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Subversive Performances, Masculine Pleasures
in 1895 Pett Ridge published his first novel A Clever Wife but it was not until 1898 that
he really found himself with Mord Em’ly, a vivid presentation of a girl of the Walworth
Road. Thereafter he produced some 30 novels and collections of short stories which
established him securely in the affections of a large and faithful public . . . His characters
were nearly all people who have come down in the world or have bettered themselves,
and his highly selective art was shown especially in little scenes of daily life depicted
with a sureness of touch and a nice economy of words. He was also an admirable lecturer
choosing subjects such as “The London Boy,” “The Cockney in the Theatre” and “The
London Accent” on which he was an expert. 13
Further supportive elaborations on suburban mores were penned by the author
Keble Howard, who in his series on the Smith family of Surbiton included an open
letter to his fictional heroes:
You confided to me, when first you made your appearance, that you were pained because
certain people insisted upon regarding you as satirical figures, and the comedy in which
the unimaginative take it for granted that any work with the name of “Smith” or
“Surbiton” in the title must necessarily depend for success upon the old fashioned
treatment. In the same class . . . you must place those who protest that there is no scope
for artistic work between Mayfair and Whitechapel. To write of the middle classes, in
short, is a confession of mediocrity. They do not understand, you see, how much more
difficult it is to get an effect without flying to extremes. They admit that the middle
classes are the mainstay of England, but venture to write about them, save in the blessed
spirit of satire, and artistically you are forthwith damned. But you and I, my friends, are
not to be frightened off our little stage by such easy disparagement. 14
The suburban novel also differed from bachelor literature, though both focused
with differing degrees of sympathy on the significance of domestic detail and
routine. Authors like Pett Ridge and Keble Howard were keen to stress the
inclusive social nature of “life outside the radius,” coterminous with Marsh’s
claims that “the suburb served as the spatial context for what its advocates hoped
would be a new form of marriage. Husbands and wives would be companions, not
rivals, and the spectre of individualist demands would retreat in the face of family
togetherness.” 15 The bachelor novel was more likely to stress the benefits of
independence from any broader family economy, and the freedom this allowed for
the more “selfish” and “fashionable” consumption of leisure, clothing, or food that
marked the “individualist” gradations of metropolitan distinction. Occasionally,
however, the two forms overlapped, with bachelor households portrayed as the
happy though temporary twin of suburban matrimonial bliss. A short story by A.J.
Lewis titled “Our Treasures: A Story of Bachelor Housekeeping” of 1887, tracked
the move away in authorial emphasis from a dissolute city-center bachelor
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