Part 50

"little genuises"=>"little geniuses"

I am desirious of reading=>I am desirous of reading

Et peut-on savoir jusqu'ou=>Et peut-on savoir jusqu'où

Dés que ma santé=>Dès que ma santé

Journal of Speculative Philsophy=>Journal of Speculative Philosophy

end was apporaching until it was close at hand=>end was approaching until it was close at hand

FOOTNOTES:

Literary Remains of Henry James, p. 151.

Henry James (in A Small Boy and Others, p. 5) says of Catherine Barber; "She represented for us in our generation the only English blood--that of both her own parents--flowing in our veins." She may well have seemed to her grandson to be of a different type from other members of the family, who were more recently, and doubtless obviously, Irish or Scotch; but the statement is incorrect. John Barber was the son of Patrick Barber, who came from Longford County, Ireland, about 1750 and settled at Neelytown near Newburgh (after having lived in New York City and Princeton) about 1764, and of Jannet Rhea (or Rea) whose parents were well-to-do people in old Shawangunk in 1790. Whatever may have been the previous history of the Rhea family, their name does not suggest an English origin. Both Patrick Barber and Matthew Rhea were pillars of Goodwill Presbyterian Church in Montgomery.

See Literary Remains, p. 149.

If the reader were familiar, as he cannot be presumed to have been, with the elder Henry James or his writings, he would be in no danger of finding anything cold or qualifying in these words, but would discern a true adoration expressing itself in a way that was peculiarly characteristic of their writer. For Henry James, Senior, a spiritual democracy deeper than that of our political jargon was not a mere conception: it was an unquestioned reality. The outer wrappings in which people swathed their souls excited him to anger and ridicule more often than praise; but when men or women seemed to him beautiful or adorable he thought it was because they betrayed more naturally than others the inward possession of that humble "social" spirit which he wanted to think of as truly a common possession--God's equal gift to each and all. To say of his mother that that could be felt in her, that she was merely that, was his purest praise. The reader may find this habit of his thought expressing itself anew in William James by turning to a letter on page 210 below. That letter might have been written by Henry James, Senior.

The places of two of the eleven who died early were taken by their orphaned children.

According to the Rev. Hugh Walsh of Newburgh, who has worked out the Walsh genealogy. A Small Boy and Others (page 6) says "Killyleagh."

A Small Boy and Others, p. 8.

Literary Remains of Henry James, Introduction, p. 9.

See, further, Notes of a Son and Brother, pp. 181 et seq.

Society of the Redeemed Form of Man, quoted in the Introduction to Literary Remains, p. 57, et seq.

Letter to Shadworth H. Hodgson, p. 241 infra.

A Small Boy and Others, p. 216.

Vide also a passage in the Literary Remains, at p. 104.

Life of E. L. Godkin, vol. II, p. 218. New York, 1907.

Early Years of the Saturday Club; E. W. Emerson's chapter on Henry James, Senior, p. 328. There follows a delightful account of a "Conversation" at R. W. Emerson's house in Concord, at which Henry James, Senior, upset a prepared discourse of Alcott's and launched himself into an attack on "Morality." Whereupon Miss Mary Moody Emerson, "eighty-four years old and dressed underneath without doubt, in her shroud," seized him by the shoulders and shook him and rebuked him. "Mr. James beamed with delight and spoke with most chivalrous courtesy to this Deborah bending over him."

Some passages in William James's early letters to his family might seem labored. They should be read with this in mind. An especially high-sounding phrase or a flight into a grand style was understood as a signal meaning "fun," and such passages are never to be taken as serious.

A Small Boy and Others, p. 207.

"I have fully decided to try being a painter. I shall know in a year or two whether I am made to be one. If not, it will be easy to retreat. There's nothing in the world so despicable as a bad artist." (1860.)

For James's use of Touchstone's question, see p. 190 infra.

Cf. Henry James's Life of W. W. Story, vol. II, p. 204, where there is a passage which sounds reminiscent of the author's father and brother.

The following entries occur among some "notes on his students" which President Eliot made at the time--