Plot Summaries
The Album opens at the country house of Courtland outside London, where the owner Bedford is dying upstairs and the fate of his estate is unclear. Sir Ralph Damant appears on the scene; he's the nearest heir so he figures the estate should be his. Artist Mark Bernal (long lost and thought dead) also shows up. He's a distant relative and comes with an album of sketches dated "September, '91." Three women are already hanging around: Lady Basset, Bedford's buddy who now wants Sir Ralph so she can get the Bedford estate; Maud Vincent, beloved by Teddy Ashdown but wanting more; and Grace Jesmond, Bedford's put-upon secretary who falls for Mark.
An incredible amount of stage bustle ensues, much of it revolving around that album of Mark's. Eventually, Mark and Grace decide to get married, as do Teddy and Maud. Sir Ralph wants to get rid of the fortune-hunting Lady Basset, so in a fit of generosity that closes the play, he gives the Bedford inheritance to Mark.
The Reprobate, a play which James described as better than The Album, opens with an unannounced stranger, Mrs. Freshville, appearing at Mr. Bonsor's Hampton Court villa. It develops that she is Nina, Paul Doubleday's lady friend, who spent time with him in Paris many years ago. For the past decade Paul has been kept under close control in the villa, well away from life's temptations, by his widowed stepmother Mrs. Doubleday and his co-guardian, the bachelor Bonsor.
Blanche Amber, Bonsor's niece, meets Paul and dislikes how he is being treated almost as a child because others suspect him of a dissolute and unreliable nature. Meanwhile, Captain Chanter is pursuing Mrs. Doubleday. After many trials, tribulations, entrances, and exits, Blanche accepts Paul's marriage proposal, which gets him out of his isolation. The "reprobate" Paul turns out to be mature and responsible. To make the ending even happier, Mrs. Doubleday embraces Chanter.
Read more about this topic: Theatricals: Second Series
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“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)