Valerie was also supervised by the brilliant but opinionated Q D [Queenie] Leavis in her last year. In a supervision about Thomas Hardy, when Mrs L was holding forth on the virtues of the "organic community", a great shibboleth of the Leavises when they were influential critics, Valerie remarked that the organic life was not all it was sometimes cracked up to be: "I remember the nuisance to my mother of my miner father having to have water heated for a hip-bath when he came home from a day's shift because we had no running water or indoor sanitation".
"Nonsense, dear," replied Queenie in not-to-be-contradicted tones, "you're much too young!" The Leavises had their following -- even I admired his work in my 1st & 2nd years — but Queenie was a nasty king·sized old bitch as ever there was.

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