For most of his life, the novelist Henry James was of no fixed address. He wasn't sleeping rough – far from it. The cosmopolitan Yankee lived in comfortable rooms, houses and hotels, often with servants. And perhaps he dreamt occasionally of a home of his own. “I have felt the all but irresistible desire,” he wrote in a letter to a friend in Italy, “to put my hand on some modest pied-à-terre.” But, as this suggests, he was looking for temporary accommodation, a small flat for Italian sun and fresh air. This rootlessness was something of a family trait. His father Henry Sr was a restive intellectual who dragged his young family all over Europe and the United States (James described himself and siblings as “hotel children”). When he matured, Henry Jr wrote, toured and dined in France, Italy, Switzerland and Ireland.