by Thomas Hardy
‘28. At Academy Private View. Find that there is a very good painting here of Woolbridge Manor-House under the (erroneous) title of “Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ ancestral home”. Also one entitled “In Hardy’s Country, Egdon Heath”.
‘The worst of taking a furnished house is that the articles in the rooms are saturated with the thoughts and glances of others.’
‘May 10. Spent a scientific evening at the conversazione of the Royal Society, where I talked on the exhibits to Sir R. Quain, Dr. Clifford Allbutt, Humphry Ward, Bosworth Smith, Sir J. Crichton- Browne, F. and G. Macmillan, Ray Lankester, and others, without (I flatter myself) betraying excessive ignorance in respect of the points in the show.’
‘May 18. Left Euston by 9 o’clock morning train with E. for Llandudno, en route for Dublin. After arrival at Llandudno drove round Great Orme’s Head. Magnificent deep purple-grey mountains, the fine colour being on account of an approaching storm.’
‘19. Went on to Holyhead and Kingstown. Met on board John Morley, the Chief Secretary, and Sir John Pender. Were awaited at Dublin by conveyance from the Viceregal Lodge as promised, this invitation being one renewed from last year, when I was obliged to postpone my visit on account of my father’s death. We were received by Mrs. Arthur Henniker, the Lord-Lieutenant’s sister. A charming, intuitive woman apparently. Lord Houghton (the Lord-Lieutenant) came in shortly after.
‘Our bedroom windows face the Phoenix Park and the WickloW Mountains. The Lodge appears to have been built some time in the last century. A roomy building with many corridors.’
‘20. To Dublin Castle, Christ Church, etc., conducted by Mr. Trevelyan, Em having gone with Mrs. Henniker, Mrs. Greer, and Miss Beresford to a Bazaar. Next day (Sunday) she went to Christ Church with them, and Trevelyan and I, after depositing them at the’church door, went on to Bray, where we found the Chief Secretary and the Lord Chancellor at the grey hotel by the shore, “making magistrates by the dozen”, as Morley said.’
‘22. JVhit Monday. Several went to the races. Mr. Lucy (who is also here) and I, however, went into Dublin, and viewed the public buildings and some comical drunken women dancing, I suppose because it was Whitsuntide.
‘A larger party at dinner. Mr. Dundas, an A.D.C., played banjo and sang: Mrs. Henniker the zithern.’
‘23. Morley came to lunch. In the afternoon I went with H. Lucy to the scene of the Phoenix Park murders.’
‘24. Queen’s birthday review. Troops and carriages at door at past 11. The Aides — of whom there are about a dozen — are transformed by superb accoutrements into warriors — Mr. St. John Meyrick into a Gordon Highlander [he was killed in the South African War], Mr. Dundas into a dashing hussar. Went in one of the carriages of the procession with E. and the rest. A romantic scene, pathetically gay, especially as to the horses in the gallop past. “ Yes: very pretty!” Mr. Dundas said, as one who knew the real thing.
‘At lunch Lord Wolseley told me interesting things about war. On the other side of me was a young lieutenant, grandson of Lady de Ros, who recalled the Napoleonic wars. By Wolseley’s invitation I visited him at the Military Hospital. Thence drove to Mrs. Lyttel- ton’s to tea at the Chief Secretary’s Lodge (which she rented). She showed me the rooms in which the bodies of Lord F. Cavendish and Mr. Burke were placed, and told some gruesome details of the discovery of a roll of bloody clothes under the sofa after the entry of the succeeding Secretary. The room had not been cleaned out since the murders.
‘We dined this evening at the Private Secretary’s Lodge with Mrs. Jekyll. Met Mahaffy there, a rattling, amusing talker, and others. Went back to the Viceregal Lodge soon enough to join the state diners in the drawing-room. Talked to several, and the Viceroy. Very funny altogether, this little Court.’
‘25. Went over Guinness’s Brewery, with Mrs. Henniker and several of the Viceregal guests, in the morning. Mr. Guinness conducted us. On the miniature railway we all got splashed with porter, or possibly dirty water, spoiling Em’s and Mrs. Henniker’s clothes. E. and I left the Lodge after lunch and proceeded by 3 o’clock train to Killarney, Lord Houghton having given me a copy of his poems. Put up at the Great Southern Railway Hotel.’
‘26. Drove in car round Middle Lake, first driving to Ross Castle. Walked in afternoon about Killarney town, where the cows stand about the streets like people.’
‘27. Started in wagonette for the Gap of Dunloe. Just below Kate Kearney’s house Em mounted a pony and I proceeded more leisurely on foot by the path. The scenery of the Black Valley is deeply impressive. Here are beauties of Nature to delight man, and to degrade him by attracting all the vagabonds in the country. Boats met us at the head of the Upper Lake, and we were rowed through the three to Ross Castle, whence we drove back to Killarney town.’
On the following Sunday they left and passed through Dublin, sleeping at the Marine Hotel at Kingstown, and early the next morning took the boat to Holyhead. Reached London the same evening.
Early in June Hardy attended a rehearsal at Terry’s Theatre of his one-act play called The Three Wayfarers — a dramatization of his story The Three Strangers, made at the suggestion of J. M. Barrie. On the 3rd June the play was produced with one equally short by his friend, and another or two. The Hardys went with Lady Jeune and some more friends, and found that the little piece was well received.
During the week he saw Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Rosmersholm, in which Miss Elizabeth Robins played. The former he had already seen, but was again impressed by it, as well as by the latter. Hardy could not at all understand the attitude of the English press towards these tragic productions — the culminating evidence of our blinkered insular taste being afforded by the nickname of the ‘Ibscene drama’ which they received.
On the eighth he met for the first time (it is believed) that brilliant woman Mrs. Craigie; and about this date various other people, including Mr. Hamilton Aide, an old friend of Sir Arthur Blomfield’s. In the week he still followed up Ibsen, going to The Master Builder with Sir Gerald and Lady Fitzgerald and her sister, Mrs. Henniker, who said afterwards that she was so excited by the play as not to be able to sleep all night; and on Friday lunched with General Milman at the Tower, inspecting ‘Little-ease’, and other rooms not generally shown at that time. In the evening he went with Mrs. Hardy and Miss Milman to Barrie’s play, Walker, London, going behind the scenes with Barrie, and making the acquaintance of J. L. Toole, who said he could not go on even now on a first night without almost breaking down with nervousness. In a letter to Mrs. Henniker Hardy describes this experience:
‘The evening of yesterday I spent in what I fear you will call a frivolous manner — indeed, during the time, my mind reverted to our Ibsen experience; and I could not help being regretfully struck
by the contrast — although I honestly was amused. Barrie had arranged to take us and Maarten Maartens to see B.’s play of Walker, London, and lunching yesterday with the Milmans at the Tower we asked Miss Milman to be of the party. Mr. Toole heard we had come and invited us behind the scenes. We accordingly went and sat with him in his dressing-room, where he entertained us with hock and champagne, he meanwhile in his paint, wig, and blazer, as he had come off the stage, amusing us with the drollest of stories about a visit he and a friend paid to the Tower some years ago: how he amazed the custodian by entreating the loan of the crown jewels for an amateur dramatic performance for a charitable purpose, offering to deposit 30s. as a guarantee that he would return them, etc., etc., etc. We were rather late home as you may suppose.’
Some ten days later Hardy was at Oxford. It was during the Encaenia, with the Christ Church and other college balls, garden- parties, and suchlike bright functions, but Hardy did not make himself known, his object being to view the proceedings entirely as a stranger. It may be mentioned that the recipients of Honorary Degrees this year included Lord Rosebery, the Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Liddell, and Sir Charles Euan Smith, a friend of his own. He viewed the Commemoration proceedings from the undergraduates’ gall
ery of the Sheldonian, his quarters while at Oxford being at the Wilberforce Temperance Hotel.
The remainder of their season in London this year was of the usual sort. A memorial service to Admiral Tryon, a view of the marriage procession of the Duke of York and Princess May from the Club window, performances by Eleanora Duse and Ada Rehan in their respective theatres, with various dinners and luncheons, brought on the end of their term in Hamilton Terrace, and they returned to Dorchester. A note he made this month runs as follows:
‘I often think that women, even those who consider themselves experienced in sexual strategy, do not know how to manage an honest man.’
In the latter part of July Hardy had to go up to town again for a few days, when he took occasion to attend a lecture by Stepniak on Tolstoi, to visit City churches, and to go with Lady Jeune and her daughters to a farewell performance by Irving. His last call this summer was on Lady Londonderry, who remained his friend through the ensuing years. ‘A beautiful woman still’, he says of her; ‘and very glad to see me, which beautiful women are not always. The Duchess of Manchester [Consuelo] called while 1 was there, and Lady Jeune. All four of us talked of the marriage-laws, a conversation which they started, not I; also of the difficulties of separation, of terminable marriages where there are children, and of the nervous strain of living with a man when you know he can throw you over at any moment.’
It may be mentioned here that after the Duchess of Manchester’s death a good many years later Hardy described her as having been when he first knew her ‘a warm-natured woman, laughing-eyed, and bubbling with impulses, in temperament very much like “Julie-Jane” in one of my poems’.
‘At Dorchester. July 31 st. Mrs. R. Eliot lunched. Her story of the twins, “May” and “June”. May was born between n and 12 on the 31st May, and June between 12 and 1 on June the ist.’
The following month, in reply to an inquiry by the editors of the Parisian paper L’ Ermitage, he wrote:
‘I consider a social system based on individual spontaneity to promise better for happiness than a curbed and uniform one under which all temperaments are bound to shape themselves to a single pattern of living. To this end I would have society divided into groups of temperaments, with a different code of observances for each group.’
It is doubtful if this Utopian scheme possessed Hardy’s fancy for any long time.
In the middle of August Hardy and his wife accepted an invitation to visit the Milnes-Gaskells at Wenlock Abbey, on their way thither calling at Hereford to see the Cathedral, Hardy always making a point of not missing such achievements in architecture, even if familiar. Lady Catherine and her daughter met them at the station. ‘Lady C. is as sweet as ever, and almost as pretty, and occasionally shows a quizzical wit. The pet name “Catty” which her dearest friends give her has, I fear, a suspicious tremor of malice.’ They were interested to find their bedroom in the Norman part of the building, Hardy saying he felt quite mouldy at sleeping within walls of such high antiquity.
Their time at the Abbey appears to have been very pleasant. They idled about in the shade of the ruins, and Milnes-Gaskell told an amusing story of a congratulatory dinner by fellow-townsmen to a burgher who had obtained a divorce from his wife, where the mayor made a speech beginning ‘On this auspicious occasion’. During their stay they went with him to Stokesay Castle and Shrewsbury.
Lady Wenlock came one day; and on Sunday Hardy and Lady C. walked till they were tired, when they ‘ sat down on the edge of a lonely sandpit and talked of suicide, pessimism, whether life was worth living, and kindred dismal subjects, till we were quite miserable. After dinner all sat round a lantern in the court under the stars — where Lady C. told stories in the Devonshire dialect, moths flying about the lantern as in In Memoriam. She also defined the difference between coquetting and flirting, considering the latter a grosser form of the first, and alluded to Zola’s phrase, “a woman whose presence was like a caress”, saying that some women could not help it being so, even if they wished it otherwise. I doubted it, considering it but their excuse for carrying on.’
On their way back the Hardys went to Ludlow Castle, and deplored the wanton treatment which had led to the rooflessness of the historic pile where Comus was first performed and Hudibras partly written. Hardy thought that even now a millionaire might be able to re-roof it and make it his residence.
On a flying visit to London at the end of this month, dining at the Conservative Club with Sir George Douglas, he had ‘an interesting scientific conversation’ with Sir James Crichton-Browne. ‘A woman’s brain, according to him, is as large in proportion to her body as a man’s. The most passionate women are not those selected in civilized society to breed from, as in a state of nature, but the colder; the former going on the streets (I am sceptical about this). The doctrines of Darwin require readjusting largely; for instance, the survival of the fittest in the struggle for life. There is an altruism and coalescence between cells as well as an antagonism. Certain cells destroy certain cells; but others assist and combine. Well, I can’t say.’
‘September 13. At Max Gate. A striated crimson sunset; opposite it I sit in the study writing by the light of a shaded lamp, which looks primrose against the red.’ This was Hardy’s old study facing west (now altered) in which he wrote Tess of the d’Urbervilles, before he removed into his subsequent one looking east, where he wrote The Dynasts and all his later poetry, and which is still unchanged.
‘September 14. Drove with Em. to the Sheridans’, Frampton. Tea on lawn. Mrs. Mildmay, young Harcourt, Lord Dufferin, etc. On our return all walked with us as far as the first park-gate. May [afterwards Lady Stracey] looked remarkably well.’
‘September 17. At Bockhampton heard a story about eels that was almost gruesome — how they jumped out of a bucket at night, crawled all over the house and half-way up the stairs, their tails being heard swishing in the dark, and were ultimately found in the garden; and when water was put to them to wash off the gravel and earth they became lively and leapt about.’
At the end of the month Hardy and his wife went on a visit to Sir Francis and Lady Jeune at Arlington Manor, finding the house when they arrived as cheerful as the Jeunes’ house always was in those days, Hardy saying that there was never another house like it for cheerfulness. Among the other house-guests were Mrs. Craigie (‘John Oliver Hobbes’), Lewis Morris, Mr. Stephen (a director of the North-Western Railway), and Hubert Howard, son of Lord Carlisle. On Sunday morning Hardy took a two hours’ walk with Mrs. Craigie on the moor, when she explained to him her reasons for joining the Roman Catholic Church, a step which had vexed him somewhat. Apparently he did not consider her reasons satisfactory, but their friendship remained unbroken. While staying there they went to Shaw House, an intact Elizabethan mansion, and to a picnic in Savernake Forest, ‘where Lady Jeune cooked luncheon in a great saucepan, with her sleeves rolled up and an apron on’.
‘October 7-10. Wrote a song.’ (Which of his songs is not mentioned.)
‘November 11. Met Lady Cynthia Graham. In appearance she is something like my idea of Tess, though I did not know her when the novel was written.’
‘November 23. Poem. “The Glass-stainer” (published later on).’
‘November 28. Poem. “He views himself as an automaton” (published).’
‘December. Found and touched up a short story called “An Imaginative Woman”.
‘In London with a slight cold in the head. Dined at the Dss. of Manchester’s. Most of the ‘guests had bad colds, and our hostess herself a hacking cough. A lively dinner all the same. As some people had not been able to come I dined with her again a few days later, as did also George [afterwards Lord] Curzon. Lady Londonderry told me that her mother’s grandmother was Spanish, whence the name of Theresa. There were also present the Duke of Devonshire, Arthur Balfour, and Mr. and Mrs. Lyttelton. When I saw the Duchess again two or three days later, she asked me how I liked her relation, the Duke. I said not much; he was too heavy for one thin
g. “That’s because he’s so shy!” she urged. “I assure you he is quite different when it wears off.” I looked as if I did not believe much in the shyness. However, I’ll assume it was so.’
After looking at a picture of Grindelwald and the Wetterhorn at somebody’s house he writes: ‘I could argue thus: “There is no real interest or beauty in this mountain, which appeals only to the childish taste for colour or size. The little houses at the foot are the real interest of the scene”.’ Hardy never did argue so, nor intend to, nor quite believe the argument; but one understands what he means.
Finishing his London engagements, which included the final revision with Mrs. Henniker of a weird story in which they had collabourated, entitled ‘The Spectre of the Real’, he spent Christmas at Max Gate as usual, receiving the carol-singers there on Christmas Eve, where, ‘ though quite modern, with a harmonium, they made a charming picture with their lanterns under the trees, the rays diminishing away in the winter mist’. On New Year’s Eve it was calm, and they stood outside the door listening to the muffled peal from the tower of Fordington St. George.
CHAPTER XXII
ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED, MUTILATED, AND RESTORED
1894-1895: Aet. 53-55
‘February 4, 1894. Curious scene encountered this (Sunday) evening as I was walking back to Dorchester from Bockhampton very late — nearly 12 o’clock. A girl almost in white on the top of Stinsford Hill, beating a tambourine and dancing. She looked like one of the “angelic quire”, who had tumbled down out of the sky, and I could hardly believe my eyes. Not a soul there or near but her and myself. Was told she belonged to the Salvation Army, who beat tambourines devotionally.’ The scene was afterwards put into verse.
