452
PARTISAN REVIEW
violence with which the American Civil War broke upon us, at the
North, fifty-four years ago, when I had a consciousness of youth
which perhaps equalled in vivacity my present consciousness of age.. ..
The analogy quickened and deepened with every elapsing hour; the
drop of the balance under the invasion of Belgium reproduced with
intensity the agitation of the New England air by Mr. Lincoln's call
to arms, and I went about for a short space as with the queer secret
locked in my breast of at least already knowing how such occasions
helped and what a big war was going to mean" ( 13, pp. 11 f.). The
analogy of the wars in his own consciousness thus attested, it is not
difficult to believe that a common motivational tie was at least implicit–
ly at work. He might have been found wanting in 1861, but he would
not be found so on this second and doubtless final occasion. At that
earlier time he had adjusted to his personal wounds by withdrawal
and by such constructive acts as the art of fiction permitted. But now
a positive participation in real social action would provide the solution
for the problem which had haunted him through life. Instead of hang–
ing his head as
a
war disability, he would stand forth as a war hero;
England, which had been for him a refuge of escape, would become
a citadel of
his
true assertion; and America, which had exhibited him
as weak, would now be exhibited by
him
as weak.
-
In this setting becomes intelligible the mooted question of James's
assumption of British citizenship a few months before his death. He
had, on the one hand, been adding to his numerous activities in the
Allied
intere.~t
repeated statements of his consternation that America
did not enter the war at once. On the other hand,
his
fervent iden–
tification with the English cause increased daily. Thus in July, 1915,
he at last became a naturalized British subject. By this stroke he chan–
ged for himself the orientation of a lifetime. His haven of refuge was
transformed into the many-flagged and turreted embattlements of
which he well might write with a surge of liberated passion. From these
heights he could in the end look down upon America hanging back in
the distance. His own words-in a letter to his nephew-again at this
point offer direct confirmation: "I have testified to my long attach–
ment here in the only way I could-though I certainly shouldn't have
done it, under the inspiration of our Cause,
if
the U. S.
A.
had done
it a little more
for
me. Then I should have thrown myself back on that
and been content with it; but as this, at the end of a year, hasn't taken
place, I have had to act for myself, and I go so far as quite to think,
I hope not fatuously, that I shall have set an example and shown a
little something of the way" (6, Vol. II, p. 491).
