ABSTRACT
He was in his late prime at this time and made a powerful impression on me. He was small and blond, with a fine head and full brown beard,1 more like a studious country doctor than a novelist, and his wife was equally plain. ‘We were both essentially country folk’, he said. ‘My house is outside Dorchester which is only a little city. I am a justice of the peace’, he added with a faint smile. ‘I am hardly ever in London. I came up this time on my wife’s account’.
