by Thomas Hardy
‘Your obedient servant,
‘Thomas Hardy.’
Again in the country in August, Hardy resumed his cycling tours, meeting by accident Mr. William Watson, Mr. Francis Coutts (Lord Latymer), and Mr. John Lane at Glastonbury, and spending a romantic day or two there among the ruins.
In October Hardy learnt by letter from Madras of the death ot Mrs. Malcolm Nicolson — the gifted and impassioned poetess known as ‘Laurence Hope’, whom he had met in London; and he wrote a brief obituary notice of her in the Athenceum at the end of the month. But beyond this, and the aforesaid newspaper letters, he appears to have printed very little during this year 1904. A German translation of Life’s Little Ironies was published in Aus fremden Zungen, in Berlin, and a French translation of The Well-Beloved undertaken.
His memoranda get more and more meagre as the years go on, until we are almost entirely dependent on letter-references, reviews, and casual remarks of his taken down by the present writer. It is a curious reversal of what is usually found in lives, where notes and diaries grow more elabourate with maturity of years. But it accords with Hardy’s frequent saying that he took little interest in himself as a person, and his absolute refusal at all times to write his reminiscences.
In January (1905) he served as Grand Juror at the winter Assizes, and in the latter part of the month met Dr. Shipley, Mr. Asquith, Lord Monteagle, Sir Edgar Vincent, and others at a dinner at the National Club given by Mr. Gosse. At this time he was much interested in the paintings of Zurbaran, which he preferred to all others of the old Spanish school, venturing to think that they might some day be held in higher estimation than those of Velazquez.
About this time the romantic poem entitled ‘The Noble Lady’s Tale’ was printed in the Cornhill Magazine.
The first week in April Hardy left Dorchester for London en route for Aberdeen, the ancient University of which city had offered him the honourary degree of LL.D. In accepting it he remarked:
‘I am impressed by its coming from Aberdeen, for though a stranger to that part of Scotland to a culpable extent I have always observed with admiration the exceptional characteristics of the northern University, which in its fostering encouragement of mental effort seems to cast an.eye over these islands that is unprejudiced, unbiased, and unsleeping.’
It was a distance of near 700 miles by the route he would have to take — almost as far as to the Pyrenees — and over the northern stage of it winter still lingered; but his journey there and back was an easy one. The section from Euston Square to the north was performed in a train of sleeping-cars which crunched through the snow as if it were January, the occasion coinciding with the opening of the new sculpture gallery, a function that brought many visitors from London. Hardy was hospitably entertained at the Chanonry Lodge, Old Aberdeen, by Principal and Mrs. Marshall Lang, which was the beginning of a friendship that lasted till the death of the Principal. Among others who received the like honour at the same time were Professor Bury and Lord Reay.
In the evening there was a reception in the Mitchell Hall, Marischal College, made lively by Scotch reels and bagpipers; and the next day, after attending at the formal opening of the sculpture gallery, he was a guest at the Corporation Dinner at the Town Hall, where friends were warm, but draughts were keen to one from a southern county, and speeches, though good, so long that he and the Principal did not get back to Chanonry Lodge till one o’clock.
On Sunday morning Hardy visited spots in and about Aberdeen associated with Byron and others, and lunched at the Grand Hotel by the invitation of Mr. (afterwards Sir) James Murray, dining at the same place with the same host, crossing hands in ‘Auld Lang Syne’ with delightful people whom he had never seen before and, alas, never saw again. This was the ‘hearty way’ (as it would be called in Wessex) in which they did things in the snowy north. To Hardy the whole episode of Aberdeen, he said, was of a most pleasant and unexpected kind, and it remained with him like a romantic dream.
Passing through London on his way south he breakfasted at the Athenaeum, where he was shocked to learn of the death of his friend Lord St. Helier (Sir Francis Jeune), who had been ailing more or less since the loss of his only son in the previous August. Hardy on his way down to Dorset was led to think of the humorous stories connected with the Divorce Court that the genial judge sometimes had told him when they were walking in the woods of Arlington Manor in the summer holidays; among them the tale of that worthy couple who wished to be divorced but disliked the idea of such an unpleasant person as a co-respondent being concerned in it, and so hit upon the plan of doing without him. The husband, saying he was going to Liverpool for a day or two, got a private detective to watch his house; but instead of leaving stayed in London, and at the dead of night went to his own house in disguise, and gave a signal. His wife came down in her dressing-gown and let him in softly, letting him out again before it was light. When the husband inquired of the detective he was informed that there was ample evidence; and the divorce was duly obtained.
Hardy could not remember whether it was a story of the same couple or of another, in which Sir Francis had related that being divorced they grew very fond of each other, the former wife becoming the husband’s mistress, and living happily with him ever after.
As they had taken a flat at Hyde Park Mansions for this spring and summer Hardy did not stay long in Dorset, and they entered the flat the week before Easter. During April he followed up Tchaikowsky at the Queen’s Hall concerts, saying of the impetuous march-piece in the third movement of the Pathetic Symphony that it was the only music he knew that was able to make him feel exactly as if he were in a battle.
‘May 5. To the Lord Mayor’s farewell banquet to Mr. Choate at the Mansion House. Thought of the continuity of the institution, and the teeming history of the spot. A graceful speech by Arthur Balfour: a less graceful but more humorous one by Mr. Choate. Spoke to many whom I knew. Sat between Dr. Butler, Master of Trinity, and Sir J. Ramsay, Came home with Sir F. Pollock.’
This month he was seeing Ben Jonson’s play, The Silent Woman, and Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island and Man and Superman, and went to the Royal Society’s Conversazione; though for some days confined to the house by a sore throat and cough. At a lunch given by Sidney Lee at the Garrick Club in June he talked about Shakespeare with Sir Henry Irving, and was reconfirmed in his opinion that actors never see a play as a whole and in true perspective, but in a false perspective from the shifting point of their own part in it, Sir Henry having shied at Hardy’s suggestion that he should take the part of Jaques.
In this June, too, he paid a promised visit to Swinburne, and had a long talk with him; also with Mr. Watts-Dunton. ‘ Swinburne’s grey eyes are extraordinarily bright still — the brightness of stars that do not twinkle — planets namely. In spite of the nervous twitching of his feet he looked remarkably boyish and well, and rather impish. He told me he could walk twenty miles a day, and was only an old man in his hearing, his sight being as good as ever. He spoke with amusement of a paragraph he had seen in a Scottish paper: “ Swinburne planteth, Hardy watereth, and Satan giveth the increase.” He has had no honours offered him. Said that when he was nearly drowned his thought was, “My Both-well will never be finished!” That the secret reason for Lady Byron’s dismissal of Lord Byron was undoubtedly his liaison with Augusta. His (Swinburne’s) mother [Lady Jane, nie Ashburnham] used to say that it was the talk of London at the time. That the last time he visited his friend Landor the latter said plaintively that as he wrote only in a dead language (Latin), and a dying language (English), he would soon be forgotten. Talking of poets, he said that once Mrs. Procter told him that Leigh Hunt on a visit to her father one day brought an unknown youth in his train and introduced him casually as Mr. John Keats. (I think, by the way, that she also told me of the incident.) We laughed and condoled with each other on having been the two most abused of living writers; he for Poems and Ballads, I for Jude the Obscure.’
Later on in June he went to
Mr. Walter Tyndale’s exhibition of Wessex pictures, some of which Hardy had suggested, and during the remainder of their stay in London they did little more than entertain a few friends at Hyde Park Mansions, and dine and lunch with others.
‘June 26, 1905. To the Hon. Sec. of the Shakespeare Memorial Committee:
‘I fear that I shall have to leave town before the meeting of the Committee takes place.
‘All I would say on the form of the Memorial is that one which embodies the calling of an important street or square after Shakespeare would seem to be as effectual a means as any of keeping his name on the tongues of citizens, and his personality in their minds.’
In July they went back to Dorset. Here, in the same month, a Nelson-and-Hardy exhibition was opened in Dorchester, the relics shown being mainly those of the Captain of the Victory, who had been born and lived near, and belonged to a branch of the Dorset Hardys, the subject of this memoir belonging to another.
On September 1 Hardy received a visit from 200 members of the Institute of Journalists at their own suggestion, as they had arranged a driving tour through his part of the country. There was an understanding that no interviews should be printed, and to this they honourably adhered. Their idea had been a call on him only, but they were entertained at tea, for which purpose a tent 150 feet long had to be erected on Max Gate lawn. ‘ The interior with the sun shining through formed a pretty scene when they were sitting down at the little tables’, Mrs. Hardy remarks in a diary. ‘They all drove off in four-in-hand brakes and other vehicles to Bockhampton, Puddletown, Bere Regis, and Wool.’ After they had gone it came on to rain, and Hardy, returning from Dorchester at ten o’clock, met the vehicles coming back in a procession, empty; ‘ the horses tired and steaming after their journey of thirty miles, and their coats and harness shining with rain and perspiration in the light of the lamps’.
In pursuance of the above allusion to interviewing, it may be stated that there are interviewers and interviewers. It once happened that an interviewer came specially from London to Hardy to get his opinions for a popular morning paper. Hardy said positively that he would not be interviewed on any subject. ‘ Very well’, said the interviewer, ‘then back I go, my day and my expenses all wasted.’ Hardy felt sorry, his visitor seeming to be a gentlemanly and educated man, and said he did not see why he should hurry off, if he would give his word not to write anything. This was promised, and the interviewer stayed, and had lunch, and a pleasant couple of hours’ conversation on all sorts of subjects that would have suited him admirably. Yet he honourably kept his promise, and not a word of his visit appeared anywhere in the pages of the paper.
In the middle of this month the 150th anniversary of the birth of the poet Crabbe at Aldeburgh in Suffolk was celebrated in that town, and Hardy accepted the invitation of Mr. Edward Clodd to be present. There were some very good tableaux vivants of scenes from the poems exhibited in the Jubilee Hall, some good lectures on the poet, and a sermon also in the parish church on his life and work, all of which Hardy attended, honouring Crabbe as an apostle of realism who practised it in English literature three-quarters of a century before the French realistic school had been heard of.
Returning to Max Gate he finished the second part of The Dynasts — that second part which the New York Tribune and other papers had been positive would never be heard of, so ridiculous was the first — and sent off the MS. to the Messrs. Macmillan in the middle of October.
‘First week in November. The order in which the leaves fall this year is: Chestnuts; Sycamores; Limes; Hornbeams; Elm; Birch; Beech.’
A letter written November 5 of this year:
‘All I know about my family history is that it is indubitably one of the several branches of the Dorset Hardys — having been hereabouts for centuries. But when or how it was connected with the branch to which Nelson’s Hardy’s people belonged — who have also been hereabouts for centuries — I cannot positively say.1 The branches are always asserted locally to be connected, and no doubt are, and there is a strong family likeness. I have never investigated the matter, though my great-uncle knew the ramifications. The Admiral left no descendant in the male line, as you may know.
‘As to your interesting remarks on honours for men of letters, I have always thought that any writer who has expressed unpalatable or possibly subversive views on society, religious dogma, current morals, and any other features of the existing order of things, and who wishes to be free and to express more if they occur to him, must feel hampered by accepting honours from any government — which are different from academic honours offered for past attainments merely.’
1 Since writing the above I have received from a correspondent what seems to me indubitable proof of the connection of these two branches of the Hardy family. — F. E. H.
To Mr. Israel Zangwill on November 10:
‘It would be altogether presumptuous in me — so entirely outside Jewish life — to express any positive opinion on the scheme embodied in the pamphlet you send to me. I can only say a word or two of the nature of a fancy. To found an autonomous Jewish state or colony, under British suzerainty or not, wears the look of a good practical idea, and it is possibly all the better for having no retrospective sentiment about it. But I cannot help saying that this retrospective sentiment among Jews is precisely the one I can best enter into.
‘So that if I were a Jew I should be a rabid Zionist no doubt. I feel that the idea of ultimately getting to Palestine is the particular idea to make the imaginative among your people enthusiastic — “like unto them that dream” — as one of you said in a lyric which is among the finest in any tongue, to judge from its power in a translation. You, I suppose, read it in the original; I wish I could. (This is a digression.)
‘The only plan that seems to me to reconcile the traditional feeling with the practical is that of regarding the proposed Jewish state on virgin soil as a stepping-stone to Palestine. A Jewish colony united and strong and grown wealthy in, say, East Africa, could make a bid for Palestine (as a sort of annexe) — say 100 years hence — with far greater effect than the race as scattered all over the globe can ever do; and who knows if by that time altruism may not have made such progress that the then ruler or rulers of Palestine, whoever they may be, may even hand it over to the expectant race, and gladly assist them, or part of them, to establish themselves there.
‘This expectation, nursed throughout the formation and development of the new territory, would at any rate be serviceable as an ultimate ideal to stimulate action. With such an idea lying behind the immediate one, perhaps the Zionists would reunite and co-operate with the New Territorialists.
‘I have written, as I said, only a fancy. But, as I think you know, nobody outside Jewry can take a deeper interest than I do in a people of such extraordinary character and history; who brought forth, moreover, a young reformer who, though only in the humblest-walk of life, became the most famous personage the world has ever known.’
At the end of 1905 a letter reached him from a correspondent in the Philippine Islands telling him that to its writer he was ‘ like some terrible old prophet crying in the wilderness’.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE REMAINDER OF ‘THE DYNASTS’
1906-1908: Aet. 65-67
The Dynasts, Part II, was not published till the first week in February 1906, and its reception by the reviews was much more congratulatory than their reception of the first part, an American critical paper going so far as to say, ‘ Who knows that this work may not turn out to be a masterpiece?’
This year they reoccupied the flat in Hyde Park Mansions that had been let to them by Lady Thompson the year before, and paid the customary visits to private views, concerts, and plays that are usually paid to such by people full of vigour from the country. Of the Wagner concerts he says:
‘I prefer late Wagner, as I prefer late Turner, to early (which I suppose is all wrong in taste), the idiosyncrasies of each master being more strongly shown in these strains
. When a man not contented with the grounds of his success goes on and on, and tries to achieve the impossible, then he gets profoundly interesting to me. To-day it was early Wagner for the most part: fine music, but not so particularly his — no spectacle of the inside of a brain at work like the inside of a hive.’
An attack of influenza, which he usually got while sojourning in London, passed off, and they entertained many friends at the flat as usual, and went out to various meetings and dinners, though he does not write them down in detail as when he thought he must. They included one at Vernon Lushington’s, where Hardy was interested in the portrait of his host’s father, the Lushington of the Lady Byron mystery, who kept his secret honourably; also a luncheon in a historic room weighted with its antiquity, the vaulted dining-room of the house in Dean’s Yard then occupied by Dr. Wilberforce as Archdeacon of Westminster. It was this year that Hardy met Dr. Grieg, the composer, and his wife, and when, discussing Wagner music, he said to Grieg that the wind and rain through trees, iron railings, and keyholes fairly suggested Wagner music; to which the rival composer responded severely that he himself would sooner have the wind and rain.
On the 21 st May the following letter, in which Hardy gives a glimpse of himself as a young man in London, appeared in The Times:
‘Sir,
‘This being the 100th anniversary of J. Stuart Mill’s birth, and as writers like Carlyle, Leslie Stephen, and others have held that anything, however imperfect, which affords an idea of a human personage in his actual form and flesh, is of value in respect of him, the few following words on how one of the profoundest thinkers of the last century appeared forty years ago to the man in the street may be worth recording as a footnote to Mr. Morley’s admirable estimate of Mill’s life and philosophy in your impression of Friday.
