the Order of Merit, which had recently been established by King Edward VII. He was invested with the Order at Flint Cottage in December of that year, at a small ceremony performed by the King's representative, Sir Arthur Ellis. In 1909, he died at home in Box Hill. His ashes were buried alongside Marie's in the cemetery at Dorking, Surrey. In 1912 Constable & Co. published Letters of George Meredith in 2 volumes. Family Augustus Meredith died in 1876, aged seventy-nine, and his second wife Matilda in 1885, aged sixty-seven. Both were buried in Southsea, having returned to England from South Africa around 1863. In Augustus's final years, George visited him from time to time, though only out of a sense of duty. By his two wives George Meredith had three children, outliving both wives and one child. His relationship with Arthur, his son by Mary, was at first affectionate, and they made a memorable trip to the Alps and Venice in 1861. In 1862 Arthur was enrolled at Norwich School, which was run by a friend of Meredith's, Augustus Jessopp. Arthur would later be sent to school in Switzerland, before continuing his studies in Stuttgart. For most of Arthur's adult life, father and son were estranged. Arthur found work in a linseed warehouse in France, but health problems curtailed this, and he spent several years on Lake Garda, producing a little journalism and attempting to write a book. His health collapsed in 1886, and he relocated to Australia. He died of tuberculosis, not long after returning from Australia, in September 1890. With his second wife, Marie, he had two children. Their son, William Maxse (1865–1937), would edit Meredith's letters and achieve note in the world of publishing. Their daughter, Marie Eveleen (1871–1933), known as Mariette, married Henry Parkman Sturgis, an American-born banker and politician twenty-four years her senior, who by his first wife Mary (d. 1886) had six children. His stepdaughter Edith Nicolls, later Clarke, for more than forty years ran The National Training School Of Cookery. A pioneer of what came to be known as "domestic science", she published several cookbooks and received the MBE. She died in 1926. The first biography of Meredith was published in 1920 by Stewart Marsh Ellis, his second cousin. Literary style Meredith's style has attracted a great deal of comment, both favourable and disapproving. Early on, critics noted his indebtedness to two