Biography
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5. The First Vocational Turn: Art and Its Foibles
Initially, Henry lost this battle and after a year-long hiatus in Switzerland from 1859 to 1860, William eagerly followed his passion for art under Hunt's tutelage. However, while William was away in Europe, Hunt's work as a portrait artist had taken off. This gave William insight into the practical concerns of the artist that reached far beyond the choice of color and paint. William began to realize that artistry, like his own father's oratory, concerned not just himself but his audience too. No work, not even the lofty heights of the artist, was detachable from everyday concerns – economics, social graces, and personality.
Meanwhile, Henry James did not let up on William, still hoping that he would turn away from his passion and towards the intellectual life of science – and not in the laboratory but in the field. Knowledge as the pursuit of the soul, not the pursuit of particular goals, was Henry's ideal. What mattered is that activity pushes out from the passions of the soul in order to gain intellectual insight into spiritual matters. William was never oblivious to his father's spiritual concerns.
Within a year, William's interest in art waned. Stimulated primarily by his own self-doubt over his abilities, William worried about his success as an artist and his ability to pay for such a lifestyle.[3] Never having dropped his joy in science and experimentation, thoughts of academic studies in the sciences began to take hold evermore strongly. Thus, in 1861 when his father made a deal that he could enroll at the Lawrence Scientific School in Cambridge, Massachusetts rather than enlist for service in the Civil War, William jumped at the opportunity.[4]
This decisive moment in many ways closed the chapter on the external battle between father and son for William's soul, but the internal battle within William himself was still in its infancy and its climax remained almost a decade away.
[3] The artistic legacy was carried on by two of William's children – William, Jr. (1882-1961) and Alexander (1890-1946) became reputable painters.
[4] William's two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob) did enlist, Wilky serving under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw with the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, one of the first official black units in the United States Army.
Source: Talisse RB, Hester DM. 2004. Lives in transition: experiencing James. In On James, chap 1. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing. p. 5. [Adapted by permission of the authors.]
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