HENRY ]AMES
455
to the haunts of his catastrophe. But the neurotic repression failed to
yield, and a severe nervous depression that expressed his sense of defeat
ensued.
With the outbreak of World War I soon following, when he
\Vas already over seventy, came a final effort at solution-now not by
sublimation
in
fiction, by escape or return, but in relationships to the
real social world. It is not surprising that a note of overcompensation
was present in these war activities, especially in the assumption of
British citizenship, and that his end was probably hastened by his
profligate expenditure of energy. But
in
large measure he re-estab–
lished contact with the realities of his environment by these acts and
in the same degree he thus succeeded in laying the ghost of his unlived
past before death overtook him.
Three wars are thus spanned by the ghost of Henry James: the
Civil War, which evoked it mortally in his youth; World War I, which
permitted it to be laid before his death; and World War II, which, oc–
curring during the centenary of his birth, recalls it anew in the im–
mortal sense.
REFERENCES
Works by Henry James
1. The ambassadors. New York: Harpers, 1903.
2. The American scene. New York: Harpers, 1907.
3. The beast in the jungle in The better sort. New York: Scribners, 1903. Pp.
189-244.
4. The Bostonians. New York: Macmillan, 1886.
5. The jolly corner in Novels and tales. New York Edition. New York: Scrib-
ners, 1909. Vol. XVII, pp. 433-485.
6. Letters. Edited by Percy Lubbock. New York: Scribners, 1920. 2 vols.
7. Notes of a son and brother. New York: Scribners, 1914.
8. Novels and tales. New York Edition. New York: Scribners, 1907-1917. 26 vols.
9. Owen Wingrave in The wheel of time. New York: Harpers, 1893. Pp. 147-
220.
10. A passionate pilgrim and other tales. Boston: J ames R. Osgood, 1875.
11. Sir Edmund Orme in The lesson of the master and other tales. New York:
Macmillan, 1892. Pp. 266-302.
12. The story of a year.
Atlantic Monthly,
1865, 15, 257-281.
13. Within the rim. London: Collins, 1918.
Works by Others
14. Gosse, Edmund. Aspects and impressions. New York: Scribners, 1922. Pp.
17-53.
15. James, Henry, Sr. The secret of Swedenborg. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1869.
16. James, William. Letters. Edited by his son Henry James. Boston: Atlantic
Monthly Press, 1920. 2 vols.
17. Warren, Austin. The elder Henry James. New York. Macmillan, 1934.
18. Wilson, Edmund. The wound and the bow. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941.
