Thomas Hardy (10 page)

In June 1873 Hardy visited Cambridge where he met his friend Horace Moule, and the two of them visited Kings College Chapel, from the roof of which they could see Ely Cathedral ‘gleaming in the distant sunlight’.
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(Whatever doubts Hardy may have had about the dogma of Christianity, he was still in love with its ritual, its imagery and the splendours of its architecture.) Sadly, this was to be the pair’s last encounter. Hardy visited St Juliot on two occasions during 1873; the second time at Christmas.

On 21 September 1873, in his rooms at Queens College, Cambridge (where he was employed as a Poor Law inspector), Horace Moule took his own life. He had befriended Hardy; encouraged him with gifts of books and intellectually stimulating conversations; set him on the road to socialism, and shielded and defended him when his books were denigrated by other critics. But for years Moule, a taker of opium and a heavy drinker, had battled against severe depression and suicidal tendencies, and at the end of the day, Hardy’s great friend and comrade had been unable to overcome his problems. What was it that had brought the two of them so closely together? Perhaps in Hardy, Moule recognised a kindred spirit: a person, like himself, of great sensitivity, who saw enormous suffering in the world and found it hard to bear.

Moule’s body was brought back to Fordington for burial in consecrated ground. This was possible, because although it was normally considered a crime for a person to commit suicide, the jury had returned a verdict of ‘temporary insanity’. Hardy was nonplussed and wrote, quoting Psalm 74: ‘Not one is there among us that understandeth any more.’

In December 1872, scholar and critic Leslie Stephen, who had been impressed by his reading of
Under the Greenwood Tree
, asked Hardy to provide a story suitable for serialisation in the
Cornhill Magazine
, of which he was editor. Stephen, a philosopher and man of letters, was also editor of the
Dictionary of National Biography
. A year later, Hardy would meet him in person and the two would become lifelong friends.

Accordingly, having completed
A Pair of Blue Eyes
, Hardy set out to write
Far from the Madding Crowd
, in which he ventured beyond the world of his own personal experiences and instead used as the basis of the plot a story told to him by his cousin Tryphena Sparks. It tells of a woman who has inherited a farm, which contrary to the tradition of the times she insists on managing herself. However, Hardy does not neglect to include his favourite theme – that of a man of humble means but nevertheless honourable, steadfast and industrious, who finds himself in the seemingly impossible position of having fallen in love with a woman above his station. This, of course, is a reflection of his inferiority complex in respect of Emma.

The novel is set in and around Puddletown (‘Weatherbury’), and it is said that during the writing of it, when Hardy remembered to carry a pocket notebook, ‘his mind was [as] barren as the Sahara [Desert]’. And yet when he did not, and ideas came thick and fast, he was obliged to search for ‘large dead leaves, white chips [of wood] left by the wood cutters or pieces of stone or slate that came to hand’ on which to write.
⁷

Gabriel Oak, Known as ‘Farmer Oak’, Is the lessee of a sheep farm on which he keeps 200 sheep. One day, he encounters an attractive young lady riding in a cart. She approaches a toll gate but refuses to pay the gatekeeper the full fare requested. Oak offers to make up the difference, which is tuppence. When he receives no thanks for his pains, he considers the young lady to be vain.

However, he is determined to make her his wife, and to this end he calls at her house with the gift of a lamb. ‘I am only an every day sort of man,’ he tells her, self-deprecatingly, but he has a ‘nice, snug little farm’, and when they are married, he promises to work ‘twice as hard as I do now’. Music is introduced into the story, when Oak tells Bathsheba Everdene – for that is her name – that if she marries him, she shall have a pianoforte ‘in a year or two’, and he, for his part, will practise on the flute and play to her in the evenings. He will love her, he says, until he dies.

Oak’s offer is refused. Bathsheba says she does not love him, and throws in the fact that she is better educated than he;she advises that he find someone to provide him with the money with which to stock a larger farm. ‘Then I’ll ask you no more,’says Oak. Another disaster befalls Oak, when an overzealous sheepdog chases his flock over a precipice.

In the hope of finding work, Oak journeys to Casterbridge to attend a ‘hiring fair’ – where workers would assemble in the hope of being taken on by an employer – but without success. He then travels onward by waggon to Shottsford, where another hiring fair is being held. En route, he hears the waggoner discussing a woman, evidently a farmer, whom he describes as a ‘very vain feymell [female]’ who can ‘play the peanner [piano]’. Oak deduces, correctly, that this woman is none other than Bathsheba.

Having alighted from the waggon, Oak sees a hayrick which is on fire. This is an opportunity for the author, Hardy, in his description of burning hayricks, to display his deep knowledge of country matters. He states that in such an eventuality: ‘the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is lost to the eye.’ By the judicious placement of tarpaulins around the base of the stack to stop the draught, and with the application of water, Oak saves the day. His actions do not go unnoticed, and the lady farmer (who, as it happens, is Miss Bathsheba Everdene), agrees to employ him as her shepherd. A deputy is required to assist Oak – the person chosen being ‘Young Cain Ball’.

‘How did he come by such a name as Cain?’enquires Bathsheba. The answer: because his mother was not ‘a Scripture-read woman’, and believing that it was Abel who killed Cain, Instead of the other way round, a mistake was therefore made at his christening. As always, the Bible is never far from Hardy’s thoughts.

Bathsheba catches her farm bailiff stealing barley; she dismisses him, but instead of seeking a replacement, swears that she will attend to everything herself. At the same time, Fanny Robin, the youngest of her servants, goes missing. In fact, impatient to be married, she has gone to see her ‘young man’, Sergeant Troy of the militia.

Bathsheba buys a Valentine’s Day card, thinking to send it to a child, but instead sends it as a prank to Farmer Boldwood, a bachelor who has a neighbouring farm. The words imprinted on its seal read ‘Marry Me’. Boldwood shows the card to Oak, who tells him that the handwriting on it is Miss Everdene’s.

Fanny Robin’s plans to marry Sergeant Troy encounter a hitch when she mistakenly goes to the wrong church. Meanwhile Boldwood, who has taken the sending of the Valentine card seriously, proposes marriage to Bathsheba. She refuses him on the grounds that she does not love him. Furthermore, she admits to him that the sending of the Valentine card was ‘wanton’ and ‘thoughtless’ on her part. When she asks Oak his opinion on the matter, he gives it to her in no uncertain terms. The act, says he, was ‘unworthy of any thoughtful, and meek, and comely woman’.Leading a man on whom she did not care for was ‘not a praiseworthy action’. (He had previously described her behaviour as ‘coquettish’.) Bathsheba is incensed by Oak’s criticism of her and she orders him to leave the farm. Oak is quickly recalled, however, when his services are required to attend to some sheep which have become bloated and sick after breaking down the fence and feeding off a field of clover.

Boldwood reappears at the shearing supper, held in Bathsheba’s great barn, where there is much music and merriment. When farm labourer Joseph Poorgrass is asked to sing, he retorts, ‘I be in liquor, and the gift is wanting in me’, but he obliges nonetheless.

One night, when Bathsheba is taking a final look around her farm, she encounters Sergeant Troy, and her skirt becomes entangled in his riding spur. ‘I wish it had been the knot of knots, which there’s no untying,’ he says, on catching sight of her beautiful face. Troy tells Bathsheba she is beautiful, something Farmer Boldwood had never done; and this she regards as a fatal omission on the latter’s part. Bathsheba meets Troy again at the haymaking, at which he has come to assist. He gives her a gold watch which had belonged to his father. He then helps her with her bees, and gives her an exhibition of sword play. Here, in describing the various ‘infantry cuts and guards’, Hardy again shows his knowledge and attention to detail.

When Oak warns Bathsheba of the dangers of becoming involved with one such as Troy, she reacts by dismissing him, Once again, from the farm. She confesses to her maid Liddy that she loves Troy ‘to very distraction and agony’. When Boldwood discovers this he is distraught. Despite her feelings for Troy, Bathsheba decides to travel to Bath where he is currently staying and ‘bid him farewell’ – that is, end her relationship with him. Troy, on his return, encounters Boldwood, who encourages him to marry Fanny Robin. However, when Boldwood sees how much Bathsheba appears to love Troy, he changes his mind and exhorts Troy instead to marry Bathsheba. Troy then informs Boldwood that he and Bathsheba are already married – she having changed her mind once more and the ceremony having taken place in Bath.

At the harvest supper and dance, when all the employees are the worse for drink and a storm blows up, Oak, with Bathsheba’s help, Manages to save the precious hayricks once again. Bathsheba confesses to Oak that when she had visited Troy in Bath, he had emotionally blackmailed her by saying that he had seen a woman more beautiful than her, and therefore could not be counted upon unless she ‘at once became his’. Through ‘jealousy and distraction’ she had married him. As her husband, Troy, now demands money from Bathsheba for gambling purposes.

Bathsheba becomes suspicious when they encounter a poor woman en route to the Casterbridge workhouse whom Troy appears to know. It is Fanny Robin. Troy promises to meet her and bring her money in two days time. He confesses to Bathsheba that this is the woman he was intending to marry before he met her. Bathsheba realises that her romance with Troy is at an end. When news comes that Fanny Robin has died, Bathsheba sends a waggon to Casterbridge to collect her coffin.

On the return journey with the coffin, driver Joseph Poorgrass, who ‘felt anything but cheerful’ and wished he had some company, calls at an inn, where Oak finds him so drunk that he himself is obliged to drive the waggon for the remainder of its journey. ‘All that’s the matter with me,’ says Poorgrass, ‘is the affliction called a multiplying eye.’ This reference to double vision, brought on by drink, is Hardy’s rustic humour at its best.

It is now too late for the funeral to take place so it is postponed until the following day. Meanwhile, the coffin is kept at Bathsheba’s house in a sitting room next to the hall.

While awaiting her husband’s return, Bathsheba, who suspects that Fanny Robin has had a baby, allows her curiosity to overcome her; she prises open the coffin lid. Her worst fears are realised when she finds two bodies inside: one of an infant child, and the other of Fanny. Troy returns, sees the situation, kisses the corpse and tells Bathsheba: ‘This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be.’

Troy, miserable after the death of Fanny Robin, chooses to disappear from the scene, and Bathsheba believes him to be dead – he having left his clothes on a beach, prior to going for a swim from which he does not return. In reality he has found employment at a sheep fair in an ‘entertainment’, in which he takes the part of highwayman Dick Turpin.

Boldwood finally extracts from a most reluctant Bathsheba a promise that she will marry him in six years time, provided that Troy has not returned. But Troy does return, making himself known at a party held by Boldwood one Christmas Eve, at which Bathsheba is in attendance. As Troy summons her, and seizes her arm, Boldwood reacts by shooting him dead.

Oak, meanwhile, has decided to emigrate to California. Bathsheba is dismayed at this news. The wheel has turned full circle and now it is she who wants him. This causes Oak to change his mind and move, instead, to a small farm in the locality. Would Bathsheba allow him to love her, win her and marry her, even though, as he puts it, ‘I’ve danced at your skittish heels … for many a long mile, and many a long day’.

‘But you will never know,’ she replies.

‘Why?’ he asks.

‘Because you never ask.’

Finally, after a rollercoaster ride to which both humour and tragedy are essential ingredients, the coquettish Bathsheba and the long-suffering but steadfast Oak resolve their differences and the couple marry to the sound of cannon fire and numerous musical instruments, including drum, tambourine, serpent, tenor viol and double bass. Such a happy ending is also, undoubtedly, what Hardy the author desires for himself and Emma.

In respect of
Far from the Madding Crowd
(which Leslie Stephen helped him to edit), Hardy had the satisfaction of being asked by a publisher for a manuscript, rather than having to endure the painful process of seeking a publisher out as previously. He is now at his best, as, confidently and without inhibition, he portrays the life and landscape of his beloved Wessex. The novel was serialised between January and December 1874 in the
Cornhill Magazine
and, on the strength of Hardy having been paid the sum of £400 by its publishers, Smith, Elder & Co., he and Emma could now afford to marry.

Hardy and Emma were married on 17 September 1874. Hardy was living in lodgings at Westbourne Park, Paddington, London, at the time, and the ceremony was held in the local church of St Peter. Emma’s uncle, Dr Edwin Hamilton Gifford, canon of Worcester Cathedral, officiated; the only other people present being Emma’s civil servant brother, Walter E. Gifford (born 1842), and Sarah Williams, the daughter of Hardy’s landlady, who signed the register as a witness.
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This is curious, because it was common practice then, as it is now, for a bride-to-be to be married in her own parish (Emma’s parents were currently living in Bodmin). Alternatively, had Emma’s brother-in-law, the Revd Holder married them, then his church of St Juliot was near enough to Bodmin for Emma’s parents to have attended the ceremony without difficulty.