The Letters of William James, Vol. 1 · William James
WM. JAMES.
_To Henry James._ ASHEVILLE, N.C., _Aug. 20, 1891_. MY DEAR HARRY,--...Of poor Lowell's death you heard. I left Cambridge the evening of the funeral, for which I had waited over, and meant to write to you about it that very afternoon. But as it turned out, I didn't get a moment of time.... He had never been ill in his life till two years ago, and didn't seem to understand or realize the fact as most people do. I doubt if he dreamed that his end was approaching until it was close at hand. Few images in my memory are more touching than the picture of his attitude in the last visits I paid him. He was always up and dressed, in his library, with his velvet coat and tobacco pipes, and ready to talk and be talked to, alluding to his illness with a sort of apologetic and whimsical plaintiveness that had no querulousness in it, though he coughed incessantly, and the last time I was there (the last day of June, I think) he was strongly narcotized by opium for a sciatica which had lately supervened. Looking back at him, what strikes one most was his singularly boyish cheerfulness and robustness of temperament. He was a sort of a boy to the end, and makes most others seem like premature old men....[99]
I have at last "struck it rich" here in North Carolina, and am in the most peculiar, and one of the most poetic places I have ever been in. Strange to say, it is on the premises of a land speculation and would-be "boom." A tract of twenty-five square miles of wilderness, 3800 feet above the sea at its lowest part, has been bought; between 30 and 40 miles of the most admirable alpine, evenly-graded, zigzagging roads built in various directions from the centre, which is a smallish cleared plateau; an exquisite little hotel built; nine cottages round about it; and that is all. Not a loafer, not a fly, not a blot upon the scene! The serpent has not yet made his appearance in this Eden, around which stand the hills covered with primeval forest of the most beautiful description, filled with rhododendrons, laurels, and azaleas which, through the month of July, must make it ablaze with glory. I went this morning on horseback with the manager of the concern, a really charming young North Carolinian educated at our Institute of Technology, to the top of "Grandfather Mountain" (close by, which the Company owns) and which is only a couple of hundred feet lower than Mt. Washington. The road, the forest, the view, the crags were as good as such things can be. Apparently the company had just planted a couple of hundred thousand dollars in _pure esthetics_--a most high-toned proceeding in this degenerate age. Later, doubtless, a railroad, stores, and general sordidness with wealth will creep in. Meanwhile let us enjoy things! There "does be" advantages in creation as opposed to evolution, in the railway, in the telegraph and the electric light, and all that goes with them. This peculiar combination of virgin wilderness with perfectly planned roads, Queen Anne cottages, and a sweet little modern hotel, has never been realized until our day.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.