FLORENCE, Oct. 6, 1892.
...So the magician Renan is no more! I don't know whether you were ever much subject to his spell. If so, you have a fine subject for Sunday lectures! The queer thing was that he so slowly worked his way to his natural mental attitude of irony and persiflage, on a basis of moral and religious material. He levitated at last to his true level of superficiality, emancipating himself from layer after layer of the inhibitions into which he was born, and finally using the old moral and religious vocabulary to produce merely musical and poetic effects. That moral and religious ideals, seriously taken, involve certain refusals and renunciations of freedom, Renan seemed at last entirely to forget. On the whole, his sweetness and mere literary coquetry leave a displeasing impression, and the only way to handle him is not to take him heavily or seriously. The worst is, he was a prig in his ideals....
To James J. Putnam.
16 PIAZZA DELL'INDIPENDENZA,
FLORENCE, Oct. 7, 1892.
My dear Jim,—We got your delightful letter ever so long ago, and nothing but invincible lethargy on my part, excusing itself to conscience by saying, "I mustn't write till I have something definitive to announce," is responsible for this delay. The lethargy was doubtless the healthy reversion of the nervous system to its normal equilibrium again, so I let it work. And the conscientious sophism was not so unreasonable after all. My brain has gradually got working in a natural manner again, and we are definitively settled for the winter, so the time for a line to you has come.
To begin with, your letter sounded delicious, and I like to think of you as enjoying the neighborhood of our good little [Chocorua] lake so much, and particularly as expressing such satisfaction in the look of our little place. If it hasn't "style," it has at least a harmonious domesticity of appearance. A recent letter referred to "Dr. Putnam's" place on the hill across the lake, as if you or Charlie might have been buying over there too. Is this so? I shall be very glad if it is so.
As for ourselves, coming abroad with a pack of children is not the same thing in reality as it is on paper. A summer full of passive enjoyment is one thing, a summer full of care for the present and anxious schemes for the coming winter is another. When you come abroad, come with Marian for the summer only and leave the children at home. Of course they have gained perception and intelligence, and if this Florence school only turns out well, they will have a good deal of French, and other experiences which will be precious to them hereafter; so that on their [account] there will be nothing to regret. But the parental organism in sore need of recuperative vacation gets a great deal more of it per dollar and per day if allowed to wander by itself. Enough now of this philosophy!...
I am telling you nothing of our summer, most all of which was passed in Switzerland. Germany is good, but Switzerland is better. How good Switzerland is, is something that can't be described in words. The healthiness of it passes all utterance—the air, the roads, the mountains, the customs, the institutions, the people. Not a breath of art, poetry, esthetics, morbidness, or "suggestions"! It is all there, solid meat and drink for the sick body and soul, ready to be turned to, and do you infallible good when the nervous and gas-lit side of life has had too much play. What a see-saw life is, between the elemental things and the others! We must have both; but aspiration for aspiration, I think that of the over-cultured and exquisite person for the insipidity of health is the more pathetic. After the suggestiveness, decay and over-refinement of Florence this winter, I shall be hungry enough for the eternal elements to be had in Schweiz. I didn't do any high climbing, for which my legs and Schwindeligkeit both unfit me, but any amount of solid moderate walking (say four to six hours a day), which did me a lot of good. I envy the climbers, though!
Now that my brain begins to work again, I have mapped out a profitable course of winter reading, Naturphilosophie and Kunstgeschichte, and, if the boys' school is only as good as it is cracked up to be, we shall have had a good year. Alice is very well, and much refreshed in spite of maternal cares and perplexities.... Love from both of us to both of you, and wishes for a good winter. Love also to all your family circle, especially Annie, and to Mrs. Wynne if she be near.
W. J.