James

JAMES, GEORGE WHARTON (Sept. 27,
i858-Nov. 8, 1923), lecturer and writer on the
Southwest, continued an early American tradi-
tion by being a self-made man of English birth.
His parents were John and Ann (Wharton)
James of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, where he
lived until he was twenty-three. Born into an un-
privileged non-conformist world and oftener ill
than not, he made up for what he lacked by his
precocity, his lifelong will to learn, his gift for
human relations. In his youth he seemed to be
destined for the church. After crossing the ocean
in 1881 he was a Methodist minister in Nevada
and California for seven years. But between 1883
and 1888 he joined the Royal Historical, Astro-
nomical, and Microscopical societies, the Geo-
logical Society of London, and the Victoria In-
stitute. In England not only Carlyle and Ruskin
but Darwin, Tyndall, and Huxley influenced him.
In America he knew John Muir, Joseph Le
Conte, Major Powell of the Colorado River. The
turning-point of his career came in 1889, in the
form of a crisis more than physical. In the end
he recovered his health and discovered the air he
could breathe.

He found it around him in the breezy South-
west, which he made his peculiar province. He
studied, rode, camped, and photographed with
the greater zest, perhaps, because he had known
a cloudier and more ordered land. In 1895 ne
married Emma (George) Farnsworth of New
England and Pasadena. In the meantime he took
but a step from the pulpit to the platform, lec-
turing from coast to coast on the Chautauqua
circuit, for the Brooks Humane Fund of Pasa-
dena, in educational institutions, before scientific
bodies. Writing, however, became his true voca-
tion. For thirty years articles, pamphlets, and
books poured from him with remarkable facility.
Among his other activities he also found time to
be editor of the Basket (1903-04), associate edi-
tor of the Craftsman (1904-05), editor of Out
West (1912-14), and literary editor of the Oak-
land Tribune (1919). He died in harness at the
age of sixty-five.

A man of hobbies, enthusiasms, and sympa-
thies, rather than a scholar or an artist, James
nevertheless fills a place of his own in American
regional literature. In his way he represents the
Ruskin-Browning tradition transplanted to the
soil of Thoreau, and finding the sun not in Italy
but in the Painted Desert. Of his more than forty
volumes, revealing a wide range of interests, sev-
eral are tracts in ethics or sociology. All of them
reflect the American cult of optimism, and almost
all celebrate the land the writer loved best. If he
did not invent a patriotic slogan, he contributed

James

much to its propagation. Four of his best-known
books, on California, Arizona, New Mexico, and
Utah, were written for a See America First
series. Similar in intent were Our American
Wonderlands (1915), his books on the Grand
Canyon and Lake Tahoe, and others. As a Cali-
fornian by choice he took especial interest in the
Hispano-Mexican "antiquities" of that state. In
and Out of the Old Missions of California (1905)
is the chief of half a dozen volumes in this field.
He had the good taste to urge the preservation,
rather than the restoration, of the missions. His
records of their history, architecture, decoration,
and furniture are indispensable for the anti-
quarian.

The Indians of the Southwest had no more
constant or comprehending friend than James.
He studied their dialects, customs, beliefs, and
arts, was adopted into several of their tribes,
maintained friendly relations with hundreds of
tribesmen, and never lost an opportunity to ad-
vance their interests. Of his books about them,
those on Indian baskets and blankets and the sym-
bolism of Indian design are among the earliest
authentic works on the subject. He was almost
the first white man to witness the Snake Dance of
the Hopi and to appreciate its ritual significance.
At the time of his death he was on the point of
leaving for Washington, as member of an ad-
visory committee called by the secretary of the in-
terior to reconsider government policies toward
the tribes. Perhaps the most touching of many
tributes to his memory was that of a representa-
tive California Indian (Pasadena Star-News,
Nov. 16,1923).

James collected one of the most notable libra-
ries of the Pacific Coast. Thanks to his widow
and step-daughter, the best of it is available to re-
search students in the Southwest Museum at Los
Angeles. Besides general literature on California
or by Californians, and files of Californian and
other western magazines, it includes complete
sets of legislative and scientific reports of many
kinds, explorations and histories of the West in
English, French, and Spanish, and much rare
material relating to the Franciscan missions and
the Indians of the Southwest and Mexico.

[Who's Who in America, 1922-23 ; An* Men of Sci.
(1910), ed. by J. M. Cattell; H. M. Bland, "Geo. Whar-
ton James/' Out West, May 1912; James's Quit Your
Worrying (1916), pp. 254-60; the Overland Monthly,
May, Dec. 1923; San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 9,
1923 j and the Pasadena Star-News, Nov. 8, 9, i3> 19^3*
and Nov. 30,1928.] H.G.D.

JAMES, HENRY (June 3, i8n-Dec. 18,
1882), lecturer and writer on religious, social,
and literary topics, was the second son of Wil-
liam James, a merchant and leading citizen, of

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