H.E. Bates Companion

A memoir of a Bedfordshire inn maintained by one of Bates's aunts, Matilda, sister to his maternal grandmother Priscilla Bird Lucas. Bates recalls the atmosphere, fragrance, customs, and clientele of the "modest and dignified little pub" that "reflected the character of my aunt. It was not prim, and I am pretty sure it was not always proper, but it had about it a kind of austere homeliness." Bates would later mention his aunt and pub in the first volume of his autobiography, The Vanished World (54). In the New Statesman and Nation (August 25, 1934, viii, 183, pp. 237-238), included in the chapter "The Height of Summer" in Through the Woods in 1936.