Tess (22 page)
Authors: Emma Tennant
The (unconscious) wished-for death of Florence has brought about a poem as moving as those written after the death of Emma. Now Gertrude is in danger of becoming the next Florence figure in Hardy's imagination â after all, the poet had to be in love with a dead woman, thus forcing the woman who's next in line into the prison of the no-longer-loved, i.e. middle age.
Gertrude escapes this, of course. Firstly, she's immortal, she's Tess.
And, much to Wessex's delight and bounding, barking relief, Florence returns and lives on.
It is Hardy who is weakening, growing old. He's eighty-four and a half now and his passion is burning him out. He must consummate his passion before he dies. Then Tess, any Tess, can come after he has gone â to act out the story of love, revenge, betrayal and death.
Florence, weak though she is from the operation, sees her husband dwindle to nothing more than a spark of love, a burning ember of erotic fascination for his new incarnation of Tess. Rehearsals go on all day and far into the night. They even take place at Max Gate!
The food turns to mush, the toast dries and explodes like pistol shots in the hands, doors to the garden are left open by the Hardy Players and autumn storms usher in the leaves so that the house looks like a haunted film set.
Florence's nervous tics become more pronounced. Wessex follows her closely, and snaps at anyone who comes near.
Hardy suggests to the Dorchester Amateurs that they rehearse in Wool Manor itself â the imagined scene of Tess's and Angel's disastrous honeymoon. Florence sees him off at the door of her house â where the epicentre has turned into a melodrama in which
she plays no part â and she wonders in turn whether her husband will come back alive from this journey. She waits â as Hardy waited in the black night air â and Nobody Comes. But Hardy, as she bitterly knows, if he dies, will die of joy. Her death (which shadows her remaining years, so terrified is she of recurrence of cancer â in fact she survives her husband by nine years) will be a loveless, joyless thing. She stands by the gate â but the late October night air is chilly and it's ghoulish out there too, near the day of All Hallows and the roaming ghost that Florence dreads above all other: the ghost of her guilt at her betrayal of poor Emma.
Wessex runs up, white in the blackness. Florence takes him into the house and closes the door. She has a strong premonition that something is taking place at Wool Manor which will signal the end of her marriage to Thomas Hardy â be it death or, figuratively, at least, divorce.
We have to laugh when we contrast the terrible, dark and tragic scene that Thomas Hardy painted of that honeymoon at Wool Manor â when his Tess, seduced by Alec D'Urberville, mother of his (now-dead) child, trusts and confides her secret to Angel, thus losing him for ever â with the reality of the rehearsal. Poor Gertrude! Alone there with the foolish old bard and a balding Dr E. W. Smerdon as Angel Clare.
Where is the handsome, cold-hearted, high-thinking hypocrite with the looks of a pre-Raphaelite angel? Where are the diamonds, a wedding gift from the bridegroom's family, which Angel must fasten around the neck of the young bride then found not to be âpure'? Will they really have to make do with an old silk kerchief of Hardy's â the deep red and white spotted one Florence searched for in vain during the past weeks, sniffing out with her usual uncanny instinct an object that becomes a fetish â and a fetish that has become, by another transmutation of the imagination, a part of the loved one itself?
Yes; Hardy is happy to make do. The bandana, given to him by an admiring French hostess on one of his bicycling trips to France
with Emma, now has the smell of Gertrude's soft, pink neck firmly imprinted on it. Hardy will never let Florence whisk it off to the sculleries downstairs where maids scrub with square bars of scratchy soap. He will guard it, as he guards Gertrude in his heart; and, only too happy to have helped the Dorchester Players cast the unattractive Dr Smerdon, sadly short of hair, as the romantic lead opposite his darling, he goes over and knots the hankie loosely around his Tess's neck, and he smiles fondly down at her as he pulls the noose a little tighter. Does he think of the Bridport Dagger, the hangman's noose, as it closes round the neck of his first Tess, in Salisbury gaol?
â Tell him! Oh tell him you forgave
him
, so surely he will forgive
you
! â Hardy's eyes mist with tears for the thousandth time as they go through the scene. Even Dr Smerdon is almost transformed, as he kills his love for Tess ⦠repudiates her ⦠goes from the room, saying he wants to walk alone, and Tess goes flying after. Heartbroken, ten times more terribly betrayed than by young D'Urberville's casual seduction and abandonment â yes, Hardy knows this scene will live for ever. He had seen that Angel Clare, with all his âgoodness', âsharing', âintegrity', was more damaging than a bundle of Alec D'Urbervilles put together. Men may appear to change â he thinks as he watches the pathos of the famous scene â but the old story will be played out for all that.
A fire is lit in the grate of the manor â once a fine house but now partially demolished, as depressing as the day Hardy dreamt it up as a suitable site for a disastrous honeymoon. And â as one of the Hardy Players goes out to collect more firewood, and walks across the courtyard (the farm has become the main reason to keep the house going)â
A cock crows.
This kind of thing is always happening to Thomas Hardy. What he writes takes place â years later, sometimes, but recognizably from one of his books â and people regard him with some fear and awe, some hostility, as a man uncomfortably close to the supernatural.
â An afternoon cockcrow, Hardy says and laughs and wheezes a
little, standing in the doorway to cool, with a new fire going and the flames bringing high colour to Tess's cheeks. That's bad, he goes on, quoting from the book. (Of course, everyone in the room knows the quotation. Tess's Angel Clare, driving away from their wedding a few hours before arriving at Wool, hears a cock crow, right in the middle of the afternoon, a bad omen as everyone knows.) And although
Tess
is just a novel â and this is just a rehearsal of an amateur dramatization of the novel â everyone there also feels as if they've heard an omen of misfortune. It's not real, is it? But they don't like it all the same. And rumour that Gertrude Bugler is the apple of the great: writer's eye makes the simple Dorchester citizens uneasy, too. Is it really the case that Gertrude's mother was the model for Tess? Will she elope with Mr Hardy â a scandal â will they be found and apprehended as Tess and Angel were, after the murder of Alec, at Stonehenge? (Here the imagination of some of the young women takes flight.) The aura of obsession which surrounds the poet makes the atmosphere more charged than many (including Dr Smerdon) feel capable of handling. And it's only a rehearsal! What will it be like on the night?
Young Fred Beazer, responsible for stage shifting and lights, wonders if the sound of the afternoon crow is a sign his elaborate sets will come crashing down, causing injury to many, perhaps, at the first night at the Guildhall in Dorchester at the end of November. There's a sudden feeling the play's unlucky â even amateur actors are ready to jump to that conclusion â and after a few more stumbling attempts on Dr Smerdon's part to show the repressed, icy anger of Angel at finding he has married someone he hadn't bargained for â a Non-Pure Woman, a Ruined Maid â there's a request for an adjournment for refreshments.
Hardy grants it willingly. He climbs the stairs of the old manor to the bedroom, where mistletoe, first placed there to celebrate the marriage of Tess and Angel Clare, hangs mockingly above the four-poster bed. He must help his Tess with her coat and hat left there, and remove the handkerchief from round her neck (the players have ordered paste gems, a great parure from Bournemouth, to adorn his sweetheart's neck and shoulders on the night of the first performance).
It's dark in the bedroom, and a low, greenish light comes in from the meadows outside â the last of the day, before the blackness in which Florence will wait so miserably sets in. Gertrude goes over to the four-poster and picks up her coat. Thomas Hardy, who has brought this place to life in the pages of a book and will spirit it away with him when he goes, walks up to her, goes down on his knees.
A commotion downstairs. Players and stagehands run in at the open door of the hall.
Hardy and Gertrude stand in the door of the bedroom, barely visible in the falling dusk.
Steps pound on the bare oak stairs that are guarded by the tall portraits of men and women Hardy describes with such attention to detail in his novel,
Tess
.
Fred Beazer runs in. He gasps out the news â a girl's been drowned â no, off Chesil Bank, down Abbotsbury way â done it herself â no one's saying over whom, or why â¦
A player walks up the stairs and comes into the bedroom with a torch. He beams it on the strange couple, sixty years dividing them, but with one and the same look in their eyes.
And everyone says later, when they go to the inn to get over the shock â it's a funny thing, isn't it? There was that cock crowed out in the farmyard at Wool this afternoon ⦠and they do say that's bad luck â¦
The same uneasy feeling settles again, but not for long. The resemblance between the news of the attempt to drown herself of Retty Priddle (in the book of
Tess
), all for love of Angel Clare, and today's tragedy, is no more than that â a resemblance. Retty had been hopelessly infatuated with Angel â and it was to Tess that he proposed marriage. Of course there was nothing to connect the two â an afternoon cockcrow at Wool Manor and then the drowning of a poor girl. But there were one or two who glanced all the same at Dr Smerdon â of all the respectable, married and balding men
â and just wondered if the maid hadn't had some business with him, so great is the power of fantasy over reality.
By now, Gertrude is safely home in Beaminster in the squat little house by the church. And Hardy has walked into the freezing hall at Max Gate, brushed past Florence and gone up to his study to work.
Florence, ungreeted, unloved, turns off the lights. As she goes up the stairs, she thinks of Wool Manor â and of her husband's description in
Tess
, of the two huge portraits that hang above the staircase there â and she knows the betrothal of Hardy and his Tess is complete. She reads in
Tess
of the arrival of Angel and his new young wife at Wool Manor: âOn the landing Tess stopped and started.
â “What's the matter?” said he.
â “Those horrid women!” she answered with a smile. “How they frightened me.”
âHe looked up and perceived two life-size portraits on panels built into the masonry. As all visitors to the mansion are aware, these paintings represent women of middle age, of a date some two hundred years ago, whose lineaments once seen can never be forgotten. The long pointed features, narrow eye, and smirk of the one, so suggestive of merciless treachery; the bill-hook nose, large teeth, and bold eye of the other, suggesting arrogance to the point of ferocity, haunt the beholder afterwards in his dreams.
â “Whose portraits are those?” asked Clare of the charwoman.
â “I have been told by old folk that they were ladies of the D'Urberville family, the ancient lords of this manor,” she said. “Owing to their being builded into the wall they can't be moved away.”
âThe unpleasantness of the matter was that, in addition to their effect upon Tess, her fine features were unquestionably traceable in these exaggerated forms ⦠'
Florence, half-fainting, leans back against the banisters. She sees the features of young Gertrude as Tess ⦠in her growing, bilious jealousy she sees the ladies of the D'Urberville family look
down and disdain her, from the walls above the staircase at ugly, unromantic Max Gate.
Florence sees the portraits in one swirl of the moon that comes out from behind a cloud and makes in her fevered imagination the wall by the tall staircase at Wool. And she knows â as she goes quietly past Hardy's study (he scribbles on, so late, a moth caught in his lamp now, dancing, dying as he scratches away) â she knows Hardy has stood under the portraits with his Tess, and she has looked up at her foremothers, and she will bring the old story once more into the world, as he wants her to.
Only the next day does Florence hear about the afternoon cockcrow and the drowning at Chesil Beach. She nods grimly at the news, brought by the maid, and purses her twitching lips.
Hardy has brought all this together, as he marshals his beautiful poems, his books, his plays. Everyone, like the moth in his night-lamp, dances and dies for Hardy. They are players all.
Florence shivers, ill still, coddled in a thick shawl â as she contemplates the eagerly awaited occasion of the First Night.
We walk along the road on our way back to the Mill, Baby Tess â and I turn once and see the faces of the women in the portraits, a fine mist off the sea forming a jaw and a formidable nose high above the leaves of our mother's tree â which the wind blows away again, leaving, bare now after the last autumn gale, a simple birch.
Our mother knew of these women âof two hundred years ago' whom Hardy brought into
Tess
to show, despite his insistence on his heroine being a âPure Woman', that there was bad blood in her: these ancestresses with their lineaments suggesting âmerciless treachery' and âarrogance to the point of ferocity' would, by sheer force of lineage, cause the ballad of love, betrayal, murder to be sung through their descendant. Our mother Mary knew there was no escape from this. And as we look back, at the bend in the road west from Langton Herring, at the silver birch, thin and forked,
striped on the silver-grey bark with the weals of time â I feel the familiar sorrow that I never understood my mother when she lived among us â and nor did Tess, that's for sure. She was trying to tell us something â but maybe all daughters feel that about their mothers â and she just couldn't get through. She tried to warn us â but we mistook her strange stories for the babbling of madness. When she sighed â or, frequently â wept in her lonely bed at the Mill at night, we heard only the mist creeping along the ill-fitting door out in the lane, or the wind in the trees.
