William James: A Belated Acknowledgment

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

LONG, oh, very long, ago, — as long ago as when I was eight years old, — my family betook itself for a part of the summer to a certain modest hotel on Cape Ann. (It was the only hotel which that stretch of the Cape then boasted, and it stood in the midst of a green and rocky wilderness. Ah, me!) I was the eldest child and, unlike my my small brother and sister, I ‘ came to the table.’ My instructions were, not to speak there unless I was spoken to — a really distressing prohibition for a little girl ‘as sociable as Montaigne,’whose sociability was rarely suppressed at home. And alas! nobody did speak to me for days. We sat, my mother and I (my father came down only for the Sundays), at the side of the long board; beyond her, a line of people with some of whom she chatted pleasantly through breakfast, dinner, and supper; but beyond unlucky little me, only a line of empty chairs. Chairs empty, at least, until, one never-to-be-forgotten midday, there slipped into the one next me a being who, at my first glance, made upon me an indelible impression.

He looked like no one I had ever seen before; he looked, though I did n’t know that was it, foreign. He was very slender, his clothes were of an entrancing, unfamiliar cut, he had a little pointed beard, he wore a soft, flowing, blue-and-green-plaid necktie, its bows and ends outside his waistcoat. He had — child as I was, I instantly felt it — an ‘air.’ Here indeed was excitement! Oh, if he would only speak to me! — But at first he only ate his dinner — I need hardly say that in that time and place the midday meal was dinner. Then, all at once, my attention was distracted even from him by a thrilling discovery. I was eating green corn and I had just finished my ear. ‘ Why! ’ — I lifted up my voice, rules and regulations thrown to the winds — ‘Why! I’ve found out something. Every ear of corn has an even number of rows.’

An admonitory glance from my mother. But I could not hold my peace. ‘ But it’s so! It must be. I always butter two at a time, and I never have any left over.’

‘Well, well, dear, never mind.’ My mother was only half attending. ‘We don’t want to hear about it now.’

’But is n’t it so? Is n’t it?’

‘Oh. I don’t know, dear: I don’t believe it is. At any rate, mother wants you to be quiet now. Wait till after dinner.’

Then — oh, then — a champion rode into the lists! Up spoke my wonderful neighbor.

‘Excuse me, madam, but the little girl is right. Every ear of corn has an even number of rows.’

O joy, O rapture, O triumph beyond compare!

’Dear me! ’ My mother changed her tune. ‘Has it really? How interesting!’

And thereupon ensued a conversation in which, thanks to my new friend, — a friend I felt him to be, even then, — I was not only included but ‘ featured.’

After dinner word went round that the new arrival was Mr. William James, recently returned from Paris and now an instructor at Harvard.

Mr. James and I established forthwith an intimacy — at least, it felt like intimacy to me — which lasted as long as he stayed. How long that was, I don’t know. The period bulks so largely in my memory that it seems as if it might have been months; but I dare say it was no more than a fortnight or so. At all events, it ‘made’ my summer.

Not only at table did my friend and I converse. The beach, the cranberry marsh, a certain woodsy nook with a hammock in it: all these I remember as the scenes of confabulation with him. There must have been some understanding between him and my mother about it all. Otherwise I should never have been permitted so to ‘tag’ him. ‘Don’t let my little girl annoy you, Mr. James.’ — ‘Oh, she does n’t annoy me at all.’ I like to think that that was the way of it. Possibly he went so far as to say, ‘She interests me,’ or even, ‘Ienjoy her.’ At any rate, it does me good to think he did and so I am going to think so. That is pragmatism, is n’t it?

It was at table, though, that the pragmatist-to-be most egged me on to chatter. (And, as will have been apparent, egging on was the last thing I required.) I suspect this was partly to tease my mother. Most likely the two were having their fun over my head. Anyhow, I was incited to some startling deliverances. Once, apropos of I forget what, Mr. James asked me, quite gravely, how many languages I spoke. My reply came without a moment’s hesitation: ‘Three.’

On which my mother told me not to talk nonsense. But Mr. James ignored her.

‘Three, eh? Dear me, that’s a good many for a little girl. What are they?’

‘English, French, and hog-Latin.’ Had I not had, that very spring, halfa-dozen French lessons out of a little yellow primer? And as for hog-Latin, the reader must surely remember ‘ whatgery that-gery was-gery.’

‘ Well,’ said my friend, ‘ that certainly seems to be three. And so you speak French. Could you speak a little for me? Perhaps you know some French poetry.’

‘I do.’

‘Won’t you say some?’

I promptly obliged with a recitation. How must my accent have struck upon the ear of the quondam dweller in Paris!

I did not deem it necessary to mention that these lines comprised my entire repertoire of French ‘poetry.’

Our best, our most penetrating talks, however, came off in solitude à deux. I recall one in particular. Mr. James is established in the hammock under the pines; I sit on the ground — at his feet literally as well as metaphorically. Across his knees lies a thin piece of board, and on it the gruesome remains of a frog. (He got the frog out of the cranberry-marsh. I was going along the path at the edge of the marsh, and I saw him — Mr. James, not the frog — springing from tuft to tuft over in the wet part. He had a tin pail and I called out, ‘Are you going berrying?’ But he shook his head.) He is doing things — deft, swift things — to the batrachian relics, with some bright little instruments, which he takes out of a small black-leather case. I look on, shrinking but fascinated. I have no faintest notion why anybody should want to kill a frog and cut it up; it seems cruel and horrid; but if Mr. James does it, it must be all right somehow.

Of the conversation there under the pine trees, no word remains with me, but its impress on my mind and spirit has proved permanent. In language suited to my understanding, the anatomist explained what he was doing and why he was doing it, and went on to tell and to show me things of absorbing interest, about frogs. And so I got — from William James! — my first glimpses into the wonder-worlds of physiology and psychology.

We presently passed to a discussion of my ambitions, of what I was going to be and do when I grew up. Of one thing I was certain: I was going to college. (Only a little while before, my imagination had been fired by hearing, for the first time, about girls going to college.) Mr. James said, well, I had better come to Harvard; they did n’t let girls into Harvard now, but he thought they would by the time I wanted to come. Would he be there then? I asked. Yes, he guessed he would. And if I would let him know when I was ready, he would try to get me in. I straightway visualized an imposing edifice with a great door which my friend swung back while I, with head held high and his kind eyes upon me, passed through into the mysteries and glories of ‘college.’ And ever since that summer afternoon, this picture has risen before me oftener and more vividly than any of the scenes in which I actually beheld Mr. James.

Curiously enough, I remember nothing of the parting with my friend. I remember only the glow he left in my spirit. It lasted, that glow, a very long time. Indeed, it has never quite gone from me.

I never saw William James again. I was always expecting to encounter him

Once, after tarrying a week in a certain small hotel, I learned that for the first two days of my stay he had been under the same roof, had sat only a few yards away from me in the dining-room; and at the moment, I was inconsolable over having so narrowly missed him. But perhaps, after all, it was as well. Perhaps it is as well that we did not meet again at all; and that so there is no later impression to blur the image in my mind of the slender, upright figure, with the little pointed beard and the soft blue-and-green-plaid necktie, setting open for me, with a quick, free gesture, that massive, magic portal.