ABSTRACT
The most astute of politicians, with little concern for literature and a merely casual knowledge of it, on one hand, and on the other hand the shyest of authors to whom politics were remote and uninspiring. They seemed to get along very well, and when an opportunity came I asked Hardy what they had talked about. Had Chamberlain confided the secrets of the cabinet to him, or had Hardy, breaking his habit of reserve, disclosed to the rather saturnine wearer of the orchid and the monocle, the evolution of another Tess or Jude?
