Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1141 page)

Back again in Dorsetshire he continued his application to the story, and by July had written it all, the last few chapters having been done at a gallop, for a reason to be told directly. In the middle of the month he resumed residence in London, where he hurriedly corrected the concluding pages and posted the end of the MS. to the editor early in August.

The next month Thomas Hardy and Miss Emma Lavinia Gifford were married at St. Peter’s, Elgin Avenue, Paddington, by her uncle Dr. E. Hamilton Gifford, Canon of Worcester, and afterwards Archdeacon of London. In the November following Far from the Madding Crowd was published in two volumes, with the illustrations by Miss Helen Paterson, who by an odd coincidence had also thought fit to marry William Allingham during the progress of the story. It may be said in passing that the development of the chapters month by month had brought these lines from Mrs. Procter:

‘You would be gratified to know what a shock the marriage of Bathsheba was. I resembled Mr. Boldwood — and to deceive such an old novel-reader as myself is a triumph. We are always looking out for traps, and scent a long way off a surprise. . . .

‘I hear that you are coming to live iri stony-hearted London. Our great fault is that we are all alike. . . . We press so closely against each other that any small shoots are cut off at once, and the young tree grows in shape like the old one.’

When the book appeared complete the author and his wife, after a short visit to the Continent — their first Continental days having been spent at Rouen — had temporarily gone to live at Surbiton, and remained there for a considerable time without nearly realising the full extent of the interest that had been excited among the reading public by the novel, which unsophistication was only partially removed by their seeing with unusual frequency, during their journeys to and from London, ladies carrying about copies of it with Mudie’s label on the covers.

Meanwhile Mr. George Smith, head of the firm of Smith and Elder — a man of wide experience, who had brought Charlotte Bronte before the reading public, and who became a disinterested friend of Hardy’s — suggested to him that he should if possible get back the copyright of Under the Greenwood Tree, which he had sold to Tinsley Brothers for £30. Tinsley at first replied that he would not return it for any sum: then that he would sell it for £300. Hardy offered half, which offer Tinsley did not respond to, and there the matter dropped.

Among the curious consequences of the popularity of Far from the Madding Crowd was a letter from the lady he had so admired as a child, when she was the grande dame of the parish in which he was born. He had seen her only once since — at her town-house in Bruton Street as aforesaid. But it should be stated in justice to her that her writing was not merely a rekindled interest on account of his book’s popularity, for she had written to him in his obscurity, before he had published a line, asking him to come and see her, and addressing him as her dear Tommy, as when he was a small boy, apologizing for doing so on the ground that she could not help it. She was now quite an elderly lady, but by signing her letter ‘Julia Augusta’ she revived throbs of tender feeling in him, and brought back to his memory the thrilling ‘frou-frou’ of her four grey silk flounces when she had used to bend over him, and when they brushed against the font as she entered church on Sundays. He replied, but, as it appears, did not go to see her.

Meanwhile the more tangible result of the demand for Far from the Madding Crowd was an immediate request from the editor and publishers of the Cornhill for another story, which should begin as early as possible in 1875.

This was the means of urging Hardy into the unfortunate course of hurrying forward a further production before he was aware of what there had been of value in his previous one: before learning, that is, not only what had attracted the public, but what was of true and genuine substance on which to build a career as a writer with a real literary message. For mere popularity he cared little, as little as he did for large payments; but having now to live by the pen — or, as he would quote, ‘to keep base life afoot’ — he had to consider popularity. This request for more of his writing not only from the Cornhill but from other quarters coincided with quizzing personal gossip, among other paragraphs being one that novel-writing was coming to a pretty pass, the author of Lorna Doone having avowed himself a market-gardener, and the author of Far from the Madding Crowd having been discovered to be a house-decorator (!). Criticism like this influenced him to put aside a woodland story he had thought of (which later took shape in The Woodlanders), and make a plunge in a new and untried direction. He was aware of the pecuniary value of a reputation for a speciality; and as above stated, the acquisition of something like a regular income had become important. Yet he had not the slightest intention of writing for ever about sheepfarming, as the reading public was apparently expecting him to do, and as, in fact, they presently resented his not doing. Hence, to the consternation of his editor and publishers, in March he sent up as a response to their requests the beginning of a tale called The Hand of Ethelberta — A Comedy in Chapters which had nothing whatever in common with anything he had written before.

In March he went to the Oxford and Cambridge Boat-Race, and entered rooms taken in Newton Road, Westbourne Grove, a light being thrown on the domestic and practical side of his life at this time by the following:

‘Newton Road, Westbourne Grove, March 19, 1875.

‘Messrs Townly and Bonniwell, Surbiton.

‘Gentlemen: Please to warehouse the cases and boxes sent herewith, and numbered as follows:

‘No. 1. Size 3 ft. 6 ins. x 2 ft. 6 ins. x 2 ft. 2 ins., containing linen and books.

‘No. 2. Size 2 ft. o ins. x 1 ft. 9 insx 1 ft. ins. containing books.

‘No. 3. Size 2 ft. o ins. xi ft. 4 ins. xf ft. 2 ins. containing books.

‘No- 4. Size 1 ft. 5 ins. x 1 ft. o ins. x 1 ft. o ins. containing sundries.

‘A receipt for same will oblige’.

Their entire worldly goods were contained in this small compass.

The next three months were spent at the address given above, where they followed an ordinary round of museum, theatre, and concert-going, with some dining-out, in keeping with (what he had written earlier to Mr. George Smith: ‘ We are coming to Town for three months on account of Ethelberta, some London scenes occurring in her chequered career which I want to do as vigorously as possible — having already visited Rouen and Paris with the same object, other adventures of hers taking place there.’ He also asked Smith’s advice on a German translation of Far from the Madding Crowd, which had been asked for.

The Comedy in Chapters, despite its departure from a path desired by his new-found readers, and to some extent desired by himself, was accepted for the magazine. The beginning appeared in the Cornhill for May, when Hardy had at last the satisfaction of proving, amid the general disappointment at the lack of sheep and shepherds, that he did not mean to imitate anybody, whatever the satisfaction might have been worth. The sub-title did not appear in the magazine, Mr. Stephen having written in respect of it:

104NOVELS — TO ILLNESS1873-76

‘I am sorry to have to bother you about a trifle! I fully approved of your suggestion for adding to “ Ethelberta’s Hand” the descriptive title “A Comedy in Chapters”. I find however from other people that it gives rather an unfortunate idea. They understand by Comedy something of the farce description, and expect you to be funny after the fashion of Mr., or some professional joker. This, of course,

is stupid; but then, advertisements are meant for stupid people. The question is, unluckily, not what they ought to feel but what they do feel. ... I think, therefore, that if you have no strong reason to the contrary it will be better to drop the second title for the present. When the book is reprinted it can of course appear, because then the illusion would be immediately dispelled.’

One reflection about himself at this date sometimes made Hardy uneasy. He perceived that he was ‘up against’ the position of having to carry on his life not as an emotion, but as a scientific game; that he was committed by circumstances to novel-writing as a regular trade, as much as he had formerly been to architecture; and that hence he would, he deemed, have to look for material in manners — in ordinary social and fashionable life as other novelists did. Yet he took no interest in manners, but in the substance of life only. So far what he had written had not been novels at all, as usually understood — that is pictures of modern customs and observances — and might not long sustain the interest of the circulating library subscriber who cared mainly for those things. On the other hand, to go about to dinners and clubs and crushes as a business was not much to his mind. Yet that was necessary meat and drink to the popular author. Not that he was unsociable, but events and long habit had accustomed him to solitary living. So it was also with his wife, of whom he wrote later, in the poem entitled ‘A Dream or No’:

Lonely I found her,

The sea-birds around her,

And other than nigh things uncaring to know.

He mentioned this doubt of himself one day to Miss Thackeray, who confirmed his gloomy misgivings by saying with surprise: ‘ Certainly; a novelist must necessarily like society!’

Another incident which added to his dubiety was the arrival of a letter from Coventry Patmore, a total stranger to him, expressing the view that A Pair of Blue Eyes was in its nature not a conception for prose, and that he ‘regretted at almost every page that such unequalled beauty and power should not have assured themselves the immortality which would have been impressed upon them by the form of verse’. Hardy was much struck by this opinion from Pat- more. However, finding himself committed to prose, he renewed his consideration of a prose style, as it is evident from the following note: ‘Read again Addison, Macaulay, Newman, Sterne, Defoe, Lamb, Gibbon, Burke, Times leaders, etc., in a study of style. Am more and more confirmed in an idea I have long held, as a matter of common sense, long before I thought of any old aphorism bearing on the subject: “Ars est celare artem”. The whole secret of a living style and the difference between it and a dead style, lies in not having too much style — being, in fact, a little careless, or rather seeming to be, here and there. It brings wonderful life into the writing:

‘A sweet disorder in the dress . . .

A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility,

Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part.

‘Otherwise your style is like worn half-pence — all the fresh images rounded off by rubbing, and no crispness or movement at all.

‘It is, of course, simply a carrying into prose the knowledge I have acquired in poetry — that inexact rhymes and rhythms now and then are far more pleasing than correct ones.’

About the time at which the Hardys were leaving Surbiton for Newton Road occurred an incident, which can best be described by quoting Hardy’s own account of it as printed in Mr. F. W. Maitland’s Life of Leslie Stephen:

‘One day (March 23, 1875) I received from Stephen a mysterious note asking me to call in the evening, as late as I liked. I went, and found him alone, wandering up and down his library in slippers; his tall thin figure wrapt in a heath-coloured dressing-gown. After a few remarks on our magazine arrangements he said he wanted me to witness his signature to what, for a moment, I thought was his will; but it turned out to be a deed renunciatory of holy-orders under the act of 1870. He said grimly that he was really a reverend gentleman still, little as he might look it, and that he thought it was as well to cut himself adrift of a calling for which, to say the least, he had always been utterly unfit. The deed was executed with due formality. Our conversation then turned upon theologies decayed and defunct, the origin of things, the constitution of matter, the unreality of time and kindred subjects. He told me that he had “wasted”

much time on systems of religion and metaphysics, and that the new theory of vortex rings had “a staggering fascination” for him.’

On this description the editor of the Life, Mr. Maitland, remarks: ‘ This scene — I need not say it — is well drawn. A tall thin figure wrapt in a heath-coloured dressing-gown was what one saw if one climbed to that Stylites study at dead of night.’

In May Hardy formed one of a deputation to Mr. Disraeli in support of a motion for a Select Committee to inquire into the state of Copyright Law; and on Waterloo Day he and his wife went to Chelsea Hospital — it being the 60th anniversary of the battle — and made acquaintance with the Waterloo men still surviving there. Hardy would tell that one of these — a delightful old campaigner named John Bentley whom he knew to the last — put his arm round Mrs. Hardy’s waist, and interlarded his discourse with ‘my dear young woman’, while he described to her his experiences of that memorable day, one rather incisive touch in his tale to her being that through the haze of smoke all that could be discerned was ‘ anything that shined’, such as bayonets, helmets, and swords. The wet eve of the battle, when they slept” in the rain with nothing over them, he spoke of as ‘last night’, as if he were speaking on the actual day. Another experience he related to her was a love-affair. While quartered in Brussels he had a sweetheart. When ordered to advance to Waterloo her friends offered to hide him if he would desert, as the French were sure to win. He refused, urging the oath he had taken; but he felt strongly tempted, as she was very fond of him, and he of her. She begged him to write, if he lived through the campaign, and to be sure to get a Belgian or Frenchman to direct the letter, or it might not find her. After the battle, and when he was in Paris he did write, and received an answer, saying she would come to Paris and meet him on Christmas Day at 3 o’clock. His regiment had received orders to march before that time, and at Christmas he was — Mrs. Hardy forgot where. But he thought of her, and wondered if she came. ‘Yes, you see, ‘twas God’s will we should meet no more’, said Bentley, speaking of her with peculiar tenderness.