ABSTRACT
In James's autobiography the element of memory is of course primary. At moments James feels that it is all too much: `I confess myself embarrassed by my very ease of re-capture of my young consciousness; so that I perforce try to encourage lapses and keep my abundance down' (Autobiography, p. 156). For the other texts it is more an interpretative frame. What I shall want to distinguish is the relation of this immediacy of personal memory to its cultural sense, to see it as part of the Jamesian pattern of understanding.
