Editing Arnold Bennett (section)

===Freelance; Paris===
In 1900 Bennett resigned his post at ''Woman'', and left London to set up house at Trinity Hall Farm, near the village of [[Hockliffe]] in Bedfordshire, where he made a home not only for himself but for his parents and younger sister. He completed ''Anna of the Five Towns'' in 1901; it was published the following year, as was its successor, ''[[The Grand Babylon Hotel]]''. The latter, an extravagant story of crime in high society, sold 50,000 copies in hardback and was almost immediately translated into four languages.<ref>Carey, p. 153</ref> By this stage he was confident enough in his abilities to tell a friend:
{{blockindent|Although I am 33 & I have not made a name, I infallibly know that I shall make a name, & that soon. But I should like to be a legend. I think I have settled in my own mind that my work will never be better than third rate, judged by the high standards, but I shall be cunning enough to make it impose on my contemporaries.<ref>Bennett and Hepburn, p. 151</ref>|}}

[[File:26 rue d'Aumale Paris.jpg|thumb|left|alt=exterior of 19th-century Parisian appartement block|upright|Rue d'Aumale, Bennett's second address in Paris]]
In January 1902 Enoch Bennett died, after a decline into dementia.<ref>Drabble, pp. 88–89</ref> His widow chose to move back to Burslem, and Bennett's sister married shortly afterwards. With no dependants, Bennett − always a devotee of French culture<ref name=odnb/> − decided to move to Paris; he took up residence there in March 1903.<ref name="Drabble, p. 104">Pound, p. 127</ref> Biographers have speculated on his precise reasons for doing so.  Drabble suggests that perhaps "he was hoping for some kind of liberation. He was thirty-five and unmarried";<ref name="Drabble, p. 104"/> Lucas writes that it was almost certainly Bennett's desire to be recognised as a serious artist that prompted his move;<ref name=odnb/> according to his friend and colleague [[Frank Swinnerton]], Bennett was following in the footsteps of George Moore by going to live in "the home of modern realism";<ref name=s14>Swinnerton (1950), p. 14</ref> in the view of the biographer [[Reginald Pound]] it was "to begin his career as a man of the world".<ref name="Drabble, p. 104"/> The [[9th arrondissement of Paris]] was Bennett's home for the next five years, first in the rue de Calais, near the [[Place Pigalle]], and then the more upmarket rue d'Aumale.<ref>Drabble, pp. 109 and 150; and Pound, p. 156</ref>

Life in Paris evidently helped Bennett overcome much of his remaining shyness with women.<ref>Drabble, pp. 105–106</ref> His journals for his early months in Paris mention a young woman identified as "C" or "Chichi", who was a [[chorus girl]];<ref>Bennett (1954), pp. 71–72, 76, 81 and 84–86</ref> the journals – or at least the cautiously selected extracts published since his death<ref name=lhd/> – do not record the precise nature of the relationship, but the two spent a considerable amount of time together.<ref>Pound, pp. 128–129; and Drabble, pp. 10, and 105–106</ref>

In a restaurant where he dined frequently a trivial incident in 1903 gave Bennett the germ of an idea for the novel generally regarded as his masterpiece.<ref name=s14/><ref>Sutherland, John. [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192122711.001.0001/acref-9780192122711-e-2180 "Old Wives' Tale, The"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210312092950/https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192122711.001.0001/acref-9780192122711-e-2180 |date=12 March 2021 }}, ''The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English'', Oxford University Press, 1996. Retrieved 31 May 2020 {{subscription required}}</ref> A grotesque old woman came in and caused a fuss; the beautiful young waitress laughed at her, and Bennett was struck by the thought that the old woman had once been as young and lovely as the waitress.<ref>Bennett (1954), pp. 76–77</ref> From this grew the story of two contrasting sisters in ''[[The Old Wives' Tale]]''.<ref>Pound, pp. 132–133</ref> He did not begin work on that novel until 1907, before which he wrote ten others, some "sadly undistinguished", in the view of his biographer Kenneth Young.<ref>Young, p. 10</ref> Throughout his career, Bennett interspersed his best novels with some that his biographers and others have labelled pot-boilers.<ref name=odnb/><ref>Drabble, p. 263; Young, p. 10; and Hepburn (2013), p. 37</ref>