Thomas Hardy (23 page)

In May, to celebrate the peace agreement signifying the end of the South African War, Hardy flew a flag (presumably the Union flag) in the garden of Max Gate.
⁵
Later that year he remarked on how ‘motor-cars [were] rather a nuisance to humble roadsters like me, one never knowing whether the occupants are Hooligan-motorists or responsible drivers’.
⁶
(Hardy continued to rely on his bicycle and did not, as yet, possess a car.)

During the latter part of 1902, Hardy was working on Volume 1 of
The Dynasts
: a story which had been taking shape in his mind over a number of years. For this he moved location yet again, into a newly constructed study above a new kitchen. The extra space provided by the extension enabled Emma to commandeer the two attic rooms on the second floor, to which she withdrew for long periods, spending her time reading, sewing and painting.

At the beginning of 1903 Hardy remarked upon ‘the decay of Parliamentary government’ – a sentiment which might apply equally well today. The problem could be solved, he said, by ‘electing a wise autocrat, & conceding to him unlimited sway [authority] for a fixed term’.
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The following month he was advising caution in the restoration of an ancient building: in this case, the tower of Fordington church, which he described as a ‘venerable monument’ much admired by the famous architect Sir Gilbert Scott.
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He also had an opinion on capital punishment, admitting that it was a deterrent, but questioning ‘the moral right of a community to inflict that punishment’.
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Meanwhile, Hardy was complaining of rheumatism, Emma was ‘ailing’, and both were suffering from lassitude.
¹⁰

Emma, having gone to London with Hardy in June, was obliged to return to Dorset after she ‘contracted a severe cough almost on the day of her arrival’. Hardy attributed this to the wet and cold weather. By July, because she had not recovered, he returned to Max Gate.
¹¹

Around this time Hardy was to voice his disapproval of vivisection, which, nevertheless, he felt was a small matter in comparison with ‘the
general
cruelty of man to the “lower” animals’. Perhaps if, say, lions had won the upper hand instead of the human race, ‘they wd [sic] have been less cruel by this time’.
¹²
Later, Hardy would say how he found it difficult, with his limited knowledge of the subject, to pronounce on which ‘sport’ was the most cruel. Those who derived pleasure from watching an animal struggling to ‘escape the death-agony’, which was deliberately inflicted on it by human beings, was to his mind ‘one of the many convincing proofs that we have not yet emerged from barbarism’.
¹³

In January 1904 the first volume of
The Dynasts
was published by Macmillan.

In 1904 Hardy was introduced to a 25-year-old female schoolteacher, literary critic, published author of children’s books, and long-standing admirer of his works. Her name was Florence Emily Dugdale, daughter of Edward Dugdale, headmaster of St Andrew’s National School, Enfield, Middlesex, and his wife Emma Dugdale. One day, Florence would play a pivotal role in his life.

How this meeting came about is unclear, but as Florence Henniker was present at the time, it may be that the two Florences were friends. Not being in the best of health, Florence Dugdale was seeking an alternative and less arduous occupation to teaching. This Hardy was able to provide, by enlisting her support in helping him to research his books.

Hardy’s mother Jemima died on 3 April 1904, which was Easter Sunday. She was buried at Stinsford in the same grave as her husband. Although 90 years of age, her memory and intellect had remained undimmed. ‘It took me hours to be able to think & express what she had at the tip of her tongue,’ said Hardy. The gap left by her departure was ‘wide, & not to be filled’.
¹⁴
Mary, Katharine and Henry Hardy attended the funeral. Significantly, either from her own volition or on the instructions of her husband, Emma was absent.

The following month Hardy reported on the loss of his oldest friend in Dorchester, the historian, antiquarian and watercolour artist Henry Moule. His friendship with Moule, said Hardy, was a ‘true friendship “which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown”’.
¹⁵

Hardy’s letter-writing continued unabated throughout the years. In July 1904 he was complaining to Alfred Pope, brewer and former Mayor of Dorchester, about odours emanating from the town’s sewage system, which were so foul that he felt unable to invite friends to Max Gate
¹⁶
(though even if he had done so, it is debatable whether Emma would have allowed such visitors to venture beyond the threshold). In October he informed Edmund Gosse of the death of Emma’s brother Walter, assistant manager of the general post office in Maida Vale, london, who had retired only six months previously. (Walter’s wife, Charlotte, outlived him, dying in 1919.) With financial assistance from Hardy, Walter’s son Gordon had trained to become an architect. Walter’s daughter Lilian, however, had drifted from place to place, including Max Gate, where she spent prolonged periods of time.

In April 1905 Hardy steeled himself to make the long journey up to Aberdeen in Scotland, to receive from that city’s university the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. In London in May he attended a farewell banquet for the Lord Mayor, and visited the theatre to see plays by Ben Jonson and Bernard Shaw. In June he visited his old friend, the poet Swinburne.

A party of 200 members of the Institute of Journalists visited Hardy at Max Gate in September 1905, and were provided with tea served from a marquee 150ft long; the latter having been erected on the garden lawn especially for the purpose. It had been the members’ own idea to visit Hardy, though he may not have shared their enthusiasm, having been the victim of no small amount of criticism from some of their number over the years.

In November, displaying his usual attention to detail, Hardy recorded the chronological order in which the trees were shedding their leaves that year: ‘Chestnuts; Sycamores; Limes; Hornbeams; Elm; Birch; Beech.’
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February 1906 saw the publication of the second volume of
The Dynasts
. In London again that year, Hardy commented that he preferred ‘late Wagner’, just as he also preferred ‘late Turner’. As usual, time was spent at the British Museum Library verifying certain facts for the final volume (III) of
The Dynasts
.

Later that year, Hardy wrote to Captain G.L. Derriman, secretary of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, stating that he feared that the rabbits, pigeons and other birds which featured in a conjuring performance at London’s Alhambra Theatre, may possibly have been ‘drugged or blinded to make them passive’.
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Hardy was again ahead of his time in his concern for the animal kingdom.

In August 1906 Hardy and his brother, Henry, went on a cycling tour to visit the cathedrals of Lincoln, Ely and Canterbury; as well as the Cambridge colleges. Henry was then aged 55, whereas Hardy was eleven years his senior. This was no mean feat for a man of 66.

The following year, Emma went to London to join the suffragist procession. Hardy was himself in favour of women’s suffrage, as he confirmed in a letter to the leader of its movement, Millicent Fawcett.
¹⁹
The couple went on to meet playwright George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte, it is believed for the first time.
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In June 1906 they attended a garden party given by King Edward VII at Windsor Castle. Now Hardy had truly ‘arrived’ in society, whether he liked it or not. In November the Dorsetshire Regiment, then based in India, asked him to provide them with a marching tune – stipulating that it must have local affinities and be suitable for rendition with fifes and drums. He duly obliged with an old tune of his grandfather’s called
The Dorchester Hornpipe
.

In March 1907 Hardy wrote to Florence Dugdale advising her, if she was ‘not
quite
well’, to refrain from carrying out searches (which she was doing on his behalf for
The Dynasts
) at the British Museum. He also suggested that she demand from her prospective publisher the sum of 21 guineas, rather than the £8 proposed, for a volume of children’s stories which she was writing.
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In April Hardy requested that ‘Miss Dugdale’ be permitted to be absent from school for a day, in order that she might join him in another search – this time at the South Kensington Museum.
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Hardy wrote an introductory letter to publisher Maurice Macmillan in July 1907, recommending Florence to the post of assistant in his firm, ‘in the preparation of school books & supplementary readers’.
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(Macmillan had previously published Hardy’s
The Woodlanders
and
Wessex Tales
, and was currently engaged in publishing
The Dynasts
; the third and last volume of which appeared in February 1908.)

At Max Gate, where Hardy spent a great deal of time alone in his study, the unresolved question of why his marriage had not worked travelled round and round in his head as he searched for an explanation. Now, in
The Dynasts: A Drama of the Napoleonic Wars, in Three Parts, Nineteen Acts, and Thirty Scenes
, and possibly again with his failed marriage in mind, he would address the question of whether supernatural forces have an influence on events taking place on earth.

The Dynasts
is the longest dramatic composition in English literature. It is an historical narrative, written mainly in blank verse, but also in other metres and in prose, featuring France’s Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. It begins, in 1805, with Napoleon’s threat to invade England; covers the Battle of Trafalgar; the war in the Spanish Peninsula; Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, and finally, the Battle of Waterloo where the great French commander is defeated by the Duke of Wellington. Although
The Dynasts
was a play, said Hardy, it was ‘intended simply for mental performance, rather than for production on the stage of a theatre’. There are many informative scenes: a debate in the House of Commons;Napoleon’s coronation;Napoleon’s divorce of his wife, Josephine, and his marriage to Marie Louise of Austria, and so forth. It features many characters: among them Lord Nelson and William Pitt. It may be argued that of even greater importance are the ‘Spirits’, which Hardy describes as ‘supernatural spectators of the terrestrial action’. They include the ‘Spirit of the Years’, Of the ‘Pities’, Of ‘Rumour’, and the spirits ‘Sinister’ and ‘Ironic’. The ‘Shade of the Earth’ and the ‘Angels’ provide the chorus.

In his Preface, Hardy describes
The Dynasts
as ‘the Great Historical Calamity, or clash of Peoples, artificially brought about some hundred years ago’. No doubt Napoleon would have regarded the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars as a ‘calamity’, though the victorious Duke of Wellington would have begged to differ. But Hardy had in mind a broader context, pertaining to the human race in general.

His ‘Spirits’ appear to reflect the various viewpoints of a ‘normal’ onlooker to what is happening on the Earth below, rather than having any religious connotation. The doctrines of the Spirits, however, ‘are but tentative’, and not intended to offer the reader a ‘systematized philosophy’ by which the mystery of ‘this unintelligible world’ might be explained.
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Was it possible, from a study of Napoleon, to draw some general conclusions about life on Earth, and to shed light on the great unanswered questions of the ‘Why’ and the ‘Wherefore’?