HENRY JAMES
437
books dealt with religious questions, such as the nature of evil,
and with social problems, like those of marriage and divorce, in which
the relation of the individual to society occupied a central place. His
views were distinctly unconventional. Though he was at various times
an enthusiastic student of Fourier and Swedenborg, he was never a
mere disciple-the individualistic stamp was too strong on all he
thought and wrote. Inde<;d, this markedly idiosyncratic bias made his
books, despite their vivid language and command of style, accessible to
a very limited audience. The majority tended to be of a mind with
the reviewer who said of "The Secret of Swedenborg" that the elder
James had not only written about the secret of Swedenborg but that
he had kept it. One is inevitably reminded of the similar quips with
which_ the works of his son and namesake were later received; for ex–
ample, the comment in
Life
expressing the hope that Henry James
would sharpen his point of view and then stick himself with it, and
Mark Twain's avowal that he would rather be damned to John
Bunyan's heaven than have to read
The Bostonians.
The early life of the elder James is not without interest in the
present context, especially as concerns an accident which befell him
at the age of thirteen and which left its mark upon him for the rest
of his life. While a schoolboy at the Albany Academy, he formed
one of a group who used to meet in a near-by park for experiments
in balloon flying. The motive power for the balloon was furnished
by a ball of tow soaked in turpentine. The ball would drop when
the balloon caught fire, and the boys would then kick the ball around
for their amusement. During one of these experiments, when
Henry's pantaloons had by chance got sprinkled with turpentine,
one of the balls can1e, flying through the open window of a stable.
The boy in an attempt to put out the fire, which would otherwise
have consumed the building, rushed to the hayloft and stamped out
tile flame. In doing so he burnt his leg severely and had to remain in
bed for the next two years. A double amputation above the knee
proved necessary. He had a wooden leg in later years and was preven–
ted by his infirmity from leading a very active life. Fortunately he
had inherited sufficient money from his father- an influential and
w·ealthy citizen of Albany- to obviate any routine means of earning
a livelihood. Accordingly, the children of Henry James were much
more closely companioned by him than would otherwise have been
possible, and it is thus easier to understand that the strength of charac–
ter which he had should have left so strong an impression upon their
young personalities. In the
Notes of a Son and Brother
(
p.
192),
the
