Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1153 page)

1 November 17-19. In a fit of depression, as if enveloped in a leaden cloud. Have gone back to my original plot for The Wood- landers after all. Am working from half-past ten a.m. to twelve p.m., to get my mind made up on the details.’

‘November 21-22. Sick headache.’

‘Tragedy. It may be put thus in brief: a tragedy exhibits a state of things in the life of an individual which unavoidably causes some natural aim or desire of his to end in a catastrophe when carried out.’

‘November 25. Letter from John Morley [probably about The Woodlanders, he being then editor of Macmillan’s Magaiine in which it was to appear]; and one from Leslie Stephen, with remarks on books he had read between whiles.’

‘December 9. “Everything looks so little — so ghastly little!” A local exclamation heard.’

‘December 12. Experience wnteaches — (what one at first thinks to be the rule in events).’

‘December 21. The Hypocrisy of things. Nature is an arch- dissembler. A child is deceived completely; the older members of society more or less according to their penetration; though even they seldom get to realise that nothing is as it appears.’

‘December 31. This evening, the end of the old year 1885 finds me sadder than many previous New Year’s Eves have done. Whether building this house at Max Gate was a wise expenditure of energy is one doubt, which, if resolved in the negative, is depressing enough. And there are others. But:

‘“ This is the chief thing: Be not perturbed; for all things are according to the nature of the universal.” ‘ [Marcus Aurelius.]

1886. — ‘January 2, The Mayor of Casterbridge begins to-day in the Graphic newspaper and Harper s Weekly. — I fear it will not be so good as I meant, but after all, it is not improbabilities of incident but improbabilities of character that matter. . . .

‘Cold weather brings out upon the faces of people the written marks of their habits, vices, passions, and memories, as warmth brings out on paper a writing in sympathetic ink. The drunkard looks still more a drunkard when the splotches have their margins made distinct by frost, the hectic blush becomes a stain now, the cadaverous complexion reveals the bone under, the quality of handsomeness is reduced to its lowest terms.’

‘January 3. My art is to intensify the expression of things, as is done by Crivelli, Bellini, etc., so that the heart and inner meaning is made vividly visible.’

‘January 6. Misapprehension. The shrinking soul thinks its weak place is going to be laid bare, and shows its thought by a suddenly clipped manner. The other shrinking soul thinks the clipped manner of the first to be the result of its own weakness in some way, not of its strength, and shows its fear also by its constrained air! So they withdraw from each other and misunderstand.’

‘March 4. Novel-writing as an art cannot go backward. Having reached the analytic stage it must transcend it by going still further in the same direction. Why not by rendering as visible essences, spectres, etc., the abstract thoughts of the analytic school?’

This notion was approximately carried out, not in a novel, but through the much more appropriate medium of poetry, in the supernatural framework of The Dynasts as also in smaller poems. And a further note of the same date enlarges the same idea:

‘The human race to be shown as one great network or tissue which quivers in every part when one point is shaken, like a spider’s web if touched. Abstract realisms to be in the form of Spirits, Spectral figures, etc.

‘The Realities to be the true realities of life, hitherto called abstractions. The old material realities to be placed behind the former, as shadowy accessories.’

In the spring and summer they were again in London, staying in Bloomsbury to have the Reading Room of the Museum at hand. It was the spring during which Gladstone brought in his Home Rule Bill for Ireland. The first that Hardy says about it occurs in an entry dated April 8, 9, 10, 11:

‘A critical time, politically. I never remember a debate of such absorbing interest as this on Gladstone’s Bill for Irish Government. He spoke lucidly: Chamberlain with manly practical earnestness; Hartington fairly forcibly; Morley without much effect (for him). Morley’s speech shows that in Parliament a fine intelligence is not appreciated without sword-and-buckler doggedness. Chamberlain impresses me most of all, as combining these qualities.’

And on May 10: ‘Saw Gladstone enter the Houses of Parliament. The crowd was very excited, not only waving their hats and shouting and running, but leaping in the air. His head was bare, and his now bald crown showed pale and distinct over the top of Mrs. Gladstone’s bonnet.’

On the 13 th Hardy was in the House, the debate on the Government of Ireland still continuing:

‘Gladstone was suave in replying to Bradlaugh, almost unctuous. “Not accustomed to recognize Parliamentary debts after five years”, etc. He would shake his head and smile contradictions to his opponents across the table and red box, on which he wrote from time to time. Heard Morley say a few words, also Sir W. Harcourt, and Lord Hartington; a speech from Sir H. James, also from Lord G. Hamilton, Campbell-Bannerman, etc. Saw the dandy party enter in evening-dress, eye-glasses, diamond rings, etc. They were a great contrast to Joseph Arch and the Irish members in their plain, simple, ill-fitting clothes. The House is a motley assembly nowadays. Gladstone’s frock-coat dangled and swung as he went in and out with a white flower in his button-hole and open waistcoat. Lord Randolph’s manner in turning to Dillon, the Irish member, was almost arrogant. Sir R. Cross was sturdy, like T. B. the Dorchester butcher, when he used to stand at the chopping-block on market-days. The earnestness of the Irish members who spoke was very impressive; Lord G. Hamilton was entirely wanting in earnestness; Sir H. James quite the reverse; E. Clarke direct, firm, and incisive, but inhumane.

‘To realise the difficulty of the Irish question it is necessary to see the Irish phalanx sitting tight: it then seems as if one must go with Morley, and get rid of them at any cost.

‘Morley kept trying to look used to it all, and not as if he were a consummate man of letters there by mistake. Gladstone was quite distinct from all others in the House, though he sits low in his seat from age. When he smiled one could see benevolence on his face. Large-heartedness versus small-heartedness is a distinct attitude which the House of Commons takes up to an observer’s eye.’

Though he did not enter it here Hardy often wrote elsewhere, and said of Home Rule that it was a staring dilemma, of which good policy and good philanthropy were the huge horns. Policy for England required that it should not be granted; humanity to Ireland that it should. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives would honestly own up to this opposition between two moralities, but speciously insisted that humanity and policy were both on one side — of course their own.

‘May. Reading in the British Museum. Have been thinking over the dictum of Hegel — that the real is the rational and the rational the real — that real pain is compatible with a formal pleasure — that the idea is all, etc., but it doesn’t help much. These venerable philosophers seem to start wrong; they cannot get away from a prepossession that the world must somehow have been made to be a comfortable place for man. If I remember, it was Comte who said that metaphysics was a mere sorry attempt to reconcile theology and physics.’

‘May 17. At a curious soiree in Bond Street. Met a Hindu Buddhist, a remarkably well-educated man who speaks English fluently. He is the coach of the Theosophical Society. Also encountered a Mr. E. Maitland, author of a book called The Pilgrim and the Shrine, which I remember. He mentioned also another, written, I think he said, by himself and Dr. Anna Kingsford in collabouration. If he could not get on with the work on any particular night he would go to her next morning and she would supply him with the sentences, written down by her on waking, as sentences she had dreamt of without knowing why. Met also Dr. Anna Kingsford herself, and others; all very strange people.’

The Mayor of Casterbridge was issued complete about the end of May. It was a story which Hardy fancied he had damaged more recklessly as an artistic whole, in the interest of the newspaper in which it appeared serially, than perhaps any other of his novels, his aiming to get an incident into almost every week’s part causing him in his own judgment to add events to the narrative somewhat too freely. However, as at this time he called his novel-writing ‘mere journeywork’ he cared little about it as art, though it must be said in favour of the plot, as he admitted later, that it was quite coherent and organic, in spite of its complication. And others thought better of it than he did himself, as is shown by the letter R. L. Stevenson writes thereon:

‘Skerryvore,

‘Bournemouth,

‘My dear Hardy,

‘I have read “ The Mayor of Casterbridge” with sincere admiration: Henchard is a great fellow, and Dorchester is touched in with the hand of a master.

‘Do you think you would let me try to dramatize it? I keep unusually well, and am ‘Yours very sincerely,

‘Robert Louis Stevenson.’

What became of this dramatic project there is no evidence to show in the Life of Stevenson, so far as is remembered by the present writer. The story in long after years became highly popular; but it is curious to find that Hardy had some difficulty in getting it issued in volume-form, James Payn, the publishers’ reader, having reported to Smith, Elder and Co. that the lack of gentry among the characters made it uninteresting — a typical estimate of what was, or was supposed to be, mid-Victorian taste.

During the remainder of this month, and through June and July, they were dining and lunching out almost every day. Hardy did not take much account of these functions, though some remarks he makes are interesting. For instance, he describes the charming daughter of a then popular hostess with whom he and his wife had been lunching:

‘MWis still as childlike as when I first met her. She has an instinct to give something which she cannot resist. Gave me a flower. She expresses as usual contrary opinions at different moments. At one time she is going to marry; then she never is: at one moment she has been ill; at another she is always well. Pities the row of poor husbands at Marshall and Snelgrove’s. Gave a poor crossing-sweeper a shilling; came back and found her drunk. An emotional delicate girl, in spite of what she calls her “largeness”, i.e. her being bigly built.’

In these weeks Hardy met Walter Pater, ‘whose manner is that of one carrying weighty ideas without spilling them’. Also a lot of politicians, on whom he notes: ‘ Plenty of form in their handling of politics, but no matter, or originality.’ Either on this occasion or a few days later the hostess, Mrs. Jeune, drew the attention of Justin McCarthy — also a guest — to the Conservative placard in her window. ‘I hope you don’t mind the blue bill?’ ‘Not at all,’ said the amiable McCarthy blandly. ‘Blue is a colour I have liked from a boy.’

At Mr. and Mrs. Gosse’s they met Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and his daughter:

‘His is a little figure, that of an aged boy. He said markedly that he did not read novels; I did not say I had never read his essays,

though it would have been true, I am ashamed to think. . . . But authors are not so touchy as they are supposed to be on such matters — at least I am not — and I found him a very bright, pleasant, juvenile old man.’ At a Rabelais Club dinner a few days later he renewed acquaintance with Dr. Holmes, and with Henry James, ‘who has a ponderously warm manner of saying nothing in infinite sentences’; and also talked to George Meredith. This may possibly have been the first time he and Meredith had met since Hardy received Meredith’s advice about novel-writing; but it is not clear that it was so. At dinners elsewhere in these weeks he met Whistler and Charles Keene, Bret Harte, Sambourne, and others — most of them for the first and last time; at Sidney Colvin’s he renewed acquaintance with R. L. Stevenson, then in London; and at another house sat next to a genial old lady, Lady Camperdown, and ‘could not get rid of the feeling that I was close to a great naval engagement’.

On some music of Wagner’s listened to at a concert at this time when it was less familiar to the public than after, Hardy remarks: ‘It was weather and ghost music — whistling of wind and storm, the strumming of a gale on iron railings, the creaking of doors; low screams of entreaty and agony through key-holes, amid which trumpet- voices are heard. Such music, like any other, may be made to express emotion of various kinds; but it cannot express the subject or reason of that emotion.’

Apropos of this it may be mentioned here that, many years after, Hardy met Grieg, and in doing his best to talk about music Hardy explained that Wagner’s compositions seemed to him like the wind- effects above described. ‘I would rather have the wind and rain myself,’ Grieg replied, shaking his head.

Mrs. Procter, who was still strong enough to go out, came to the Hardys to tea, and among her stores of anecdotes told one that was amusing about Macaulay and Sydney Smith, who had dined at her house in years gone by: when Macaulay had gone she said to Sydney Smith: ‘You gave him no chance at all to talk.’ ‘On the contrary,’ said Sydney Smith, ‘I gave him several opportunities — which you took advantage of.’

It was during this summer that the Hardys either began or renewed their acquaintance with Mrs. Henry Reeve and her sister Miss Gollop, whose family was an old Dorset one; and with Reeve himself, the well-known editor of the Edinburgh Review and of the famous Greville Memoirs. Notwithstanding a slight pompousness of manner he attracted the younger man by his wide experience of Continental men of letters, musicians, and princes, and of English affairs political and journalistic.

‘June 29. Called on Leslie Stephen. He is just the same or worse; as if dying to express sympathy, but suffering under some terrible curse which prevents his saying any but caustic things, and showing antipathy instead.’ [Hardy was not aware that Stephen was unwell, and growing deaf, or he would not have put in this form his impression of a man he so much liked, and who had been so much to him.]