The house itself is a delightful old mansion giving on a wide garden, which gives in turn on a broad terrace giving on the river.
The Eminent Novelist met us at the gate. We had expected to find the author of Angela Rivers and The Garden of Desire a pale æsthetic type (we have a way of expecting the wrong thing in our interviews). We could not resist a shock of surprise (indeed we seldom do) at finding him a burly out-of-door man weighing, as he himself told us, a hundred stone in his stockinged feet (we think he said stone).
He shook hands cordially.
“Come and see my pigs,” he said.
“We wanted to ask you,” we began, as we went down the walk, “something about your books.”
“Let’s look at the pigs first,” he said. “Are you anything of a pig man?”
We are always anxious in our interviews to be all things to all men. But we were compelled to admit that we were not much of a pig man.
“Ah,” said the Great Novelist, “perhaps you are more of a dog man?”
“Not altogether a dog man,” we answered.
“Anything of a bee man?” he asked.
“Something,” we said (we were once stung by a bee).
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