'Charlotte Esmond'

A joyless widow briefly hopes for love from a visiting salesman, only to learn that he wishes to marry her daughter (drawing comparison with two earlier stories: 'The Flame' and 'Nina').

She finds meaning in caring for their daughter, but the baby tragically dies and she returns to boredom and loneliness.

In the preface to a 1938 collection of his stories, Country Tales, Bates singles out this tale, along with 'The Black Boxer', as accomplishing his difficult transition from a focus on mood to a focus on character and thereby projecting him "into a new world."

Reviews:

• New Statesman and Nation (May 9, 1931, p. 400, attached)
• Times Literary Supplement (May 19, 1931, p. 409, attached)

In The Criterion (October 1930), The Black Boxer Tales (1932), Thirty Tales (1934), The Bride Comes to Evensford and Other Tales (1949) and published in a separate edition as 'Mrs. Esmond's Life' (1931). Reprinted as Mrs. Esmond's Life in Greater Omnibus of Private Books (1942), American Aphrodite (4:13, 1954).