But the middle-class public, for purposes of Art, has practically
disappeared. The social strata from which George Eliot and Dickens
drew their characters no longer interests the great B. P. Hetty
Sorrell, Little Em'ly, would be pronounced "provincial;" a Deronda or
a Wilfer Family ignored as "suburban."

I confess that personally the terms "provincial" and "suburban," as
epithets of reproach, have always puzzled me. I never met anyone
more severe on what she termed the "suburban note" in literature than
a thin lady who lived in a semi-detached villa in a by-street of
Hammersmith. Is Art merely a question of geography, and if so what
is the exact limit? Is it the four-mile cab radius from Charing
Cross? Is the cheesemonger of Tottenham Court Road of necessity a
man of taste, and the Oxford professor of necessity a Philistine? I
want to understand this thing. I once hazarded the direct question
to a critical friend:

"You say a book is suburban," I put it to him, "and there is an end
to the matter. But what do you mean by suburban?"

"Well," he replied, "I mean it is the sort of book likely to appeal
to the class that inhabits the suburbs." He lived himself in
Chancery Lane.

[May a man of intelligence live, say, in Surbiton?]

"But there is Jones, the editor of The Evening Gentleman," I argued;
"he lives at Surbiton. It is just twelve miles from Waterloo. He
comes up every morning by the eight-fifteen and returns again by the