There is a critical opinion that Henry James's “Figure in the Carpet” is an ironic story in which the book-reviewer Corvick only pretends to discover a recurrent pattern in the works of a celebrated novelist in order to entice his fiancée, a literary compulsive, to marry him without waiting for her mother to die, the moral being that the search for such patterns does not represent a mature interest in literature. In his preface to the volume containing the story in the New York Edition, however, James replies to critics who demand to know “where on earth, where roundabout us at this hour,” he had found a living model for his pattern-weaving novelist: “As for the all-ingenious ‘Figure in the Carpet,’…nothing would induce me to come into close quarters with you on the correspondence of this anecdote.…All I can at this point say is that if ever I was aware of ground and matter for a significant fable, I was aware of them in that connection.” He adds that the impulse which led him to write the story, far from opposing a search for abstruse themes, was his opposition to the general “mistrust of anything like close or analytic appreciation—appreciation, to be appreciation, implying, of course, some such rudimentary zeal.…What I most remember of my proper process is the lively impulse, at the root of it, to reinstate analytic appreciation.” And in the story itself there is evidence that James intended Corvick to discover an actual pattern in Vereker's novels.

The appeal for treason lodged against Sir Thomas Mortimer in the parliament of 1397 as well as the entire background to the event has been the subject of considerable confusion. Much of this confusion has been the result of poor communication within the historical community. The information has been available, but it has appeared in diverse places. Thus, the two most recent biographers of Richard II, Anthony Steel and Harold Hutchison, have each been puzzled by the appeal of Mortimer: “The reasons for his inclusion are not clear…”; “…a mysterious addition for which no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered.” Sir Charles Oman, however, offered an explanation over sixty years ago: “As a small supplementary addition to the appeals of the previous autumn, two noted supporters of Gloucester in 1387 were dealt with—Lord Cobham, and Sir Thomas Mortimer, who had murdered the constable of Chester at Radcot Bridge.” Oman was not quite accurate when he grouped Mortimer with Cobham. Although Sir Thomas was not included in the original bill of appeal, he was cited in the summary of the appeal and the subsequent processes of the autumn session of Richard II's last parliament; lord Cobham did not become involved until the parliament reassembled in the next year. Oman's explanation of the matter, however, is not vitiated by this error. It, therefore, deserves further investigation as a solution to the mystery of Mortimer's appeal.