Fanny Kemble dies in January. Continues to write unproduced plays. In March goes to Paris for two months. Sends Compton first act and scenario for Guy Domville. Meets William and family in Lucerne and stays a month, returning to London in June. Spends July completing Guy Domville in Ramsgate. George Alexander, actor-manager, agrees to produce the play. Daly stages first reading of Mrs. Jasper, and James withdraws it, calling the rehearsal a mockery. The Real Thing and Other Tales published in the U.S. and Britain in March; in the summer, stories including “The Private Life” and “The Wheel of Time” published in a one-volume collection in Britain and in two volumes in the U.S.

1894

Constance Fenimore Woolson dies in Venice, January. Shocked and upset, James prepares to attend funeral in Rome but changes his mind on learning she is a suicide. Goes to Venice in April to help her family settle her affairs. Receives one of four copies, privately printed by Loring, of Alice’s diary. Finds it impressive but is concerned that so much gossip he told Alice in private has been included (later burns his copy). Robert Louis Stevenson dies in Samoa. Guy Domville goes into rehearsal. Theatricals: Two Comedies and Theatricals: Second Series published.

1895

Guy Domville opens January 5 at St. James’s Theatre in London. At play’s end James is greeted by a fifteen-minute roar of boos, catcalls, and applause. Horrified and depressed, abandons the theater. Play earns him $1,300 after five-week run. Feels he can salvage something useful from playwriting for his fiction (“a key that, working in the same general way fits the complicated chambers of both the dramatic and the narrative lock”). Writes scenario for The Spoils of Poynton. Visits Lord Wolseley and Lord Houghton in Ireland. In the summer goes to Torquay in Devon and stays until November while electricity is being installed in De Vere Gardens flat. Begins friendship with W. E. Norris, who resides at Torquay. Writes a one-act play (“Mrs. Grace­dew”) at request of Ellen Terry. Terminations (containing “The Death of the Lion,” “The Coxon Fund,” “The Middle Years,” “The Altar of the Dead”) published.

1896–97