It appears that your poor old uncle is remarkably
difficult, but he doesn't do it on purpose."



the Department of Internal
Revenue, and at farming near
Prairie du Chien, but financial
success eluded him.
  Meantime, his son Joseph Cary
and his daughter Alice, born in
1875, were growing up.
  Novelist Graham Greene con-
nects Henry's permanent move to
England with the economic trials of
Bob and Wilky. Henry, excluded
from Civil War service because of a
slight back injury, felt that his own
well-being had been bought at the
cost of his younger brothers'
troubles, and he sought escape out
of the country. Treachery and
betrayal keynote many of the James
stories. As Greene sees it, the
betrayed victims were often
generous young men of high ideals,
like Bob and Wilky.
  This is largely conjecture, but it
is fact that after the death of the
senior Henry James in 1882, when
division of his $95,000 estate came
into the picture, there was discus-
sion as to whether Wilky had not
already used his share in advance.
His father believed so, for he
omitted Wilky from his will. Large-
ly through Henry's efforts, the es-
tate was divided so as to set up a
trust for Wilky's wife and family.
Wilky did die the next year, and his
family must have regarded Uncle
Henry as a benefactor.
  Henry, although the Atlantic
separated him from his relatives,
kept track of them. Then in 1909
he began to write to his niece.
Those years, 1909-1915, were im-
portant to both. Alice launched into
marriage. Henry, in what turned
out to be his last six years, was
writing his reminiscences.
  Establishing a common ground
between them, Henry wrote, still in
December of 1909, that he
remembered Milwaukee well, and
commented:


  I wish you didn't cling so
  furiously nowadays to your cold



lakeside. I think of it as I found it
that grim (grim and polar in
spite of your welcome) winter
day six years ago, while those
fleeting hours were too brief for
me to get "broken in."

  Illness dogged the James family
during 1910-1911, Bob and
William James died, and young
Alice, shortly after her wedding,
fell seriously ill. Henry, though
himself in poor health, expressed
sympathy and hope in his letter to
Alice's mother:

  I very greatly grieve that Alice's
  marriage, so auspicious in all
  ways as it seemed, should have
  been followed by such an evil
  time. But tell her with her i
  Uncle's blessing that one ab,
  solutely, with patience and faith,
  emerges....
  But dismal events in Britain
obsessed his mind, and this
reflected in subsequent letters to
Alice. It was plain that, surrounded
by friends as he was in England,
Henry still yearned for the intimacy
of family:
  As your poor Uncle totters
  further around he reaches out
  more and more for any stray
  attentions from anyone in the
  nature of gentle niece or nephew
  or sister-in-law-though I make
  no point of the "in-law."
  Remember that, dearest Alice !...
  When 250 of Henry's friends
commissioned John Sargent to
paint his portrait, on the event of
his 70th birthday, he wrote Alice
about the project:
  I sit tomorrow A.M. to Sargent
  for my portrait for the third
  time.... It appears that your poor



  old uncle is remarkably difficult,
  but he doesn't do it on purpose.
  Sargent likes me to have a friend
  or companion sitting with us, for
  talk and cheer, while he paints. It
  makes the face more animated. If
  you only were here it would be
  jolly for you to fill this office....
  America seemed geared to the
dollar then as now, and Henry
reacted to the American way of
business:
  That (being in Milwaukee all
  summer) is one of these facts
  which comes to us here from
  America... to make us feel, with
  wonder, how much harder the
  great machine of business grinds
  its victims to all appearance, on
  your side of the world than it
  does here, where certain breaks
  and shifts and reliefs are in-
  volved in the very structure of
  life.... You are more heroic in
  your great tensions and
  patiences. Prodigious the
  American man! I take off my hat
  to him. Let David, please, feel the
  side-wind of that gesture!

  By now the conflagration of
World War I blazed, and this took
its toll of Henry. In fact it took over
his life and finished his literary
career. He wrote to Alice:

  The war wages itself on such a
  scale that it blocks out
  everything else but its own very
  presence and cruelty-so that we
  know and think, we eat and
  drink, we sleep and wake, we
  utter and feel absolutely nothing
  else.

  Her answers sympathized, for
Alice herself had dived into the war
relief work she wrote of to her Un-
cle Henry. He answered:
  Your letter is really the first sign
  I have had from America of a real
  understanding or imagination of



... one absolutely, with patience and faith,
emerges."



June 1978/Wisconsin Academy Review/9