Volume 1

The letters of William James / edited by his son, Henry James.

  • William James
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The letters of William James / edited by his son, Henry James. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to see that all these elaborate conceits (which seem imitated from the choice Italian manner, and which I confess have * fl°wed from my pen quite unpremeditatedly and somewhat to my own surprise) are nothing but a shabby cloak under which I am trying to hide my own palpable laziness — a laziness which even the higher affections can only render a little restless and uncomfortable, but not dispel.— How¬ ever, it is dispelled at last, is n t it? So let me begin. You will have heard stray tidings of us from time to time, so I need give you no detailed account of our peregrinations or decisions. We had a delicious summer in Switzerland, that noble and medicinal country, and we have now got into first-rate shape at Florence, although there is a menace of 'sociability” commencing, which may take away that wonderful and unexampled sense of peace. I have been enjoying [myself] of late in sitting under the lamp until midnight, secure against any possible interruption, and reading what things I pleased. I believe that last year in Cambridge I counted one single night in which I could sit and read passively till bedtime; and now that the days have begun to lengthen and that the small end of winter appears looking through the future, I begin to count them here as something unspeakably precious that may ne’er return. The boys are at an English school which, though certainly very good, gives them rather less French and German than they would have at Browne and Nichols’s. Peg is having first-rate opportunities” in the way of dancing, gymnastics and other accomplishments of a bodily sort. We have a little shred of a half-starved, but very cheerful, ex-ballet dancer who brings a poor little, humble, peering- eyed fiddler — “ Maestro ” she calls him — three times a week to our big salon, and makes supple the limbs of Peg
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