Love and Lucy

Maurice Hewlett had been writing contemporary novels for years by 1916, and this one stays entirely inside a comfortable London marriage. James Macartney is a prosperous Onslow Square solicitor who married Lucy Meade when she was barely eighteen and has treated her with cool courtesy through the twelve years since. The comfort of the household is real; the warmth is not. When James brings the wealthy, restless Jimmy Urquhart to dinner to settle a loan for Francis Lingen, Urquhart’s energy unsettles Lucy, and her husband begins to notice the woman across his own table.

A contemporary reviewer called it the story of a man who fell in love with his wife. The interest is in how seriously Hewlett takes the inner life of ordinary, well-off people, and how much feeling he finds under their good manners.