William James

“ William James of Albany was at that time approaching the term of his remarkably fruitful career, and as I see the fruits of it stated on the morrow of his death—in the New York Evening Post of December 20th 1832, for instance, I find myself envying the friendly youth who could bring his modest Irish kin such a fairytale from over the sea. I attach as I hang upon the passage a melancholy gaze to the cloud of images of what might have been for us all that it distractingly throws off. ”

“ I hope that I do not take too great a liberty with your friendship," he added, seeing a cloud come upon his auditor's brow.
"Not in the least, Manners, not in the least," answered Sir William: "I was only thinking what I could do to relieve the poor youth's mind. I am afraid I somewhat mistook him, Manners, when I saw him with you in America; I am afraid I did not half see the nobler and finer qualities of his mind, concealed, as they were, under an exterior of frivolous fastidiousness. But I can assure you, that anything on earth I can do to set his mind at ease I will do ”

“ Everyone was so angry and disappointed that he should have come into the world at all, that a story was put about that he was not the son of the king and queen, but a strange baby who had been carried into the queen's room in a warming-pan, because James was resolved to prevent Mary and William from reigning.
Only silly people could believe such a story as this; but all the Whigs, and most of the Tories, thought in earnest that it was a sad thing for the country to have an heir to the throne brought up by a Roman Catholic, and to think it right to treat his subjects as James was treating them. ”

“ William James and his family were now in Europe for a year of Switzerland and Italy, and Henry joined them at Lausanne on his way home. The next two years of London were given up, almost without intermission, to the hopes and anxieties of his theatrical affairs, in which he was now completely immersed—so much so, indeed, as to test his very remarkable powers of physical endurance, which seem in middle life to have thrown off the early troubles of his health. ”

“ Whatever wisdom and energy could do William did. Those obstacles which no wisdom or energy could have overcome his enemies themselves studiously removed.
On the great day on which the Bishops were acquitted, and on which the invitation was despatched to the Hague, James returned from Hounslow to Westminster in a gloomy and agitated mood. He made an effort that afternoon to appear cheerful: 428 but the bonfires, the rockets, and above all the waxen Popes who were blazing in every quarter of London, were not likely to soothe him. ”

“ The next generation, moreover, were by this time growing up and were beginning to take a place in Henry James's life that was a source of ever-increasing pride and pleasure to him. From now onward there was nothing he so welcomed as the recurring visits to Lamb House of one or other of his elder brother's children. William James was again in Europe in 1902, delivering at Edinburgh the lectures that presently appeared as The Varieties of Religious Experience. ”

“ William James, philosopher, brother of Henry James, novelist, was born in New York, on January 11, 1842, of devout and independent parentage. Throughout life his studies were much disturbed by ill health. ”

“ They seem to have been reckoned as pious people, and several of their number are known to have been generous supporters of the churches in which they worshiped; but, if one may judge by the scanty records which remain, there is no one among them to whom one can point as foreshadowing the inclination to letters and religious speculation that manifested itself strongly in William James and his father. They were mainly concerned to establish themselves in a new country. ”

“ Of all the schemes ever formed for the restoration of James or of his descendants, this scheme promised the fairest. That national pride, that hatred of arbitrary power, which had hitherto been on William's side, would now be turned against him. Hundreds of thousands who would have put their lives in jeopardy to prevent a French army from imposing a government on the English, would have felt no disposition to prevent an English army from driving out the Dutch. ”

“ When William caught sight of the valley of the Boyne, he could not suppress an exclamation and a gesture of delight. He had been apprehensive that the enemy would avoid a decisive action, and would protract the war till the autumnal rains should return with pestilence in their train. He was now at ease. It was plain that the contest would be sharp and short. The pavilion of James was pitched on the eminence of Donore. The flags of the House of Stuart and of the House of Bourbon waved together in defiance on the walls of Drogheda. ”

“ That Hamilton meditated declaring for William is certain, and that he would have taken all his colleagues with him, except Dundee and Balcarres, is probable; but the King's sudden return to Whitehall postponed matters for a time.
James reached London from Rochester on the afternoon of Sunday, December 16th. William was then at Windsor, and James expressed a wish to meet him in London, offering St. James's Palace for his quarters. William sent an answer that he could not come to London while there were any troops there not under his command. ”

“ For three years James suffered in a place of concealment, before he found the way opened to escape. When he resolved on having his freedom he was much under twenty-one years of age, a brave young man, for three years, with unfailing spirit, making resistance in the city of Richmond to the slave Power!
Such heroes in the days of Slavery, did much to make the infernal system insecure, and to keep alive the spirit of freedom in liberty-loving hearts the world over, wherever such deeds of noble daring were made known. ”

“ Wrapped in tatters it is therefore that, with three or four of William's letters of '67 and '68 kept before me, I make my stride, not only for the sake of what I still regard as their admirable interest, but for the way they bring back again to me everything they figured at the time, every flame of faith they rekindled, every gage they held out for the future. ”

“ But James held him fast. “The deil’s in the callant,” says he, “to think o’ runnin’, an’ him no able to stand his lane. Lie still, I tell ye!” And William, who knew it was in vain for him to strive with his strong brither, thought it best no to struggle ony mair. When he had gotten quite round again, James helpit him up, an’ as they’re gaun down to the water for William to wash himsel, they meet Jeanie coming fleein’ up the path; and when she saw William’s bloody face and claes, she clasped her hands thegither, an’ would hae fa’en, if James hadna keppit her. ”

“ As king of England he concluded treaties of alliance with the members of the League of Augsburg and sent a large army to oppose the French in Flanders. But his greatest immediate peril during 1689–1690 came from the circumstance that the French disputed the mastery of the seas with the Anglo-Dutch fleet, and that Ireland was strongly for King James. On the 1st of July 1690 the allies were badly beaten at sea off Beachy Head, but on the same day William himself won a decisive victory over James’s army at the Boyne in Ireland. Dublin and Drogheda soon fell and-James fled from Ireland. ”

“ For Charles and James were content to be the vassals and pensioners of a powerful and ambitious neighbour: they submitted to his ascendency: they shunned with pusillanimous caution whatever could give him offence; and thus, at the cost of the independence and dignity of that ancient and glorious crown which they unworthily wore, they avoided a conflict which would instantly have shown how helpless, under their misrule, their once formidable kingdom had become. Their ignominious policy it was neither in William's power nor in his nature to follow. ”

“ Having shed innocent blood for the purpose of enabling James to keep up thirty thousand troops without the consent of Parliament, he now pretended to think it monstrous that William should keep up ten thousand with the consent of Parliament. That a great constituent body should be so forgetful of the past and so much out of humour with the present as to take this base and hardhearted pettifogger for a patriot was an omen which might well justify the most gloomy prognostications. ”

“ Our maternal greatgrandfather on the mother's side—that is our mother's mother's father, Alexander Robertson of Polmont near Edinburgh—had likewise crossed the sea in the mid-century and prospered in New York very much as Hugh Walsh was prospering and William James was still more markedly to prosper, further up the Hudson ”

“ But his principles, though they might perhaps have held out against the severities and the promises of William, were not proof against the ingratitude of James. Human nature at last asserted its rights. ”

“ When about sixteen years old he became a contributor to the journals published in the neighbourhood of Howden, and in 1790 he commenced business in that town with his brother, William Savage [q. v.] , as printer and bookseller. In 1797 William moved to London, and in 1803 James followed him, and from that time devoted himself unweariedly to antiquarian and bibliographical pursuits. ”

“ When he grew to manhood, Lord William warmly supported the Roman Catholic cause and was imprisoned by Elizabeth; but when James became King, he was released and restored to his estates on the Border. Throughout the remainder of his career he was the most notable man of his district. He knew how to make himself respected by his wild neighbours. His fame and power were great. He founded the fortunes of his family so surely that he it is who is usually thought of as the ancestor of the Earls of Carlisle, though his great-grandson was the first to hold the title. ”

“ I having for a long time but the scantest company of my own, even at the Law School, where my fellow-disciples could bear the name for me only as a troop of actors might have done on that further side of footlights to which I never went round. This last at least with few exceptions, while there were none to the exquisite rule, as I positively to-day feel it, of my apprehension of William's cluster as a concern of his—interesting exactly because of that reference. ”

“ The party to which he had attached himself might perhaps have reasonably considered him as a hostage sufficient to ensure the good faith of his father; for the Earl was approaching that time of life at which even the most ambitious and rapacious men generally toil rather for their children than for themselves. But the distrust which Sunderland inspired was such as no guarantee could quiet. Many fancied that he was,—with what object they never took the trouble to inquire,—employing the same arts which had ruined James for the purpose of ruining William. Each prince had had his weak side. ”

“ The cause of James was the cause of France; and, though to superficial observers the French alliance seemed to be his chief support, it really was the obstacle which made his restoration impossible. In the patriotism, the too often unamiable and unsocial patriotism of our forefathers, lay the secret at once of William's weakness and of his strength. They were jealous of his love for Holland; but they cordially sympathized with his hatred of Lewis. ”

“ It's a terrible country not to live in." He would have exclaimed even more if he had witnessed the mescal experiment, that is briefly mentioned in the letter that follows. He might then have gone on to remark that the "fixing" of life seemed, in William's neighborhood, to be quite gratuitously heroic. William James and his wife and the youngest child were alone in the Chocorua cottage for a few days, picnicking by themselves without any servant. They had no horse ”

“ King James staid a little longer. He did not mind when he heard that Prince George of Denmark had gone to the Prince of Orange, but only laughed, and said "Est il possible?" but when he heard his daughter Anne, to whom he had always been kind, was gone too, the tears came into his eyes, and he said, "God help me, my own children are deserting me." He would have put himself at the head of the army, but he found that if he did so he was likely to be made prisoner and carried to William. So he disguised himself and set off for France ”

“ Having lived beyond his means, he went to London in 1784, hoping to get preferment from his acquaintance, Sancroft, Arlington, or Sir Leoline Jenkins. He got nothing except 7l. from Jenkins and on the accession of James II was left out of the commission for publicly attacking a Whitehall Jesuit. He tried to make something by his pen, and composed his dictionary for a stationer (Brome) in 1688. He wrote some tracts after the Revolution maintaining the doctrine of non-resistance, but inferring that, as James had deserted the throne, submission was due to William and Mary. ”

“ It was indeed impossible that a design so vast as that which had been formed against the King of England should remain during many weeks a secret. No art could prevent intelligent men from perceiving that William was making great military and naval preparations, and from suspecting the object with which those preparations were made. Early in August hints that some great event was approaching were whispered up and down London. The weak and corrupt Albeville was then on a visit to England, and was, or affected to be, certain that the Dutch government entertained no design unfriendly to James. ”