HENRY JAMES
75
to
him, as she traced the loves of the duchesses beside the widowed
cribs
of her children, was her blind devotion to them alone. The
plot of the story turns around the contrast between her and her son,
who grows up to pretend to be a novelist, a fake disciple of form,
and, while waiting for "inspiration," sponges on her generosity. James'
tender handling of her character did not prevent
him
from comment–
ing
on the vulgarization of taste accomplished by a lady who could
contribute volumes "to the diversion of her contemporaries," but who
"couldn't write a page of English." He had similar authors in mind
when, in
The American Scene,
he trained
his
eye upon "the little
tales, mostly by ladies, and about and for children romping through
the ruins of the Language, in the monthly magazines."
In
The Next Time
his approach to
his
own situation is no longer
so oblique, though the tone is still that of high comedy. Here Mrs.
Highmore, "one of the most voluminous writers" of the age, yearns
to be like her brother-in-law Ralph Limbert, "but of course only once,
an exquisite failure." He, on the other hand, had worn out
his
ener–
gies in the effort to sell. After
The Major Key
never even got the
publisher's money back, he tried for every popular device, but the
worst he could do couldn't escape from being "a shameless merciless
masterpiece" which only the critics read.
It
was the same to the end
of
his
short career. Even
The Hidden Heart,
planned as an adven–
ture story, turned out to be "but another female child." There was
to be no next time for him any more than for Mrs. Highmore.
As
his
critic friend, whose love was "the love that killed" with a popular
audience, was to sum it up: "You can't make a sow's ear out of a
silk purse."
The same phrase was turned by James about himself, imme–
diately after the disastrous opening night of
Guy Domville,
in a letter
to
his
brother William. But though he recounted the brutal shock of
having been hissed and booed by the gallery after responding to the
cry of "Author! Author!" he added: "Don't worry about me; I'm
a Rock." Yet the problem of an audience was to bother him to the
end.
As
he wrote in his notebook,
The Next Time
was suggested to
him
"really by all the little backward memories of one's frustrated
ambition"; and he recalled particularly how, in his early years, he
had contracted td write some Paris letters for
The New
r
ork Tribune,
and how, despite every effort, he had not been able to make them bad
enough to satisfy Whitelaw Reid.
Broken Wings,
written half a dozen
