The Distracted Preacher

by Thomas Hardy

  “He frightened you a little last night, anyhow; and I would advise you to drop it before it is worse.”

  She shook her head. “No, I must go on as I have begun. I was born to it. It is in my blood, and I can’t be cured. Oh, Richard, you cannot think what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try me when you put me between this and my love for ’ee!”

  Stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands over his eyes. “We ought never to have met, Lizzy,” he said. “It was an ill day for us. I little thought there was anything so hopeless and impossible in our engagement as this. Well, it is too late now to regret consequences in this way. I have had the happiness of seeing you and knowing you at least.”

  “You dissent from Church, and I dissent from State,” she said, “and I don’t see why we are not well matched.”

  He smiled sadly, while Lizzy remained looking down, her eyes beginning to overflow.

  That was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that followed were unhappy days. Both she and he went mechanically about their employments, and his depression was marked in the village by more than one of his denomination with whom he came in contact. But Lizzy, who passed her days in-doors, was unsuspected of being the cause: for it was generally understood that a quiet engagement to marry existed between her and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for some time.

  Thus uncertainly the week passed on, till one morning Stockdale said to her, “I have had a letter, Lizzy. I must call you that till I am gone.”

  “Gone?” said she, blankly.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am going from this place. I felt it would be better for us both that I should not stay after what has happened. In fact, I couldn’t stay here, and look on you from day to day, without becoming weak and faltering in my course. I have just heard of an arrangement by which the other minister can arrive here in about a week, and let me go elsewhere.”

  That he had all this time continued so firmly fixed in his resolution came upon her as a grievous surprise. “You never loved me!” she said, bitterly.

  “I might say the same,” he returned; “but I will not. Grant me one favor. Come and hear my last sermon on the day before I go.”

  Lizzy, who was a church-goer on Sunday mornings, frequently attended Stockdale’s chapel in the evening with the rest of the double-minded, and she promised.

  It became known that Stockdale was going to leave, and a good many people outside his own sect were sorry to hear it. The intervening days flew rapidly away, and on the evening of the Sunday which preceded the morning of his departure Lizzy sat in the chapel to hear him for the last time. The little building was full to overflowing, and he took up the subject which all had expected, that of the contraband trade so extensively practised among them. His hearers, in laying his words to their own hearts, did not perceive that they were most particularly directed against Lizzy, till the sermon waxed warm and Stockdale nearly broke down with emotion. In truth, his own earnestness, and her sad eyes looking up at him, were too much for the young man’s equanimity. He hardly knew how he ended. He saw Lizzy, as through a mist, turn and go away with the rest of the congregation, and shortly afterwards followed her home.

  She invited him to supper, and they sat down alone, her mother having, as was usual with her on Sunday nights, gone to bed early.

  “We will part friends, won’t we?” said Lizzy, with forced gayety, and never alluding to the sermon—a reticence which rather disappointed him.

  “We will,” he said, with a forced smile on his part; and they sat down.

  It was the first meal that they had ever shared together in their lives, and probably the last that they would so share. When it was over, and the indifferent conversation could no longer be continued, he arose and took her hand. “Lizzy,” he said, “do you say we must part—do you?”

  “You do,” she said, solemnly. “I can say no more.” “Nor I,” said he. “If that is your answer, good-by!”

  Stockdale bent over her and kissed her, and she involuntarily returned his kiss. “I shall go early,” he said, hurriedly. “I shall not see you again.”

  And he did leave early. He fancied, when stepping forth into the gray morning light, to mount the van which was to carry him away, that he saw a face between the parted curtains of Lizzy’s window; but the light was faint, and the panes glistened with wet; so he could not be sure. Stockdale mounted the vehicle, and was gone; and on the following Sunday the new minister preached in the chapel of the Moynton Wesleyans.

  One day, two years after the parting, Stockdale, now settled in a midland town, came into Nether-Moynton by carrier in the original way. Jogging along in the van that afternoon, he had put questions to the driver, and the answers that he received interested the minister deeply. The result of them was that he went without the least hesitation to the door of his former lodging. It was about six o’clock in the evening, and the same time of year as when he had left; now, too, the ground was damp and glistening, the west was bright, and Lizzy’s snow-drops were raising their heads in the border under the wall.

  Lizzy must have caught sight of him from the window, for by the time that he reached the door she was there holding it open; and then, as if she had not sufficiently considered her act of coming out, she drew herself back, saying, with some constraint, “Mr. Stockdale!”

  “You knew it was,” said Stockdale, taking her hand. “I wrote to say I should call.”

  “Yes, but you did not say when,” she answered.

  “I did not. I was not quite sure when my business would lead me to these parts.”

  “You only came because business brought you near?”

  “Well, that is the fact; but I have often thought I should like to come on purpose to see you. But what’s all this that has happened? I told you how it would be, Lizzy, and you would not listen to me.”

  “I would not,” she said, sadly. “But I had been brought up to that life, and it was second nature to me. However, it is all over now. The officers have blood-money for taking a man dead or alive, and the trade is going to nothing. We were hunted down like rats.”

  “Owlett is quite gone, I hear.”

  “Yes, he is in America. We had a dreadful struggle that last time, when they tried to take him. It is a perfect miracle that he lived through it; and it is a wonder that I was not killed. I was shot in the hand. It was not by aim; the shot was really meant for my cousin; but I was behind, looking on as usual, and the bullet came to me. It bled terribly, but I got home without fainting, and it healed after a time. You know how he suffered?”

  “No,” said Stockdale. “I only heard that he just escaped with his life.”

  “He was shot in the back, but a rib turned the ball. He was badly hurt. We would not let him be took. The men carried him all night across the meads to Bere, and hid him in a barn, dressing his wound as well as they could, till he was so far recovered as to be able to get about. He had gied up his mill for some time, and at last he got to Bristol, and took a passage to America, and he’s settled in Wisconsin.”

  “What do you think of smuggling now?” said the minister, gravely.

  “I own that we were wrong,” said she. “But I have suffered for it. I am very poor now, and my mother has been dead these twelve months. But won’t you come in, Mr. Stockdale?”

  Stockdale went in; and it is to be presumed that they came to an understanding, for a fortnight later there was a sale of Lizzy’s furniture, and after that a wedding at a chapel in a neighboring town.

  He took her away from her old haunts to the home that he had made for himself in his native county, where she studied her duties as a minister’s wife with praiseworthy assiduity. It is said that in after-years she wrote an excellent tract called “Render unto Caesar; or, The Repentant Villagers,” in which her own experience was anonymously used as the introductory story. Stockdale got it printed, after making some corrections, and putting in a few powerful sentences of his own; and many hundreds of co
pies were distributed by the couple in the course of their married life.

  April 1879.

  Table of Contents

  1. Hardy’s Fictional Universe

  a. The Wessex of Thomas Hardy’s Novels & Poems—Map from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New

  b. Introductory—Introduction from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New

  c. Lulworth Cove—Illustration from Hardy Country Water-Colours by Walter Tyndale

  d. Budmouth to Lulstead—Selection from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New

  2. Reading I

  “A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four” by Thomas Hardy

  3. Reading II

  “The Thieves Who Couldn’t Stop Sneezing” by Thomas Hardy

  4. British Liquor Laws

  a. Metropolitan Police Act of 1839—Selections from original legislation pertaining to liquor and drunkenness

  b. Licensing Act of 1872—Selection pertaining to liquor and drunkenness from original legislation

  Illustration—“Appeal of the Liquor Traffic Interest to the Working Men of England”—Political Cartoon from the March 16, 1872 issue of The Leisure Hour: An Illustrated Magazine for Home Reading

  5. Contemporary Media

  a. “Drunkenness and Legislation”—Article by Charles Beard from the April, 1872 issue The Theological Review: A Journal of Religious Thought and Life

  b. “Habitual Drunkenness: A Vice Crime, or Disease?—Article by John Charles Bucknill from the February, 1877 issue of The Contemporary Review

  c. “The Liquor Question”—Article from the March 15, 1879 issue of The Saturday Review

  Illustration: “How to Prevent Drunkenness—A Problem”—Political cartoon from the March 27, 1878 issue of Fun

  Reading III

  “On the Abolition of Malt Liquor in Public Offices” from the September, 1860 issue of the Theatrical Journal

  Reading IV

  Hungry Johnny from the March, 1862 issue of the religious periodical Quiver

  6. Smugglers Smuggling

  Illustration: “Cask for Smuggling Cider”—Illustration from King’s Cutters and Smugglers 1700–1855 By E. Kebel Chatterton

  Illustration: “How the Deal Boatmen used to Smuggle Tea Ashore”—Ilustration from King’s Cutters and Smugglers 1700–1855 By E. Kebel Chatterton

  Reading V

  An excerpt from Memoirs of a Smuggler compiled from the journal of John Rattenbury

  Recipe—“Household Receipt” for Rhubarb Wine from the February 15th, 1871 issue of Bow Bells: A Magazine of General Literature for Family Reading

  Hardy’s Fictional Universe

  The Wessex of Thomas Hardy’s Novels & Poems

  Map from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New.

  Introductory

  Introduction from The Wessex of Thomas Hardy by

  B.C.A. Windle & E.H. New.

  Whilst Thackeray was engaged upon his story “The Virginians,” he confided to Motley that “he intended to write a novel of the time of Henry V., which would be his capo d’opera, in which the ancestors of all his present characters, Warringtons, Pendennises, and the rest, should be introduced. It would be a most magnificent performance,” he said, “and nobody would read it.” This idea, which was probably never seriously entertained and certainly never was realized, would, had it been carried out, have been quite in harmony with Thackeray’s plan of linking novel to novel by a use, if not always of identical characters in successive books, at least of members of the same family. The genealogist can easily trace the family tree of the Esmond Warringtons from “Henry Poyns, gent., who married Dorothea, daughter and heiress of Edward, Earl and Marquis Esmond, and Lord of Castlewood,” through the Georgian Esmonds and Warringtons, down to “the Stunner,” friend and mentor of Pendennis—of Pendennis, who is himself the hero of one novel, the putative author of another, and a prominent figure in a third. Then, again, amongst minor personages, there is Voelcker or Foker the brewer, whose son was pupil to George Warrington, of “ The Virginians,” and whose better known descendant Harry Foker appears in “Pendennis” to frustrate on two occasions the love-affairs of the young gentleman after whom the book is named. Such a plan of welding into one organic whole what would otherwise be the isolated efforts of a novelist’s imagination, imparts without doubt a considerable air of verisimilitude to the series. It was not, of course, the sole property of the greatest of this century’s novelists, but has been employed by other writers, and notably by Zola in his Rougon Macquart memoirs. Mr. Hardy himself has used it to some extent, for the name of William Dewey, that fine old man, of whom his author seems to be particularly fond, occurs in several of the novels, whilst in “The Mayor of Casterbridge” mention is made of James Everdene, the uncle from whom Bathsheba, of “Far from the Madding Crowd,” inherited her farm, and of Boldwood, then “a silent, reserved young man,” as figuring amongst the creditors of the unfortunate Henchard. But Mr. Hardy has his own plan for binding together the links of his chain of tales—a different plan from that of Thackeray, but not less effectual. The former may perhaps be spoken of as the method of genealogical, the latter of scenic continuity. For Mr. Hardy has annexed unto himself a small—a relatively small—stretch of country, and has steadily, in novel after novel, proceeded to people it with a new population, a population which never had any existence outside the dreamland of its creator’s thoughts, but a population made so real to us by his genius, that the pilgrim through Wessex can scarcely bring himself to believe that Bathsheba and Oak, Dick Dewey and his wife Fancy, with all the other characters which pass before the inner eye when one thinks of the Wessex novels, might not be perceptible to the ordinary senses, were it possible to pierce the veil which, it seems, must hide them as one strolls through the little country towns and villages to which they belong. The late William Morris once said that we must no more expect to see the rustics of Hardy than those of Mason and Walker, both being ideal creations without actual existence; yet how much more real are they to many of us than those flesh-and-blood rustics with whom it may have been our fate to have been brought in contact! Whilst peopling these scenes with the creatures of his imagination, Mr. Hardy has achieved a feat which he was probably far from contemplating when he first commenced his series of novels. For incidentally he has resuscitated, one may even say re-created, the old half-forgotten kingdom of Wessex. Before his time, those who used this term at all were thinking of a land made memorable by the ravages of a horde of sea-borne adventurers, who gradually drove before them, in conflict after conflict of those “battles of kites and crows” of which Milton scornfully spoke, the earlier possessors of the country-side. It was the land which later was ruled over by Ine, the law-giver, the founder of Taunton, the land of Alfred, greatest and wisest of early kings. But Wessex as a living, breathing reality, Wessex as a part of nineteenth-century life, sprang first into existence under the touch of the magic wand of its novelist. In the introduction to the last edition of “Far from the Madding Crowd,” its author, reminding himself and his readers that it was in its pages that he first made use of the ancient name of Wessex in the sense in which he has made us understand it, explains the reasons which led him to make choice of that title.

  “The series of novels I projected,” he writes, “being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene. Finding that the area of a single county did not afford a canvas large enough for this purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, I disinterred the old one. The press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex population living under Queen Victoria—a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, labourers who could read and write, and National School children. But I believe I am correct in stating that, until the existence of this contemporaneous We
ssex was announced in the present story, in 1874, it had never been heard of, and that the expression, ‘a Wessex peasant,’ or ‘a Wessex custom,’ would theretofore have been taken to refer to nothing later in date than the Norman Conquest. . . . Since then the appellation which I had thought to reserve to the horizons and landscapes of a merely realistic dream-country, has become more and more popular as a practical provincial definition; and the dream-country has, by degrees, solidified into a utilitarian region which people can go to, take a house in, and write to the papers from.”

  This feat, the re-creation of an old territory, Mr. Hardy has achieved as much by his marvellous powers of describing natural objects and scenery, as by his skill in delineating rustic character. Indeed, it is chiefly by the former great and excellent gift that the deed has been done. Others can draw character, even rustic character—might not Master Gammon occupy a place on the line in any gallery of British yokels?—but who is Mr. Hardy’s rival in description of nature? Here those who believe in him as one of the great masters in the art of fiction may take their stand and fear the attack of no opponent.

  The knowledge of rustic character must not be left out of count, though it is no part of the purpose of this book to dwell upon that aspect of the question, nor must the way in which the characters belong to and form the complement of their environment be forgotten. Can any reader fail to recognize that Marty South and Giles Winterborne would have been impossible elsewhere than in the regions of Little Hintock; or can he ramble over Egdon Heath without being constrained to feel that it has existed from ages long gone by, in order to form a setting for that noble tale, “The Return of the Native”?