"I hardly remember such another disappointment, and I try to analyze why, when Where Angels Fear to Tread was so very promising, and when A Room with a View seemed to advance that promise, Howard's End makes one fear that no good thing will come of these anticipations. I think it is due to the author's having listened to the people who (may have) said that he should give more "story," and that he should be coarse in morals, and that he should coruscate in style. But these three things are not native to him, and so the man who gave us before such delicate and faithful studies of character, and who wrote so simply, now produces a book (which has many details of merit, but) which, taken as a whole, is sensational and dirty and affected. I should like to know what you think of the new craze for introducing into fiction the high-bred maiden who has a baby? It is the craze of the moment; it is beginning to attract the wonder of the Continent... The French, who allow themselves every other aberration, have at least preserved their horror of this one, which never occurs in their novels. I think it is a mark of feminisation... I do not know how an Englishman can calmly write of such a disgusting thing, with such sang-froid. If you will look at Chapter 40 of Howard's End and will put it side by side with an incident in real life, forcibly, without literature or cant, you will feel the gooseflesh rise upon you."