...I believe I didn't tell you, in the bustle of traveling, much about Wundt. He made a very pleasant and personal impression on me, with his agreeable voice and ready, tooth-showing smile. His lecture also was very able, and my opinion of him is higher than before seeing him. But he seemed very busy and showed no desire to see more of me than the present interview either time. The psychologische Gesellschaft I stayed over to see was postponed, but he did not propose to me to do anything else—to the gain of my ease, but to the loss of my vanity. Dear old Stumpf has been the friendliest of these fellows. With him I shall correspond....
LIÈGE, Nov. 20, 1882.
...I am still at Delbœuf's, aching in every joint and muscle, weary in every nerve-cell, but unable to get away till tomorrow noon. I was to have started today.... The total lesson of what I have done in the past month is to make me quieter with my home-lot and readier to believe that it is one of the chosen places of the Earth. Certainly the instruction and facilities at our university are on the whole superior to anything I have seen; the rawnesses we mention with such affliction at home belong rather to the century than to us (witness the houses here); we are not a whit more isolated than they are here. In all Belgium there seem to be but two genuine philosophers; in Berlin they have little to do with each other, and I really believe that in my way I have a wider view of the field than anyone I've seen (I count out, of course, my ignorance of ancient authors). We are a sound country and my opinion of our essential worth has risen and not fallen. We only lack abdominal depth of temperament and the power to sit for an hour over a single pot of beer without being able to tell at the end of it what we've been thinking about. Also to reform our altogether abominable, infamous and infra-human voices and way of talking. (What further fatal defects hang together with that I don't know—it seems as if it must carry something very bad with it.) The first thing to do is to establish in Cambridge a genuine German plebeian Kneipe club, to which all instructors and picked students shall be admitted. If that succeeds, we shall be perfect, especially if we talk therein with deeper voices....
To Henry James.
PARIS, Nov. 22, 1882.
Dear H.,—Found at Hottinguer's this A.M. your letter with all the enclosures—and a wail you had sent to Berlin. Also six letters from my wife and seven or eight others, not counting papers and magazines. I will mail back yours and father's letter to me. Alice [Mrs. W. J.] speaks of father's indubitable improvement in strength, but our sister Alice apparently is somewhat run down.—Paris looks delicious—I shall try to get settled as soon as possible and meanwhile feel as if the confusion of life was recommencing. I saw in Germany all the men I cared to see and talked with most of them. With three or four I had a really nutritious time. The trip has amply paid for itself. I found third-class Nichtraucher almost always empty and perfectly comfortable. The great use of such experiences is less the definite information you gain from anyone, than a sort of solidification of your own foothold on life. Nowhere did I see a university which seems to do for all its students anything like what Harvard does. Our methods throughout are better. It is only in the select "Seminaria" (private classes) that a few German students making researches with the professor gain something from him personally which his genius alone can give. I certainly got a most distinct impression of my own information in regard to modern philosophic matters being broader than that of any one I met, and our Harvard post of observation being more cosmopolitan. Delbœuf in Liège was an angel and much the best teacher I've seen....[67] "The Century," with your very good portrait, etc., was at Hottinguer's this A.M., sent by my wife. I shall read it presently. I'm off now to see if I can get your leather trunk, sent from London, arrested by inundations, and ordered to be returned to Paris. I never needed its contents a second. And in your little American valise and my flabby black hand-bag and shawl-straps and a small satchel, I carried not only everything I used, but collected a whole library of books in Leipsig, some pieces of Venetian glass in their balky bolsters of seaweed, a quart bottle of eau de Cologne, and a lot of other acquisitions. I feel remarkably tough now, and fairly ravenous for my psychologic work. Address Hottinguer's.
W. J.
James's mother had died during the preceding winter. Now, just after his arrival in Paris, he received news that his father was dangerously ill.
He went to London immediately, with the intention of getting home as soon as possible. On arriving at his brother Henry's lodgings, he found that Henry had already sailed. He also received a despatch advising him that the danger was not immediate and that he should wait. He remained, but with misgivings which the next news intensified.