Reading Henry James

From The Library of America’s edition of Henry James’s writings. Copyright © 2006 Literary Classics of the U.S. Reprinted with permission.

1843

Born April 15 at 21 Washington Place, New York City, the second child (after William, born January 11, 1842, N.Y.C.) of Henry James of Albany and Mary Robertson Walsh of New York. Father lives on inheritance of $10,000 a year, his share of litigated $3,000,000 fortune of his Albany father, William James, an Irish immigrant who came to the U.S. immediately after the Revolution.

1843-45

Accompanied by mother’s sister, Catharine Walsh, and servants, the James parents take infant children to England and later to France. Reside at Windsor, where father has nervous collapse (“vastation”) and experiences spiritual illumination. He becomes a Swedenborgian (May 1844), devoting his time to lecturing and religious-philosophical writings. James later claimed his earliest memory was a glimpse, during his second year, of the Place Vendôme in Paris with its Napoleonic column.

1845-47

Family returns to New York. Garth Wilkinson James (Wilky) born July 21, 1845. Family moves to Albany at 50 N. Pearl St., a few doors from grandmother Catharine Barber James. Robertson James (Bob or Rob) born August 29, 1846.

1847-55

Family moves to a large house at 58 W. 14th St., New York. Alice James born August 7, 1848. Relatives and father’s friends and acquaintances–Horace Greeley, George Ripley, Charles Anderson Dana, William Cullen Bryant, Bronson Alcott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson (“I knew he was great, greater than any of our friends”) are frequent visitors. Thackeray calls during his lecture tour on the English humorists. Summers at New Brighton on Staten Island and Fort Hamilton on Long Island’s south shore. On steamboat to Fort Hamilton August 1850, hears Washington Irving tell his father of Margaret Fuller’s drowning in shipwreck off Fire Island. Frequently visits Barnum’s American Museum on free days. Taken to art shows and theaters; writes and draws stage scenes. Described by father as “a devourer of libraries.” Taught in assorted private schools and by tutors in lower Broadway and Greenwich Village. But father claims in 1848 that American schooling fails to provide “sensuous education” for his children and plans to take them to Europe.

1855-58

Family (with Aunt Kate) sails for Liverpool, June 27. James is intermittently sick with malarial fever as they travel to Paris, Lyon, and Geneva. After Swiss summer, leaves for London where Robert Thomson (later Robert Louis Stevenson’s tutor) is engaged. Early summer 1856, family moves to Paris. Another tutor engaged and children attend experimental Fourierist school. Acquires fluency in French. Family goes to Boulogne-sur-mer in summer, where James contracts typhoid. Spends late October in Paris, but American crash of 1857 returns family to Boulogne where they can live more cheaply. Attends public school (fellow classmate is Coquelin, the future French actor).

1858-59

Family returns to America and settles in Newport, Rhode Island. Goes boating, fishing, and riding. Attends the Reverend W. C. Leverett’s Berkeley Institute, and forms friendship with classmate Thomas Sergeant Perry. Takes long walks and sketches with the painter John La Farge.

1859-60

Father, still dissatisfied with American education, returns family to Geneva in October. James attends a preengineering school, Institution Rochette, because parents, with “a flattering misconception of my aptitudes,” feel he might benefit from less reading and more mathematics. After a few months withdraws from all classes except French, German, and Latin, and joins William as a special student at the Academy (later the University of Geneva) where he attends lectures on literary subjects. Studies German in Bonn during summer 1860.

1860-62

Family returns to Newport in September where William studies with William Morris Hunt, and James sits in on his classes. La Farge introduces him to works of Balzac, Merimée, Musset, and Browning. Wilky and Bob attend Frank Sanborn’s experimental school in Concord with children of Hawthorne and Emerson and John Brown’s daughter. Early in 1861, orphaned Temple cousins come to live in Newport. Develops close friendship with cousin Mary (Minnie) Temple. Goes on a week’s walking tour in July in New Hampshire with Perry. William abandons art in autumn 1861 and enters Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard. James suffers back injury in a stable fire while serving as a volunteer fireman. Reads Hawthorne (“an American could be an artist, one of the finest”).

1862-63

Enters Harvard Law School (Dane Hall). Wilky enlists in the Massachusetts 44th Regiment, and later in Colonel Robert Gould Shaw’s 54th, one of the first black regiments. Summer 1863, Bob joins the Massachusetts 55th, another black regiment, under Colonel Hollowell. James withdraws from law studies to try writing. Sends unsigned stories to magazines. Wilky is badly wounded and brought home to Newport in August.

1864

Family moves from Newport to 13 Ashburton Place, Boston. First tale, “A Tragedy of Error” (unsigned), published in Continental Monthly (Feb. 1864). Stays in Northampton, Massachusetts, early August-November. Begins writing book reviews for North American Review and forms friendship with its editor, Charles Eliot Norton, and his family, including his sister Grace (with whom he maintains a long-lasting correspondence). Wilky returns to his regiment.

1865

First signed tale, “The Story of a Year,” published in Atlantic Monthly (March 1865). Begins to write reviews for the newly founded Nation and publishes anonymously in it during next fifteen years. William sails on a scientific expedition with Louis Agassiz to the Amazon. During summer James vacations in the White Mountains with Minnie Temple and her family; joined by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and John Chipman Gray, both recently demobilized. Father subsidizes plantation for Wilky and Bob in Florida with black hired workers. (The idealistic but impractical venture fails in 1870.)

1866-68

Continues to publish reviews and tales in Boston and New York journals. William returns from Brazil and resumes medical education. James has recurrence of back ailment and spends summer in Swampscott, Massachusetts. Begins friendship with William Dean Howells. Family moves to 20 Quincy St., Cambridge. William, suffering from nervous ailments, goes to Germany in spring 1867. “Poor Richard,” James’s longest story to date, published in Atlantic Monthly (June-Aug. 1867). William begins intermittent criticism of Henry’s story-telling and style (which will continue throughout their careers). Momentary meeting with Charles Dickens at Norton’s house. Vacations in Jefferson, New Hampshire, summer 1868. William returns from Europe.

1869-70

Sails in February for European tour. Visits English towns and cathedrals. Through Nortons meets Leslie Stephen, William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward BurneJones, John Ruskin, Charles Darwin, and George Eliot (the “one marvel” of his stay in London). Goes to Paris in May, then travels in Switzerland in summer and hikes into Italy in autumn, where he stays in Milan, Venice (Sept.), Florence, and Rome (Oct. 30-Dec. 28). Returns to England to drink the waters at Malvern health spa in Worcestershire because of digestive troubles. Stays in Paris en route and has first experience of Comédie Française. Learns that his beloved cousin, Minnie Temple, has died of tuberculosis.

1870-72

Returns to Cambridge in May. Travels to Rhode Island, Vermont, and New York to write travel sketches for The Nation. Spends a few days with Emerson in Concord. Meets Bret Harte at Howells’ home April 1871. Watch and Ward, his first novel, published in Atlantic Monthly (Aug.-Dec. 1871). Serves as occasional art reviewer for the Atlantic January-March 1872.

1872-74

Accompanies Aunt Kate and sister Alice on tour of England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany from May through October. Writes travel sketches for The Nation. Spends autumn in Paris, becoming friends with James Russell Lowell. Escorts Emerson through the Louvre. (Later, on Emerson’s return from Egypt, will show him the Vatican.) Goes to Florence in December and from there to Rome, where he becomes friends with actress Fanny Kemble, her daughter Sarah Butler Wister, and William Wetmore Story and his family. In Italy sees old family friend Francis Boott and his daughter Elizabeth (Lizzie), expatriates who have lived for many years in Florentine villa on Bellosguardo. Takes up horseback riding on the Campagna. Encounters Matthew Arnold in April 1873 at Story’s. Moves from Rome hotel to rooms of his own. Continues writing and now earns enough to support himself. Leaves Rome in June, spends summer in Bad Homburg. In October goes to Florence, where William joins him. They also visit Rome, William returning to America in March. In Baden-Baden June-August and returns to America September 4, with Roderick Hudson all but finished.

1875

Roderick Hudson serialized in Atlantic Monthly from January (published by Osgood at the end of the year). First book, A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales, published January 31. Tries living and writing in New York, in rooms at 111 E. 25th Street. Earns $200 a month from novel installments and continued reviewing, but finds New York too expensive. Transatlantic Sketches, published in April, sells almost 1,000 copies in three months. In Cambridge in July decides to return to Europe; arranges with John Hay, assistant to the publisher, to write Paris letters for the New York Tribune.

1875-76

Arriving in Paris in November, he takes rooms at 29 Rue de Luxembourg (since renamed Cambon). Becomes friend of Ivan Turgenev and is introduced by him to Gustave Flaubert’s Sunday parties. Meets Edmond de Goncourt, Émile Zola, G. Charpentier (the publisher), Catulle Mendès, Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, Ernest Renan, Gustave Doré. Makes friends with Charles Sanders Peirce, who is in Paris. Reviews (unfavorably) the early Impressionists at the Durand-Ruel gallery. By midsummer has received $400 for Tribune pieces, but editor asks for more Parisian gossip and James resigns. Travels in France during July, visiting Normandy and the Midi, and in September crosses to San Sebastian, Spain, to see a bullfight (“I thought the bull, in any case, a finer fellow than any of his tormentors”). Moves to London in December, taking rooms at 3 Bolton Street, Piccadilly, where he will live for the next decade.

1877

The American published. Meets Robert Browning and George du Maurier. Leaves London in midsummer for visit to Paris and then goes to Italy. In Rome rides again in Campagna and hears of an episode that inspires “Daisy Miller.” Back in England, spends Christmas at Stratford with Fanny Kemble.

1878

Publishes first book in England, French Poets and Novelists (Macmillan). Appearance of “Daisy Miller” in Cornhill Magazine, edited by Leslie Stephen, is international success, but by publishing it abroad loses American copyright and story is pirated in U.S. Cornhill also prints “An International Episode.” The Europeans is serialized in Atlantic. Now a celebrity, he dines out often, visits country houses, gains weight, takes long walks, fences, and does weightlifting to reduce. Elected to Reform Club. Meets Tennyson, George Meredith, and James McNeill Whistler. William marries Alice Howe Gibbens.

1879

Immersed in London society (“. . . dined out during the past winter 107 times!”). Meets Edmund Gosse and Robert Louis Stevenson, who will later become his close friends. Sees much of Henry Adams and his wife, Marian (Clover), in London and later in Paris. Takes rooms in Paris, September-December. Confidence is serialized in Scribner’s and published by Chatto & Windus. Hawthorne appears in Macmillan’s “English Men of Letters” series.

1880-81

Stays in Florence March-May to work on The Portrait of a Lady. Meets Constance Fenimore Woolson, American novelist and grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper. Returns to Bolton Street in June, where William visits him. Washington Square serialized in Cornhill Magazine and published in U.S. by Harper & Brothers (Dec. 1880). The Portrait of a Lady serialized in Macmillan’s Magazine (Oct. 1880-Nov. 1881) and Atlantic Monthly; published by Macmillan and Houghton, Mifflin (Nov. 1881). Publication both in United States and in England yields him the then-large income of $500 a month, though book sales are disappointing. Leaves London in February for Paris, the south of France, the Italian Riviera, and Venice, and returns home in July. Sister Alice comes to London with her friend Katharine Loring. James goes to Scotland in September.

1881-83

In November revisits America after absence of six years. Lionized in New York. Returns to Quincy Street for Christmas and sees ailing brother Wilky for the first time in ten years. In January visits Washington and the Henry Adamses and meets President Chester A. Arthur. Summoned to Cambridge by mother’s death January 29 (“the sweetest, gentlest, most beneficent human being I have ever known”). All four brothers are together for the first time in fifteen years at her funeral. Alice and father move from Cambridge to Boston. Prepares a stage version of “Daisy Miller” and returns to England in May. William, now a Harvard professor, comes to Europe in September. Proposed by Leslie Stephen, James becomes member, without the usual red tape, of the Atheneum Club. Travels in France in October to write A Little Tour in France (published 1884) and has last visit with Turgenev, who is dying. Returns to England in December and learns of father’s illness. Sails for America but Henry James Sr. dies December 18, 1882, before his arrival. Made executor of father’s will. Visits brothers Wilky and Bob in Milwaukee in January. Quarrels with William over division of property–James wants to restore Wilky’s share. Macmillan publishes a collected pocket edition of James’s novels and tales in fourteen volumes. Siege of London and Portraits of Places published. Returns to Bolton Street in September. Wilky dies in November. Constance Fenimore Woolson comes to London for the winter.

1884-86

Goes to Paris in February and visits Daudet, Zola, and Goncourt. Again impressed with their intense concern with “art, form, manner” but calls them “mandarins.” Misses Turgenev, who had died a few months before. Meets John Singer Sargent and persuades him to settle in London. Returns to Bolton Street. Sargent introduces him to young Paul Bourget. During country visits encounters many British political and social figures, including W. E. Gladstone, John Bright, and Charles Dilke. Alice, suffering from nervous ailment, arrives in England for visit in November but is too ill to travel and settles near her brother. Tales of Three Cities (“The Impressions of a Cousin,” “Lady Barberina,” “A New England Winter”) and “The Art of Fiction” published 1884. Alice goes to Bournemouth in late January. James joins her in May and becomes an intimate of Robert Louis Stevenson, who resides nearby. Spends August at Dover and is visited by Paul Bourget. Stays in Paris for the next two months. Moves into a flat at 34 De Vere Gardens in Kensington early in March 1886. Alice takes rooms in London. The Bostonians serialized in Century Feb. 1885-Feb. 1886; published 1886), The Princess Casamassima serialized in Atlantic Monthly (Sept. 1885-Oct. 1886; published 1886).

1886-87

Leaves for Italy in December for extended stay, mainly in Florence and Venice. Sees much of Constance Fenimore Woolson and stays in her villa. Writes “The Aspern Papers” and other tales. Returns to De Vere Gardens in July and begins work on The Tragic Muse. Pays several country visits. Dines out less often (“I know it all–all that one sees by ‘going out’–today, as if I had made it. But if I had, I would have made it better!”).

1888

The Reverberator, The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Modern Warning, and Partial Portraits published. Elizabeth Boott Duveneck dies. Robert Louis Stevenson leaves for the South Seas. Engages fencing teacher to combat “symptoms of a portentous corpulence.” Goes abroad in October to Geneva (where he visits Woolson), Genoa, Monte Carlo, and Paris.

1889-90

Catharine Walsh (Aunt Kate) dies March 1889. William comes to England to visit Alice in August. James goes to Dover in September and then to Paris for five weeks. Writes account of Robert Browning’s funeral in Westminster Abbey. Dramatizes The American for the Compton Comedy Company. Meets and becomes close friends with American journalist William Morton Fullerton and young American publisher Wolcott Balestier. Goes to Italy for the summer, staying in Venice and Florence, and takes a brief walking tour in Tuscany with W. W. Baldwin, an American physician practicing in Florence. Miss Woolson moves to Cheltenham, England, to be near James. Atlantic Monthly rejects his story “The Pupil,” but it appears in England. Writes series of drawing-room comedies for theater. Meets Rudyard Kipling. The Tragic Muse serialized in Atlantic Monthly (Jan. 1889-May 1890; published 1890). A London Life (including “The Patagonia,” “The Liar,” “Mrs. Temperly”) published 1889.

1891

The American produced at Southport is a success during road tour. After residence in Leamington, Alice returns to London, cared for by Katharine Loring. Doctors discover she has breast cancer. James circulates comedies (Mrs. Vibert, later called Tenants, and Mrs. Jasper, later named Disengaged) among theater managers who are cool to his work. Unimpressed at first by Ibsen, writes an appreciative review after seeing a performance of Hedda Gabler with Elizabeth Robins, a young Kentucky actress; persuades her to take the part of Mme. de Cintré in the London production of The American. Recuperates from flu in Ireland. James Russell Lowell dies. The American opens in London, September 26, and runs for seventy nights. Wolcott Balestier dies, and James attends his funeral in Dresden in December.

1892

Alice James dies March 6. James travels to Siena to be near the Paul Bourgets, and Venice, June-July, to visit the Daniel Curtises, then to Lausanne to meet William and his family, who have come abroad for sabbatical. Attends funeral of Tennyson at Westminster Abbey. Augustin Daly agrees to produce Mrs. Jasper. The American continues to be performed on the road by the Compton Company. The Lesson of the Master (with a collection of stories including “The Marriages,” “The Pupil,” “Brooksmith,” “The Solution,” and “Sir Edmund Orme”) published.

1893

Fanny Kemble dies in January. Continues to write unproduced plays. In March goes to Paris for two months. Sends Edward Compton first act and scenario for Guy Domville. Meets William and family in Lucerne and stays a month, returning to London in June. Spends July completing Guy Domville in Ramsgate. George Alexander, actor-manager, agrees to produce the play. Daly stages first reading of Mrs. Jasper, and James withdraws it, calling the rehearsal a mockery. The Real Thing and Other Tales (including “The Wheel of Time,” “Lord Beaupré,” “The Visit”) published.

1894

Constance Fenimore Woolson dies in Venice, January. Shocked and upset, James prepares to attend funeral in Rome but changes his mind on learning she is a suicide. Goes to Venice in April to help her family settle her affairs. Receives one of four copies, privately printed by Miss Loring, of Alice’s diary. Finds it impressive but is concerned that so much gossip he told Alice in private has been included (later burns his copy). Robert Louis Stevenson dies in the South Pacific. Guy Domville goes into rehearsal. Theatricals: Two Comedies and Theatricals: Second Series published.

1895

Guy Domville opens January 5 at St. James’s Theatre. At play’s end James is greeted by a fifteen-minute roar of boos, catcalls, and applause. Horrified and depressed, abandons the theater. Play earns him $1,300 after five-week run. Feels he can salvage something useful from playwriting for his fiction (“a key that, working in the same general way fits the complicated chambers of both the dramatic and the narrative lock”). Writes scenario for The Spoils of Poynton. Visits Lord Wolseley and Lord Houghton in Ireland. In the summer goes to Torquay in Devonshire and stays until November while electricity is being installed in De Vere Gardens flat. Friendship with W. E. Norris, who resides at Torquay. Writes a one-act play (“Mrs. Gracedew”) at request of Ellen Terry. Terminations (containing “The Death of the Lion,” “The Coxon Fund,” “The Middle Years,” “The Altar of the Dead”) published.

1896-97

Finishes The Spoils of Poynton (serialized in Atlantic Monthly April-Oct. 1896 as The Old Things; published 1897). Embarrassments (“The Figure in the Carpet,” “Glasses,” “The Next Time,” “The Way It Came”) published. Takes a house on Point Hill, Playden, opposite the old town of Rye, Sussex, August-September. Ford Madox Hueffer (later Ford Madox Ford) visits him. Converts play The Other House into novel and works on What Maisie Knew (published Sept. 1897). George du Maurier dies early in October. Because of increasing pain in wrist, hires stenographer William MacAlpine in February and then purchases a typewriter; soon begins direct dictation to MacAlpine at the machine. Invites Joseph Conrad to lunch at De Vere Gardens and begins their friendship. Goes to Bournemouth in July. Serves on jury in London before going to Dunwich, Suffolk, to spend time with Temple-Emmet cousins. In late September 1897 signs a twenty-one-year lease for Lamb House in Rye for £70 a year ($350). Takes on extra work to pay for setting up his house–the life of William Wetmore Story ($1,250 advance) and will furnish an “American Letter” for new magazine Literature (precursor of Times Literary Supplement) for $200 a month. Howells visits.

1898

“The Turn of the Screw” (serialized in Collier’s Jan.- April; published with “Covering End” under the title The Two Magics) proves his most popular work since “Daisy Miller.” Sleeps in Lamb House for first time June 28. Soon after is visited by William’s son, Henry James Jr. (Harry), followed by a stream of visitors: future Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mrs. J. T. Fields, Sarah Orne Jewett, the Paul Bourgets, the Edward Warrens, the Daniel Curtises, the Edmund Gosses, and Howard Sturgis. His witty friend Jonathan Sturges, a young, crippled New Yorker, stays for two months during autumn. In the Cage published. Meets neighbors Stephen Crane and H. G. Wells.

1899

Finishes The Awkward Age and plans trip to the Continent. Fire in Lamb House delays departure. To Paris in March and then visits the Paul Bourgets at Hyères. Stays with the Curtises in their Venice palazzo, where he meets and becomes friends with Jessie Allen. In Rome meets young American-Norwegian sculptor Hendrik C. Andersen; buys one of his busts. Returns to England in July and Andersen comes for three days in August. William, his wife, Alice, and daughter, Peggy, arrive at Lamb House in October. First meeting of brothers in six years. William now has confirmed heart condition. James B. Pinker becomes literary agent and for first time James’s professional relations are systematically organized; he reviews copyrights, finds new publishers, and obtains better prices for work (“the germ of a new career”). Purchases Lamb House for $10,000 with an easy mortgage.

1900

Unhappy at whiteness of beard which he has worn since the Civil War, he shaves it off. Alternates between Rye and London. Works on The Sacred Fount. Works on and then sets aside The Sense of the Past (never finished). Begins The Ambassadors. The Soft Side, a collection of twelve tales, published. Niece Peggy comes to Lamb House for Christmas.

1901

Obtains permanent room at the Reform Club for London visits and spends eight weeks in town. Sees funeral of Queen Victoria. Decides to employ a typist, Mary Weld, to replace the more expensive overqualified shorthand stenographer, MacAlpine. Completes The Ambassadors and begins The Wings of the Dove. The Sacred Fount published. Has meeting with George Gissing. William James, much improved, returns home after two years in Europe. Young Cambridge admirer Percy Lubbock visits. Discharges his alcoholic servants of sixteen years (the Smiths). Mrs. Paddington is new housekeeper.

1902

In London for the winter but gout and stomach disorder force him home earlier. Finishes The Wings of the Dove (published in August). William James Jr. (Billy) visits in October and becomes a favorite nephew. Writes “The Beast in the Jungle” and “The Birthplace.”

1903

The Ambassadors, The Better Sort (a collection of eleven tales), and William Wetmore Story and His Friends published. After another spell in town, returns to Lamb House in May and begins work on The Golden Bowl. Meets and establishes close friendship with Dudley Jocelyn Persse, a nephew of Lady Gregory. First meeting with Edith Wharton in December.

1904-05

Completes The Golden Bowl (published Nov. 1904). Rents Lamb House for six months, and sails in August for America after twenty-year absence. Sees new Manhattan skyline from New Jersey on arrival and stays with Colonel George Harvey, president of Harper’s, in Jersey shore house with Mark Twain as fellow guest. Goes to William’s country house at Chocorua in the White Mountains, New Hampshire. Re-explores Cambridge, Boston, Salem, Newport, and Concord, where he visits brother Bob. In October stays with Edith Wharton in the Berkshires and motors with her through Massachusetts and New York. Later visits New York, Philadelphia (where he delivers lecture “The Lesson of Balzac”), and then Washington, D.C., as a guest in Henry Adams’ house. Meets (and is critical of) President Theodore Roosevelt. Returns to Philadelphia to lecture at Bryn Mawr. Travels to Richmond, Charleston, Jacksonville, Palm Beach, and St. Augustine. Then lectures in St. Louis, Chicago, South Bend, Indianapolis, Los Angeles (with a short vacation at Coronado Beach near San Diego), San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Returns to explore New York City (“the terrible town”), May-June. Lectures on “The Question of Our Speech” at Bryn Mawr commencement. Elected to newly founded American Academy of Arts and Letters (William declines). Returns to England in July; lectures had more than covered expenses of his trip. Begins revision of novels for the New York Edition.

1906-08

Writes “The Jolly Corner” and The American Scene (published 1907). Writes eighteen prefaces for the New York Edition (twenty-four volumes published 1907). Visits Paris and Edith Wharton in spring 1907 and motors with her in Midi. Travels to Italy for the last time, visiting Hendrik Andersen in Rome, and goes on to Florence and Venice. Engages Theodora Bosanquet as his typist in autumn. Again visits Edith Wharton in Paris, spring 1908. William comes to England to give a series of lectures at Oxford and receives an honorary Doctor of Science degree. James goes to Edinburgh in March to see a tryout by the Forbes-Robertsons of his play The High Bid, a rewrite in three acts of the one-act play originally written for Ellen Terry (revised earlier as the story “Covering End”). Play gets only five special matinees in London. Shocked by slim royalties from sales of the New York Edition.

1909

Growing acquaintance with young writers and artists of Bloomsbury, including Virginia and Vanessa Stephen and others. Meets and befriends young Hugh Walpole in February. Goes to Cambridge in June as guest of admiring dons and undergraduates and meets John Maynard Keynes. Feels unwell and sees doctors about what he believes may be heart trouble. They reassure him. Late in year burns forty years of his letters and papers at Rye. Suffers severe attacks of gout. Italian Hours published.

1910

Very ill in January (“food-loathing”) and spends much time in bed. Nephew Harry comes to be with him in February. In March is examined by Sir William Osler, who finds nothing physically wrong. James begins to realize that he has had “a sort of nervous breakdown.” William, in spite of now severe heart trouble, and his wife, Alice, come to England to give him support. Brothers and Alice go to Bad Nauheim for cure, then travel to Zurich, Lucerne, and Geneva, where they learn Robertson (Bob) James has died in America of heart attack. James’s health begins to improve but William is failing. Sails with William and Alice for America in August. William dies at Chocorua soon after arrival, and James remains with the family for the winter. The Finer Grain and The Outcry published.

1911

Honorary degree from Harvard in spring. Visits with Howells and Grace Norton. Sails for England July 30. On return to Lamb House, decides he will be too lonely there and starts search for a London flat. Theodora Bosanquet obtains two work rooms adjoining her flat in Chelsea and he begins autobiography, A Small Boy and Others. Continues to reside at the Reform Club.

1912

Delivers “The Novel in The Ring and the Book,” on the 100th anniversary of Browning’s birth, to the Royal Society of Literature. Honorary Doctor of Letters from Oxford University June 26. Spends summer at Lamb House. Sees much of Edith Wharton (“the Firebird”), who spends summer in England. (She secretly arranges to have Scribner’s put $8,000 into James’s account.) Takes 21 Carlyle Mansions, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, as London quarters. Writes a long admiring letter for William Dean Howells’ seventy-fifth birthday. Meets André Gide. Contracts bad case of shingles and is ill four months, much of the time not able to leave bed.

1913

Moves into Cheyne Walk flat. Two hundred and seventy friends and admirers subscribe for seventieth birthday portrait by Sargent and present also a silver-gilt Charles II porringer and dish (“golden bowl”). Sargent turns over his payment to young sculptor Derwent Wood, who does a bust of James. Autobiography A Small Boy and Others published. Goes with niece Peggy to Lamb House for the summer.

1914

Notes of a Son and Brother published. Works on “The Ivory Tower.” Returns to Lamb House in July. Niece Peggy joins him. Horrified by the war (“this crash of our civilisation,” “a nightmare from which there is no waking”). In London in September participates in Belgian Relief, visits wounded in St. Bartholomew’s and other hospitals; feels less “finished and useless and doddering” and recalls Walt Whitman and his Civil War hospital visits. Accepts chairmanship of American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in France. Notes on Novelists (essays on Balzac, Flaubert, Zola) published.

1915-16

Continues work with the wounded and war relief. Has occasional lunches with Prime Minister Asquith and family, and meets Winston Churchill and other war leaders. Discovers that he is considered an alien and has to report to police before going to coastal Rye. Decides to become a British national and asks Asquith to be one of his sponsors. Receives Certificate of Naturalization on July 26. H. G. Wells satirizes him in Boon (“leviathan retrieving pebbles”) and James, in the correspondence that follows, writes: “Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance.” Burns more papers and photographs at Lamb House in autumn. Has a stroke December 2 in his flat, followed by another two days later. Develops pneumonia and during delirium gives his last confused dictation (dealing with the Napoleonic legend) to Theodora Bosanquet, who types it on the familiar typewriter. Mrs. William James arrives December 13 to care for him. On New Year’s Day, George V confers the Order of Merit. Dies February 28. Funeral services held at the Chelsea Old Church. The body is cremated and the ashes are buried in Cambridge Cemetery family plot.

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