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The Other Jameses:
- blliterarymagic
- Aug 1
- 6 min read
Sydney, Ber, and Gracie
My dear literary spirit,
To celebrate Monty’s birthday (1 August), let us look at his family and, in particular, his siblings.
Although Montague Rhodes James is imagined today as a solitary figure—precise, donnish, tucked up alone in college cloisters—that image is an illusion born of our retrospective affection for those lone dons of his ghost stories. In truth, Monty was the youngest of four, the final child in a tightly knit, intellectually restless, and devotedly loving household. His siblings each helped shape him, and, in subtle ways, they shaped his stories too.
Let us meet them in turn.
Sydney Rhodes James (1853–1934)
Canon. Chaplain. Pedagogue. “The Brutalist.”
Sydney, eldest of the James children, was born eight years before Monty. By the time the family relocated to Great Livermere in 1865, Sydney was already preparing to leave for Haileybury College, having won a scholarship at the age of fourteen. In Monty’s memory, Sydney became less a brother and more a sort of favourite uncle: tall, athletic, commanding—a schoolmaster with a booming voice and a gift for wry discipline.
Sydney made an early career of Eton. He was appointed to teach the Third Form—a division, he claimed, filled with the cunning, the idle, and the hopeless—and described his own methods as "rather brutal" but effective. His classroom language became infamous: he often dismissed untidy lower-form boys as "mouldy toads" and "dingy owls" while he strode about dispensing judgment with theatrical disdain. Amongst the students, he was dubbed “Kidney Beans,” which gives us insight into how he himself might have pronounced his own name, “Sydney James.”
Though his severity and sarcasm were legendary, Sydney remained a devoted educator and stern brother. During Monty’s student years at Eton, Sydney offered both opportunity and obstacle. When a minor bullying complaint arose against Monty—perhaps no more than a boyish prank—Sydney did nothing to shield his brother. It was a defining moment. The bond between them was warm but never really close, and though they continued to share an enjoyment of societies and skating parties, and late in life they spent holidays together at Sydney’s home on the Isle of Wight, they were no more than warmly cordial and fraternally friendly rather than devoted brothers.
In later years, Sydney became Canon of York and a figure of public esteem. He was awarded the CBE for his service during the Great War. But for Monty, Sydney would always be the authoritative elder: admired, perhaps slightly feared, loved certainly, yet never quite close.
Herbert Ellison Rhodes James (1857–1939)
Doctor. Soldier. Scientist. “The Comrade.”
Named for his father (Hebert) and known in the family as "Ber," Monty’s second brother was five years older. He was scientifically minded, genial, and marked by a sense of quiet humour. Where Sydney stood tall and aloof, Ber was companionable. Monty called him “a chum”—a phrase that suggests genuine warmth without necessarily a deep intellectual affinity.
Ber entered the Army Medical Service in 1882, receiving his commission that same year. His early postings included Aldershot and Cyprus (1883–1888). From 1892 to 1897, he served in China, where he was appointed to the permanent sanitary committee for British troops. During the infamous 1894 bubonic plague outbreak in Hong Kong, Ber assisted in identifying the plague bacillus that had stumped medical science since the 14th century and was commended by the colonial government. He later accompanied Chinese forces during the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), authoring reports on medical organization that influenced War Office policy. The Chinese government awarded him the Order of the Double Dragon for his service to the wounded.
After returning to Britain, Ber held roles as secretary to the Principal Medical Officer (Home District) and senior instructor at the Royal Army Medical Corps depot in Aldershot. During the Second Boer War, he served as commandant of the RAMC depot. Post-war, he contributed to reforms as secretary of a commission investigating medical shortcomings in South Africa, working alongside Secretary of State for War St John Broderick and Director-General Alfred Keogh.
Ber played a pivotal role in relocating the Army Medical School from Netley to London's Millbank site, establishing a modernized medical centre there. He became its first commandant and director of studies, overseeing the hospital and school until his initial retirement in 1908. He was later recalled to serve during the Great War.
During the First World War, Ber oversaw the establishment of British army hospitals for the Gallipoli campaign and commanded No. 11 General Hospital in Alexandria (1915). He was subsequently posted to Salonika, where he remained until 1918, supervising military medical operations under extreme conditions. His service earned him the Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB), Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG), and Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), along with mentions in dispatches.
For all his accomplishments, Ber never overshadowed Monty. Instead, he provided steady fraternity and a welcome sense of normalcy. The two maintained a longstanding private joke—adopting the comic alter egos of “Barker” the grocer (Monty) and “Johnson” the butcher (Ber). Their absurd quarrels, carried out in Suffolk dialect, were legendary among family and friends, and lasted well into adulthood.
Ber, one suspects, was Monty’s link to the outer world: to medicine, to soldiering, to the grittier corners of experience. He was, in short, the older brother one might confide in without ceremony, and they shared a true closeness.
In an interesting coincidence, probably intentional, Ber rose to the rank of Colonel early in the same year that Monty wrote “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to you, My Lad” in which a Colonel is the hero.
Grace Caroline Rhodes James (1859–1952)
Painter. Humourist. Equestrienne. Keeper of Cats. “The Heart.”
Unhappily, no individual portrait of Gracie has yet to be identified. I’m still searching.
Gracie, the only sister, stood nearest in age to Monty and closest in sensibility. Their bond was intense, affectionate, and long-lived. She painted, she composed musical sketches, and she shared Monty’s oddest delights—including a macabre sense of humour that bordered, delightfully, on the grotesque.
At fifteen, she drew a picture of their dickie bird, which had been savaged by her cat—a gory wreck draped down the back of a chair—and posted the disturbing image to twelve-year-old Monty, who, of course, delighted in it. They shared a warped, but endearing, sense of fun. When Sydney beat her in a race up a tree, she exacted revenge by drawing a picture of his decapitated body tumbling earthward from that tree. Her letters were wicked, funny, and spiked with an ironic elegance that Monty enjoyed and emulated.
Gracie married late in life. On 29 March 1910, not quite ten months after the death of their father, she wed Reverend Edward John Woodhouse, newly appointed Rector of her father’s incumbency at Livermere. The ceremony was held by special license in London, at St. Andrew Undershaft. Sydney officiated; Monty stood as best man. For a brief time, Gracie returned to the rectory that had been their family home since childhood. The marriage, however, was not long—Woodhouse died four years later—but it was a union marked by affection and familial comfort.
Gracie continued her love of animals, horses & cats in particular, and support for her brother’s career. She was a comfort to Monty, a mirror to his imagination, and likely the first to laugh at the earliest drafts of his ghost stories (which are, make no mistake, intentionally amusing). She also possessed a peculiar talent for epistolary invective. When Monty’s schoolhouse penmanship declined (never to recover, alas; he has simply the worst handwriting!) she scolded him for it. Monty replied—via their father—that she ought first to consult a dictionary before attempting to spell "orthography."
In a family marked by intellect, humour, and achievement, Gracie stood for affection and home. Her presence shaped Monty’s imagination—those clever, odd, and supportive women who punctuate his ghost stories surely owe her a quiet debt.
Final Thoughts
Of Monty’s three siblings, each shaped a different portion of his emotional map: Sydney the athletic figure of austere command, Ber the heroic and worldly collaborator, Gracie the poet and secret accomplice. All three, in their own way, helped form the peculiar compound of erudition, mischief, and melancholy that marks James’s ghost stories.
He may have written of lonely men in empty rooms, but Monty’s own life was crowded with parlour games, clever teasing, and the long laughter of shared childhood that stretched well into old age.
Next month, we will visit three of Monty’s closest friends, who also (unsurprisingly) took up pens to write their own rather exquisite ghost stories.
Ever, your fellow spirit,
Brian Jay Corrigan
