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9. The Will to Endure
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
'** / The Will to Endure j^[`Wc[i[ih[jkhd[ZjeYWcXh_Z][ in August './), only to face financial losses and the necessity of consolidating their holdings. The American economy had dipped precariously during their months abroad: two-thirds of Alice’s legacy had been lost.1 She had encountered the same thing two decades earlier, when she came back from Europe to find the Gibbens family funds depleted. Fortunately, her European sojourn had allowed her to regain some of her strength, which had been drained by eleven years of childbearing and nursing, and this time she had William as a financial provider. The depression was deep and widespread, starting in America and then spreading across the Atlantic. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad failed in January './), causing financial panic. Other railroads went next: the Erie Railroad, the Northern Pacific, and finally the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe at the end of the year. Widespread bank failures followed these losses, and the stock market plunged. The West and the South were already in the midst of an agricultural depression, and multiple railroad and bank failures worsened conditions in those regions. Gold reserves dwindled, falling below $'&& million. This large-scale depression was not over until './-. j^[m_bbje[dZkh[ '*+ Alice and William had spent considerable sums abroad, dipping deeply into their savings. They brought back twenty-eight trunks, three clocks, a set of dishes, and two maids, emblems of material success. However, the depression meant they must retrench. Some Harvard professors were let go, but fortunately William kept his job at his same salary. The Jameses were still short of funds, however. This time Alice did not consider teaching, but she entertained other plans. Learning of people willing to pay high prices for Cambridge rentals, she offered /+ Irving Street to one party for $(,&&& a year, but she was unable to conclude the deal.2 William and Alice even considered the drastic step of selling their beloved house.3 In addition to their financial woes, Alice barely had time to unpack before she was inundated with family and social obligations. William was vexed these years with increasing responsibilities, both to Harvard and to his profession, and she felt his frustrations. When he returned to teaching that fall William suffered depression, so he made eighteen visits to a mind-curer, a Miss Clarke, to alleviate it, calling it a spell of melancholy.4 Sometimes these mind-cures restored his ability to sleep.5 He also contracted tonsillitis at the end of October, but the disease at least forced him to rest.6 Despite his depression he kept his sense of wonder at the world; nothing was quite like William James’s exuberant embrace of reality. On his way to Thomas Davidson’s Keene Valley summer institute, Glenmore, two summers after his return, he wrote a postcard to Peggy expressing his delight in and empathy for small things: “Yesterday a beautiful hummingbird came into the library and spent two hours without resting, trying to find his way out by the skylight in the ceiling. You never saw such untiring strength. Filled with pity for his fatigue, I went into the garden and culled a beautiful rose. The moment I held it up in my hand under the skylight, the angelic bird flew down into it and rested there as in a nest—the beautifullest sight you ever saw.”7 That fall William resumed his investigations of psychic phenomena, even though many of his American peers refused to consider parapsychology as a serious pursuit. In England, however, experiments in psychic research had more validity. In './) Frederick Myers asked William to take the presidency of the British Society for Psychical Research. He refused, but in November Myers warned him he would be asked again, citing Alice’s approval of the society’s work. “I am sure Mrs. James would agree to much [44.222.149.13] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 05:41 GMT) '*, j^[m_bbje[dZkh[ in this letter—and the dear spirits are hovering around us in the Summer Land.”8 Late in './) William accepted. The Jameses were besieged at home after their return. Because of Alice’s warm hospitality and William’s irrepressible nature, old and young alike swarmed to /+ Irving Street. William constantly protested this stream of visitors, yet he never turned anyone away. He welcomed the stimulation and the distractions visitors brought, and, despite the financial downturn, the couple entertained constantly. Alice had grown up in a large family, and while the...