The Real Thing: and Other Tales - Tapa blanda

The narrator, an unnamed illustrator and aspiring painter, hires a faded genteel couple, the Monarchs, as models, after they have lost most of their money and must find some line of work. They are the “real thing” in that they perfectly represent the aristocratic type, but they prove inflexible for the painter’s work. He comes to rely much more on two lower-class subjects who are nevertheless more capable, Oronte, an Italian, and Miss Churm, a lower-class Englishwoman. The illustrator finally has to get rid of the Monarchs, especially after his friend and fellow artist Jack Hawley criticizes the work in which the Monarchs are represented. Hawley says that the pair has hurt the narrator’s art, perhaps permanently. In the final line of the story the narrator says he is “content to have paid the price—for the memory.”

Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American-born British writer. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism.