Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

by Thomas Hardy

  Of another cast was the following. Holder as a young man was a curate in Bristol during the terrible cholera visitation. He related that one day at a friend’s house he met a charming young widow, who invited him to call on her. With pleasant anticipations he went at tea-time a day or two later, and duly inquired if she was at home. The servant said with a strange face: ‘ Why, Sir, you buried her this morning!’ He found that amongst the many funerals of cholera victims he had conducted that day, as on every day, hers had been one.

  At another of these funerals the clerk or sexton rushed to hii* 1 immediately before the procession arrived to ask him to come and 1 look at the just opened grave, which was of brick, with room for tv0 or more, the first place being occupied by the coffin of the deceased person’s husband, who had died three weeks before. The coffin was overturned into the space beside it. Holder hastily told the sexton ‘ to turn it back into its place, and say nothing, to avoid distressing; the relatives by the obvious inference.

  He also remembered a singular alarm to which he had once been subjected. He was roused one night by a voice calling from below ‘Holder, Holder! Can you help me?’ It was the voice of a neighbouring incumbent named Woodman, and wondering what terrible thing had happened he rushed downstairs as soon as he could, seizing a heavy stick on the way. He found his neighbour in great agitation, who explained that the news had come late the previous evening that a certain noble lord the patron, who was a great critic of sermons, had arrived in the parish, and was going to attend next morning’s service. ‘Have you a sermon that will do? I have nothing — nothing!’ The conjuncture had so preyed upon his friend’s nerves during the night that he had not been able to resist getting up and coming. Holder found something he thought might suit the noble critic, and Woodman departed with it under his arm, much relieved.

  Some of Holder’s stories to him were, as Hardy guessed, rather well-found than well-founded, but they were always told with much solemnity. Yet he would sometimes recount one ‘ the truth of which he could not quite guarantee’. It was what had been related to him by some of his aged parishioners concerning an incumbent of that or an adjacent living many years before. This worthy ecclesiastic was a bachelor addicted to drinking habits, and one night when riding up Boscastle Hill fell off his horse. He lay a few minutes in the road, when he said ‘Help me up, Jolly!’ and a local man who was returning home behind him saw a dark figure with a cloven foot emerge from the fence, and toss him upon his horse in a jiffy. The end of him was that on one night of terrific lightning and thunder he was missed, and was found to have entirely disappeared.

  Holder had kept up a friendly acquaintance with Hawker of Morwenstow, who predeceased him by seven years, though the broad and tolerant views of the rector of St. Juliot did not quite chime in with the poet-vicar’s precisianism; and the twenty miles of wild Cornish coast that separated their livings was a heavy bit of road for the rector’s stout cob to traverse both ways in a day. Hardy re- retted the loss of his relative, and was reminded sadly of the pleasure used to find in reading the lessons in the ancient church when his brother-in-law was not in vigour. The poem ‘Quid hie agis?’ in Moments of Vision is in part apparently a reminiscence of these readings.

  In December Hardy was told a story by a Mrs. Cross, a very old country-woman he met, of a girl she had known who had been betrayed and deserted by a lover. She kept her child by her own exertions, and lived bravely and throve. After a time the man returned poorer than she, and wanted to marry her; but she refused. He ultimately went into the Union workhouse. The young woman’s conduct in not caring to be ‘made respectable’ won the novelist- poet’s admiration, and he wished to know her name; but the old narrator said, ‘Oh, never mind their names! they be dead and rotted by now’.

  The eminently modern idea embodied in this example — of a woman’s not becoming necessarily the chattel and slave of her seducer — impressed Hardy as being one of the first glimmers of woman’s enfranchisement; and he made use of it in succeeding years in more than one case in his fiction and verse.

  In the same month the Hardys attended Ambulance-Society lectures — First-Aid teaching being in fashion just then. He makes a note concerning a particular lecture:

  ‘A skeleton — the one used in these lectures — is hung up inside the window. We face it as we sit. Outside the band is playing, and the children are dancing. I can see their little figures through the window past the skeleton dangling in front.’ Another note — this on the wintry weather: ‘Heard of an open cart being driven through the freezing rain. The people in it became literally packed in ice; the men’s beards and hair were hung with icicles. Getting one of the men into the house was like bringing in a chandelier of lustres.’

  In the same month he replied as follows to a question asked him by letter:

  ‘To A. A. Reade, Esq. ‘Dear Sir,

  ‘I can say that I have never found alcohol helpful to literary production in any degree. My experience goes to prove that the effect of wine, taken as a preliminary to imaginative work, as it is called,

  is to blind the writer to the quality of what he produces rather than to raise its quality.

  ‘When walking much out of doors, and particularly when on Continental rambles, I occasionally drink a glass or two of claret or mild ale. The German beers seem really beneficial at these times of exertion which (as wine seems otherwise) may be owing to some alimentary qualities they possess apart from their stimulating property. With these rare exceptions I have taken no alcoholic liquor for the last two years.

  ‘Yours truly,

  ‘T. Hardy.’

  ‘February 25, 1883. Sent a short hastily written novel to the Graphic for Summer Number.’ [It was The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid.]

  ‘February 28. Walked with Walter Fletcher (County Surveyor) to Corfe Mullen. He says that the scene of the auction of turnpike tolls used to be curious. It was held at an inn, and at one end of the room would be the auctioneer and trustees, at the other a crowd of strange beings, looking as not worth sixpence among them. Yet the biddings for the Poole Trust would sometimes reach £1400. Sometimes the bidders would say, “Beg yer pardon, gentlemen, but will you wait to let us step outside a minute or two? “ Perhaps the trustees would say they could not. The men would say, “then we’ll step out without your letting us”. On their return only one or two would bid, and the peremptory trustees be nettled.

  ‘Passed a lonely old house formerly an inn. The road-contractor now living there showed us into the stable, and drew our attention to the furthest stall. When the place was an inn, he said, it was the haunt of smugglers, and in a quarrel there one night a man was killed in that stall. If an old horse is put there on certain nights, at about two in the morning (when the smuggler died) the horse cries like a child, and on entering you find him in a lather of sweat.

  ‘The huge chestnut tree which stood in front of this melancholy house is dead, but the trunk is left standing. In it are still the hooks to which horses were fastened by the reins while their owners were inside.’

  ‘March 13. M. writes to me that when a farmer at Puddlehinton who did not want rain found that a neighbouring farmer had sent to the parson to pray for it, and it had come, he went and abused the other farmer, and told him ‘twas a very dirty trick of his to catch God A’mighty unawares, and he ought to be ashamed of it.

  ‘Our servant Ann brings us a report, which has been verified, that the carpenter who made a coffin for Mr. W. who died the other day, made it too short. A bystander said satirically,” Anybody would think vou’d made it for yourself, John!” (the carpenter was a short man). The maker said, “Ah — they would!” and fell dead instantly.’

  In reply to a letter from Miss Mary Christie:

  ‘Wimborne, April 11, 1883.

  ‘Dear Madam,

  ‘I have read with great interest the account of your scheme for encouraging a feeling for art in National schools, and if my name be of any service in support of the general proposi
tion, I willingly consent to your using it. As to the details of such a scheme, my views differ somewhat from your own. For instance, I think for children between 9 and 12 or 13 — the great mass of those in elementary schools — fairly good engravings, such as those in the Graphic, Illustrated News, etc., (not the coloured pictures) to be as conducive to the end desired as more finished pictures and photographs. A child’s imagination is so powerful that it only requires the idea to set it to work: and hence a dozen suggestions of scenes and persons by as many prints would seem to me to be of more value to him or her than the perfect representation of one, — while the latter would cost as much as the former. This, however, is altogether a secondary point, and I daresay that if we were to talk over the subject we should soon be quite at one about it. . . .’

  Hardy and his wife were in London off and on during May and June, seeing pictures, plays, and friends. At a lunch at Lord Houghton’s, who with his sister Lady Galway had taken a small house off Park Lane for this season, Hardy met Robert Browning again, Rhoda Broughton for the first time, and several others, including Mrs.

  from America, ‘a large-eyed lady-owner of ten serial publications, which, she told me, she called her ten children. Also Lady C. who talked to me about Rabelais — without knowledge obviously — having heard that I belonged to the Rabelais Club. She said she meant to read him through. She had read one chapter, but couldn’t get on with the old French, so was looking for a literal translation. Heaven bless her reading!

  ‘Houghton, seeing Browning about to introduce me to Rhoda Broughton, hastened forward before Browning, and emphatically introduced us with the manner of a man who means to see things properly done in his own house; then walked round, pleased with himself as the company dropped in; like one who, having set a machinery in motion, has now only to wait and observe how it goes.’

  ‘June 24. Sunday. Went in the afternoon to see Mrs. Procter at Albert Hall Mansions. Found Browning present. He told me that Mrs. , whom he and I had met at Lord Houghton’s, had made £200,000 by publishing pirated works of authors who had made comparatively nothing. Presently Mrs. Sutherland Orr and Mrs. Frank Hill (Daily News) came in. Also two Jewesses — the Misses Lazarus — from America. Browning tried the elder with Hebrew, and she appeared to understand so well that he said he perceived she knew the tongue better than he. When these had gone George Smith [the publisher] called. He and Mrs. Procter declared that there was something tender between Mrs. Orr and Browning. “Why don’t they settle it!” said Mrs. P.

  ‘In the evening went to the Irving dinner. Sir Frederick Pollock, who took the chair, and made a speech, said that the departure of Irving for America would be a loss that would eclipse the gaiety of nations (!) Irving in his reply said that in the twenty-seven years he had been on the stage he had enacted 650 different characters.’

  ‘June 25. Dined at the Savile with Gosse. Met W. D. Howells of New York there. He told me a story of Emerson’s loss of memory. At the funeral of Longfellow he had to make a speech. “ The brightness and beauty of soul”, he began, “of him we have lost, has been acknowledged wherever the English language is spoken. I’ve known him these forty years; and no American, whatever may be his opinions, will deny that in — in — in — I can’t remember the gentleman’s name — beat the heart of a true poet.”

  ‘Howells said that Mark Twain usually makes a good speech. But once he heard him fail. In his speech he was telling a story of an occasion when he was in some western city, and found that some impostors personating Longfellow, Emerson, and others had been there. Mark began to describe these impostors, and while doing it found that Longfellow, Emerson, etc., were present, listening, and, from a titter or two, found also that his satirical description of the impostors was becoming regarded as an oblique satirical description of the originals. He was overspread by a sudden cold chill, and struggled to a lame ending. He was so convinced that he had given offence that he wrote to Emerson and Longfellow, apologizing. Emerson could not understand the letter, his memory of the incident having failed him, and wrote to Mark asking what it meant. Then Mark had to tell him what he wished he had never uttered; and altogether the fiasco was complete.’

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE COUNTY TOWN

  1883-1885: Aet. 43-45

  In this month of June the Hardys removed from Wimborne to Dorchester, which town and its neighbourhood, though they did not foresee it, was to be their country-quarters for the remainder of their lives. But several months of each spring and summer were to be spent in London during the ensuing twenty years, and occasionally spells abroad. This removal to the county town, and later to a spot a little outside it, was a step they often regretted having taken; but the bracing air brought them health and renewed vigour, and in the long run it proved not ill-advised.

  ‘July 19. In future I am not going to praise things because the accumulated remarks of ages say they are great and good, if those accumulated remarks are not based on observation. And I am not going to condemn things because a pile of accepted views raked together from tradition, and acquired by instillation, say antecedently that they are bad.’

  ‘July 22. To Winterborne-Came Church with Gosse, to hear and see the poet Barnes. Stayed for sermon. Barnes, knowing we should be on the watch for a prepared sermon, addressed it entirely to his own flock, almost pointedly excluding us. Afterwards walked to the rectory and looked at his pictures.

  ‘Poetry versus reason: e.g., A band plays “ God save the Queen”, and being musical the uncompromising Republican joins in the harmony: a hymn rolls from a church-window, and the uncompromising No-God-ist or Unconscious God-ist takes up the refrain.’

  Mr. T. W. H. Tolbort, a friend of Hardy’s from youth, and a pupil of Barnes’s, who years earlier had come out at the top in the Indian Civil Service examination, died at the beginning of the next month, after a bright and promising career in India, and Hardy wrote an obituary notice of him in the Dorset Chronicle. The only note Hardy makes on him in addition to the printed account is as follows:

  ‘August 13. Tolbort lived and studied as if everything in the world were so very much worth while. But what a bright mind has gone out at one-and-forty!’

  He writes elsewhere of an anecdote told him by Barnes touching his tuition of Tolbort. Barnes had relinquished his school and retired to the country rectory in which he ended his days, when Tolbort’s name, and Barnes’s as his schoolmaster, appeared in The Times at the head of the Indian examination list, a wide proportion of marks separating it from the name following. It was in the early days when these lists excited great interest. In a few mornings Barnes was deluged with letters from all parts of the country requesting him at almost any price to take innumerable sons, and produce upon them the same successful effect. ‘I told them that it took two to do it’, he would say, adding sadly that a popularity which would have been invaluable during the hard-working years of his life came at almost the first moment when it was no longer of use to him.

  In this month of August he made a memorandum on another matter:

  ‘Write a list of things which everybody thinks and nobody says; and a list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks.’

  At this time too Hardy encountered an old man named P,

  whose father, or grandfather, had been one of the keepers of the Rainbarrows’ Beacon, 1800-1815, as described in The Dynasts, the remains of whose hut are still to be seen on the spot. It may be interesting to mention that the daughter of a travelling waxwork proprietor had some years before, when exhibiting at Puddletown,

  entirely lost her heart to P’s brother, a handsome young labourer of the village, and he had married her. As her father grew old and infirm the son-in-law and his wife succeeded to the showman’s business and carried it on successfully. They were a worthy and happy couple,

  and whenever in their rounds they came to P’s native village the husband’s old acquaintance were admitted gratis to the exhibition, which was of a highly moral and religious cast, inc
luding Solomon’s Judgment, and Daniel in the Den of Lions, where the lions moved their heads, tails, eyes, and paws terrifically, while Daniel lifted his hands in prayer. Heads of murderers were ranged on the other side, as a wholesome lesson to evildoers. Hardy duly attended the show because the man’s forefather had kept Rainbarrows’ Beacon (described in The Dynasts’); and the last he saw of old Pwas in the private tent attached to the exhibition, where he was sitting as a glorified figure drinking gin-and-water with his relatives.

  Not having been able when he came to Dorchester to find a house to suit him, Hardy had obtained a plot of land of the Duchy of Cornwall in Fordington Field, about a mile into the country, on which to build one; and at the beginning of October marked out as a preliminary the spot where the well was to be sunk. The only drawback to the site seemed to him to be its newness. But before the well- diggers had got deeper than three feet they came upon Romano- British urns and skeletons. Hardy and his wife found the spot was steeped in antiquity, and thought the omens gloomy; but they did not prove so, the extreme age of the relics dissipating any sense of gruesomeness. More of the sort were found in digging the house- foundations, and Hardy wrote an account of the remains, which he read at the Dorchester Meeting of the Dorset Field Club, 1884. It was printed in the ‘Proceedings’ of the Club in 1890.

  ‘November 3. The Athenceum says: “The glass-stainer maintains his existence at the sacrifice of everything the painter holds dear. In place of the freedom and sweet abandonment which is nature’s own charm and which the painter can achieve, the glass-stainer gives us splendour as luminous as that of the rainbow ... in patches, and stripes, and bars.” The above canons are interesting in their conveyance of a half truth. All art is only approximative — not exact, as the reviewer thinks; and hence the methods of all art differ from that of the glass-stainer but in degree.’