DOI article:
James, Henry: The next time
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0017
By Henry James 13
about the courses ? It was by such vulgar people, often, that a
success was attested. It made, if you came to look at it, nothing
but money ; that is it made so much that any other result showed
small in comparison. A failure, now, could make—oh, with the
aid of immense talent of course, for there were failures and failures
—such a reputation ! She did me the honour—she had often done
it—to intimate that what she meant by reputation was seeing me
toss a flower. If it took a failure to catch a failure I was by my
own admission well qualified to place the laurel. It was because
she had made so much money and Mr. Highmore had taken such
care of it that she could treat herself to an hour of pure glory.
She perfectly remembered that as often as I had heard her heave
that sigh I had been prompt with my declaration that a book sold
might easily be as glorious as a book unsold. Of course she knew
that, but she knew also that it was an age of flourishing rubbish
and that she had never heard me speak of anything that had u done
well ” exactly as she had sometimes heard me speak of something
that hadn’t—with just two or three words of respect which, when
I used them, seemed to convey more than they commonly stood
for, seemed to hush up the discussion a little, as if for the very
beauty of the secret.
I may declare in regard to these allusions that, whatever I then
thought of myself as a holder of the scales, I had never scrupled to
laugh out at the humour of Mrs. Highmore’s pursuit of quality at
any price. It had never rescued her, even for a day, from the hard
doom of popularity, and, though I never gave her my word for it,
there was no reason at all why it should. The public would
have her, as her husband used roguishly to remark ; not indeed
that, making her bargains, standing up to her publishers and even,
in his higher flights, to her reviewers, he ever had a glimpse of her
attempted conspiracy against her genius, or rather, as I may say,
against
about the courses ? It was by such vulgar people, often, that a
success was attested. It made, if you came to look at it, nothing
but money ; that is it made so much that any other result showed
small in comparison. A failure, now, could make—oh, with the
aid of immense talent of course, for there were failures and failures
—such a reputation ! She did me the honour—she had often done
it—to intimate that what she meant by reputation was seeing me
toss a flower. If it took a failure to catch a failure I was by my
own admission well qualified to place the laurel. It was because
she had made so much money and Mr. Highmore had taken such
care of it that she could treat herself to an hour of pure glory.
She perfectly remembered that as often as I had heard her heave
that sigh I had been prompt with my declaration that a book sold
might easily be as glorious as a book unsold. Of course she knew
that, but she knew also that it was an age of flourishing rubbish
and that she had never heard me speak of anything that had u done
well ” exactly as she had sometimes heard me speak of something
that hadn’t—with just two or three words of respect which, when
I used them, seemed to convey more than they commonly stood
for, seemed to hush up the discussion a little, as if for the very
beauty of the secret.
I may declare in regard to these allusions that, whatever I then
thought of myself as a holder of the scales, I had never scrupled to
laugh out at the humour of Mrs. Highmore’s pursuit of quality at
any price. It had never rescued her, even for a day, from the hard
doom of popularity, and, though I never gave her my word for it,
there was no reason at all why it should. The public would
have her, as her husband used roguishly to remark ; not indeed
that, making her bargains, standing up to her publishers and even,
in his higher flights, to her reviewers, he ever had a glimpse of her
attempted conspiracy against her genius, or rather, as I may say,
against