ABSTRACT
Alfred Noyes I met him only once, not in Dorset, but in London, at a small afternoon party given by Mrs William Sharp.1 The only other guest was Robert Hichens, who was then regarded as one of the ‘younger generation’ of novelists.2 It was a very hot summer afternoon, and I remember that Hardy introduced what might be called a Wessex note into the picture when the urbane younger novelist was presented to him; for, by way of comment on the heat, he gave so vivid an imitation of a field worker wringing the sweat from his brow with two fingers that for a moment London melted into Froom Vale.
