‘The Death of the Lion’: James’s ‘Martyr of the Artistic Ideal’

Abstract

In 1894 James published ‘The Death of the Lion’, the first of three stories about the literary life he wrote for Henry Harland’s new magazine, The Yellow Book.¹ Over the years he came to think of it as a specific predecessor and companion piece of ‘The Next Time’. In both he presented a public ignorance and cruelty so great as to cause the exhaustion and death of the writer. These stories are companion pieces also in their portrayal of the contrasting efforts of their heroes, Neil Paraday and Ralph Limbert, to accommodate the limited intellect and sensibility of their audience. In ‘The Next Time’, Limbert withdraws before imaginatively transcending his fate. He removes himself intellectually (into an ill-fated effort to disguise his talent) and socially (from London life to the ‘Goose Green’, where he has the freedom to be poor). By contrast, Para-day in ‘The Death of the Lion’ attempts to embrace his audience, forgiving their ignorance and crudity and striving to repay their ostensible admiration. He dies of this effort at Prestidge, the home of his predatory hostess, Mrs Wimbush. As the narrator describes his fate, Paraday is the most ruthlessly exploited victim in James’s fiction about writers and critics.²