If all this success were not enough to invite envy and spite, Bennett was also a member of the establishment: he served in 1918 as Director of Propaganda for the Ministry of Information, his opinion on political matters was sought and given, and he visited Checquers with Lord Beaverbrook, his close friend. He lived well, traveled extensively, often in his own yacht, and kept servants. He was thus a target for ambitious young writers; Virginia Woolf in particular attacked him in her essay Mr Bennett and Mrs. Brown, published as a pamphlet in 1924. He was made to look oldfashioned by Woolf and was caricatured as the philistine Mr. Nixon by Ezra Pound in his poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920). Pound admitted decades later that he had never read Arnold Bennett's work and knew nothing about him, except that he was rich and owned a yacht.
This reputation for good living damaged Bennett's credibility as a writer. The Bloomsbury set ridiculed him because he came from the pottery district and retained his Northern accent throughout his life. His father had kept a pawnshop before qualifying as a lawyer in early middle age.
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