Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1135 page)

The publisher stated they could not purchase the MS. outright, but that they would publish it if he would guarantee a small sum against loss — say £20. The offer on the whole was fair and reasonable: Hardy agreed to the guarantee, Chapman promised to put the book in hand and to send a memorandum of his undertaking to publish it; and Hardy shortly after left London, expecting proof- sheets soon to be forwarded.

As they did not come he may have written to inquire about them; anyhow Messrs. Chapman suddenly asked him in a note if he would call on them and meet ‘the gentleman who read your manuscript’ — whose opinion they would like him to have.

He went in March, by appointment as to the day and hour, it is believed, not knowing that the ‘gentleman’ was George Meredith. He was shown into a back room of the publishing offices (opposite Sackville Street, and where Prince’s Restaurant now stands); and before him, in the dusty and untidy apartment, piled with books and papers, was a handsome man in a frock-coat — ‘buttoned at the waist, but loose above’ — no other than Meredith in person, his ample dark- brown beard, wavy locks, and somewhat dramatic manner lending him a striking appearance to the younger man’s eye, who even then did not know his name.

Meredith had the manuscript in his hand, and began lecturing Hardy upon it in a sonorous voice. No record was kept by the latter of their conversation, but the gist of it he remembered very well. It was that the firm were willing to publish the novel as agreed, but that he, the speaker, strongly advised its author not to ‘ nail his colours to the mast’ so definitely in a first book, if he wished to do anything practical in literature; for if he printed so pronounced a thing he would be attacked on all sides by the conventional reviewers, and his future injured. The story was, in fact, a sweeping dramatic satire of the squirearchy and nobility, London society, the vulgarity of the middle class, modern Christianity, church-restoration, and political and domestic morals in general, the author’s views, in fact, being obviously those of a young man with a passion for reforming the world — those of many a young man before and after him; the tendency of the writing being socialistic, not to say revolutionary; yet not argumentatively so, the style having the affected simplicity of Defoe’s (which had long attracted Hardy, as it did Stevenson, years later, to imitation of it). This naive realism in circumstantial details that were pure inventions was so well assumed that both Macmillan and Morley had been perhaps a little, or more than a little, deceived by its seeming actuality; to Hardy’s surprise, when he thought the matter over in later years, that his inexperienced imagination should have created figments that could win credence from such experienced heads.

The satire was obviously pushed too far — as sometimes in Swift and Defoe themselves — and portions of the book, apparently taken in earnest by both his readers, had no foundation either in Hardv’ s beliefs or his experience. One instance he could remember was a chapter in which, with every circumstantial detail, he described in the first person his introduction to the kept mistress of an architect who ‘took in washing’ (as it was called in the profession) — that is, worked at his own office for other architects — the said mistress adding to her lover’s income by designing for him the pulpits, altars, reredoses, texts, holy vessels, crucifixes, and other ecclesiastical furniture which were handed on to him by the nominal architects who employed her protector — the lady herself being a dancer at a music- hall when not engaged in designing Christian emblems — all told so plausibly as to seem actual proof of the degeneracy of the age.

Whatever might have been the case with the other two, Meredith was not taken in by the affected simplicity of the narrative, and that was obviously why he warned his young acquaintance that the press would be about his ears like hornets if he published his manuscript. For though the novel might have been accepted calmly enough by the reviewers and public in these days, in genteel mid-Victorian 1869 it would no doubt have incurred, as Meredith judged, severe strictures which might have handicapped a young writer for a long time. It may be added that the most important scenes were laid in London, of which city Hardy had just had between five and six years’ constant and varied experience — as only a young man at large in the metropolis can get it — knowing every street and alley west of St. Paul’s like a born Londoner, which he was often supposed to be; an experience quite ignored by the reviewers of his later books, who, if he only touched on London in his pages, promptly reminded him not to write of a place he was unacquainted with, but to get back to his sheepfolds.

The upshot of this interview was that Hardy took away the MS. with him to decide on a course.

Meredith had added that Hardy could rewrite the story, softening it down considerably; or what would be much better, put it away altogether for the present, and attempt a novel with a purely artistic purpose, giving it a more complicated ‘plot’ than was attempted with The Poor Man and the Lady.

Thus it happened that a first and probably very crude manuscript by an unknown young man, who had no connection with the press, or with literary circles, was read by a most experienced publisher, and by two authors among the most eminent in letters of their time. Also that they had been interested to more than an average degree in his work, as was shown by their wish to see him, and their voluntary bestowal of good counsel. Except the writer himself, these three seem to have been the only ones whose eyes ever scanned the MS.

It was surprising enough to Hardy to find that, in the opinion of such experienced critics, he had written so aggressive and even dangerous a work (Mr. Macmillan had said it ‘meant mischief’) almost without knowing it, for his mind had been given in the main to poetry and other forms of pure literature. What he did with the MS. is uncertain, and he could not precisely remember in after years, though he found a few unimportant leaves of it — now also gone. He fancied that he may have sent it to some other publisher just as it stood, to get another opinion before finally deciding its fate, which publisher may have thought it too risky also. What happened in respect of new writing was that he took Meredith’s advice too literally, and set about constructing the eminently ‘sensational’ plot of Desperate Remedies, of which anon.

Meanwhile, during his stay in London in the winter, Hardy heard news of the death at Dorchester of Mr. John Hicks, whose pupil he had been, and whom he had lately assisted; and at the end of April received a request from Mr. G. R. Crickmay, an architect of Weymouth, who had purchased Mr. Hicks’s practice, to aid him in carrying out the church-restorations that Hicks had begun, or undertaken to begin. Hardy called on Mr. Crickmay, who appeared not to have studied Gothic architecture specially, if at all, but was an amiable, straight-dealing man; and Hardy assented to help him finish the churches. Probably thinking of his book, he agreed for a fortnight only in the first place, though Mr. Crickmay had asked for a longer time.

During May Hardy continued to prepare for Crickmay, in Hicks’s old Dorchester office, the church-drawings he had already made some progress with; and the arrangement proved eminently satisfactory, as is evident, Mr. Crickmay proposing to enlist Hardy’s services for three months certain at his Weymouth office, the church-work left, unfinished by Hicks turning out to be more than had been anticipated It is to be gathered that Hardy considered this brief occupation would afford, at any rate, breathing-time while he should ruminate on what it was best to do about the writing of the novels, and he closed with Crickmay for a term which was afterwards still further lengthened by unforeseen circumstances.

He used to remember that after coming away from the interview with Crickmay with much lightness of heart at having shelved further thought about himself for at least three months, he stood opposite the Burdon Hotel on the Esplanade, facing the beautiful sunlit bay, and listened to the Town band’s performance of a set of charming new waltzes by Johann Strauss. He inquired their name, and found that it was the ‘Morgenblatter’. The verses ‘At a Seaside Town’ must refer in their background to this place at this time and a little onward, though the gist of them can be fancy only.

He now became regularly resident at Weymouth, and took lodgings there, rowing in the bay almost every evening of this summer, and bathing at seven in the morning either on the pebble-beach towards Preston, or diving off from a boat. Being — like Swinburne — a swimmer, he would lie a long time on his back on the surface of the waves, rising and falling with the tide in the warmth of the morning sun. He used to tell that, after the enervation of London, this tonic existence by the sea seemed ideal, and that physically he went back ten years in his age almost as by the touch of an enchanter’s wand.

In August or September a new assistant came to Mr. Crickmay’s drawing-offices, who was afterwards sketched in Desperate Remedies as ‘Edward Springrove’ — and in November this young man persuaded Hardy to join a quadrille class in the town, which was a source of much amusement to them both. Dancing was still an art in those days, though Hardy remarked once that he found the young ladies of Weymouth heavier on the arm than their London sisters. By the time that winter drew on he had finished all the drawings for church- restoration that had been placed in his hands, but he remained at his Weymouth lodgings, working at the MS. of Desperate Remedies, the melodramatic novel, quite below the level of The Poor Man and the Lady, which was the unfortunate consequence of Meredith’s advice to ‘write a story with a plot’.

A Development So 1869 passed, and at the beginning of February in the year following Hardy gave up his rooms at Weymouth and returned to his rural home to be able to concentrate more particularly on the MS. than he could do in a lively town and as a member of a dancing-class where a good deal of flirtation went on, the so-called ‘class’ being, in fact, a gay gathering for dances and love-making by adepts of both sexes. The poem entitled ‘The Dawn after the Dance’, and dated ‘Weymouth, 1869’, is supposed, though without proof, to have some bearing on these dances.

He had not been in the seclusion of his mother’s house more than a week when he received the following letter from Mr. Crickmay, which, as it led to unexpected emotional developments, it may be worth while to give verbatim:

‘Weymouth, ‘ nth February, 1870.

‘Dear Sir:

‘Can you go into Cornwall for me, to take a plan and particulars of a church I am about to rebuild there? It must be done early next week, and I should be glad to see you on Monday morning. — Yours tru,y’’G. R. Crickmay.’

This was the church of St. Juliot, near Boscastle, of which Hardy had vaguely heard in Mr. John Hicks’s time as being likely to turn up for manipulation, and had been struck by its romantic sound. Despite the somewhat urgent summons he declined the job, the moment being inconvenient with the new novel in hand. But receiving a more persuasive request from Crickmay later, and having finished the MS. of Desperate Remedies (except the three or four final chapters) by the beginning of March, he agreed to go on the errand.

Sending off, therefore, on the previous Saturday the copy of his second novel to Mr. Alexander Macmillan, whom he now regarded as a friend, he set out on Monday, March 7, for the remote parish mentioned, in a county he had never entered, though it was not distant. It was a journey of seeming unimportance, and was reluctantly undertaken, yet it turned out to have lifelong consequences for him. The restoration of this church was, moreover, the work which brought to a close Hardy’s labours in Gothic architecture, though he did not know it at the time.

Though the distance was not great the way was tedious, there being few railways in Cornwall at this date. Rising at four in the morning, and starting by starlight from his country retreat, armed with sketch-book, measuring-tape, and rule, he did not reach Launces- ton till four in the afternoon, where he hired a conveyance for the additional sixteen or seventeen miles’ distance by the Boscastle road towards the north coast, and the spot with the charming name — the dilapidated church, parish, and residence of the Rev. Caddell Holder, M.A. Oxon.

It was a cloudy evening at the end of a fine day, with a dry breeze blowing; and leaving the Boscastle highway by a by-road to the left he reached St. Juliot Rectory, by which time it was quite dark. His arrival and entry can best be described in the words of the lady whom he met that night for the first time, and who later on became his wife. Long afterwards she wrote down het: ‘Recollections’,

which are given in the following pages in full so far as they relate to her husband, these making up the whole of the second half of her manuscript, the first half being entirely concerned with other members of her family and herself before she knew him.

She was born at 10 York Street, Plymouth, and baptized at St. Andrew’s Church, being the younger daughter of Mr. J. Attersoll Gifford, a solicitor. She had grown up in a house close to the Hoe, which she used to call’ the playground of her childhood’. She would relate how, to her terror at first, she was daily dipped as a little girl in the pools under the Hoe; and on its cliffs — very much more rugged than now — had had her youthful adventures, one of which, leaving her clinging to a crag, would have cost her her life but for the timely aid of a kind boatman. Her education was carried on at a school for young ladies also overlooking the Hoe’s green slopes, where, to use her own words, ‘military drills took place on frequent mornings, and then our dear instructress drew down the blinds’. At nineteen she removed from Plymouth with her parents.

CHAPTER V

ST. JULIOT

1870: Aet. 29-30

The Latter Part of Mrs. (Emma Lavinia) Hardy’s MS., found after her Death, and entitled ‘Some Recollections’

[The words in square brackets are added to make the allusions intelligible]

‘My only sister married the Rev. Caddell Holder, son of a Judge of Barbadoes, where he was born: he often spoke of his beautiful home there, with oranges growing by his bedroom window. At Trinity College, Oxford, he was a “gentleman-commoner” (this is now abolished), where so far as he could discover his only privilege [from the distinction] was being allowed to walk upon the grass and wear a gold-tasselled cap, he used to say. He was rector of St. Juliot, North Cornwall, where I [first] knew him; and it was there that my husband made my acquaintance, which afterwards proved a romance in full for us. . . .