James Strachey - Early Life

Early Life

He was a son of Lt-Gen Sir Richard Strachey and Lady (Jane) Strachey, called the enfant miracle as his father was 70 and his mother 47. Some of his nieces and nephews, who were considerably older than James, called him Jembeau or Uncle Baby. His parents had thirteen children, of whom ten lived to adulthood.

He was educated at Hillbrow preparatory school in Rugby and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took over the rooms used by his older brother Lytton Strachey, and was known as 'the Little Strachey'; Lytton was now 'the Great Strachey'. At Cambridge, Strachey fell deeply in love with the poet Rupert Brooke, who did not return his affections. He was himself pursued by mountaineer George Mallory—conceding to his sexual advances—by Harry Norton, and by economist John Maynard Keynes, with whom he also had an affair. His love of Brooke was a constant, however, until his death in 1915, which left Strachey "shattered".

James was assistant editor of The Spectator, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group or 'Bloomsberries' when he became familiar with Alix Sargant Florence, though they first met in 1910. They moved in together in 1919 and married in 1920.

Soon afterwards they moved to Vienna, where James, an admirer of Freud, began a psychoanalysis with the great man, something which he would claim to Lytton 'provided "a complete undercurrent for life"'. Freud asked the couple to translate some of his works into English, and this became their lives' work: they became 'my excellent English translators, Mr and Mrs James Strachey'.