ABSTRACT
While Mary had written what would turn out to be her last long work of ction,1 she was still being read and 1914 brought a Nelson’s Library edition of Red Pottage, some een years a er the original debacle with Edward Arnold. But more important, unforeseen events would dominate this year. On 13 June Mary was writing to Rhoda Broughton, one of her staunchest friends of the previous century, with jokes about Percy Lubbock’s forthcoming marriage to an unnamed woman (in fact he did not marry during Mary’s lifetime), and ippant expressions of jealousy because Victoria was making o with a cool dozen of her friends and inviting them to tea on her own account. Brooke was
the same as ever only more so: full of endless talk on how it is better to be good than pretty (which it isn’t) and how happiness is to be found in thinking of others. He is just like the third leading articles in Th e Times.2
