Then the two hikers sat in silence, absorbing the beauty around them and reflecting on what had been said. “Dr. James is not well, you know,” Eleanor said after a time, her mood shifting suddenly. “In the past he would have been on this walk with us, leading the way up the mountain with his great strides. You would have heard from him directly. He is a man of great vitality—or was. But his heart is not strong now, and he is taken frequently by bouts of angina.”
“What a shame,” Jung said. “That is not a good symptom, you know.”
“He struggles through bravely.”
“You may have to speak for his ideas after he is gone. Are you intimidated by that role?”
The observation caught her by surprise. “Oh,” she said, “I hope the condition is not that serious.”
“Nevertheless, you are a good surrogate.” Carl Jung had a way of staring intently into the eyes during a conversation, a habit Eleanor, like most of his associates, became accustomed to over time, but now in this first meeting it made her self-conscious. She looked away. “You do him honor,” Jung said, with what Eleanor was beginning to find a very appealing directness. In fact, it was around this time that she began to realize how much she was loving this depth of exchange.
“I have enjoyed these conversations,” she said, returning his gaze.
“We must find a way to continue them,” he said. “Across oceans and continents.”
That made Eleanor laugh. “Across oceans and continents,” she repeated. “How grand.”
“Grand”—he paused, now he the one looking down at his feet—“and fitting.”
“Quite fitting,” she repeated, acknowledging for the first time that it might have been unwise for them to come this far alone.
“What advice would Dr. James give?” he said quickly.
“I can hardly speak for him,” she protested again.
The young doctor smiled and looked around. “I notice that the eminent professor is not here, and I was hoping that someone might represent him in this idyllic moment.”
She released a laugh. “Well, in that case, in this idyllic moment, as you say, I suppose I ought to try again.”
“I suppose also,” he said with the same smile.
Eleanor took a deep breath and looked up at her hiking partner. “I believe that Dr. James would suggest, as we have discussed, that you loosen the ties to Dr. Freud and his Viennese colleagues.” The directness of her words surprised them both.
Jung paused. “Dr. Freud and I agree on much, but there is much unspoken on which we do not agree. There is a tension. At the beginning of this trip, while we were still in Bremen, Dr. Freud accused me of wishing him dead.”
“Oh my,” Eleanor said.
“We are a bit too close. I feel a responsibility to remain near to him in thinking and to avoid any differences, and yet I do feel a kinship with Dr. James and the less literal aspects of psychology. Dr. Freud’s interpretations, his Oedipus complex and others, seem to both of us too narrow. To those interested not only in the scientific but also in the spiritual approaches, they seem only part of the story. There are astrology and medieval alchemy and the whole world of Eastern religions to consider.”
She nodded and paused to consider her words. “And Dr. James has a deep interest in those unscientific sources,” she said very deliberately. “The unconscious speaks through images, I think he would say to you. And I think he would encourage you to explore those images more than the literalness of childhood impulses.”
The young doctor looked as if he had seen a vision. “He really would say that?”
“I believe he would. He has said that he finds you gifted in recognizing the full wonder of the unconscious mind.” She paused, giving thought to what she just said. “Yes, that is it. He would suggest that you pay more attention to the signs of the unconscious mind that emerge in all cultures.” Later, she would wonder where the words had come from, but she was not unhappy that she had said them.
“Dr. James has sent quite a representative,” Jung said. “We must discuss these matters further.”
“Yes,” she said suddenly, looking up, and quickly moved to rise, “but not now. Now we need to return to the camp. The others will worry.” She held up her hand. “We would not want your hosts to think that I had lost you in the wilds.”
“I certainly would not,” the Swiss doctor said with enthusiasm, rising to his feet and helping her to hers. “But at your pace, we will be back in no time.”
And when they arrived at the compound at least one of the elder Putnams remarked upon their late return.
“We were about to send out a search patrol,” he said.
“Oh, that was not necessary,” Eleanor Burden said with an unapologetic enthusiasm, smiling and keeping to herself the rush of affectionate connection she was feeling with this new friend, a connectedness and intellectual intimacy she had not felt for more than ten years, since her return from Vienna.
The next morning, as the two European visitors boarded the two-horse carriage that would take them along the rustic road to the Lake Placid train station, the whole Putnam Camp assembled for the traditional farewell ceremony. Jung stepped toward Eleanor, now joined by her two young daughters, and extended his hand. “Thank you for what will remain in my mind as a thoroughly delightful afternoon, an important one.”
She held out her hand and took his. “I too shall cherish it.”
“We shared an idyll, the romantic poets would say.”
“We did indeed.” And she looked up into his fierce blue eyes. “I enjoyed it immensely.”
“There will be more opportunities for such conversations,” he said.
“That is my hope also,” Eleanor said.
As the carriage pulled away and the Putnam family group began to sing its farewell, as was the long-standing tradition of the camp, the children threw crab apples, the Adirondack sign of affection and respect, Freud wrote later in a letter home. Jung looked back at Eleanor and smiled warmly. And thus in that moment, wordlessly, the covenant of a lifetime was sealed. Shortly after that, when Jung had returned to Zurich, the letters began with an immediate intimacy and affection, and the deep friendship became manifest.
She did not know at that time the important role this new friendship would play in what was to come.
18
A Companion of the Soul
She finally shared with William James the whole story. He had been in increasingly ill health, the moments of incapacitation due to angina a great concern to those around him. During the 1909 Clark University visit of Freud and Jung, it was clear to all participants that William James had great interest in the themes of the conference, but was unable to participate fully because of ill health.
It was a year later, early in 1910, the year of Arnauld Esterhazy’s entry into Boston and life at St. Gregory’s School, that Eleanor held her fateful meeting. William James was sitting up on the sun porch of his Cambridge house, with a blanket enfolding his lap. “Oh, my dear,” he said as Eleanor approached and kissed him on the cheek. “I have not much energy this morning, I fear,” he added, excusing his not rising to greet her.
“You look fit and ready for the day,” she said with a burst of her usual enthusiasm, but she knew she was convincing no one. He looked weakened and tired, and Eleanor had been filled recently with the dread that she might soon lose him. “And you are traveling to Europe?”
“Henry is not well. It is those dark moods of his, you know. He is despondent and needs the comforting perspective of his older brother. We leave in three days for his home in East Sussex.”
“Are you sure you are strong enough to make such a trip?” The deep concern she felt was obvious on her face.
“Oh, yes,” William James said, nodding as if to acknowledge that he was famous for making do, carrying on, going the extra mile. “It will be quite restful, actually. Alice and I love ocean travel, and Henry’s England is magnificent this time of year.”
“Am I wrong then
to worry about you?” She suppressed a shudder, thinking for just an instant of his obvious fallibility.
“You needn’t worry, dear Eleanor,” he said with a warm smile that attempted reassurance. “I shall miss you though. You brighten my day so with your visits.”
“They mean the world to me. You know that.” She had long since grown accustomed to the closeness they shared. Earlier, she had been uneasy about his reputation of being attracted to younger women. There was the example of the young and brilliant Pauline Goldmark, a Bryn Mawr student with whom, around the time of Eleanor’s Vienna visit, he entered into a three-year correspondence, and who seemed to enter his conversations regularly in a way that certainly caused speculation and talk, whether there was anything but platonic attachment. And, it was rumored, such behavior certainly caused a strain on his marriage, whether anything showed on the surface.
He had always showed a great loyalty to her, one she could never fully account for. No matter how busy he was, he always dropped everything when she visited him, listening to her intently, genuinely interested in what was on her mind.
In her youth she tended to take his attentions for granted, enjoying the small gifts and occasional attendances at significant events of her life, like school ceremonies and graduations. That he had been a close friend of her parents was Eleanor’s explanation. “Dr. James had been empathetic to a young girl losing her mother,” she told her Winsor School friends when they would ask how she was so fortunate as to have the attentions of such a famous man. But later, as her interests began to broaden and deepen, he was someone with whom to share ideas. However it was, she cherished her visits to him now, as she had all her life.
On the eve of her wedding to Frank Burden in 1902, when Dr. James agreed enthusiastically to stand in at the ceremony, in a rare moment of affectionate candor, he admitted to his feelings of guilt at allowing her severe and puritanical aunt, her father’s sister Prudence, to take over the duties of her upbringing. “I and others should have interceded on your behalf,” he had said then without elaboration, words she treasured then and for the rest of her life.
“There is much I need to tell you, before my trip,” he said on this visit, leaving out any mention of what might happen during the strain of travel abroad. But it became clear to her in retrospect that a certain foreboding caused him to choose that particular moment for what he was about to reveal. She pulled a chair up close to his and leaned forward, taking his hand in hers.
He smiled at her characteristic eagerness and took a deep breath, allowing his tired eyes to sweep over her face. “What I will tell you now, I have not told another soul for over thirty years.”
“I am ready to listen,” Eleanor said, her usual enthusiasm diminished only slightly by his solemn tone.
“Before Alice and I married,” he began, “before we met even, when I was still in my twenties and very much at sea as to my vocation, I fell quite deeply in love with my cousin Minnie Temple, a very forceful young woman of great vitality. And for a time she was the world to me, but she had tuberculosis, which proved to be fatal. I almost died myself of grief. I was deeply moved by a friend, a married woman my age, who reached out to me with comfort and solace.”
He paused then, making it clear that this might be a lengthy narrative.
In 1872, William James, new to his teaching position at Harvard, was thirty years old and very much adrift. His health was not good, his professional future was not in any way certain, and he was subject to recurring bouts of depression. Charles W. Eliot, Harvard’s bright new president, had begun a renaissance at the college and had very much wanted James to be a part of it. The young scholar with a very scattered academic background had taken his first teaching job and had loved it, his true calling, he realized. But what to teach?
The position was in medical science and physiology, but young James really wanted to teach philosophy and what he called “mental science.” Minnie Temple’s death that year from tuberculosis had taken the wind out of his sails in the most profound of ways, and with his poor health he doubted that he could ever be a husband or a father, let alone an energetic teacher of college students.
His younger brother Henry, one of the pillars of his life, had moved to Italy first, then England, a departure that benefited Henry’s writing, but a blow to their brotherly closeness. And thus, in many ways, William James was indeed adrift, and alone.
Before Henry left for Italy, he had introduced William to a young married couple, two of his acquaintances in Boston. The husband was a young man of promise, and his young wife was a beautiful and vivacious hostess, in their beautiful home. Their living room, her “salon,” as Henry called it, was a stimulating and restful place to settle on a weekday evening, as Henry had done often before his departure for Europe, and William had continued in his brother’s absence. The young wife, it turned out, an unusually insightful and compassionate counsel and comfort, had known Minnie Temple and had mourned her loss along with many of William’s friends. She had also a deep interest in the ideas of the transcendentalists, having met, like the Jameses, many of the Concord group in her parents’ home. In short, she was a compelling companion for William at this time in his life, and she possessed what William called “a remarkable ability to listen.” He had never met, he admitted to his brother, a woman of such beauty and energy for ideas and a depth of knowledge and understanding. “It seemed that every time I began on an idea or a complex sentence,” he said, “she anticipated its direction and became ready to absorb the thought and enrich it.
“Somehow during discussions with this beautiful and sensitive woman, both the grief I was feeling and the ambivalence about my life at Harvard seemed to come to calm and resolution,” he said. “It was during these conversations that I began to form confidence in both my professional and personal beliefs.” At her side, he began discovering what he really wanted in his life, focusing on philosophy more in his teaching with a vigor and energy that had been lacking before. “What had been scattered,” he said, “became connected, what was vague and amorphous became crystal clear.” More than any other influence in his life until then, this remarkable woman caused him to gain perspective and to bring about change. The feminine strength she radiated became infused in him. “I was discovering new dimensions of my very being.”
There was, however, unanticipated consequence. What had begun as comfort in a great loss blossomed into mutual and passionate attraction. The two friends both became deeply conflicted about what was emerging, and in the fall of 1873, he bearing the worst of the guilt, it seemed, still fretting over his discomfort with teaching medicine at Harvard, William decided to travel to Europe, to meet up with Henry in Italy, to rest and sort matters out.
But not far from his reasoning was the substantial fear that his attachment to this attractive young Boston wife had gone much too far and needed intercession. She had become for him, he feared, like Coleridge’s opiate, and he needed an escape.
His time with Henry in Italy proved to be unsettling rather than restorative. His own ill health seemed to have returned, he found the grimmer and grittier sides of European poverty distressing, and he admitted to being deeply homesick, longing for the inspiration of the married and respectable young woman back home. Then Henry became ill, and William tended to him, leading his younger brother to call him his “ministering angel who nursed and tended” him “throughout with inexpressible devotion.” Somehow, helping his brother seemed to work wonders with his own illness, and he began to feel stronger. In March, he sailed for home, writing a very simple and respectful letter to the young matron advising her of his return.
Upon that announced return, guarded as they were against such a reaction, the two met with an ardor that stunned them both, “a wondrous meeting of souls, minds, and bodies,” William described it privately to his sister, Alice, without naming the subject of his emotional outpouring.
After his return, William began working with the medical school, and he began recogniz
ing his significant debt to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great friend of his father who was now in his seventies. The two friends shared a poem by Emerson: “Give all to love. Obey thy heart. Nothing refuse. ’T is a brave master,” the great transcendentalist said. “Let it have scope. It requireth courage stout. Souls above doubt, valor unbending. It will reward.” Sharing these words, the two clandestine lovers fell into each other’s arms. And, as desperate and passionate as they were, realized from almost the beginning that they had to cease and desist.
With the most painful of resolutions, they agreed to part and not see each other again. It was during that resolute period of parting that they discovered that she was pregnant.
As he approached the end of this telling to Eleanor the story, in which William had avoided using names, a heavy silence fell now between them. “She was one of the most beautiful beings I have ever known,” he said. “A total companion of the soul. Giving her up was almost my undoing, and I fear that even today she occupies, after all these years, a significant place in my heart.”
“What happened to her?” Eleanor breathed, barely able to utter the words, for fear of what she would hear.
“We avoided each other as well as one could in tight-knit Boston society. It was a matter of high resolve on both parts. I found Alice, the second dear Alice in my life, and, most happily, we married.”
“And the woman?” Eleanor repeated, still breathless.
“Nine years later she died,” he said, and the two of them could only stare into each other’s eyes. “Diphtheria,” he added softly. “She died with her young son, leaving behind her eight-year-old daughter.”
A profound silence fell between them in that moment. When she spoke finally, it was in little more than a whisper. “It was Mother.”
19
“WE SHALL MEET AGAIN”
The first of her most precious letters, the one from William James, was obviously written in the long hours of his Atlantic crossing and was mailed from England back to Boston as soon as the ship docked.
The Lost Prince Page 14