James

pose, in Paris and Boulogne, with occasional vis-
its to England and Switzerland. He returned to
America in the spring of 1858, settled for a year
in Newport, R. I., and then reembarked for Eu-
rope in the late summer of 1859, spending the
following year chiefly in Switzerland, where his
boys attended school. At length, in the autumn of
1860, he settled in Newport and resumed rela-
tions with his New England friends. This circle,
together with the educational and professional
interests of his eldest son, William, drew him to
Boston in 1864, and eventually to Cambridge,
where the family was established in immediate
proximity to Harvard College in the autumn of
1866. His wife died in Cambridge on Jan. 29,
1882, and his own end came on Dec. 18 of the
same year. Most of the fellow enthusiasts and re-
formers of his early days had died or had made
terms with the world, but James, though few
listened to him, fought on to the end for the
truths of which he was so profoundly convinced.

[The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James
(1885), edited with an introduction by William James;
The Letters of William James (1920), edited by his
son Henry James, Introduction; E. W. Emerson, The
Early Years of the Saturday Club (1918), pp. 322-33;
J. A. Kellogg, Philosophy of Henry James (1883);
C. E. Lackland, "Henry James, the Seer," Jour, of
Speculative Philosophy, Jan. 1885, p. 53; W. H. Kim-
ball, "Swedenborg and Henry James," Jour, of Specu-
lative Philosophy, Apr. 1883, p. 113; Katherine B.
Hastings, "Wm. James of Albany, N. Y. (1771-1832)
and His Descendants" (1924), reprinted from N. F.
Geneal. and Biog. Record, Apr., June, Oct. 1924.]

R.B.P.

JAMES, HENRY (Apr. 15, i843-Feb. 28,
1916), novelist, was born iu New York City, the
son of Henry James [^.^.] and of Mary Walsh
his wife, and the younger brother of William
James [<?.?/.]. The father had inherited from his
father, a merchant of Albany, a fortune which
not only permitted the elder Henry James to de-
vote his own life to speculation and conversation,
but which also enabled him to transmit to his
children the advantages of a similar leisure. The
younger Henry James seems to have accepted,
perhaps to have comprehended, none of his fa-
ther's metaphysical and theological ideas. From
his early youth he was as positive in his interests
as he was sensitive in his impressions. The range
and variety of his impressions, however, and his
special opportunity for forming them, he owed to
one of his father's theories, which was that chil-
dren who were being trained to be citizens of the
world should not be allowed to take root in any
particular religion, political system, ethical code,
or set of personal habits. The future novelist was
consequently brought up in a deliberate cosmo-
politanism and made his choice oŁ a national hab-
itat only after he had arrived at maturity.

James

Such schooling as he had was given to him in
strict accordance with the paternal theory. In
Albany and in New York, where the family re-
mained with few interruptions until 1855, various
teachers came and went, and nothing was contin-
uous but the boy's curiosity and his impressions,
the best account of which is to be found in the
remarkable autobiographical books, A Small Boy
and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother.
There can be no doubt that these boyish sensa-
tions had been enlarged and routed by memory
before they were set down as memoirs, but
neither can there be any doubt that from the first
they were acutely concerned with the subtle hu-
man relationships which the novelist was all his
life to observe and record. Had Henry James
been kept in New York he might in time have
come to the point of saturation with his native
city and might have been content to study the
world there. Instead, at the age of twelve he was
removed with the family to Europe for a stay of
three years, during which he gathered impres-
sions successively at Geneva, London, Paris,
Boulogne. Back to America, specifically to New-
port, R. L, in 1858, he returned to Geneva in 1859
and went to Bonn in 1860, still changing teach-
ers and localities almost with the seasons. Later
in 1860 the family was established in Newport,
from which Henry James went to the Harvard
Law School in 1862, to be followed, in a sense, by
the family, which reestablished itself, again in a
sense, in Boston in 1864 and then in Cambridge
in 1866. Thereafter the novelist looked upon
Cambridge as his American home, so far as he
might be said to have one.

Precocious enough in his sensibilities, James
was not precocious in his decision as to what his
aims were. Mathematics and drawing at the out-
set engaged him nearly as much as literature.
Only at Cambridge, where he came under the in-
fluence of Charles Eliot Norton [q.v.] and Wil-
liam Dean Howells [q.v.], did he gradually be-
come aware of his profounder intentions. The
Civil War, to which a physical infirmity kept him
from going as two of his brothers went, had in-
tensified his consciousness that the world was "a
more complicated place than it had hitherto seem-
ed, the future more treacherous, success more
difficult ... a world in which everything hap-
pens" (Hawthorne, 1879, pp. I39-4&). Troubled
by the menacing world, he had developed in him-
self the sense that his unavoidable role was to be
that of a spectator of life. Encouraged in his
detachment by the learned Norton and the gentle
Howells, James gathered up his random energies
and directed them all toward his art. He fol-
lowed no profession, He took no part in affairs.

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