Transcribed from the 1915 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
THE DEATH
OF THE LION
BY HENRY JAMES
[Picture: Decorative symbol]
* * * * *
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER
NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
* * * * *
This edition first published 1915
The text follows that of the
Definitive Edition
CHAPTER I.
I had simply, I suppose, a change of heart, and it must have begun when I
received my manuscript back from Mr. Pinhorn. Mr. Pinhorn was my
“chief,” as he was called in the office: he had the high mission of
bringing the paper up. This was a weekly periodical, which had been
supposed to be almost past redemption when he took hold of it. It was
Mr. Deedy who had let the thing down so dreadfully: he was never
mentioned in the office now save in connexion with that misdemeanour.
Young as I was I had been in a manner taken over from Mr. Deedy, who had
been owner as well as editor; forming part of a promiscuous lot, mainly
plant and office-furniture, which poor Mrs. Deedy, in her bereavement and
depression, parted with at a rough valuation. I could account for my
continuity but on the supposition that I had been cheap. I rather
resented the practice of fathering all flatness on my late protector, who
was in his unhonoured grave; but as I had my way to make I found matter
enough for complacency in being on a “staff.” At the same time I was
aware of my exposure to suspicion as a product of the old lowering
system. This made me feel I was doubly bound to have ideas, and had
doubtless been at the bottom of my proposing to Mr. Pinhorn that I should
lay my lean hands on Neil Paraday. I remember how he looked at me—quite,
to begin with, as if he had never heard of this celebrity, who indeed at
that moment was by no means in the centre of the heavens; and even when I
had knowingly explained he expressed but little confidence in the demand
for any such stuff. When I had reminded him that the great principle on
which we were supposed to work was just to create the demand we required,
he considered a moment and then returned: “I see—you want to write him
up.”
“Call it that if you like.”
“And what’s your inducement?”
“Bless my soul—my admiration!”
Mr. Pinhorn pursed up his mouth. “Is there much to be done with him?”
“Whatever there is we should have it all to ourselves, for he hasn’t been
touched.”
This argument was effective and Mr. Pinhorn responded. “Very well, touch
him.” Then he added: “But where can you do it?”
“Under the fifth rib!”
Mr. Pinhorn stared. “Where’s that?”
“You want me to go down and see him?” I asked when I had enjoyed his
visible search for the obscure suburb I seemed to have named.
“I don’t ‘want’ anything—the proposal’s your own. But you must remember
that that’s the way we do things _now_,” said Mr. Pinhorn with another
dig Mr. Deedy.
Unregenerate as I was I could read the queer implications of this speech.
The present owner’s superior virtue as well as his deeper craft spoke in
his reference to the late editor as one of that baser sort who deal in
false representations. Mr. Deedy would as soon have sent me to call on
Neil Paraday as he would have published a “holiday-number”; but such
scruples presented themselves as mere ignoble thrift to his successor,
whose own sincerity took the form of ringing door-bells and whose
definition of genius was the art of finding people at home. It was as if
Mr. Deedy had published reports without his young men’s having, as
Pinhorn would have said, really been there. I was unregenerate, as I
have hinted, and couldn’t be concerned to straighten out the journalistic
morals of my chief, feeling them indeed to be an abyss over the edge of
which it was better not to peer. Really to be there this time moreover
was a vision that made the idea of writing something subtle about Neil
Paraday only the more inspiring. I would be as considerate as even Mr.
Deedy could have wished, and yet I should be as present as only Mr.
Pinhorn could conceive. My allusion to the sequestered manner in which
Mr. Paraday lived—it had formed part of my explanation, though I knew of
it only by hearsay—was, I could divine, very much what had made Mr.
Pinhorn nibble. It struck him as inconsistent with the success of his
paper that any one should be so sequestered as that. And then wasn’t an
immediate exposure of everything just what the public wanted? Mr.
Pinhorn effectually called me to order by reminding me of the promptness
with which I had met Miss Braby at Liverpool on her return from her
fiasco in the States. Hadn’t we published, while its freshness and
flavour were unimpaired, Miss Braby’s own version of that great
international episode? I felt somewhat uneasy at this lumping of the
actress and the author, and I confess that after having enlisted Mr.
Pinhorn’s sympathies I procrastinated a little. I had succeeded better
than I wished, and I had, as it happened, work nearer at hand. A few
days later I called on Lord Crouchley and carried off in triumph the most
unintelligible statement that had yet appeared of his lordship’s reasons
for his change of front. I thus set in motion in the daily papers
columns of virtuous verbiage. The following week I ran down to Brighton
for a chat, as Mr. Pinhorn called it, with Mrs. Bounder, who gave me, on
the subject of her divorce, many curious particulars that had not been
articulated in court. If ever an article flowed from the primal fount it
was that article on Mrs. Bounder. By this time, however, I became aware
that Neil Paraday’s new book was on the point of appearing and that its
approach had been the ground of my original appeal to Mr. Pinhorn, who
was now annoyed with me for having lost so many days. He bundled me
off—we would at least not lose another. I’ve always thought his sudden
alertness a remarkable example of the journalistic instinct. Nothing had
occurred, since I first spoke to him, to create a visible urgency, and no
enlightenment could possibly have reached him. It was a pure case of
profession flair—he had smelt the coming glory as an animal smells its
distant prey.