Emerson and the James Family

Abstract

E. 0. MATTHIESSEN has said that of the James family upon Emerson compose by themselves a chapter of American intellectual history.' Those comments are significant simply as near-contemporary evaluations of Emerson by three men of widely divergent tastes. That the Jameses were of one family, a father and two sons, does not lend conformity to their evaluations. The thesis of this study might therefore be stated as early evaluations of Emerson by a theologian, a philosopher, and an artist. On the other hand, these three men, Henry James, Sr., and his two sons, William and Henry, were of one family; and that fact cannot and should not be ignored. C. Hartley Grattan pointed out a number of years agro that what the Jameses did, individually and collectively, has long since become a part of the general stream of culture in the EuropeanAmerican world. Tendencies they initiated or gave impetus to have been taken up and further developed and sometimes redirected by later thinkers until it is well nigh impossible to see that the contemporary manifestation of that tendency is properly to be listed under the heading of a James bequest.2 What has not been pointed out, however, is the fact that the Jameses did leave a bequest-in the form of an evaluation of Emerson-anticipating in many respects conclusions which scholarship has only recently caught up with. Nor, as far as I know, has it been pointed out that, although the three Jameses each saw Emerson only partially, taken as a unit, they saw him whole-according to Emerson's own definition of a whole man. One calls the elder Henry James theologian only for want of a better term. One might call him a modified Swedenborgian, a supernaturalist, or even a socialist. Since, however, he did propound a theological system and since it was from a theological point of