"The Four Beauties."
A reminiscence of newspaper reporter Richardson (who appears also in Love for Lydia), and thus reflecting Bates's experiences with the Northamptonshire Chronicle. As with most of Bates's fiction hearkening back to his youth in Rushden, the tale is delightful in its lush atmosphere and details of country life and customs; however the structure, consisting of the narrator's romantic involvement with each of three lovely and highly-sexed daughters, as well as their mother, is weak and rambling. The tale shares with some of Bates's late work, and his comic work in general, a celebration of the sensual life. Vannatta (122-123) notes that this love triangle plus two lacks the "sordidness and violence" elsewhere evident in Bates's treatment of love", and praises the "rarefied, dreamlike ambience which Bates has employed so effectively in the past." He also notes that Richardson, far from provoking jealousy amongst his lovers or censure from the reader, seems to be "little more than a plaything of girls...whose wiles are as ancient as Eve; " thus offering further comparison to Richardson's complicated relationship in Love for Lydia. An adaptation in the television series "Country Matters" was aired in March 1973. In Woman's Own (April 23, 30, 1966), The Four Beauties (1968), The Best of H.E. Bates (1980).