Thomas Hardy (6 page)

Macmillan declined to publish the work, although he commented that much of it was ‘admirable’, and one scene in particular was ‘full of power and insight’. He ultimately saw it as an excessive attack, by Hardy, on the upper classes, which were portrayed as ‘heartless’ in their dealings with the ‘working classes’. These sentiments were echoed by John Morley, a friend of Macmillan to whom the latter had shown the work. Nevertheless, Morley did at least admit that the author ‘has stuff and purpose in him’.
¹⁸

Unwilling to take no for an answer, Hardy, in the December of 1868, made a brief visit to London to see Macmillan personally. The answer remained the same, but Macmillan did suggest that he approach Frederick Chapman of publishers Chapman & Hall. Hardy duly met Chapman the following day, left the work with him and returned to Dorchester.

He revisited London in January 1869, when the reply from Chapman & Hall finally arrived. They would publish
The Poor Man and the Lady
, but only if Hardy guaranteed to furnish them with the sum of £20 to cover any losses which the firm might incur. By the time March came, Hardy, Instead of being sent the proofs of the book as he expected, was asked by Chapman & Hall to visit London yet again. Here he met George Meredith, who expressed the opinion that the book would be perceived as ‘socialistic’, or even ‘revolutionary’. As such, it would be liable to be attacked, on all sides, by conventional reviewers, and this might prove a handicap to Hardy in the future. Hardy should either rewrite the story or write another novel with a more interesting plot.
¹⁹

What had prompted Hardy to make an assault on the nobility and squirearchy in this fashion? Was it simply that, as an Englishman, his sympathies naturally lay with the underdog? The ‘establishment’, as he was well aware, wielded immense power and bore down very heavily on those who dared to cross the boundaries which it had laid down. A classical example of this was the case of the six Dorset farm labourers – the so-called ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ – whose ‘crime’ had been to swear an illegal oath. This they had done in an attempt to organise and thus defend themselves against the progressive reduction of their wages from eight, to seven, and then to a threatened six shillings per week: an insufficient sum with which to support themselves and their starving families. For this, they had been sentenced in 1834 to be transported to Australia and Tasmania. Hardy was no doubt aware that their trial had taken place in Dorchester, even though this had occurred six years prior to his birth. He may also have been influenced both by the heroic work of Horace Moule’s father, the Revd Henry Moule, who as vicar of Fordington struggled to improve the lot of the poor of his parish, particularly during the cholera epidemic of 1854, and by Moule’s son Horace, who was an ardent socialist.

Despite George Meredith’s adverse comments, Hardy, in April 1869, sent the manuscript of
The Poor Man and the Lady
to Smith, Elder & Company, who also rejected it. In December 1870, with dogged determination, he sent it to Tinsley Brothers, only to be offered terms for publication by them which were unacceptable to him.

John Hicks died in the winter of 1868/69. In April 1869 Hardy was asked by G.R. Crickmay – a Weymouth architect who had purchased Hicks’ practice – if he would assist him in continuing with the work on church restorations. To this, Hardy agreed, and in July he commenced work at Crickmay’s office in Weymouth.

Having found lodgings in Weymouth at 3 Wooperton Street, Hardy was able to avail himself of the amenities which the town provided. For him, pleasant summer diversions included listening to the town band playing waltzes (newly composed by Johann Strauss); bathing each morning, and rowing in the bay each evening. He also joined a dancing class to learn the quadrille. It was at about this time that he formed an attachment to his cousin Tryphena Sparks, a student teacher from Puddletown who was eleven years his junior, he even went as far as to buy her a ring.

By the time winter arrived, Hardy had completed the work set for him by Crickmay. Nonetheless, he chose to remain at Weymouth where he would commence work on a new novel entitled
Desperate Remedies
. In February 1870, however, he returned to the peace and quiet of his home at Bockhampton in order to concentrate more fully on the manuscript. Chapman & Hall’s reader, George Meredith, had criticised
The Poor Man and the Lady
for the weakness of its plot. Hardy, therefore, resolved that the plot
of Desperate Remedies
would be nothing less than sensational.
²⁰

Within a week, Crickmay was in touch again, requesting that he depart as soon as possible for Cornwall, in order ‘to take a plan and particulars of a church I am about to rebuild there’.
²¹
This was a reference to the church of St Juliot near Boscastle, on Cornwall’s north coast. This visit to Cornwall was one which would change the life of the young Hardy dramatically and irrevocably.

Hardy’s journey from Weymouth to Cornwall, on Monday 7 March 1870, involved him rising at four in the morning, catching the train at Dorchester station and changing several times before reaching the station at Launceston. For the remaining 16 miles he was obliged to hire a pony and trap, and by the time he arrived at St Juliot rectory, it was dark. Here, at the front door, a dazzling apparition met his eyes: a female with a rosy, Rubenesque complexion, striking blue eyes and auburn hair with ringlets reaching down as far as her shoulders.

Emma Lavinia Gifford, like Hardy, was aged 29. Born in Plymouth, she was the daughter of solicitor John Attersoll Gifford and his wife, also Emma (
née
Farman), and the youngest but one of a family of five. Brought up in a fine house not far from Plymouth’s seafront or ‘Hoe’, Emma was educated privately at a school run by ‘dear, refined single ladies of perfect manners’,
¹
and she was accustomed to mingling with ‘the élite of the town’.
²
So how did she come to be living in this remote part of north Cornwall?

Prior to Emma’s birth in 1840, her wealthy paternal grandmother, Helen Gifford (
née
Davie), a widow since 1825, had come to live with her family. According to Emma, Helen ‘considered it best that he [Emma’s father, John] should give up his profession which he disliked, and live a life of quiet cultivated leisure’.
³
However, John Gifford’s name continued to appear on the Law Institution’s list of registered solicitors up until the year 1851 (but not thereafter), and the census for that year gives his profession as ‘Attorney at Law’. When Helen died in 1860, John (along with Helen’s other offspring) inherited a portion of her estate. John and his family then relocated in June of that year to Bodmin in Cornwall, and John subsequently took his late mother’s advice, retired from legal practice and became a ‘Fundholder’ instead – one who lives off the income from his investments.
⁴

Here in Cornwall, Emma’s elder sister, Helen, obtained a post first as a governess (in which capacity she was succeeded, for a brief period, by Emma), and then as companion to an elderly lady at Tintagel on the coast. There, Helen met her husband-to-be, the Revd Caddell Holder, MA Oxon, rector of St Juliot, the repair of whose church was the objective of Hardy’s visit.

The Revd Holder was born on the Caribbean island of Barbados, where his father was a judge, and was educated at Trinity College, Oxford. When he married Helen, on 10 September 1868 at Bodmin parish church, he was aged 67, and she only 31. (This was Holder’s second marriage; his first wife Ann having died three years previously.) When Holder took his new wife back to his home, Emma accompanied them. At the rectory of St Juliot, Emma would help her sister with ‘house affairs’ and also pay visits to the ‘parish folk’ (that is, her brother-in-law’s parishioners).
⁵
Her spare time was spent riding her pony Fanny, painting in watercolour, sketching and gathering wild flowers. On Sundays she played the harmonium and ‘conducted the church music’.
⁶

It so happened that when Hardy arrived on the scene, the Revd Holder was suffering from an attack of gout. His wife was attending her husband and it was therefore Emma who received the visitor.

According to a circular, issued from St Juliot rectory in March 1869, the church, which dated from Saxon times:

Has for many years been in a ruinous condition, and no service has been held in it for more than two years, the Parishioners being under the necessity of using the National School Room for the celebration of Divine Service, which in every respect is quite unfit for the purpose.

The tower threatens to fall and is in a highly dangerous condition; the Roof, Floor and a large portion of the Walls of the Nave are too dilapidated for any partial repairs, and render the interior unhealthy for the congregation … With the exception of the walls of the South Aisle and Porch, an entire rebuilding will be necessary, the estimated cost of which is about £900.

The Patron of the living, the Rev. R. [Richard] Rawle [vicar of Tamworth, Staffordshire] has promised to give the sum of £700 towards the Restoration, on condition that the further sum of £200 be raised within the present year.
⁷

The arrival of architect Hardy was therefore a matter of great interest and excitement in the parish, for now, at last, long-awaited plans for the church could be put into operation.

The evening of Hardy’s arrival, said Emma, was ‘lovely … after a wild winter’.
⁸
She also recalled that Hardy ‘had a beard’ and was wearing ‘a rather shabby great coat’. A blue paper protruded from his pocket which proved to be, not a plan of the church, but the manuscript of a poem he had written.
⁹
Emma states that on his first visit to the church, ‘the architect … [Hardy] stayed a few days rather longer than first intended’.
¹⁰

Two days after his arrival, Hardy, accompanied by Emma and her sister, visited Boscastle (2 miles down the valley from St Juliot), Tintagel (legendary birthplace of King Arthur) and the quarries of Penpethy, to seek slate for the roofing of the church. Next day, Hardy and Emma walked, unchaperoned, on the cliff tops. She loved the ‘beautiful sea-coast, [and] the wild Atlantic Ocean rolling in, with its magnificent waves and spray’, and declared that she and Hardy could scarcely have had a more romantic meeting.
¹¹

On the fourth day Hardy returned home. He later summed up just how deeply his own romantic instincts had been aroused by his meeting with Emma in a poem entitled
When I Set Out For Lyonnesse
(this being the poetical name for the county of Cornwall), and, in particular, in the poem’s final verse:

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes,

All marked with mute surmise

My radiance fair and fathomless,

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes!

It seemed Hardy had found the woman of his dreams. From then on he returned to St Juliot every few months, taking the opportunity to visit other local beauty spots with Emma, including the beautiful Valency Valley. (The word ‘valency’ is believed to derive from the Cornish ‘melin-jy’, meaning ‘mill house’.)

To return to Hardy’s literary endeavours, George Meredith had demanded that his next novel contain more of a plot and, sure enough, he obliged. However, in
Desperate Remedies
, the fact that there are effectively two stories going on – first a romance and then a murder – makes not inconsiderable demands on the reader. The story is as follows:

On the death of their father (who is already a widower), Owen Graye and his younger sister Cytherea leave the Midlands for Budmouth (Weymouth). Here they find lodgings and Owen takes up the post of assistant to a local architect. On an excursion by paddle steamer to Lulworth Cove, Owen misses the boat back. This enables Cytherea to become better acquainted with her brother’s friend and colleague Edward Springrove (who is head draughtsman in Owen’s office), who has joined the steamer for the return journey. Edward and Cytherea fall in love, but a problem arises. Edward is, in fact, already engaged to be married to his cousin.