Rebecca West 
Henry James 

At various times during the latter half of the eighteenth century there crossed the Atlantic two Protestant Irishmen, a Lowland Scotsman, and an Englishman, and thereby they fixed the character of Mr Henry James’ genius. For the essential thing about Mr James was that he was an American; and that meant, for his type and generation, that he could never feel at home until he was in exile. He came of a stock that was the product of culture and needed it as part of its environment. But at the time of his childhood and youth — he was born in 1843 — culture was a thing that was but budding here and there in America, in such corners as were not being used in the business of establishing the material civilisation of the new country.