James and the Great Masticator

 There is a lot of talk these days, in the kind of places where these things are discussed, of the health benefits of thorough and lengthy chewing of food. Haven't we been here before, I thought, as I came across something on this theme... We have indeed, and after a little brain-racking the word came back to me – 'Fletcherism'. This was one of the great health fads of the golden age of health fads around the turn of the twentieth century, and one of the most successful. The brainchild of Horace Fletcher – artist, writer, businessman, opera house manager (in New Orleans), art dealer (in San Francisco) – Fletcherism taught that the key to health and strength, weight loss, happiness and long life was to chew every mouthful of food so thoroughly that it was reduced to a tasteless pulp, more liquid than solid; only then was it safe to swallow the stuff. It seemed to do the trick for Horace himself, restoring him to vigorous health after he went into a decline in his middle age. The Great Masticator was a brilliant self-publicist and a forceful personality, and he made a fortune from his theory, buying various homes around the world, one of them a Venetian palazzo, where he lived some of the time with his artist wife and entertained his celebrity disciples. Alas, in the end he took his theory too far, in effect starving himself to death, and dying of bronchitis at the age of 69. 
  Among his followers were various literary men, including Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair – and Henry James (along with his brother William). In January 1904 Henry wrote to William: 'I continue to found my life on Fletcher. He is immense – thanks to which I am getting much less so.' With Henry, the infatuation didn't last, and by 1909, he seemed to be abandoning the Great Masticator (at least, that appears to be the sense of this tangled passage from a letter of that date): 
'There are other things, or mainly one other — which I might sum up as being at last, again, definitely & unmistakably, the finally proved cul-de-sac or defeat of literal Fletcherism — might so sum up if I could go at all into the difficult & obscure subject by letter. I can’t do so — though I will return to it on some future writing, & after more results from my of late — that is these last 3 months’ very trying experience — which has abated since queer lights (on too prolonged Fletcherism) have more & more distinctly & relievingly come to me. But meanwhile communicate nothing distressful to poor dear H.F. if he is in America — his malady of motion, a perfect St. Vitus’s Dance of the déplacement-mania, make me never know where he is. I am worrying out my salvation — very interesting work & prospects, I think, much aiding — & “going into” the whole fearsome history intelligibly this way is an effort from which I recoil.'
   Others remained faithful to Fletcherism – including, of all people, Franz Kafka. He was so thorough a masticator that, according to food historian Margaret Barnett, his father hid behind his newspaper at mealtimes 'to avoid watching the writer Fletcherise'.