Howards End: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

The poor boy is named Leonard Bast. He has long been underfed, physically and mentally, and he regrets letting his suspicions and wounded pride get the best of him by turning down the tea. He walks two miles home, unable to spare money for the tram. He reenters the tiny basement apartment that he shares with a woman named Jacky. When he takes off his boots, he accidentally knocks her portrait off a little table and breaks the glass. The picture shows Jacky smiling with her mouth gaping open, baring all her dazzling white teeth. Her eyes, however, appear anxious and hungry. Leonard cuts himself trying to pick up the glass and bleeds onto the photo.

Leonard has a meager tea and then sits down with a book. He dedicates his free time to reading and attending concerts, hoping to become more cultured and gain a richer understanding of the world. However, the artists whom he so admires do not concern themselves with the actual world—like the Schlegels, they are absorbed in a romantic and unrealistic existence. The voice in the book he turns to “was the voice of one who had never been dirty or hungry, and had not guessed successfully what dirt and hunger are.”

Leonard’s reading is interrupted when Jacky comes home. She is thirty-three years old, a former prostitute whom he has promised to marry when he turns twenty-one. Her looks are past their prime—she currently has fewer, duller teeth than the younger face in the photograph. She once could have relied on her figure and her smile to attract men, and she has no real talent for wit or lively conversation. She frequently asks Leonard to repeat his promise to marry her, to his irritation. They share an unappetizing dinner and Leonard eventually retires to bed, unsatisfied.