Chapters (9)
Delivers “The Novel in The Ring and the Book,” on the 100th anniversary of Browning’s birth, to the Royal Society of Literature. Receives honorary Doctor of Letters from Oxford University on June 26. Spends summer at Lamb House. Sees much of Edith Wharton (“the Firebird”), who spends summer in England. (She secretly arranges to have Scribner’s put $8,000 into James’s account.) Takes 21 Carlyle Mansions, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, as London quarters. Writes a long admiring letter for William Dean Howells’s seventy-fifth birthday. Meets André Gide. Contracts bad case of shingles and is ill four months, much of the time not able to leave bed.
1913
Moves into Cheyne Walk flat. Two hundred and seventy friends and admirers subscribe for seventieth birthday portrait by Sargent and present also a silver-gilt Charles II porringer and dish (“golden bowl”). Sargent turns over his payment to young sculptor Derwent Wood, who does a bust of James. Autobiography A Small Boy and Others published. Goes with niece Peggy to Lamb House for the summer.
1914
Notes of a Son and Brother published. Works on The Ivory Tower. Returns to Lamb House in July. Niece Peggy joins him. Horrified by the war (“this crash of our civilisation,” “a nightmare from which there is no waking”). In London in September participates in Belgian Relief, visits wounded in St. Bartholomew’s and other hospitals; feels less “finished and useless and doddering” and recalls Walt Whitman and his Civil War hospital visits. Accepts chairmanship of American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in France. Notes on Novelists (essays on Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola) published.
1915–16
Continues work with the wounded and war relief. Has occasional lunches with Prime Minister Asquith and family, and meets Winston Churchill and other war leaders. Discovers that he is considered an alien and has to report to police before going to coastal Rye. Decides to become a British national and asks Asquith to be one of his sponsors. Receives Certificate of Naturalization on July 26. H. G. Wells satirizes him in Boon (“leviathan retrieving pebbles”) and James, in the correspondence that follows, writes: “Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance.” Burns more papers and photographs at Lamb House in autumn. Has a stroke December 2 in his flat, followed by another two days later. Develops pneumonia and during delirium gives his last confused dictation (dealing with the Napoleonic legend) to Theodora Bosanquet, who types it on the familiar typewriter. Alice, William’s widow, arrives December 13 to care for him. On New Year’s Day, George V confers the Order of Merit. Dies February 28. Funeral services held at the Chelsea Old Church. The body is cremated and the ashes are later buried in Cambridge Cemetery family plot.