She was as good as her word—she usually was.
“‘Would any one like to hear Roland’s explanation of why he is not with us?’
“‘Had it anything to do with his not being asked?’ said a pale young man; and as soon as he had spoken he glanced hastily round the circle to ascertain how his remark had succeeded.
“So far as Mrs. Almar was concerned it had not succeeded at all, in fact, though he did not know it, nothing he said would ever succeed with her again, although a week before she had hung upon his every word. He had been a new discovery, something unknown and Bohemian, but alas, a day or two before, she had observed that underlying his socialistic theories was an aching desire for social recognition. He liked to tell his bejeweled hostesses about his friends the car-drivers; but, oh, twenty times more, he would have liked to tell the car-drivers about his friends the bejeweled hostesses. For this reason Mrs. Almar despised him, and where she despised she made no secret of the fact.
“‘Not asked, Mr. Wickham!’ she said. ‘I assume my husband is asked wherever I am,’ and then turning to Laura Ussher she added with a faint smile: ‘One’s husband is always asked, isn’t he?’
“‘Certainly, as long as you never allow him to come,’ said another speaker.”
Even from so slight an excerpt we think it will be plain that in the art of characterization and in the business of writing dialogue Mrs. Miller has nothing to learn. She is really one of the most hopeful prospects in American literature to-day and the great hope for her and for readers lies in the possibility—almost a probability—that she will abandon the very restricted and unimportant milieu of her recent novels for better fields. It is simple honesty to recognize that The Happiest Time of Their Lives holds out a great promise that she will do this. Such persons as Pete Wayne and his mother, and even the rather pathetic grandfather Mr. Lanley (of the New York Lanleys) are “real,” that is, members of the human community and not sickening products of the social hothouses. If Mrs. Miller will do a novel in which most of the men and most of the women are “people”—regular people or irregular people, great or small, does not matter; but they must be people—we in America will be the first to acclaim her.
Of Mrs. Miller herself there are only a few brief facts to be stated. This tall and charming woman was born in New York in 1874, the daughter of James G. K. Duer and Elizabeth (Meads) Duer. She was graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University, in 1899. She was married to Henry Wise Miller of New York on October 5, 1899. Her New York home on the upper East Side of the city, just below Central Park and just off Fifth Avenue, is in the most fashionable residence section, is in the heart of that region where most of her characters unquestionably live and where most of the others aspire to.
Books by Alice Duer Miller
The Modern Obstacle, 1903.
Calderon’s Prisoner, 1904.
Less Than Kin, 1909.
Blue Arch, 1910.
Are Women People? 1915.
Come Out of the Kitchen, 1916.
Ladies Must Live, 1917.
The Happiest Time of Their Lives, 1918.
Wings in the Night, 1918. Poems.
The Charm School, 1919. Harper & Brothers.
The Beauty and the Bolshevist, 1920. Harper & Brothers.
Manslaughter, 1921. Dodd, Mead & Company.