James's published letters give a very complete picture of his habit of life, which from the time of his settlement in England varied little from year to year. The chief break was made in 1898, when Rye became his head-quarters instead of Kensington; but he was never very long absent from London, and he retained a room at the Reform Club for his frequent visits. Both there and in his charming old house at Rye he was lavish in entertainment of his many friends; as a host his standard of hospitality was very high—so high, indeed, as to make him at times impatient of the consequences it entailed. He could take nothing lightly, and the burden of sociability roused him to much eloquent lamentation. Yet he soon missed it in solitude, and he was easily tempted by any congenial call; he was not less generous as a guest than as a host, and in a circle which was not exactly that of society or of the arts or of the professions, but mingled of all three, he enjoyed himself and gave enjoyment. Nothing, however, not even his occasional excursions abroad, to Paris and Italy, was ever allowed to interrupt the industrious regularity of his work. Though his health was sometimes a difficulty and always a matter of a good deal of anxiety to himself, his constitution was remarkably strong, and he never seemed to feel the need of a holiday. In his seventy-second year, at the outbreak of the European War, his zeal in his work was as keen as ever, and his imagination teemed with material to be turned into art before it should be too late.
His portrait by J. S. Sargent, R.A., now in the National Portrait Gallery, was presented to him by a large group of friends in 1913, in commemoration of his seventieth birthday; and in 1914 a bust of him was executed by Mr. Derwent Wood. The portly presence, the massively modelled head, the watchful eye, the mobile expression, recall him as he was in his later years (till about 1900 he wore a close beard, and Mr. William Rothenstein made and possesses a drawing showing him with a moustache and beard), and may suggest the nature and manner of his talk. This, in a sympathetic company, where he could take his time to develop a topic or a description in his own way, was memorably opulent and picturesque. To listen to him was like watching an artist at work; the ample phrases slowly uncoiled, with much pausing and hesitating for the choice word, and out of them was gradually constructed the impression of the scene or the idea in his mind; when it was finished the listener was in possession of a characteristic product of Henry James's art. It was hardly to be called conversation, perhaps; it was too magnificent, too deliberate, for the give-and-take of a mixed gathering; but his companionable humour, his quick sensibility, his ornate and affectionate courtesy, set it further still from any appearance of formality or display. Though in any company he was certain to be the dominant, preponderant figure, his interest and his participation in the life around him were unfailing, and he seemed to have the gift of creating a special, unique relation with every one who came his way.
The shock of the War fell very heavily upon him; but he withstood it in a passionate ardour of patriotism that brought him at last, after nearly forty years of life in England, to take a step which he had never contemplated before. In July 1915 he became naturalized as a British subject. At the following new year he was awarded the order of merit: but by that time he was already lying ill and near his death. Three years before he had acquired a flat in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and it was there that he died on 28 February 1916. His body was cremated, and a commemorative tablet placed in Chelsea Old Church, close to his last home by the London riverside.
[Correspondence, published and unpublished; the autobiographical volumes, A Small Boy and Others, 1913, Notes of a Son and Brother, 1914, The Middle Years, 1917 (the dates and order of events in these books are not always to be relied on); personal knowledge. A bibliography of Henry James's works (to 1905), compiled by Le Roy Phillips, was published in America in 1906.]
JAMESON, Sir LEANDER STARR, baronet (1853–1917), South African statesman, the youngest of the eleven children of Robert Jameson, writer to the signet, by his wife, Christina, daughter of Major-General John Pringle, of Symington, Midlothian, was born in Edinburgh 9 February 1853. Not long afterwards his father, having given up the practice of the law, took to journalism, and in 1860 moved with his family to London, where he died in 1868. Leander was educated at the Godolphin School, Hammersmith, and afterwards at University College, Gower Street, where he studied medicine. After qualifying himself to practise (M.R.C.S. 1875, M.D. 1877) he seemed destined for a brilliant career in the medical profession in England; but the strain of overwork threatened his health. Moreover, he had
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