Appendix A - Extract from James’s Notebook Entry of 9 Feb. 1882, on The Death of His Mother

Summary

For a discussion of the context of this extract, and its significance for the genesis of the novel, see Introduction, pp. xxvi–xxviii. The text follows that prepared by Philip Horne for CFHJ 34. It is drawn from the second volume of James's notebooks, in the Houghton Library, Harvard (MS Am 1094 (v-2)). This volume of the notebooks runs from 25 November 1881 to 11 November 1882.

It is impossible for me to say — to begin to say — all that has gone down into the grave with her. She was our life, she was the house, she was the key-stone of the arch. She held us all together, & without her we are scattered reeds. She was patience, she was wisdom, she was exquisite maternity. Her sweetness, her mildness, her great natural beneficence were unspeakable, & it is infinitely touching to me to write about her here as one that was. When I think of all that she had been, for years — when I think of her hourly devotion to each & all of us — that when I went to Washington the last of December I gave her my last kiss, I heard her voice for the last time, — there seems not to be enough tenderness in my being to register the extinction of such a life. But I can reflect, with perfect gladness, that her work was done — her long patience had done its utmost. She had had heavy cares & sorrows, which she had borne without a murmur, & the weariness of age had come upon her. I would rather have lost her forever than see her begin to suffer as she would probably have been condemned to suffer, & I can think with a kind of holy joy of her being lifted now above all our pains and anxieties. Her death has given me a passionate belief in certain transcendent things — the immanence of being as nobly created as hers — the immortality of such a virtue as that — the reunion of spirits in better conditions than these. She is no more of an angel to-day than she had always been; but I can't believe that by the accident of her death all her unspeakable tenderness is lost to the beings she so dearly loved. She is with us, she is of us — the eternal stillness is but a form of her love.