we can conscientiously recommend him to some millionaire to support in college for a year (as unmatriculated), and so give him a chance to make himself known and find some better avocation for himself than the making of tacks ten hours a day. He knows nothing of our plan, thinks this a mere spree, so please don't let it out! Very truly yours,

WM. JAMES.

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The workman from the tack factory, like more than one other lame duck before and after him, had aroused what Professor Palmer once aptly called James's "inclination toward the under-dog and his insistence on keeping the door open for every species of human experiment." It made no difference what X----'s doctrines were, or whether or not they were akin to James's way of thinking. And if such a man was unfitted to arouse other people's sympathies, James's own were the more readily challenged. The erratics of the philosophical world were significant phenomena, and sometimes interested him most just when they were most "queer"--when they were perhaps aberrant to the point of being pathological specimens. It mattered as little to James where such people sprang from, or by what strange processes they had arrived at their ideas, as it matters to a naturalist that beetles have to be hunted for in all sorts of places. He filled the "Varieties of Religious Experience" with the records of abnormal cases and with accounts of the mental and emotional adventures of people whom the everyday world called cranks and fanatics. He was not only curious about such men, but endlessly patient and helpful to them. To some indeed his encouragement was more comforting than profitable, and among them must be numbered the X---- of this letter--an uncouth and helpless creature, who has since achieved his only immortality in another sphere of being. The poor man never got over this "spree," but withdrew from the tack factory forever, spent many years in a Mills Hotel working over an unsalable magnum opus, and every now and then appealing for funds. A letter on a later page recurs to this case.

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In the spring of 1890 James finished the remaining chapters of the "Psychology." The next letters were written during the final weeks of work on the book.

To Henry Holt.

CAMBRIDGE, May 9, 1890.

MY DEAR HOLT,--I was in hopes that you would propose to break away from the famous "Series" and publish the book independently, in two volumes. An abridgement could then be prepared for the Series. If there be anything which I loathe it is a mean overgrown page in small type, and I think the author's feelings ought to go for a good deal in the case of the enormous rat which his ten years gestation has brought forth.

In any event, I dread the summer and next year, with two new courses to teach, and, I fear, no vacation. What I wrote you, if you remember, was to send you the "heft" of the MS. by May 1st, the rest to be done in the intervals of proof-correcting. You however insisted on having the entire MS. in your hands before anything should be done. It seems to me that this delay is, now at any rate, absurd. There is certainly less than two weeks' work on the MS. undone. And every day got behind us now means a day of travel and vacation for me next September. I really think, considering the sort of risk I am running by the delay, that I must insist on getting to press now as soon as the page is decided on.

No one could be more disgusted than I at the sight of the book. No subject is worth being treated of in 1000 pages! Had I ten years more, I could rewrite it in 500; but as it stands it is this or nothing--a loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two facts: 1st, that there is no such thing as a science of psychology, and 2nd, that W. J. is an incapable.