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John Potter, Chairman of the Arnold Bennett Society, has written this introduction especially for the website:
Like the French novelist Balzac, whom he greatly admired, Arnold Bennett wrote on several occasions about misers. These characters can virtually be graded according to a scale of nastiness, with Ephraim Tellwright (Anna of the Five Towns) at the top. Henry Earlforward (Riceyman Steps), though even more dedicated than Tellwright, who is a miser by choice and for personal reasons, is one by nature and, like the leopard, is completely covered in spots which he cannot change even if he wanted to. But in Helen with the High Hand, great-uncle James Ollerenshaw has the knack of hanging on to his riches without really inconveniencing anybody other than himself. Indeed, he can at times be quite a jovial soul and plays a nifty concertina when the occasion arises. Until, that is, the arrival in his household of Helen, the 25-year-old daughter of his step niece. Helen, a schoolteacher by profession and, it has to be said, a bit of an adventuress by inclination, wheedles her way into his life by means of the usual feminine guile, not omitting an appeal to the male stomach. And from that point the story develops with natural progression and charm, with a doubly happy ending to what can only be described as a real romp of a novel, full of youthful doings, dialogue and dialect. There are other reasons, too, for reading this relatively short book. It is perhaps the best possible starting point for readers who wish to try Bennett for the first time. It is light, airy and agreeable but it serves as a painless introduction to the people of the Five Towns. It also contains some superbly-crafted passages, notably the introductory description of Bursley Park, than which there are very few finer pieces of evocative descriptive prose in the whole range of Bennett's work. This book undoubtedly provides the greatest and best example, out of many others, of Arnold with the Light Hand!
© John Potter, 2002
A sample chapter of Helen with the high hand is available on this website.
The full text can also be read online or downloaded free of charge. It is in XHTML format, like this page. Please note the file size is 314kb and it may take some time to open-up if you choose to read it online. Downloading for reading later may be the preferred option and this can be typically achieved by calling up an option box. If you have a mouse and it is configured for left click to select, right clicking the link may give you this option. Link to the full text of Helen with the high hand.
Page created 12 March 2002 and last updated
12 March 2002
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