Thomas Hardy (30 page)

It is surely too much of a coincidence to believe that Emma had such profoundly loving feelings for
two
dying men – the one referred to in
The Face at the Casement
and the other referred to in
The Telegram
. The conclusion must be that the two poems refer to one and the same person – William Henry Serjeant. And yet William died in January 1872, two years and eight months
prior
to Hardy’s honeymoon. So how can the discrepancy in chronology be explained?

The answer is that the time frame alluded to in
The Telegram
(in contrast with that alluded to in
The Face at the Casement
) should not be taken too literally. What seems certain is that sometime shortly prior to William’s death in January 1872, Emma received news (either by telegram or by some other means) that he was desperately ill, and was overcome with remorse. Hardy’s honeymoon was such a disaster that he altered the sequence of events to make it appear that it was then that Emma heard the news of William’s grave illness. In fact, it is possible that thoughts of Serjeant
were
in Emma’s mind during her honeymoon, and that she
did
forget, temporarily, that she was married and ‘no more a maid’. (Hardy may also have moved the telegram episode forward to coincide with his honeymoon in order to give the poem greater dramatic effect.)

Finally, how can the words ‘a soldier such as he’ from the poem be explained, when it is known for a fact that William was, by trade, a draper? The most likely explanation is that Hardy, in attempting to disguise the true identity of Serjeant, used a play on words: he exchanged the ‘j’ in his name for a ‘g’, and called him a soldier.

Hardy’s honeymoon should, particularly after all the long years of waiting, have been a blissfully happy time, for, as the poem suggests, he believed that he knew everything about his new wife and was under the impression that her heart belonged entirely to him. Instead, he was in for a rude awakening, for instead of responding to his loving gestures, her ‘spousal grace’ is marred by her ‘aversion’ to him. (The word aversion has resonances with
Jude the Obscure
and Sue Bridehead’s aversion to Phillotson.)

Perhaps the most chilling fact of all to be revealed in
The Telegram
is that Hardy, even at the very beginning of married life to Emma, had evidently resigned himself to the fact that his marriage would be a loveless one, and would continue to be so until the end of his days.

Surely it was no coincidence that in Hardy’s novel
A Pair of Blue Eyes
, first published in late 1872 and early 1873, in which Elfride Swancourt’s admirer, Stephen Smith, interrogates her about possible past lovers, the following passage occurs:

Smith: ‘And had you really never any sweetheart at all?’

Elfride: ‘None that was ever recognized by me as such.’

Smith: ‘But did nobody ever love you?’

Elfride: ‘Yes – a man did once; very much, he said.’

The person referred to by Elfride is Felix Jethway, whose mother was a widow but is now deceased.

Later in the novel, it is Henry Knight, her other suitor, who interrogates Elfride. ‘Have you ever had a lover? I am almost sure you have not; but, have you?’ he asks her. Eventually, she admits that she did once have a lover, to whom she was engaged to be married, ‘but not formally’ engaged. When Knight realises that Elfride has been less than frank with him, he declares: ‘What a poor mortal I am to play second fiddle in everything and be deluded by fibs!’

Surely Hardy, through the characters of Smith and Knight, is voicing his own insecurities in regard to Emma (‘Elfride’). He is aware that Emma is a rare beauty who was undoubtedly the talk of north Cornwall as she rode out on the moors on her pony, her beautiful auburn hair, in her words, ‘floating on the wind’.
¹⁶
During his courting days, when he was away from her in London, he may have imagined her with other men. After all, he was aware of at least two of her previous amorous attachments: to Henry Jose, The farmer’s son-cum-churchwarden, and of course to William Serjeant of St Clether.

The following scenario may be imagined. It is September 1874 and Hardy is on his honeymoon, when he expects, quite reasonably, that he and Emma will enjoy sexual intercourse. In fact, smitten as he is with her beauty, and particularly after so long a courtship, this is something which he longs for. However, it is not to be. Emma previously believed herself to be in love with William Henry Serjeant, and he with her, and this may possibly have been the case. On the other hand, it may have been a delusion – of the previously discussed ‘erotomanic’ type – which persisted in her mind even after William’s death in January 1872. One can almost hear Emma’s voice as she says to Hardy, whom she has just married, ‘I loved William and he loved me. There will never be another in my life’; and when Hardy suggests that they make love, her reaction is ‘No, for this would be to commit adultery’. Hardy, dazed and dejected by her reaction, expresses himself in the way that he knows best: he composes a poem,
The Telegram
. And because this delusion in regard to William Serjeant remains fixed in her mind – as delusions do – this explains why, all through her married life, she refuses to make love to her husband, or indeed to show him any demonstrable affection. It also explains why the couple’s relationship was doomed, from the very beginning, to failure.

Florence Emily Hardy was, in many ways, the complete antithesis of Emma, and in consequence, the changes which she brought about to Hardy’s life were truly remarkable. Unlike Emma, Florence was a modest person, as her letter of 24 October 1915 to Rebekah Owen illustrates. ‘I am not tall enough for it or graceful enough,’she says, of a hat which she has purchased in London’s Regent Street, and which she therefore offers to Rebekah. ‘The brim is lined with shell pink which does not suit my sallow complexion.’ And referring to some photographs of herself, which she had had taken, she tells Rebekah: ‘After considering them long and earnestly I am bound to confess that I have no claims at all to anything approaching good looks.’
¹

While Emma was alive, Florence’s relationship with her was outwardly cordial. For example, when she wrote to Emma in July 1910 from her home at Enfield, Middlesex, Florence said: ‘I am truly grieved to learn how sadly you have been [with a cough]. I trust that you are recovering strength in the country air. I cannot find words to thank you sufficiently for all your goodness to me.’
²

However, to Edward Clodd, in whom she confided, Florence, in November 1910, was able to voice her true feelings:

Mrs Hardy seems to be queerer than ever. She has just asked me whether I have noticed how extremely like
Crippen
Mr TH. [Hardy] is, in personal appearance. She added darkly, that she would not be surprised to find herself in the cellar one morning. All this in deadly seriousness.
³

This was a reference by Emma to American physician Hawley Harvey Crippen, who had allegedly murdered his wife in the January of that year.

To Hardy’s siblings, Florence was equally cordial. ‘I wish I was back in Dorset. Hope I shall soon see you again,’ she wrote on a postcard to Katharine Hardy on 20 October 1910.
⁴
To Mary Hardy, in August 1911, Florence sent a postcard from the seaside resort of Worthing, to say: ‘I hope you’re well. I have had a delightful fortnight here bathing once & sometimes twice a day. This card shows the house where I have been staying, & the road I cross daily in bathing dress!!’
⁵

In December 1911 Florence informed Clodd that ‘Mr T. H., his sister & I [but evidently not Emma] had a pleasant little trip last week to Bath, Gloucester & Bristol. He is very well, & seemed quite gay.’
⁶

Florence, in her letters, reveals just how important pets were in Hardy’s life. For example, she described to Clodd how Hardy had been ‘in the depths of despair at the death of a pet cat’, something which he described as ‘an entirely gratuitous & unlooked for blow’. The cat would be buried in the pet cemetery at Max Gate, and Hardy ‘[is] finding a melancholy pleasure in writing an appropriate inscription for “Kitsey’s” headstone,’ said Florence.
⁷
True to form, Hardy commemorated Kitsey in a poem entitled
The Roman Gravemounds
, but when Florence read the line ‘But my little white cat was my only friend!’, from the penultimate verse of the poem, she was highly indignant. ‘I tell him that it is
monstrous
ingratitude on his part,’ she told Clodd.
⁸
Why did his pets mean so much to Hardy? Simply because, in the absence of a wife (at least, in any meaningful sense of the word) and children, they gave him the love and companionship which he craved. In other words, Hardy’s cats and dogs were his surrogate family.

On 16 January 1913, The month after Emma’s death, Florence, in a lengthy epistle to Clodd, wrote of Hardy as follows:

His life here is
lonely
beyond words, & he spends his evenings in reading & re-reading voluminous diaries that Mrs H. has kept from the time of their marriage. Nothing could be worse for him. He reads the comments upon himself – bitter denunciations, beginning about 1891 & continuing until within a day or two of her death – & I think he will end by
believing
them.

Despite this, however, Florence did all in her power to make Hardy’s life bearable. Said she: ‘I read aloud to him every evening after dinner, until eleven o’clock & take as much care of him as I possibly can.’ And in a postscript to her letter to Clodd, she added: ‘Of course nothing could be more lonely than the life he used to lead – long evenings spent alone in his study, insult & abuse his only enlivenment. It sounds cruel to write like that, & in atrocious taste, but truth is truth, after all.’
⁹

On 30 January 1913 Florence, writing from Enfield, told Clodd that she had received a letter that day from Hardy, who had informed her that he was ‘getting through E’s papers’, and speaking of her abuse of him, Hardy declared: ‘It was, of course, sheer hallucination in her, poor thing, & not wilfulness.’ Yet again, Hardy is protective towards Emma; but his opinion was certainly not shared by Florence. In fact, so exasperated did she become that she told Clodd: ‘I feel as if I can hardly keep back my true opinion much longer.’
¹⁰

Florence was able to report to Clodd, on 7 March 1913, that Hardy ‘has been extremely well in health, & quite cheerful’. However, she was clearly exasperated by the fact that Hardy was still in denial about his disastrous marriage to Emma. Said she: ‘Today he goes to Cornwall, to St Juliot’s Rectory, where he first met his “late, espousèd saint”, forty-three years ago this very week.’
¹¹
Florence, in fact, accompanied him on this visit.

Referring to Emma’s ‘diabolical diaries’, which she had hoped had been destroyed, Florence told Clodd:

… only the other night he [Hardy] produced one from his pocket & read me a passage – written about six weeks before her death – in which she [Emma] says that her father &
Mr Putman
were right in their estimate of TH’s character: he is … [various oft-repeated adjectives of abuse], & ‘
utterly worthless
’. Of course Mr Putnam, if she means the publisher, could
never
have belittled Mr Hardy to her. It is in this sort of way that the diaries are so poisonous. [This is a reference to George Haven Putnam, American publisher and author, who visited Max Gate in June 1911.]
¹²

Four days later, after she and Hardy had returned home to Max Gate, Florence described their visit to Cornwall: ‘[It] has been a very painful one to me, & I have said a dozen times I wish I had not come – What possessed me to do it!’
¹³

Writing to Clodd again in April, Florence described how Hardy’s doctor (Edward W. Mann) had declared: ‘the state of things here, before Mrs Hardy’s death – was quite alarming, so far as T.H. was concerned. [Mann] said that the lack of attention & general discomfort must have had a serious effect sooner or later. He told this to the sisters & brother [of Hardy].’
¹⁴

On 21 August 1913 Florence was able to report to Clodd that Hardy was ‘in good health, &
wonderfully cheerful
. He has had no fit of depression for quite a long time.’
¹⁵

Florence was at the end of her tether by December, on account of the presence at Max Gate of Emma’s niece, Lilian Gifford, whose manner she found to be obnoxious, and whose presence she found to be intolerable. Said she:

We had an awful scene. I have only seen a similar one when Mrs Hardy was alive. My poor sister [Florence’s younger sister Constance] could hardly keep from bursting into tears. This woman [Lilian] insulted her, in fact, behaved like a mad-woman. Of course, her [Lilian’s] brother is an imbecile – one of them at least – and an uncle died in an asylum, and her grandfather was mad at times, so I ought to be profoundly sorry for her – but
I can’t
be that.

The ‘brother’ to whom Florence refers in the above letter could only have been Emma’s nephew, Warren Randolph Gifford (about whom little is known – Warren evidently preferred to use his middle name, Randolph; his youngest brother Randolph Gifford having died in infancy). The ‘uncle’ was Emma’s brother, Richard Ireland Gifford, and the ‘grandfather’ was Emma’s father, John Attersoll Gifford. (In this, some have accused Florence of exaggeration, or have even gone so far as to imply that she was not telling the truth.
¹⁶
In fact, Florence was a thoroughly reliable witness in this respect, as has already been demonstrated.) Continued Florence, dryly: ‘Mr Hardy had more than 20 years of insults, and apparently enjoyed them very much – according to what he says now. I don’t enjoy them [from Lilian] now.’
¹⁷