Robertson "Bob" James b. Albany, 1846; d. Concord, Mass., 1910 The youngest of the four James brothers, Robertson James -- known as Bob throughout his life -- was appointed curator of the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1884. This position may have suited his artistic talents (he was an amateur painter for much of his life), but the scale of it was entirely too small for a worldly James: The Milwaukee Art Museum was located in the back of a photography store. Great expectations and diminished outcomes are prevailing motifs in the life story of Bob James: His Jamesian upbringing prepared him for greatness, but circumstances and his own emotional problems brought him low. Walking in Wilky's Footsteps Bob's early years and schooling were typical of that of the other James brothers. Born in Albany in 1846 and moved about from city to city and country to country, Bob received an inconsistent education. But he and brother Garth (known in the family as Wilky) shared one important educational influence their older brothers William and James and sister Alice missed: Henry Sr. sent both Bob and Wilky as adolescents to Concord Academy, whose headmaster, Franklin Sanborn, was an ardent abolitionist. At the age of 16, Bob enlisted in the 55th Massachusetts Regiment, the second of the two black Civil War regiments formed in the state. His entry into the Union army followed on the heels of his brother Wilky's enlistment. But unlike Wilky, Bob would not distinguish himself in battle, and the family -- his father especially -- would think of him not as a war hero but as a layabout. Bob's undistinguished record was not his fault, however: His regiment saw little of the action of Wilky's, and sunstroke took Bob out of commission before a bullet could. After the war, Bob followed Wilky to Florida, where the two combined entrepreneurship with continued abolitionist activism. To build their fortune, they attempted to operate a plantation worked by emancipated blacks. Bob quickly gave up on the Florida venture (Wilky would last for three years more) and struck out for the West, settling in Milwaukee, where he found work as a clerk with the railroad. In 1872, he married Mary Holton, the daughter of an extremely wealthy Milwaukee businessman. (Upon his death, Edward Holton left each of his three daughters a half-million dollars.) A War with Alcohol The relationship was volatile, with frequent separations and infidelity on Bob's part. Bob's chronic alcoholism, which had begun during his war service, exacerbated the situation. Bob drifted from one job to another, although Mary's personal wealth gave the couple financial security. In 1885, Bob returned to the East Coast, where he was tended to by his brother William and William's wife, Alice. He settled in Concord, Massachusetts, where he eventually got his drinking under control (helped, perhaps, by an intermittent five-year stay in a sanitarium in upstate New York). Because of his drinking and other intemperate behavior, Bob is generally considered the least Jamesian of the Jameses. But he was not without artistic talents. In addition to painting, Bob wrote essays and poetry, publishing a poem, "The Seraph Speech," in William Dean Howells's Atlantic Monthly in 1885. In an autobiographical piece he wrote for his sister-in-law Alice, Bob lamented his ill fate at being born the younger brother of William and Henry and into a family where his talent appeared negligible. Bob James died in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1910.