DOI article:
James, Henry: The next time
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0039
By Henry James 35
Highmore, about his standing alone ; the eminent relief of this
position had brought him to the verge of ruin. Several persons
admired his books—nothing was less contestable; but they
appeared to have a mortal objection to acquiring them by sub-
scription or by purchase : they begged, or borrowed, or stole, they
delegated one of the party perhaps to commit the volumes to
memory and repeat them, like the bards of old, to listening
multitudes. Some ingenious theory was required, at any rate, to
account for the inexorable limits of his circulation. It wasn’t a
thing for five people to live on ; therefore either the objects
circulated must change their nature, or the organisms to be
nourished must. The former change was perhaps the easier to
consider first. Limbert considered it with extraordinary ingenuity
from that time on, and the ingenuity, greater even than any I had
yet had occasion to admire in him, made the whole next stage ot
his career rich in curiosity and suspense.
“I have been butting my head against a wall,” he had said in
those hours of confidence ; “and with the same sublime imbecility,
if you’ll allow me the word, you, my dear fellow, have kept
sounding the charge. We’ve sat prating here of ‘ success,’ heaven
help us, like chanting monks in a cloister, hugging the sweet
delusion that it lies somewhere in the work itself, in the expres-
sion, as you said, of one’s subject, or the intensification, as some-
body else somewhere said, of one’s note. One has been going on,
in short, as if the only thing to do were to accept the law of one’s
talent, and thinking that if certain consequences didn’t follow, it
was only because one hadn’t accepted enough. My disaster has
served me right—I mean for using that ignoble word at all. It’s
a mere distributor’s, a mere hawker’s word. What is ‘ success’
anyhow ? When a book’s right, it’s right—shame to it surely if
it isn’t. When it sells it sells—it brings money like potatoes or
The Yellow Book—Vol. VI. c beer.
Highmore, about his standing alone ; the eminent relief of this
position had brought him to the verge of ruin. Several persons
admired his books—nothing was less contestable; but they
appeared to have a mortal objection to acquiring them by sub-
scription or by purchase : they begged, or borrowed, or stole, they
delegated one of the party perhaps to commit the volumes to
memory and repeat them, like the bards of old, to listening
multitudes. Some ingenious theory was required, at any rate, to
account for the inexorable limits of his circulation. It wasn’t a
thing for five people to live on ; therefore either the objects
circulated must change their nature, or the organisms to be
nourished must. The former change was perhaps the easier to
consider first. Limbert considered it with extraordinary ingenuity
from that time on, and the ingenuity, greater even than any I had
yet had occasion to admire in him, made the whole next stage ot
his career rich in curiosity and suspense.
“I have been butting my head against a wall,” he had said in
those hours of confidence ; “and with the same sublime imbecility,
if you’ll allow me the word, you, my dear fellow, have kept
sounding the charge. We’ve sat prating here of ‘ success,’ heaven
help us, like chanting monks in a cloister, hugging the sweet
delusion that it lies somewhere in the work itself, in the expres-
sion, as you said, of one’s subject, or the intensification, as some-
body else somewhere said, of one’s note. One has been going on,
in short, as if the only thing to do were to accept the law of one’s
talent, and thinking that if certain consequences didn’t follow, it
was only because one hadn’t accepted enough. My disaster has
served me right—I mean for using that ignoble word at all. It’s
a mere distributor’s, a mere hawker’s word. What is ‘ success’
anyhow ? When a book’s right, it’s right—shame to it surely if
it isn’t. When it sells it sells—it brings money like potatoes or
The Yellow Book—Vol. VI. c beer.