Wm & H'ry

H'ry to Wm, Feb. 18, 1887. Age: 43

2012-02-24T04:00:00.000-08:00

"You are of course even more -- far more -- obsédé & excédé with letters than I am -- though they even with me constitute the very blight and leak, as it were, of my existence."

Fortunately, the brothers loved receiving letters more than they loathed producing them.

H'ry to Wm, Dec. 23, 1886. Age: 43

2012-02-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry is disappointed that W^m sent him money for books:

"I am very sorry you deemed it necessary to refund me for the [books], as it spoiled all my fun in sending them...I intended the books for a Xmas present, with the simple -- & very fortunate -- irregularity of knowing in advance what you wanted."

A nineteenth century scene from a
Bumpus Bookstore, where W^m had
sent H'ry for his books.

Wm to H'ry, Dec. 2, 1886. Age: 44

2012-02-22T04:00:00.001-08:00

W^m was known for his fiscal fastidiousness:

"I enclose a P.O. order for the books you were kind enough to get me....If got, as I asked, at Bumpus's, with 20% off, I calculate they should come to within a few pence of 1 pound 7 shillings. [Green 16s, Bosanquet 7s, Geo. Eliot 5, Sinnet 5, = 33. Then 1/5 off leaves 1.7] I'm much obliged..."

A Bumpus Bookstore in London, circa 1950

Wm to H'ry, Sept. 17, 1886. Age: 44

2012-02-21T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m buys a summer house:

"I recently ran off for an 8 days' trip in the White Mts. and am going, if a certain rival can be removed, to buy a place on Chocorua Lake, 75 acres of land, mountain 3500 ft high, exquisite lake a mile long, fine oak and pine woods, valuable mineral spring, two houses and a barn, all for 900 dollars or possibly less."

Many years later, W^m died in the house at Chocorua.

Chocorua as it looks today

W^m and Josiah Royce seated on the stone wall
near the front of the house.
(It was moved at one point.)

H'ry to Wm, Sept. 10, 1886. Age 43

2012-02-20T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry reflects on having written The Princess Casimissima and The Bostonians:

"Both so exceedingly long, especially the 2^d, having quite exhausted me....I have plenty of engagements & am to do some short things -- 1/2 a dozen little critical papers among others. The next novels I do are to be but 1/2 as long as these 2 last, & I never again mean to do anything nearly so long as the Princess."

He had still to write The Tragic Muse, The Wings of the Dove, The American Scene, and many others.

Gosse on H'ry's time at Broadway

2012-02-19T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry's friend Edmund Gosse had this to say about H'ry's time at Broadway:

"A medieval ruin...very roughly repaired so as to make a kind of refuge for us, and there, in the morning, Henry James and I would write, while Abbey and Millet painted on the floor below, and Sargent and Parsons tilted their easels just outside. We were all within shouting distance, and not much serous work was done, for we were in towering spirits....Henry James was the only sedate one of all -- benign, indulgent but grave, and not often unbending beyond a genial chuckle."

Abbot's Grange, built in 1320

H'ry to Wm, Sept. 10, 1886. Age 43

2012-02-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry, on returning from an artists' retreat:

"I have just come back from 4 days...at Broadway in Worcestershire...it is altogether a very pleasant & harmonious little artistic community, working in a manner very creditable to the good feeling of every one concerned."

Broadway was run by painter
Francis Millet.
H'ry called him a "capital fellow."

Wm to H'ry, June 25, 1886. Age: 44

2012-02-17T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m has sent along the weight-lifting apparatus he promised H'ry:

"The lifting apparatus has gone by the Pavonia...Don't make your weights too heavy, and don't work so fast as to get out of breath. Try all sorts of movements additional to those indicated in the lists I enclose."

W^m also drew an oil can in the letter -- for maintenance, and in case, one assumes, H'ry did not know what an oil can looked like.

H'ry to Wm, June 13, 1886. Age: 43

2012-02-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry graciously accepts W^m's criticisms:

"Everything you said gratified me extremely....All the middle part is too diffuse & insistent -- far too describing & explaining & expatiating. The whole thing is too long and dawdling....However, this is only by the way; for after one of my productions is finished & cast upon the waters it has, for me, quite sunk beneath the surface -- I cease to care for it & transfer my interest to the next one I am trying to float."

H'ry did remain interested enough in his old work to write a 7,000-word preface to each of the twenty-four volumes of his New York Edition, many years later.

Wm to H'ry, May 9, 1886. Age: 44

2012-02-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m continues re: The Bostonians:

"One can easily imagine a story cut out and made into a bright sparkling thing of a hundred pages, which would have been an absolute success. But you have worked it up by dint of descriptions and psychological commentaries into near 500....perilously near to turning away the great majority of readers who crave more matter & less art."

W^m did say that he'd spent ten days on his back reading the book, enjoying it all the while.

Wm to H'ry, May 9, 1886. Age: 44

2012-02-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

Now that W^m has actually read The Bostonians, his praise is tempered by underlying suspicion:

"It is superlatively well done, provided one admit that method of doing such a thing at all. Really the datum seems to me to belong rather to the region of fancy, but the treatment to that of the most elaborate realism."

H'ry to Wm., April 7, 1886. Age: 42

2012-02-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

Our image of H'ry is of the old, fat, aging Master. But early in life he exercised a good deal -- he loved riding bikes -- and here thanked W^m for a complicated weight-lifting machine, which W^m sent along with careful instructions:

"I am much obliged to you for the offer...of the chest weights -- which...I accept with pleasure -- if you can send them to me without expense. They would be very welcome to me here, as I don't get exercise enough."

H'ry to Wm, March 9, 1886. Age: 42

2012-02-08T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry acknowledges that his work sometimes benefitted from current events (in this case, a political sex scandal in which a member of Parliament was accused of engaging in threesomes, and having had encounters, as well, with the mother of one of the two women):

"A collection of episodes more hideous & abominable, in all their ramifications, it would be impossible to conceive, but I won't infect the pure air of Cambridge with them -- though I have profited by them much as a novelist."

It's worth noting that this doesn't mean that he borrowed the incident as plot -- but that whatever he suggested as a writer could trigger this particular store of knowledge in a reader's memory. In other words, he could use the reader's imagination, knowing in advance what his suggestions, in effect, would suggest.

A portrait of Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke,
the politician in question.
He maintained his innocence, and evidence
against him was lacking, but he
wound up losing his seat in Parliament
nonetheless.

Wm to H'ry, Oct. 23, 1885. Age: 43

2012-02-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

"The best advice I can give you as an author, and the last I shall now ever give you, is to imitate your own method in your shorter stories, and in [The] American & Roderick H[udson]. No better models are possible."

W^m was wrong here on every front -- H'ry's stories would continue to improve, and W^m would never stop giving him advice (which H'ry mostly ignored, even as he took his inspiration from W^m's psychology and philosophy).

H'ry to Wm, Oct. 9, 1885. Age: 42

2012-02-04T04:00:00.002-08:00

H'ry agreed in principle with W^m's criticism of The Bostonians that it spent too much time mulling characters' psychological progress, but felt the need to add a caveat:

"There is far too much of the sort of thing you animadvert upon -- though there is in the public mind at the same time a truly ignoble levity & puerility & aversion to any attempt on the part of a novelist to establish his people solidly."

The basic terms of this argument would continue for the rest of the brothers' lives.

H'ry to Wm, Oct. 9, 1885. Age: 42

2012-02-02T04:00:00.001-08:00

H'ry's only consolation for the performance of The Bostonians in book form is how it fared compared to his father's literary remains:

"I hoped much of it, & shall be disappointed -- having gotten no money for it I hoped for a little glory....But how can one murmur at one's success not being what one would like when one thinks of the pathetic, tragic ineffectualness of poor Father's lifelong effort, & the silence, & oblivion that seems to have swallowed it up?"

Wm to H'ry, Sept. 17, 1885. Age: 43

2012-01-31T04:00:00.001-08:00

The W^m-edited The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James was not selling well:

"But Houghton's July semiannual account shows only six copies sold in six months, and me in their debt for bindings. Alas! poor Father! It is sad."

Another cover of the book

H'ry to Wm, July 24, 1885. Age: 42

2012-01-29T04:00:00.001-08:00

H'ry replies to the death of infant Herman:

"Poor little mortal, with his small toddling promenade here below, one wonders whence he came & whither he is gone. But babies are soft memories & Alice will always throb to the vision of his little being."

Wm to H'ry, July 11, 1885. Age: 43

2012-01-27T04:00:00.000-08:00

On the death of infant Herman:

"We buried him three or four hours ago under the little pine tree at the corner of the ancestral lot, with a space between him and father's side, and our little family circle now seems remarkably contracted and bare."

W^m has been criticized for a somewhat cavalier attitude toward Herman's death. "Well, finis for little Humster," he wrote, "whom nobody will ever know but ourselves."

Both H'ry and W^m would wind up in the same plot (though there is some disagreement about what was done with Wm's body.)

Colm Toibin at the graveside.
If memory serves, Herman's grave is just off the
left edge of this photo.

Wm to H'ry, April 26, 1885. Age: 43

2012-01-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

The "business" referred to here is England and Russia squabbling over Afghanistan, and W^m's comments are interesting in light of the fact that we've now been there for more than a decade:

"Of course we're all intensely interested in the Russian business. But I have no comments to make upon it except the wish that if War does break out Russia may get her belly fully of it, -- enough to last her for the next 50 years."

In the future W^mwould have many comments to make upon current events, both to H'ry and publicly.

Wm to H'ry, April 1, 1885. Age: 43

2012-01-25T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry's angry letters about the reaction to The Bostonians took six weeks to get to W^m, who responded with only one line:

"Dear H,
Day before yest. came yours to me about the poor Miss Birdseye episode, concerning which I trust your troubled soul is already at rest."

They didn't discuss the book again until W^m read it.

H'ry to Wm, Feb. 15, 1885. Age: 41

2012-01-24T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry is still mad about Miss Peabody ("I believe the story will remain longer than poor Miss P.'s name or fame") but finds time to respond to a poor review of The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James, ed. by W^m:

"You don't tell me whether you had any rejoinder from Godkin to the letter you wrote about the review of your book. When I read the article it was absolutely impossible for me not to write him on my own account, & as I told him that the notice was 'contemptible, &, under the circumstances, barbarous,' he may see fit to terminate our acquaintance. Melancholy, after 20 years!"

E.L. Godkin founded The Nation

H'ry to Wm, Feb. 14, 1885. Age: 41

2012-01-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry is still fuming:

"The story is, I think, the best fiction I have written, & I expected you, if you said any thing about it, would intimate that you thought as much -- so that I find this charge on the subject of Miss P. a very cold douche indeed."

H'ry might have been smarting because he had asked to read a pair of reviews W^m had written of books on the women's suffrage movement in preparation for writing The Bostonians. W^m made no mention of how the book seems to be written in the spirit of his reviews.

H'ry to Wm, Feb. 14, 1885. Age: 41

2012-01-22T04:00:00.000-08:00

"Dear William,
I am quite appalled by your note of the 2^d, in which you assault me on the the subject of my having painted a 'portrait from life' of Miss Peabody."

W^m had told H'ry that a character from The Bostonians, Miss Birdseye, seemed to everyone in Boston to too closely resemble a local figure. H'ry first asserts that such an association is preposterous, then admits that a similarity had in fact occurred to him, but it wasn't intentional. Leon Edel later pointed out that Peabody and Birdseye mean the same thing.

Jessica Tandy played Miss Birdseye in
James Ivory's 1994 adaptation of
The Bostonians

H'ry to Wm, Jan. 2, 1885. Age: 41

2012-01-21T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry comments on The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James, which W^m had edited:

"But I can enjoy greatly the spirit, the feeling & manner of the whole thing...& feel really that poor Father, struggling so alone all his life, & so destitute of every other worldly or literary ambition, was yet a great writer."

Recently put back into print
by Nabu Press

H'ry to Wm, Dec. 4, 1884. Age: 41

2012-01-20T03:51:00.000-08:00

The brothers sometimes shared friends:

"The main purport of this is to say that I told Edmund Gosse...that I would write & ask you to go in & see him. I hate to claim your time for such a purpose; but take it easy & go only if you have a spare hour. He is a good fellow, & rather a good friend of mine: but I am under no particular obligations of hospitality to him. Call, only; don't feel obliged to invite him."

John Singer Sargent's portrait of
Sir Edmund William Gosse

END OF VOLUME ONE

Wm to H'ry, Oct. 18, 1884. Age: 42

2012-01-19T04:00:00.000-08:00

"College work has begun never for me with so little strain. Only six hours a week so far, and subjects I have been over before. I hope this will permit me to do something toward my psychology."

W^m has been at work on Principles of Psychology now for six years, and still has six to go.

H'ry to Wm, Oct. 5, 1884. Age: 41

2012-01-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

"It is called 'The Bostonians.' I shall be much abused for the title but it exactly & literally fits the story, & is much the best, simplest & most dignified I could have chosen."

H'ry was going to be abused for The Bostonians, but he didn't fully know why just yet.

The poster for the film adaptation
of The Bostonians
(Wallace Shawn is in the small print)

H'ry to Wm, May 26, 1884. Age: 41

2012-01-17T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry tries to explain why an odd woman named Carrie Cranch showed up in America and began pestering W^m about his brother:

"In Venice I took her two or three times to see some pictures -- because the Cranches came to see me, & they -- or her father -- appeared to be taking her nowhere. It is enough to cure one in future of all meddling -- or at least idle -- good-nature!...I am very sorry her madness takes such an unhappy form; but it is not a thing about which I can do anything. I do not consider myself obliged to write to Cranch, in the least, or to be anything but ignorant & irresponsible....I hope she may die -- it will be the best thing for her. But she probably won't. Meanwhile I am very sorry you should be oppressed with her."

Transcendentalist and poet,
Christopher Cranch,
father of Carrie Cranch

H'ry to Wm, May 26, 1874. Age: 41

2012-01-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

Nearly a month later than yesterday's quote, but H'ry's not done weighing in on the subject of W^m's son's name:

"If I had a child I would call him (very probably) Roland! 'Roland James' is a very good name. If this doesn't suit you -- nor Godfrey, nor Gautier, nor any name of chivalry, take something out of Shakespeare: a capital source to name a child from: Sebastian, Prosper, Valentine (I like Valentine though not sure I'd give it;) Adrian, Lancelot, Bernard, Justin, Benedick, or Benedict, Bertram, Conrad, Felix, Leonard, &."

Alas, Herman James died the following year.

H'ry to Wm, March 26, 1884. Age: 40

2012-01-15T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry, commenting on the process of name W^m's newest son, who would be named Herman:

"Hermann James strikes me as a very pretty name...I repeat, too, that to give a child the surname of a strange family whom he has had no contact with save the temporary relation of his progenitors to one member of it, is to saddle him with an awkward element of which he may easily feel the inanity in future years..."

H'ry was certainly thinking of his father's decision in naming brother Wilky -- Garth Wilkinson James -- who had only recently died tragically and in relative penury.

H'ry to Wm, March 22, 1884. Age: 40

2012-01-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

"Yesterday comes the letter from you about J[ohn]. La Farge's portrait of me, with your P.S. As regards the portrait, I regret that 'the family' should n't possess it -- but it can't be helped."

In H'ry's next letter, he admits he was unwilling to spend £60 to acquire it. "I don't think it very valuable," he wrote.

The portrait in question

H'ry to Wm., Feb. 20, 1884. Age: 40

2012-01-13T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry is back in Europe, once again reporting on the literati:

"I have also spent an evening with A. Daudet...[he] has a remarkable personal charm & is as beautiful as the day."

Daudet was also a pessimist, however, and confided to H'ry that he worried, whenever he left home, that his wife and children would die while he was out.

Alphonse Daudet

Wm to H'ry, Feb. 6, 1883. Age: 41

2012-01-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

"How your letter writing must destroy you. Don't feel any call to write me when inconvenient."

Two-and-a-half weeks later, W^m noted that for the last three or four weeks he had done "nothing literally nothing, but write letters, day after day."

A recently-unearthed postcard from Wm
to Dr. G.V.N. Dearborn, postmarked 1900

H'ry to Wm, Jan. 25, 1883. Age: 40

2012-01-11T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry's reply to W^m's observation that the English were much more interesting than England:

"[Your thoughts] upon England and the English...put into much more vigorous form than I have ever been able to give them, the thoughts and impressions which have again and again arisen within me during all these years that I have lived in London, and which have finally landed on me in the consciousness that if it is good to have one foot in England, it is still better, or at least as good, to have the other out of it."

London Bridge
John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1883

London Picture Gallery, 1883

Wm to H'ry, Jan. 23, 1883. Age: 41

2012-01-10T03:24:00.000-08:00

W^m is still complaining about whether he will be able to work in London while the rest of the family is gathered to reconcile Henry Sr.'s will:

"Your working power is about three times mine; & what is lost this year on my psychology can perhaps never, or not for 8 years to come, be made up."

His only consolation was that he was right -- Principles of Psychology appeared eight years later.

Wm to H'ry, Jan. 23, 1883. Age: 41

2012-01-09T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m strikes a Pragmatic tone in reply to his family's entreaties that he stay in London and work on Principles of Psychology rather than come home to help with the aftermath of Henry Sr.'s death:

"The horror you seem to feel at Cambridge is something with which I have no sympathy, preferring it as I do to any place in the known world....The truth is, we each of us speak from the point of view of his own work; the place where a man's work is best done seems & ought to seem the place of places to him."

W^m seems to have forgotten the mountains of Switzerland...

A sketch of Cambridge
William Trost Richards, 1886

Wm to H'ry, Jan. 9, 1883. Age: 40

2012-01-08T01:54:00.000-08:00

After Henry Sr. died, H'ry traveled to Milwaukee to assess the conditions of one of the younger brothers, Wilky, as part of the process of splitting their father's will. W^m's pre-trip advice:

"You'll find Wilky's brothers in a poor lot, & Carry [Wilky's wife] very shy, in a queer way. Be as American & homely as you can in your ways, & it will go off best."

There's a wry humor to the suggestion that H'ry "be American." That aside, W^m often suggested characters or plots for H'ry, which he mostly ignored.

Wilky James fought in the Civil War.
He's the middle figure.

A drawing of Wilky, recovering from Civil War injuries,
by W^m.

Wm to H'ry, Jan. 9, 1883. Age: 40

2012-01-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m does not appreciate a careful air in writing (and seems to anticipate the modern undergraduate approach to prose):

"Then the determination on the part of all who write now to do it as amateurs, & never use the airs & language of a professional, to be first of all a layman & a gentleman, & to pretend that your ideas came to you accidentally as it were, & are things you care nothing about. As I said, it makes one impatient at times..."

Wm to H'ry, Jan. 9, 1883. Age: 40

2012-01-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

The brothers have sometimes been said to be fans of the Pre-Raphaelites, but W^m has only tough words for a Rossetti exhibition in London:

"You ought to have seen the Rossetti exhibition, -- the work of a boarding school girl, no color, no drawing, no cleverness of any sort, nothing but feebleness incarnate, & a sort of refined intention of an extremely narrow sort, with no technical power to carry it out."

Proserpine
Dante Gabirel Rossetti, 1874

H'ry to Wm, Dec. 26, 1882. Age: 39

2012-01-04T23:13:00.000-08:00

W^m asked H'ry twice to relate in detail the scene of his father's death. H'ry did:

"He simply after the 'improvement' of which we were written before I sailed, had a sudden relapse -- a series of swoons -- after which he took to his bed not to rise again. He had no visible malady -- strange as it may seem. The 'softening of the brain' was simply a gradua refusal of food, because he wished to die."

H'ry read aloud the last letter W^m wrote to his father -- which arrived too late -- at his graveside. W^m's relationship with his father was always testy, but he wrote to his wife that the act of writing The Varieties of Religious Experience was an attempt to understand religion in his father's sense of things.

Henry, Sr., earlier in life

Wm to H'ry, Dec. 20, 1882. Age: 40

2012-01-04T04:00:00.000-08:00

"All is over! as I learn by the Standard this P.M. Poor Father! It saddens me more, much more than I expected."

W^m learned of his father's death from the newspaper. He's in London now, though H'ry has already returned to the United States, and the family encouraged Wm to stay in England. He was told his father was "decidedly recovering." He wasn't.

Henry James, Sr.
Frank Duveneck, 1881
(A few letters later, H'ry wrote "I write this
in the parlour, late in the evening...Duveneck's picture,
which is opposite to me, grows unexpectedly in value."

Wm to H'ry, Oct. 16, 1882. Age: 40

2012-01-03T01:08:00.000-08:00

"As my mind begins to vibrate in unison with the world of art, [Florence] takes the shape of an immensely rich and large city, & lures me on considerably. I have had some ideas, of which an article might possibly be made, relatively to the evolution of schools of painting, and Florence would help me out."

W^m, back in Europe once again -- he's writing from Venice -- wanted to apply Darwin to art history. He never wrote the article, perhaps because he was already late with Principles of Psychology, and wouldn't finish it for another eight years.

The Ghetto of Florence
Telemanco Signorini, 1882

H'ry to Wm, Nov. 27, 1880. Age: 37

2012-01-02T02:17:00.000-08:00

Same train of thought as yesterday, H'ry explains why the writing of The Portrait of a Lady is going so well:

"The other book increases, I think, in merit & interest as it goes on, and being told in a more spacious, expansive way than its predecessors, is inevitably more human, more sociable. It was the constant effort at condensation (which you used always to drum into my head -- àpropos of Mérimée &c -- when I was young and you bullied me,) that has deprived my former things of these qualities."

Nicole Kidman as Isabel Archer

H'ry to Wm, Nov. 27, 1880. Age: 37

2012-01-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

"The young man in Washington Square is not a portrait -- he is sketched from the outside merely....The only good thing in the story is the girl."

It was characteristic of H'ry both to describe his books in terms of painting, and to prefer his female characters to his male figures.

Library of the Reform Club,
the return address of this letter.

H'ry to Wm, Nov. 13, 1880. Age: 37

2011-12-31T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry, after W^m returned from Switzerland:

"I have not written to you partly because the tone of your letter [not preserved] was rather low & I didn't know in what fashion to respond. You appear not to have been exhilarated on your return by renewed contact with American life, or by the aspect of the American individual, & I am obviously not in a situation to reassure you on those points."

Wm to H'ry, Aug. 2, 1880. Age: 38

2011-12-30T03:54:00.000-08:00

W^m's first preserved letter in four years is excited about time spent traveling in Switzerland:

"I am getting on splendidly. Have walked from Grindelvald over the Scheideck, Grimsel & Furka, and took stage this a.m. from Andermatt and a most unforgettable day in the Banquette through the Vorder Rhein Thal....The effect of these mountains on body and soul is indescribable. My enjoyment of them is only embittered bu the tho't of their being so unhandy to Cambridge."

Andermatt

Grimsel

H'ry to Wm, Dec. 16, 1897. Age: 36

2011-12-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

W^m, even early in their lives, thought the "matter" of H'ry's fictions to be too light. H'ry replies:

"Only a line to acknowledge your note...contining strictures on Confidence &c. The latter were I think just (as regards the lightness of the tale)....I have got (heaven knows!) plenty of gravity within me, & I don't know why I can't put it more into the things I write."

H'ry to Wm, June 15, 1879. Age: 36

2011-12-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

Families just never understand:

"Mother expresses in her last night's letter the hope that I have derived much gold from the large sale (upwards of 20000 copies) of my two little Harper stories. I am sorry to say I have done nothing of the sort. Having in advance no prevision of their success I made a very poor bargain. The Episode I sold outright (copyright & all!) for a very moderate sum of ready money -- so I have had no percentage of its sale! For Daisy Miller I have rec'd. simply the usual 10% -- which, as it sells for twenty cents, brings me but 2 cents a copy."

20,000 x .02 = $400

Cybil Shepherd as Daisy Miller, 1974

H'ry to Wm, June 15, 1879. Age: 36

2011-12-27T02:12:00.000-08:00

H'ry congratulates W^m on his new son, named Henry:

"I delight in the image, indistinctly as I yet perceive it, of your infantine Henry & cordially hope he will be a fund of comfort & entertainment for you. He will be for many a day the flower of Quincy St. & I hope he will bloom with dazzling brilliancy."

Not too many years later, W^m described the consciousness of an infant as a "blooming, buzzing confusion."

H'ry to Wm, March 4, 1879. Age: 35

2011-12-26T02:36:00.000-08:00

H'ry's dizzyingly busy writing life is now in full swing:

"I have just lately answered in the affirmative an appeal of Scribner's for a serial tale about 1/3 longer than the Europeans. I am immediately getting to work upon it, & having a good idea in my head, I shall put it forward rapidly. They apparently stand ready to publish as rapidly. I was just getting underway with my little book upon Hawthorne when Scribner's proposal came; & as there was no imperative hurry with the Hawthorne, I have put it off for two or three months."

Both books were finished within eight months.

H'ry to Wm, July 23, 1878. Age: 35

2011-12-25T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry congratulates W^m on a book contract:

"Bravo also for the Holt psychology & its coincidence with your labors. May it go along triumphantly."

W^m was recruited by Henry Holt to write a short textbook. Principles of Psychology took him twelve years to complete (Holt was very patient), and he turned in more than a thousand pages, published in two volumes.

Henry Holt
(looking patient even here)

H'ry to Wm, July 15, 1878. Age: 35

2011-12-24T04:00:00.000-08:00

Wishing W^m a good honeymoon, H'ry gets a bit racy...

"Let me...[give] you, in the most tender words that my clumsy pen can shape, a tender bridal benediction. I am very glad indeed to hear that you have ceased to find occasion to delay, & that you were to repair to the happy Adirondacks under hymeneal influences....May you keep along at a pace of steady felicity."

They would have five children in about a decade (one died in infancy).

No wedding pictures of W^m & Alice

H'ry to Wm, May 29, 1878. Age 35

2011-12-23T01:32:00.000-08:00

W^m had felt the need to ask for H'ry's blessing to get married, after a notably difficult courtship. H'ry and "Miss Gibbens" were destined to become great friends:

"You have my blessing indeed, & Miss Gibbens also; or rather Miss Gibbens particularly, as she will need it most."

Alice Howe Gibbens, at 16

Alice Howe Gibbens, in the mid-1870s

H'ry to Wm, May 1, 1878. Age: 35

2011-12-21T22:03:00.000-08:00

"For myself...it has long been my most earnest & definite intention to commence at playwrighting as soon as I can. This will now be soon, & then I shall astound the world!"

It was another thirteen years before H'ry's first crack at the theatre. The world far less than astounded. Stay tuned.

H'ry to Wm, May 1, 1878. Age: 35

2011-12-21T04:00:00.000-08:00

"It is a great loss to have one's person in one country & one's glory in another, especially when there are lovely young women in the case."

H'ry -- who hid nothing from Wm -- seems intent to upend the usual Jamesian thought from queer theory. The same letter speaks of H'ry spending time in Ventnor and Bonchurch with six young women.

Views of Ventnor and Bonchurch

H'ry to Wm, May 1, 1878. Age: 35

2011-12-20T04:00:00.000-08:00

The letters are a bit more sporadic in this period, but H'ry is still thinking of writing travel pieces. The early letters are really rough drafts of essays; now H'ry tries to become economical with his "impressions":

"The Isle of Wight is charming; but I shall probably 'do' my impressions of it and of the Wilkinsonian country, in an article; so I won't expatiate here."

He never wrote an article on the Isle of Wight.

The Isle of Wight, Berthe Morisot, 1875

H'ry to Wm, Jan. 28, 1878. Age: 34

2011-12-19T02:22:00.000-08:00

"I am, as you suppose, weary of writing articles about places, & mere potboilers of all kinds; but shall probably, after the next six months, be able to forswear it altogether, & give myself up seriously to 'creative' writing."

It's interest to consider on why H'ry felt creative needed scare quotes. Alas, he never did give up writing about places, but the manner in which he did so changed dramatically.

H'ry to Wm, July 10, 1877. Age: 34

2011-12-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry sounds, strangely, like he might prefer something like an academic post:

"A salaried post enabling me to do a small amount of 1st class work at leisure, & remit this mercenary scribbling, has long been my delightful dream."

H'ry to Wm, June 28, 1877. Age: 34

2011-12-17T04:00:00.000-08:00

A long letter from H'ry, full of tidbits of London society ("Behold all the base gossip I can invent") includes an interesting tidbit:

"I got yesterday a note from Lord Houghton, who had had a fall from his horse in the Park & was slightly crippled, asking me to come in (he lives near) & sit with him. I of course responded. He is a queer, but most kind & human old fellow, & is getting better"

After his death in 1885, Lord Houghton was discovered to have a vast library of erotic literature, now held by the British Library.

Lord Houghton

H'ry to Wm, April 19, 1877. Age: 34

2011-12-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

Shortly after H'ry's thirty-fourth birthday:

"In the long run, I do very well -- though sometimes discouraged (even greatly) by my small powers of head work -- by the damnable nausea (as I call it for want of a better word) that continuous reading & writing bring on."

H'ry to Wm, Feb. 28, 1877. Age: 33

2011-12-15T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry, still reveling in the Athenæum Club:

"The Athenæum is a place it takes 16 years for a Briton to become a member of!...I often take an afternoon nap beside H[erbert]. S[pencer]. at the Athenæum, & feel as if I were robbing you of the privilege."

W^m was a fan of Spencer's early in life, but it would be his psychology and philosophy of mind that he would most attempt to upend with his own work.

Herbert Spencer

H'ry to Wm, Feb. 9, 1877. Age: 33

2011-12-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry was put on the honorary member list of the Athenæum Club, Pall Mall, London:

"This is not meant to be a letter, & I must not prolong it, as I have a head weary with letter-writing, & other writing, at which I have been busy all morning. London goes on very well, as the headpiece of my note paper will show you."

In a later letter, H'ry called the Club "a little heaven here below."

The Club in 1830

Today

One of the libraries

H'ry to Wm, Oct. 23, 1876. Age: 33

2011-12-13T04:00:00.000-08:00

Picking up from yesterday, the brothers arrive at a Hitchcockian moment:

"As he says it would make a parcel as large as a hat, I suppose that, should I get it, the carriage to America would make it cost as much as a cranium would cost you there."

H'ry is weighing the plusses and minuses of buying an entire decapitated head and sending it to W^m so W^m can finally have his precious sphenoid bone. W^m had something of a preoccupation with heads:

A cadaver drawing from W^m's time
studying anatomy in Germany.

H'ry to Wm, Oct. 13, 1876. Age: 33

2011-12-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

"If you wish it I will instantly purchase & send one. I am very sorry not to find your old bone; but I will go over to that region tomorrow a.m. & try again at some other place. I did not go further to day for good reason."

W^m had asked H'ry to obtain a perfect sphenoid bone, the butterfly-shaped bone that sits behind your face. H'ry couldn't find one, but he did find someone who would sell him a whole head, which H'ry offered to send along. His "good reason" probably has something to do with his bowels.

The sphenoid bone

H'ry to Wm, July 29, 1876. Age: 33

2011-12-11T09:55:00.000-08:00

H'ry responds to the death of an author:

"All desire is dead within me to produce something on George Sand; though perhaps I shall, all the same, mercenarily & mechanically -- though only if I am forced."

"George Sand" appeared in the July, 1877, number of The Galaxy.

Felix Nadar's portrait of Sand

H'ry to Wm, July 29, 1876. Age: 33

2011-12-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry's reply to W^m's admonition to avoid French phrases in his prose:

"Your remarks on my French tricks in my letters are doubtless most just, & shall be heeded. But it's an odd thing that such tricks should grow at a time when my last layer of resistance to a long-encroaching weariness & satiety with the French mind & its utterance has fallen from me like a garment. I have done with 'em, forever, & am turning English all over."

Needless to say, H'ry was not done with 'em forever, but a reduction in French affectation is palpable in the letters.

Wm to H'ry, July 5, 1876. Age: 34

2011-12-09T04:00:00.000-08:00

"(Excuse the uncouthness of my epistolary style, I find I don't outgrow it.)"

Many years later, after W^m died, H'ry was given the opportunity to edit W^m's letters for clarity and style. He decided to leave them as they stood.

No letter survives from W^m for another four years.

An unfortunately
small portrait of W^m
at about this time.

Wm to H'ry, July 5, 1876. Age: 34

2011-12-08T04:00:00.000-08:00

It's not lost on W^m that H'ry sometimes used him as a subject:

"Your second installment of the American is prime. The morbid little clergyman is worthy of Ivan Sergeitch [Turgenev]. I was not a little amused to find some of my own attributes in him -- I think you found my 'moral reaction' excessive when I was abroad."

The American was serialized in 1876-77, and published in book form in 1877.

Wm to H'ry, July 5, 1876. Age: 34

2011-12-07T03:57:00.000-08:00

W^m advises H'ry to avoid a too-refined style. Notably, H'ry's first attempt at a novel, serialized in 1871, five years before this letter (and not published as a book until 1878), was titled Watch and Ward.

"Keep watch and ward lest in your style you become too Parisian and lose your hold on the pulse of the great american public to which after all you mist pander for support....It will be a good thing for you to resolve never to use the word 'supreme,' and to get great care not to use 'delicate' in the french sense of a 'cultured & fastidious' person."

Wm to H'ry, July 5, 1876. Age: 34

2011-12-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m's last surviving letter for a four-year stretch:

"There is a strange naked and lonely poetry about clean pure little Nantucket under its tender sky. The settlement at Martha's vineyard, 'oak bluffs' is probably the most audacious paradise of 'caddish'ness which has ever flaunted itself in the light of day."

Oak Bluffs Wharf

Eastman Johnson, "Husking Bee Nantucket," 1876

H'ry to Wm, July 4, 1876. Age: 33

2011-12-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

"I have of late had some queer observations of Americans -- one young woman, e.g. (quite unknown to me, & knowing me only by R[oderick]. H[udson].) calling on me to interpose in a duel about to be fought on her behalf between an American & an Englishman. But while she was with me they had had it out with fisticuffs."

Perhaps the first instance when H'ry encountered enthusiastic fans who hoped that the correlation between his work and reality was more direct than was really the case.

Wm to H'ry, June 3, 1876. Age: 34

2011-12-04T04:00:00.000-08:00

"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 ever seem to get over being tickled at the discovery that they have the faculty, hence the tedious iteration and restlessness of G. Eliots commentary on life."

W^m is here sure to ruffle feathers. H'ry agreed that this was a problem with Daniel Deronda, but, notably, the tendency to go on and on with philosophy and pyschological commentaries is what would come to annoy W^m most about H'ry's work -- and it was W^m who could not "let it rest."

Another of Eliot. (She would die four years later.)

Wm to H'ry, June 3, 1876. Age: 34

2011-12-03T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m is jealous that H'ry has been able to spend so much time with Turgenev:

"Give my best love to Ivan....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."

In coming years, H'ry and W^m would come to realize that they both did not mean the same thing by "vulgar."

Wm to H'ry, June 3, 1876. Age: 34

2011-12-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

Wm is getting some rest in Newport after a long teaching year. He's here speaking metaphorically, but he'd later dabble with a variety of substances so as to experience altered states of consciousness (like this one):

"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."

An image from Newport, 1876
Artist Unknown

H'ry to Wm, April 25, 1876. Age 33

2011-12-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry, already beginning to grow tired of French salon life (antiquated even then):

"I can fancy that if one were much in society here it would often be very exasperating. Indeed its mere physiognomy which one recognises, is often annoying."

Charles X Distributing Awards to Artists Exhibiting at the Salon of 1824 at the Louvre
Heim, Francois-Joseph
1827

H'ry to Wm, April 25, 1876. Age 33

2011-11-30T04:00:00.000-08:00

Sargent may have flattered her, but I have to disagree with H'ry here (he's continuing to describe the women of Paris who have salons):

"The other is a certain Miss Reubell, who has lived here always, is 27 or 28 years old & extremely ugly, but with something very frank, intelligent & agreeable about her. If I wanted to desire to marry an ugly Parisian-American, with money & toutes élégances...Miss R. would be a very good objective."

John Singer Sargent's portrait
of Henrietta Reubell

H'ry to Wm, March 14, 1876. Age: 33

2011-11-29T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry was more than willing to make himself available for salon company:

"I have found as yet poor old M^me Mohl more remunerative....Imagine a little old woman of ninety with her grey hair in her eyes, precisely like a Skye terrier, a grotesque cap & a shabby black dress....She was very kind & friendly with me, & I shall have no trouble in seeing her as often as I wish Unfortunately she appears somewhat to have lost her memory."

M^me Mohl lived another seven years.

Mary Clarke Mohl in her younger years

H'ry to Wm, March 14, 1876. Age: 33

2011-11-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry loved to gossip:

"I have seen something of late of one Baron Holstein, German secretaire d'ambassade -- one of the most acute & intelligent men I have ever met. We occasionally dine together -- he being the only detached male that I know. (He is by the way the gentleman whose attentions to Mrs. Sumner -- he was then secretary in Washington -- were the prime cause of the explosion of the Hon Charles, & the consequent separation.)"

Baron Friedrich von Holstein in 1906

H'ry to Wm, Feb. 8, 1876. Age: 33

2011-11-27T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry, now hobnobbing with Turgenev, too:

"He is an amour d'homme. He talked more about his own writings &c than before, & said he had never invented anything or any one. Every thing in his stories comes from some figure he has seen -- tho' often the figure from whom the story has started may turn out to be secondary figure."

A portrait of Turgenev from 1872, four years earlier.

H'ry to Wm, Feb. 8, 1876. Age: 33

2011-11-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry's success was beginning to earn him passage into literary circles. He reports to W^m on meeting Ernest Renan:

"I dined awhile since at the Laugels with Renan & his wife....Renan is hideous and charming -- more hideous even than his photos. and more charming even than his writing."

Ernest Renan

Wm to H'ry, Jan. 1, 1876. Age: 33

2011-11-25T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m offers more details on how Roderick Hudson is going over:

"Professor F.[rancis] J.[ames] Child has been reading it aloud to his wife & speaks with great enthusiasm of it. He says however that you misuse your shalls & wills &c, and use the word sympathetic too often."

Apparently, Child -- a renowned Harvard English professor -- had not yet been told that H'ry was The Master.

Francis James Child

Wm to H'ry, Dec. 12, 1875. Age: 33

2011-11-24T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m on Charles Baudelaire:

"B.[audelaire] is really in his fleurs du mal original & in a certain sense elevated, & on the whole I can bear no rancor against him, although at times he writes like a person half awake and groping for words. The most amusing thing about it all is the impression one gets of the innocence of a generation in wh. the fleurs du mal should have made a scandal."

Felix Nadar's photograph of Baudelaire

Wm to H'ry, Dec. 12, 1875. Age: 33

2011-11-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry took particular care to ask W^m what he thought of the end of Roderick Hudson when it appeared. W^m's reply:

"Everyone praises the end, including myself....In looking through the volume it seems even better than it did, but I must tell you that I am struck again unfavorably by the tendency of the personages to reflect on themselves and give an acute scientific introspective classification of their own natures & states of mind....Take warning once more!"

Roderick Hudson was first serialized in the Atlantic Monthly. The first installment was printed in the January, 1875, issue, which also included Longfellow, Robert Owen, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the first installment of Twain's Life on the Mississippi.

Wm to H'ry, Dec. 12, 1875. Age: 33

2011-11-22T04:00:00.000-08:00

"I confess I like him very much in spite of all his peculiarities, for he is a man of genius, and there's always something in that to compel one's sympathy."

W^m's reply to H'ry's time spent with Charles Sanders Peirce. W^m was in the process of forming a general theory about the importance of geniuses.

Another of Peirce

H'ry to Wm, Dec. 3, 1875. Age: 32

2011-11-21T04:00:00.000-08:00

No letters for more than a year -- H'ry had returned to America for a time. Now he is back in Paris, seeing a variety of people:

"Also Chas Peirce, who wears beautiful clothes &c. He is busy swinging pendulums at the Observatory & thinks himself indifferently treated by the Paris scientists. We meet every two or three days to dine together; but tho' we get on very well, our sympathy is economical, rather than intellectual."

W^m replied that he figured Peirce would be an "uncomfortable bedfellow, thorny and spinous." Nevertheless, W^m would later become Peirce's benefactor, and would eventually borrow the skeleton of Pragmatism from him (though Peirce would claim W^m did it violence). H'ry would later say that Perice "has too little social talent."

Charles Sanders Peirce as a young man
(He was three years older than H'ry)

Wm to H'ry, July 26, 1874. Age: 32

2011-11-20T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m, reporting from Cambridge, seems to contradict some of the usual thinking about H'ry:

"At the Pool I just escaped falling in love with Miss Sally Russell of the smile. 5 minutes longer and nothing wd. have been left of me to tell the tale. She is so still and has such an unspeakable decency in all her ways, her smile is so ravishing, and her reputation for erudition so vast, that your imagination can, and does, work furiously upon her. You say such are the only ones that interest you. Come & try her!"

Alas, I could find no photograph of "Miss Sally Russell of the smile."

H'ry to Wm, July 6, 1874. Age 32

2011-11-19T04:00:00.000-08:00

Conditions are much better at Baden Baden:

"I scribble in the morning, walk in the woods in the afternoon & sit listening to the music on the promenade & eating an ice in the evening."

A wood engraving of Baden-Baden by G. Heuer, c. 1885

H'ry to Wm., June 13, 1874. Age: 32

2011-11-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

"A small closet 5 feet square isn't favorable to literary labor, but I shall give myself a chance to get used to it, & doubtless succeed."

H'ry bravely confronts challenging working conditions.

His study at Lamb House, a quarter-century later.

H'ry to Wm, May 3, 1874. Age: 32

2011-11-17T04:00:00.000-08:00

H'ry, writing from Florence, takes on a particularly impressionistic feel:

"The Piazza di Sta Maria Novella, before my windows is a wide glittering flood, with here and there two legs picking their steps beneath and umbrella."

Maurice Predergast, Umbrellas in the Rain, 1899

Wm to H'ry, April 18, 1874. Age: 32

2011-11-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

Ten months since yesterday's letter -- the brothers spent a few months together in Europe. Back home, always concerned for H'ry's well-being, W^m lays out the problem of the writing life:

"This is your dilemma: The congeniality of europe... + the difficulty of making an entire living out of original writing, and its abnormality as a matter of mental hygiene...You see to live by the pen is what very few people can do unless they 'prostitute' themselves like ____."

It's not clear whether H'ry would have known who was suggested by "____."

H'ry to Wm, Aug. 5, 1873. Age: 30

2011-11-15T04:00:00.001-08:00

"But what's the good of writing except imaginatively."

H'ry states the matter quickly and completely.

H'ry to Wm, June 18, 1873. Age: 30

2011-11-14T04:00:00.001-08:00

"I'm sorry you didn't like my Galaxy tale, which I haven't seen. Has it been sent? I hoped it was sufficiently pleasing. But one can't know."

H'ry is referring to "The Sweetheart of M. Briseux," which W^m claimed he read "without, I must say the delight I have so often got from your things." He may have been miffed at the fact that the story seems to be based on some of his own inner turmoil.

A copy of The Galaxy, 1868

Wm to H'ry, May 25, 1873. Age: 31

2011-11-13T04:00:00.001-08:00

W^m joins the ranks of academics overwhelmed by teaching duties:

"The college work [is]...a draw back on the rate of my wished for improvement. I get utterly collapsed & exhausted with the experimental preparations, and the regular triweekly recurrence of the feverish sort of erethism in which the lecture or recitation hour leaves me..."

Harvard Graduating Class, 1873
(Okay, okay...MIT was as close as I could get.)

H'ry to Wm, May 19, 1873. Age: 30

2011-11-12T04:00:00.001-08:00

Long before critics decided H'ry's work came in three different stages (early James, late James, etc.), he knew he was changing as a writer:

"The keen love & observation of the picturesque is ebbing away from me as I grow older, & I doubt whether a year or two hence I shall have it in me to describe houses and mountains, or even cathedrals & pictures. I don't know whether I shall do anything better, but I shall have spoiled for this....Mysterious & incontrollable (even to one's self) is the growth of one's mind."

H'ry to Wm, May 19, 1893. Age: 30

2011-11-11T04:00:00.001-08:00

"Whoever he is, he is very silly."

H'ry's erudite response to an anonymous critic of a piece he had written on Théophile Gautier. The critic was never identified.

Gautier, 1869

Wm to H'ry, May 11, 1973. Age: 31

2011-11-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m's life is often thought of as divided into categories -- the psychological phase, the philosophical phase, and so on. The letters tend to reveal that he was always thinking of everything at once:

"I believe I told you in my last that I had determined to stick to psychology or die. I have changed my mind....the fact is, I'm not a strong enough man to choose the other and nobler lot in life, but I can in a less penetrating way work out a philosophy in the midst of the other duties."

He had switched his attention to biology for a time, but shortly returned to psychology.

H'ry to Wm, April 9, 1873. Age: 29

2011-11-09T04:00:00.000-08:00

"I feel, myself, that I constantly improve, & I have only now to strive & to let myself go to prosper & improve indefinitely. So I think!"

H'ry's sense of his own writing career turned out much better than his plan for physical exercise.

H'ry, 1882
(There are virtually no photographs
of H'ry at about this age...)

Wm to H'ry, April 6, 1873. Age: 31

2011-11-08T04:00:00.000-08:00

W^m makes a brave decision in response to an offer from the president of Harvard, given the fact that he would not embark on Principles of Psychology for another six years, and that it would take him twelve years to complete it:

"Eliot offered me the other day the whole department (i.e. this physiology and...anatomy) for next year. But I told him I had resolved to fight it out on the line of mental science, & with such arrears of lost time behind me & such curtailed powers of work now, could not afford to make such an expedition into anatomy."

Charles Eliot, credited with turning
Harvard into what we now think of
as Harvard, had been selected as
the school's president
in 1869.

Wm to H'ry, April 6, 1873. Age: 31

2011-11-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

"My dear Harry, I take up pen once more after this long interval to converse with my in many respects twin bro."

W^m has not written in seven weeks. Despite his many criticisms of H'ry's work, the correspondence grows -- for the most part -- fonder and fonder through the brothers' lives.

They never looked much like "twin bros."