Hove

Hove appears briefly when Philip and Mildred visit a prospective caretaker for Mildred’s baby, but the encounter gives the location a distinct social function: it brings the practical cost of childcare into view and sets Mildred’s concern with being regarded as a lady beside the precarious circumstances of the woman who will care for the child.

The Visit to Hove

After lunch, Philip and Mildred travel to Hove to meet Mrs. Harding, the woman who is to take charge of the baby. She lives in a small house on a back street, described as clean and tidy. The scale and order of the home matter: this is not a grand institution but a modest household being asked to absorb another child’s daily needs.

Philip asks whether looking after a baby will be an awful nuisance. Mrs. Harding explains that the arrangement will give her something to do and bring in a few shillings a week, which will help keep the household going. She also promises that the baby will be well fed. The visit therefore establishes both the proposed care and its economic terms: the baby’s welfare depends on a paid arrangement that is useful to the caretaker as well as to Mildred.

Mrs. Harding’s Circumstances

Mrs. Harding is an elderly, stout woman with gray hair and a red, fleshy face; Philip finds her motherly in her cap and thinks she seems kind. Her account gives the household’s financial vulnerability a concrete shape. Her husband is a curate, considerably older than she is, and has difficulty finding permanent work because vicars prefer young assistants. He earns money from occasional temporary posts when another clergyman is away or ill, while a charitable institution provides a small pension.

Childcare offers Mrs. Harding both occupation in a lonely life and a few shillings toward household expenses. Her promise to feed the baby well is part of the practical assurance on which Philip and Mildred must rely. The scene presents care not as an abstract maternal virtue but as work performed within limited means and an insecure livelihood.

Social Judgement and Narrative Significance

As they leave, Mildred calls Mrs. Harding quite the lady. The judgment echoes her attention elsewhere to clothes, appearances, and the signs by which she measures status, while revealing that she can apply the same social category to a woman in a small back-street house. Philip’s response to Mrs. Harding has been grounded in her apparent kindness; Mildred’s remark instead makes respectability itself part of the conversation.

Hove thus marks a practical turning point in the baby’s arrangements without becoming a lengthy setting in its own right. The visit joins domestic dependence to money: a few shillings matter to Mrs. Harding, and dependable care matters to Mildred and Philip. Its brief exchange also anticipates the uneasy combination of need, scrutiny, and social performance that shapes the baby’s place in their lives.