literary and journalistic circles I had frequented. I put up for

the Reform, not so much for the use of the club as a sign of serious

and substantial political standing. I didn't go up to Cambridge, I

remember, for nearly a year, so occupied was I with my new

adjustments.

The people we foundourselves among at this time were people, to put

it roughly, of the Parliamentary candidate class, or people already

actually placed in the political world. They ranged between very

considerable wealth and such a hard, bare independence as old

Willersley and the sister who kept house for him possessed. There

were quite a number of young couples likeourselves, a little

younger and more artless, or a little older and more established.

Among the younger men I had a sort of distinction because of my

Cambridge reputation and my writing, and because, unlike them, I was

an adventurer and had won and married my way into their circles

instead ofbeing naturally there. They couldn't quite reckon upon

what I should do; theyfelt I had reserves ofexperience and

incalculable traditions. Close to us were the Cramptons, Willie

Crampton, who has since been Postmaster-General, rich and very

important in Rockshire, and his younger brother Edward, who has

specialised in history and become one of those unimaginative men of

letters who are the glory of latter-day England. Then there was

Lewis, further towards Kensington, where his cousins the Solomons

and the Hartsteins lived, a brilliant representative of his race,

able, industrious and invariably uninspired, with a wife a little in

revolt against the racial tradition of feminine servitude and

inclined to the suffragette point of view, and Bunting Harblow, an

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