Wm & H'ry: Literature, Love, and the Letters Between Wiliam and Henry James by J. C. Hallman Page A
Authors: J. C. Hallman
Tags: Literature & Fiction, History, Politics & Social Sciences, Authors, Biographies & Memoirs, Philosophy, Modern, 19th century, Professionals & Academics, Modern (16th-21st Centuries), Arts & Literature, Philosophers
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p.m. and Wm sat before an open stove, speaking aloud a
letter to H’ry, which Alice recorded under the light of
an electric table-lamp. Myers died forty-five minutes
later.
For Wm, the scene was particularly painful because
Myers was a symbol of why the work of the Society
for Psychical Research was important. “The official
psychologists affect to look down on him,” Wm wrote,
“but he has perhaps done more for psychology than
any of the lot.” This was even truer of Wm than it was
of Myers.
What’s notable about the scene now is what they
chose to read to Myers on his deathbed. Both Alice
and Wm were particularly fond of H’ry’s early travel
sketches, and Wm in particular liked to have certain
descriptive passages read to him before he went to
sleep. Alice would read a paragraph, and Wm would
say, “Read it again.” When Myers asked to be read to,
H’ry’s Transatlantic Sketches ,published twenty-five years earlier, was close at hand. The letters specify that Myers responded thoughtfully to “Roman Neighborhoods,” which features “the picturesque amid pictur-
esqueness,” a description of Lake Albano, a few miles
southeast of Rome:
105
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9/4/12 6:26 PM
This beautiful pool—it is hardly more—occupies
the crater of a prehistoric volcano—a perfect
cup, moulded and smelted by furnace-fires. The
rim of the cup rises high and densely wooded
around the placid, stone-blue water, with a sort
of natural artificiality. The sweep and contour of
the long circle are admirable; never was a lake so
charmingly lodged. It is said to be of extraordinary
depth; and though stone-blue water seems at
first a very innocent substitute for boiling lava,
it has a sinister look which betrays its dangerous
antecedents. The winds never reach it, and its
surface is never ruffled; but its deep-bosomed
placidity seems to cover guilty secrets, and you
fancy it in communication with the capricious
and treacherous forces of nature. Its very color
has a kind of joyless beauty—a blue as cold and
opaque as a solidified sheet of lava. Streaked and
wrinkled by a mysterious motion of its own, it
seemed the very type of a legendary pool, and
I could easily have believed that I had only to sit
long enough into the evening to see the ghosts of
classic nymphs and naiads cleave its sullen flood
and beckon to me with irresistible arms.
106
Hallman_firstpages5x.indd 106
9/4/12 6:26 PM
If H’ry ever replied to “Roman Neighborhoods”
being read at Myers’s deathbed, the letter is lost. But it would not have been lost on him that the scene demonstrated that everything he’d written in a quarter-
century of letters about his growing distaste for the
picturesque had gone ignored. The very same letter
that described Myers’s final expiration noted that Wm
and Alice had that same evening read H’ry’s essay on
Thackeray and Rye—the piece in which he had dis-
missed the usefulness of description. Wm claimed
they had read the essay “with much pleasure,” but the
truth was that the point of it had been either missed
or dismissed.
H’ry drew a distinction between a popular audi-
ence’s reaction to art and the reaction one received
from a “finer interest”—a coy way, really, of referring
to his own interest in literature, and to the interest
he hoped to inspire in others. What he meant was
technique, a reader not passively reading a story, but coming to recognize that part of the intended pleasure of some books was the reader becoming keenly
aware of the conscription of his or her intellect into
the service of the story’sprocess. All stories relied on readers’ imaginations, surely, but the stories that were
107
Hallman_firstpages5x.indd 107
9/4/12 6:26 PM
most worthwhile were the ones that set out to satisfy
the finer interest’s craving for how the story produced its
104
Hallman_firstpages5x.indd 104
9/4/12 6:26 PM
p.m. and Wm sat before an open stove, speaking aloud a
letter to H’ry, which Alice recorded under the light of
an electric table-lamp. Myers died forty-five minutes
later.
For Wm, the scene was particularly painful because
Myers was a symbol of why the work of the Society
for Psychical Research was important. “The official
psychologists affect to look down on him,” Wm wrote,
“but he has perhaps done more for psychology than
any of the lot.” This was even truer of Wm than it was
of Myers.
What’s notable about the scene now is what they
chose to read to Myers on his deathbed. Both Alice
and Wm were particularly fond of H’ry’s early travel
sketches, and Wm in particular liked to have certain
descriptive passages read to him before he went to
sleep. Alice would read a paragraph, and Wm would
say, “Read it again.” When Myers asked to be read to,
H’ry’s Transatlantic Sketches ,published twenty-five years earlier, was close at hand. The letters specify that Myers responded thoughtfully to “Roman Neighborhoods,” which features “the picturesque amid pictur-
esqueness,” a description of Lake Albano, a few miles
southeast of Rome:
105
Hallman_firstpages5x.indd 105
9/4/12 6:26 PM
This beautiful pool—it is hardly more—occupies
the crater of a prehistoric volcano—a perfect
cup, moulded and smelted by furnace-fires. The
rim of the cup rises high and densely wooded
around the placid, stone-blue water, with a sort
of natural artificiality. The sweep and contour of
the long circle are admirable; never was a lake so
charmingly lodged. It is said to be of extraordinary
depth; and though stone-blue water seems at
first a very innocent substitute for boiling lava,
it has a sinister look which betrays its dangerous
antecedents. The winds never reach it, and its
surface is never ruffled; but its deep-bosomed
placidity seems to cover guilty secrets, and you
fancy it in communication with the capricious
and treacherous forces of nature. Its very color
has a kind of joyless beauty—a blue as cold and
opaque as a solidified sheet of lava. Streaked and
wrinkled by a mysterious motion of its own, it
seemed the very type of a legendary pool, and
I could easily have believed that I had only to sit
long enough into the evening to see the ghosts of
classic nymphs and naiads cleave its sullen flood
and beckon to me with irresistible arms.
106
Hallman_firstpages5x.indd 106
9/4/12 6:26 PM
If H’ry ever replied to “Roman Neighborhoods”
being read at Myers’s deathbed, the letter is lost. But it would not have been lost on him that the scene demonstrated that everything he’d written in a quarter-
century of letters about his growing distaste for the
picturesque had gone ignored. The very same letter
that described Myers’s final expiration noted that Wm
and Alice had that same evening read H’ry’s essay on
Thackeray and Rye—the piece in which he had dis-
missed the usefulness of description. Wm claimed
they had read the essay “with much pleasure,” but the
truth was that the point of it had been either missed
or dismissed.
H’ry drew a distinction between a popular audi-
ence’s reaction to art and the reaction one received
from a “finer interest”—a coy way, really, of referring
to his own interest in literature, and to the interest
he hoped to inspire in others. What he meant was
technique, a reader not passively reading a story, but coming to recognize that part of the intended pleasure of some books was the reader becoming keenly
aware of the conscription of his or her intellect into
the service of the story’sprocess. All stories relied on readers’ imaginations, surely, but the stories that were
107
Hallman_firstpages5x.indd 107
9/4/12 6:26 PM
most worthwhile were the ones that set out to satisfy
the finer interest’s craving for how the story produced its
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