ABSTRACT
Arthur Symons This is such a funny house – not at all like the house of a man of letters, though Mrs Hardy read poems to me at breakfast; Hardy isn’t quite a man of genius, but he has some of the characteristics of one – especially a simple childlike quality, united to a very keen observation and a curious, interesting, rather painful quality of thought. He is a sort of cheerful pessimist. I never stayed anywhere with less constraint (p. 184).
