William was entertaining these thoughts as he walked up Piccadilly toward Regent Street, where he intended to cross and make his way to Pall Mall. It was early evening, and large numbers of the workforce had left their place of employment. There were robed barristers and suited scriveners, men in shirtsleeves who had come out of the pubs, and ascotted gentlemen on their way to their clubs for drinks. There were elegant ladies who had just finished tea in Mayfair and governesses pushing their prams. The weather, as was usual for London, was overcast, and a light rain fell, enough to produce the bedraggled look that was characteristic of the English crowd. Some had their umbrellas up, though the rain was light enough that many simply walked quickly, collars up, hats pulled down.
The crush of humanity felt novel to William. Boston was a large city but not a hectic one, and even there, he confined himself to the more rarified enclave of Cambridge, and within that, of Harvard College. This was where he lived with his family, where he carried on his work, taught, and entertained visitors. This was where he had established a fortress to protect his intellectual and personal aspirations. It was a site at once circumscribed and supremely free.
Thrown into the hubbub of the London streets after a workday, he was struck by the reality of teeming human life that his daily existence tended to obscure. The difference, he also realized, was the difference between the New World and the Old. In one, the sense of the individual was paramount. “We are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights,” he quoted to himself proudly. In the other, the individual was submerged, not just in the density of population but the sheer weight of history. As an American, he had shed his old-world heritage as though he had nothing behind him beyond a vague loyalty to Ireland. He could stretch his arms and legs and do whatever he pleased. But here, the past was always present, pushing up against you in coats of arms and family estates, in portraits and heirlooms, and in the web of relations, near and far. Even among working people, the past hung heavy. They were pressed into age-old traditions and customs, following along, doing what was expected, doing what was always done. The idea of following the past because it was the past repulsed him, though he also knew that history was the resource, the supple clay, that he relied on for his intellectual life and that he needed to produce his work.
He felt this duality now as he made his way through Piccadilly. London was truly the center of the Old World, in which the weight of the past and the richness of the past combined, where diabolical minds could operate unseen, and where the greatest, most penetrating intellects could be found and unite in brotherhood. It was exciting, this Manichaean city, this conjunction of evil and good, animal stupidity and godlike intellect. Yet he was glad, as he glanced around him at the scuttling populace, that he did not have to live here for any length of time.
He arrived at the crossing at Piccadilly Circus with its circle of racing vehicles and lurching crowds. A policeman was directing the traffic, flicking a gloved palm to direct the throng to cross the thoroughfare and then holding it up stiffly to indicate that they should wait. The carriages were clattering past, including a large curricle with four horses, which the driver was whipping faster, so as to make the corner before the need to stop.
William was standing with the crowd at the curb, waiting for the signal to cross, when suddenly he felt a quick but powerful shove to the center of his back that propelled him into the street. The jolt to his body was so sudden and so unexpected that he barely had time to realize what had happened. At one moment he was standing idly on the corner; at the next, he was lying in the dirt with the curricle about to bear down upon him. There was an enormous din, a chaotic clatter of wheels, and a piercing braying of horses as the carriage, its spokes stirring dust up into his nose and mouth, swerved to avoid hitting him. He could hear cursing as the driver, who had been in such a hurry, careened to the side of the road. William, meanwhile, lay dazed, his face pressed into the mud and gravel, until he was pulled to the side and helped to his feet. His suit and face were covered with dirt.
The officer directing the traffic had run up. “Are you daft!” the officer shouted, pushing him angrily onto the curb. Then, seeing that he was a gentleman and an American, took a more conciliatory tone. “You Americans got to watch yourselves,” he said, making a show to dust off William’s jacket. “We lose more of you that way than even we would like. Keep back from the street and look both ways, I tell your people, if you don’t want to be sent home in a box.”
William murmured a vague thanks for this piece of wisdom and took a moment to regain his bearings and review what had happened. Looking back and recalling the jolt that had hurtled him into the street, he could not be sure if it was the definite pressure of a hand pushing him forward or merely a jostling elbow or carrying case that some careless member of the crowd had swung in his direction. The whole incident was a blur, though the pressure, as he recalled it, had seemed definite and purposeful. Regardless of its meaning, malevolent mischief or accident, there was no possibility of tracing its source. The crowd in which he had stood had already moved on, and whoever or whatever had pushed him was lost in the vast sea of undifferentiated humanity.
Chapter 16
Nora and Henry Sidgwick were waiting for William in the large front room of the Oxford and Cambridge University Club overlooking Pall Mall. Nora Sidgwick, the former Nora Balfour and sister of the eminent politician, was a tireless advocate on behalf of female suffrage. Learned in the fields of history and literature, she had helped found and was about to take on the principalship of Newnham College, the first women’s college at Cambridge University.
Her husband, Henry Sidgwick, was one of the foremost philosophers of his day. Early in his career, he had been a member of the Cambridge Apostles and had broken with the Church of England, but after a short hiatus when he was stripped of his professorship, according to university rules, he had been reinstated as an honorary fellow and then as a chaired professor. He had built his reputation in the field of ethical philosophy, where he had managed to reconcile the utilitarianism of Bentham with the idealism associated with more romantic and aesthetic currents in English thought. But his real interest—if “real” was the proper term for it—was as a founding member and current president of the Society for Psychical Research, the organization devoted to the scientific exploration of spiritual phenomena for which Alice James had expressed so much disdain.
As William entered the room, he noted that the Sidgwicks, whom he recognized from photographs, were seated at a central table and that groups of men at the other tables were glancing in an unfriendly fashion in their direction. There were perhaps four or five such groups, several older, venerable-looking types William vaguely recognized from academic conferences, and some younger ones he imagined to be university men. All were staring angrily at the couple at the center of the room and whispering among themselves.
Spotting William as he approached, Sidgwick stood up and waved a greeting. He was a large, bearlike man with an unruly beard; he seemed to exude goodwill and affability, making the angry stares of his peers that much more puzzling. His wife, Nora, seemed equally pleasant, if less effusive. She was a small, delicately pretty woman some years younger than her husband, with an alert, confident manner. Neither, however, seemed to notice William’s disheveled appearance or the fact that he had a large mud stain on his sleeve. It struck him that it was typical of such people, their minds fixed on the larger issues of philosophy and social justice, to miss the details of ordinary life. He had been prepared to discuss the accident that had sent him practically under the wheels of the curricle, but it seemed that he would not have to do so. He was grateful for that, for he was eager to put the incident out of his mind.