Oh Those Fabulous James Boys!

A look at the relationship between the famous brothers William and Henry James.

By Eugene Taylor, published on March 01, 1995 - last reviewed on July 14, 2009

Henry, the younger, was admiring of his older brother, always looking for approval, while early on stealing most of the thunder in parental and public acclaim. William, on the other hand, while being devoted, affectionate, and Henry's critical sounding board, was also envious, frequently admonishing, and ever guilt ridden because he was dependent on the family coffers.

The core of the problem was William's tardiness in getting off the ground. He mucked around until he was 30 before he even found a job, and while he had numerous articles and reviews in print, did not publish his first book, the literary remains of his father, for 13 years beyond that. Henry went straight for his vocational goal to become a self-supporting writer, and by the time of William's first book was producing the first complete edition of his collected works to date--in 13 volumes.

William's reaction to Henry's birth is not recorded (he was only one at the time), but the Freudians would predict displacement anxiety. One anecdote seems typical. William, age eight, used to go off in the city with others his own age. Henry, just barely seven, would always want to come along. At one point, begging to be taken, he was rebuffed by William: "I play with boys who curse and swear."

All their moving about on two continents, however, threw them more closely together as they were growing up. Their lives fused and they became dependent on each other emotionally. Their letters often show an endearing affection, William opening with "beloved Arry" and often signing "Bro." or "your bretha."

Both were constantly concerned with each other's welfare. Henry found it dismally unsatisfactory and difficult to write to William without knowing every detail about his health and well-being. Henry, for his part, would give a running commentary of his own ups and downs, describing in vivid terms a languishing depression or a "moving intestinal drama."

The brothers helped each other in big and small ways. There is a record of one touching moment when Henry, who had been the only one of the two able to get from England to Boston upon their father's death, stood over the grave by himself and read William's farewell letter, which had arrived too late. When William was unable to deliver his presidential address to the British Society for Psychical Research, brother Henry rose to the podium and read it in his place. When William appeared on Henry's doorstep in 1899, desperately ill with a heart condition, Henry, with the aid of William's wife, Alice, lovingly nursed him back to health.

Especially as they aged, William was concerned about Henry's abject loneliness, partly brought on by the nature of his vocation; Henry was, after all, always watching, always observing, a habitual outsider. It was a way of living that he developed to a degree well beyond his brother. But William's concern was also due to the fact that Henry had remained single with no family of his own. As William lay dying in 1910, he made his wife promise to be there for Henry at his end.

All their lives the two of them had genuine divergences of taste and opinion. Henry found seances "dull and repulsive" and particularly disliked the riffraff they attracted. William was a cautious believer who pleaded for tolerance; as a result, he regularly attracted a coterie of cranks, eccentrics, and radicals.

Henry delighted in the refinement of civilized etiquette. William preferred the underdog, the chaotic, and the exception to the rule, and while he could carry himself with aplomb in the most cosmopolitan company, he was tactfully frank in his opinions about pretension and spoke out against dogmatism. Henry's detachment led him to a life of aesthetic contemplation; William was immersed in worldly affairs. For him, to think was to act. All of life was an ethical proving ground of the will.

There are few indications of rancor during the early period of their respective careers, and what rivalry did surface appeared as humorous jousting. The first major ripple between them seems to have come in 1882, over the dispensation of their father's estate. Wilkie had been left out of the will because his father had just advanced him a large sum of money. In a surprise move Henry, not William, had been made the executor, and when the shortfall to Wilkie came out, Henry wanted to redivide the money, while William desired to follow their father's wishes. Henry soon turned the financial affairs of the family over to William anyway, and William eventually caved in so Wilkie could get more money. But the episode demonstrates the strained circumstances that can develop over matters of inheritance, and Harry's apparent leading role with the parents.

Another episode, in 1905, involved the brothers' inaugural membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Even though both had attained international renown by that time, Henry had been elected before William, so that when William replied to the invitation to join, he turned it down. He gave three reasons: first, he never joined any bodies that did not do specific work; second, he thought accepting any such membership would be pure vanity; and third: "I am the more encouraged to this course by the fact that my younger and shallower and vainer brother is already in the Academy and that if I were there too, the other families represented might think the James influence too rank and strong." There is a certain tongue-in-cheek tone to William's letter, but there appears to be that long-standing rivalrous edge as well.