The House With the Apricot

A young traveller reports his stay at the home of a wealthy and attractive woman.

She is engaged to a man who has convinced her that he is a respectable match, but is in fact a dissipated, violent-tempered failure of a farmer. 'As she stood at the gate and shook hands with me and wished me a good journey she looked at me with shining eyes, wit a radiant triumph that seemed almost too perfect.' The title stems from an analogy between the apricot tree of the family house, beautiful but barren due to lack of root-pruning, and the woman. The mood established in the tale has been compared to that of Alexander and The Woman Who Had Imagination. Baldwin (1987, p. 116) notes that the story was inspired by a walking tour of the Cotswolds in August 1932 with Bates's friend Harry Byrom.

A holograph manuscript is held in the Senate House Library archives at the University of London (https://archives.libraries.lon...).

In The House With the Apricot and Two Other Tales (1933),Cut and Come Again (1935), Country Tales (1938),Country Tales (1940).