Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

by Thomas Hardy

  He enumerated some of the horrors of human and animal life, particularly parasitic, and added:

  ‘The problem is how to reconcile these with the absolute goodness and non-limitation of God.’

  Hardy replied: ‘ Mr. Hardy regrets that he is unable to suggest any hypothesis which would reconcile the existence of such evils as Dr. Grosart describes with the idea of omnipotent goodness. Perhaps Dr. Grosart might be helped to a provisional view of the universe by the recently published Life of Darwin, and the works of Herbert Spencer and other agnostics.’

  He met Leslie Stephen shortly after, and Stephen told him that he too had received a similar letter from Grosart; to which he had replied that as the reverend doctor was a professor of theology, and he himself only a layman, he should have thought it was the doctor’s business to explain the difficulty to his correspondent, and not bis to explain it to the doctor.

  Two or three days later the Bishop (Wordsworth) of Salisbury wrote to Hardy for his views on the migration of the peasantry, ‘which is of considerable social importance and has a very distinct bearing on the work of the Church’, adding that Hardy with his very accurate knowledge of the custom was well-qualified to be the historian of its causes and its results. ‘Are they good or bad morally and in respect of religion, respectability, etc., to men, women, and children.’ Hardy’s answer cannot be discovered, but he is known to have held that these modern migrations are fatal to local traditions, and to cottage horticulture. Labourers formerly, knowing they were permanent residents, would plant apple-trees and fruit-bushes with zealous care, to profit from them: but now they scarce ever plant one, knowing they will be finding a home elsewhere in a year or two; or if they do happen to plant any, digging them up and selling them before leaving! Hence the lack of picturesqueness in modern labourers’ dwellings.

  ‘March 1. Youthful recollections of four village beauties:

  ‘1. Elizabeth B, and her red hair. [She seems to appear in the poem called “Lizbie Browne”, and was a gamekeeper’s daughter, a year or two older than Hardy himself.]

  ‘2. Emily D, and her mere prettiness.

  ‘3. Rachel H, and her rich colour, and vanity, and frailty,

  and clever artificial dimple-making. [She is probably in some respects the original of Arabella in Jude the Obscure.]

  ‘4. Alice Pand her mass of flaxen curls.’

  ‘March. At the Temperance Hotel. The people who stay here appear to include religious enthusiasts of all sorts. They talk the old faiths with such new fervours and original aspects that such faiths seem again arresting. They open fresh views of Christianity by turning it in reverse positions, as Gerome the painter did by painting the shadow of the Crucifixion instead of the Crucifixion itself as former painters had done.

  ‘In the street outside I heard a man coaxing money from a prostitute in slang language, his arm round her waist. The outside was a commentary on the inside.’

  ‘March 9. British Museum Reading Room. Souls are gliding about here in a sort of dream — screened somewhat by their bodies, but imaginable behind them. Dissolution is gnawing at them all, slightly hampered by renovations. In the great circle of the library Time is looking into Space. Coughs are floating in the same great vault, mixing with the rustle of book-leaves risen from the dead, and the touches of footsteps on the floor.’

  ‘March 28. On returning to London after an absence I find the people of my acquaintance abraded, their hair disappearing, also their flesh, by degrees.

  ‘People who to one’s-self are transient singularities are to themselves the permanent condition, the inevitable, the normal, the rest of mankind being to them the singularity. Think, that those (to us) strange transitory phenomena, their personalities, are with them always, at their going to bed, at their uprising!

  ‘Footsteps, cabs, etc., are continually passing our lodgings. And every echo, pit-pat, and rumble that makes up the general noise has behind it a motive, a prepossession, a hope, a fear, a fixed thought forward; perhaps more — a joy, a sorrow, a love, a revenge.

  ‘London appears not to see itself. Each individual is conscious of himself, but nobody conscious of themselves collectively, except perhaps some poor gaper who stares round with a half-idiotic aspect.

  ‘There is no consciousness here of where anything comes from or goes to — only that it is present.

  ‘In the City. The fiendish precision or mechanism of town-life is what makes it so intolerable to the sick and infirm. Like an acrobat performing on a succession of swinging trapezes, as long as you are at particular points at precise instants, everything glides as if afloat; but if you are not up to time’

  ‘April 16. News of Matthew Arnold’s death, which occurred yesterday. . . . The Times speaks quite truly of his “enthusiasm for the nobler and detestation of the meaner elements in humanity”.’

  ‘April 19. Scenes in ordinary life that are insipid at 20 become interesting at 30, and tragic at 40.’

  ‘April 21. Dr. Quain told me some curious medical stories when we were dining at Mrs. Jeune’s. He said it was a mistake for anyone to have so many doctors as the German Emperor has, because neither feels responsible. Gave an account of Queen Adelaide, who died through her physicians’ ignorance of her malady, one of them, Dr. Chambers, remarking, when asked why he did not investigate her disorder, “Damn it, I wasn’t going to pull about the Queen” — she being such a prude that she would never have forgiven him for making an examination that, as it proved, would have saved her life.

  ‘Mary Jeune says that when she tries to convey some sort of moral or religious teaching to the East-end poor, so as to change their views from wrong to right, it ends by their convincing her that their view is the right one — not by her convincing them.’

  ‘April 23. To Alma-Tadema’s musical afternoon. Heckmann Quartett. The architecture of his house is incomplete without sunlight and warmth. Hence the dripping wintry afternoon without mocked his marble basin and brass steps and quilted blinds and silver apse.’

  ‘April 26. Thought in bed last night that Byron’s Childe Harold will live in the history of English poetry not so much because of the beauty of parts of it, which is great, but because of its good fortune in being an accretion of descriptive poems by the most fascinating personality in the world — for the English — not a common plebeian, but a romantically wicked noble lord. It affects even Arnold’s judgment.’

  ‘April 28. A short story of a young man — “who could not go to Oxford” — His struggles and ultimate failure. Suicide. [Probably the germ of Jude the Obscure.] There is something [in this] the world ought to be shown, and I am the one to show it to them — though I was not altogether hindered going, at least to Cambridge, and could have gone up easily at five-and-twenty.

  ‘In Regent Street, which commemorates the Prince Regent. It is in the fitness of things that The Promenade of Prostitutes should be here. One can imagine his shade stalking up and down every night, smiling approvingly.’

  ‘May 13. Lord Houghton tells me to-day at lunch at Lady Catherine Gaskell’s of a young lady who gave a full description of a ball to her neighbour during the Chapel Royal service by calling out at each response in the Litany as many details as she could get in. Also of Lordwho saves all his old tooth-brushes affectionately.

  ‘The Gaskells said that Lord and Lady Lymington and themselves went to the city in an omnibus, and one of them nearly sat on an Irishwoman’s baby. G. apologized, when she exclaimed, “Och, ‘twas not you: ‘twas the ugly one!” (pointing to Lord L.).

  ‘Lady C. says that the central position of St. James’s Square (where their house is) enables her to see so many more people. When she first comes to Town she feels a perfect lump the first fortnight — she knows nothing of the new phrases, and does not understand the social telegraphy and allusions.’

  May 28. They went to Paris via London and Calais: and stayed in the Rue du Commandant Riviere several weeks, noticing on their arrival as they always did ‘the sour smell of
a foreign city’.

  June 4 and 7. At the Salon. ‘Was arrested by the sensational picture called “The Death of Jezebel” by Gabriel Guays, a horrible tragedy, and justly so, telling its story in a flash.’

  ‘June 10. To Longchamps and the Grand Prix de Paris. Roar from the course as I got near. It was Pandemonium: not a blade of grass: half overshoe in dust: the ground covered with halves of white, yellow, and blue tickets: bookmakers with staring brass- lettered names and addresses, in the very exuberance of honesty. The starter spoke to the jockeys entirely in English, and most of the cursing and swearing was done in English likewise, and done well. The horses passed in a volley, so close together that it seemed they must be striking each other. Excitement. Cries of “ Vive la France!” (a French horse having won).’

  ‘June 11. To the Embassy. Bon Marche with Em. Walked to l’Etoile in twilight. The enormous arch stood up to its knees in lamplight, dark above against the deep blue of the upper sky. Went under and read some names of victories which were never won.’

  ‘June 12. To see the tombs of St. Denis with E. A lantern at the slit on one side of the vault shows the coffins to us at the opposite slit.’

  ‘June 13. Exhibition of Victor Hugo’s manuscripts and drawings. Thence to one of the Correctional Courts: heard two or three trivial cases. Afterwards to the Salle des Conferences.’

  ‘June 14. Sunny morning. View from l’Etoile. Fresh, after rain; air clear. Could see distinctly far away along the Avenue de la Grande Armee — down into the hollow and on to rising ground beyond, where the road tapers to an obelisk standing there. Also could see far along the Avenue Wagram. In the afternoon I went to the Archives Nationales. Found them much more interesting than I had expected. As it was not a public day the attendant showed me round alone, which, with the gloomy wet afternoon, made the relics more solemn; so that, mentally, I seemed close to those keys from the Bastille, those letters of the Kings of France, those Edicts, and those corridors of white boxes, each containing one year’s shady documents of a past monarchy.’

  Next day, coming out of the Bourse, he learnt of the death of the Emperor of Germany.

  On returning to London Hardy had a rheumatic attack which kept him in bed two or three days, after which they entered lodgings at Upper Phillimore Place, Kensington, where they remained till the third week in July. Walter Pater sometimes called on them from over the way, and told them a story of George III anent the row of houses they were living in. These, as is well known, have their fronts ornamented with the stone festooning of their date, and the King would exclaim when returning from Weymouth: ‘Ah, there are the dish-clouts. Now I shall soon be home!’ Acquaintance was renewed with various friends, among them, after a dozen years of silence, Mrs. Ritchie (Miss Thackeray), later Lady Ritchie. ‘Talked of the value of life, and its interest. She admits that her interest in the future lies largely in the fact that she has children, and says that when she calls on L. Stephen and his wife she feeIs like a ghost, who arouses sad feelings in the person visited.’

  As to the above remark on the value of life> Hardy writes whimsi cally a day or two later:

  ‘I have attempted many modes [of finding it] Forif there is any way of getting a melancholy sat’faction ouf of Ufe h Hes in dying, so to speak, before one is out of the flesh fa whkh j mean putting on the manners of ghosts, wandering in their haunts, and taking their views of surrounding things. To think of life as passing away is a sadness; to think of it as past is at least tolerable. Hence even when I enter into a room to pay a simple morning call I have unconsciously the habit of regarding the scene as if I were a spectre not solid enough to influence my environment; only fit to behold and say, as another spectre said: “ Peace be unto you!”‘

  ‘July 3. Called on [Eveline] Lady Portsmouth. Found her alone and stayed to tea. Looked more like a model countess than ever I have seen her do before, her black brocaded silk fitting her well and suiting her eminently. She is not one of those marble people who can be depended upon for their appearance at a particular moment, but like all mobile characters uncertain as to aspect. She is one of the few, very few, women of her own rank for whom I would make a sacrifice: a woman too of talent, part of whose talent consists in concealing that she has any.’

  ‘July 5. A letter lies on the red velvet cover of the table; staring up, by reason of the contrast. I cover it over, that it may not hit my eyes so hard.’

  ‘July 7. One o’clock a.m. I got out of bed, attracted by the never-ending procession [of market-carts to Covent Garden] as seen from our bedroom windows, Phillimore Place. Chains rattle, and each cart cracks under its weighty pyramid of vegetables.’

  ‘July 8. A service at St. Mary Abbots, Kensington. The red plumes and ribbon in two stylish girls’ hats in the foreground match the red robes of the persons round Christ on the Cross in the east window. The pale crucified figure rises up from a parterre of London bonnets and artificial hair-coils, as viewed from the back where I am. The sky over Jerusalem seems to have some connection with the corn-flowers in a fashionable hat that bobs about in front of the city of David. . . . When the congregation rises there is a rustling of silks like that of the Devils’ wings in Paradise Lost. Every woman then, even if she had forgotten it before, has a single thought to the folds of her clothes. They pray in the litany as if under enchantment. Their real life is spinning on beneath this apparent one of calm, like the District Railway-trains underground just by — throbbing, rushing, hot, concerned with next week, last week. . . . Could these true scenes in which this congregation is living be brought into church bodily with the personages, there would be a churchful of jostling phantasmagorias crowded like a heap of soap bubbles, infinitely intersecting, but each seeing only his own. That bald-headed man is surrounded by the interior of the Stock Exchange; that girl by the jeweller’s shop in which she purchased yesterday. Through this bizarre world of thought circulates the recitative of the parson — a thin solitary note without cadence or change of intensity — and getting lost like a bee in the clerestory.’

  ‘July 9. To “The Taming of the Shrew”. A spirited unconventional performance, revitalising an old subject. The brutal mediaeval view of the sex which animates the comedy does not bore us by its obsoleteness, the Shrew of Miss Ada Rehan being such a real shrew. Her attitude of sad, impotent resignation, when her husband wears out her endurance, in which she stands motionless and almost unconscious of what is going on around her, was well done. At first she hears the cracks of the whip with indifference; at length she begins to shrink at the sound of them, and when he literally whips the domestics out of the room she hides away. At first not looking at him in his tantrums, she gets to steal glances at him, with an awestruck arrested attention. ‘ The scene in which the sun-and-moon argument comes in contained the best of acting. Drew’s aspect of inner humorous opinion, lively eye, and made-up mind, is eminently suited to the husband’s character.

  ‘Reading H. James’s Reverberator. After this kind of work one feels inclined to be purposely careless in detail. The great novels of the future will certainly not concern themselves with the minutiae of manners. . . . James’s subjects are those one could be interested in at moments when there is nothing larger to think of.’

  ‘July 11. At the Savile. [Sir] Herbert Stephen declares that he met Sr [another member of the Club] in Piccadilly, a few minutes ago, going away from the direction of the club house door, and that Sr nodded to him; then arriving quickly at the Club he saw Sr seated in the back room. Sr, who is present during the telling, listens to this story of his wraith, and as H. S. repeats it to the other members, becomes quite uncomfortable at the weirdness of it. H. S. adds that he believes Sr is in the back room still, and Sr says he is afraid to go in to himself.’

  ‘July 13. After being in the street: What was it on the faces of those horses? — Resignation. Their eyes looked at me, haunted me. The absoluteness of their resignation was terrible. When afterwards I heard their tramp as I lay in bed, the ghosts of their
eyes came in to me, saying, “Where is your justice, O man and ruler?”

  ‘Lady Portsmouth told me at a dinner party last night that once she sat between Macaulay and Henry Layard in dining at Lord Lansdowne’s, and whenever one of them had got the ear of the table the other turned to her and talked, to show that the absolute vacuity of his rival’s discourse had to be filled in somehow with any rubbish at hand.’

  ‘July 14. Was much struck with Gladstone’s appearance at Flinders Petrie’s Egyptian Exhibition. The full curves of his Roman face; and his cochin-china-egg complexion was not at all like his pallor when I last saw him, and there was an utter absence of any expression of senility or mental weakness. — We dined at Walter Pater’s. Met Miss , an Amazon, more, an Atalanta, most, a Faustine. Smokes: handsome girl: cruel small mouth: she’s of the class of interesting women one would be afraid to marry.’

  Here follow long lists of books read, or looked into, or intended to be read, during the year.

  CHAPTER XVII

  MORE TOWN FRIENDS AND A NOVEL’S DISMEMBERMENT

  1888-1889: 4et. 48-49

  Returning to Dorchester two days later, he notes down: ‘Thought of the determination to enjoy. We see it in all nature, from the leaf on the tree to the titled lady at the ball. ... It is achieved, of a sort, under superhuman difficulties. Like pent-up water it will find a chink of possibility somewhere. Even the most oppressed of men and animals find it, so that out of a thousand there is hardly one who has not a sun of some sort for his soul.’