A Woman Poet Laureate – E.V. Lucas 190

E.V. Lucas It was when I was staying with [A.E.W.] Mason at Weymouth that I first met Thomas Hardy. We had been intending to go to sea in his yacht, but a storm springing up we took a car instead, explored Dorset and called on Thomas Hardy at Max Gate. I remember that Alfred Austin1 had just died and the question of the new Laureate was being debated. Hardy said that his vote was for Mrs Meynell,2 not only for her distinction, but because there was no reason why a woman should make a worse Laureate than a man.