Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1171 page)

While walking from Zermatt with a Russian gentleman to the Riffel-Alp Hotel, whither Mrs. Hardy had preceded him on a pony, he met some English ladies, who informed him of the mysterious disappearance of an Englishman somewhere along the very path he had been following. Having lunched at the hotel and set his wife upon the pony again he sent her on with the guide, and slowly searched all the way down the track for some clue to the missing man, afterwards writing a brief letter to The Times to say there was no sign visible of foul play anywhere on the road. The exertion of the search, after walking up the mountain-path in the hot morning sun, so exhausted his strength that on arriving at Geneva, whither they went after leaving Zermatt, he was taken so ill at the Hotel de la Paix that he had to stay in bed. Here as he lay he listened to the plashing of a fountain night and day just outside his bedroom window, the

casements of which were kept widely open on account of the heat. It was the fountain beside which the Austrian Empress was murdered shortly after by an Italian anarchist. His accidental nearness in time and place to the spot of her doom moved him much when he heard of it, since thereby hung a tale. She was a woman whose beauty, as shown in her portraits, had attracted him greatly in his youthful years, and had inspired some of his early verses, the same romantic passion having also produced the outline of a novel upon her, which he never developed.

While he was recovering at Geneva Mrs. Hardy found by chance the tomb of an ancestor who had died there. But of Geneva, its lake, Diodati, Montalegre, Ferney, and the neighbourhood, he merely remarks: ‘ These haunts of the illustrious! Ah, but they are gone now, and care for their chosen nooks no more!’

Again in London in July he expressed views on scenery in the following letter:

To the Editor of the ‘Saturday Review’

‘Sir, — I am unable to reply to your inquiry on “The Best Scenery I know”. A week or two ago I was looking at the inexorable faces of the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn: a few days later at the Lake of Geneva with all its soft associations. But, which is “best” of things that do not compare at all, and hence cannot be reduced to a common denominator? At any given moment we like best what meets the mood of that moment.

‘Not to be entirely negative, however, I may say that, in my own neighbourhood, the following scenes rarely or never fail to delight beholders:

‘1. View from Castle Hill, Shaftesbury.

‘2. View from Pilsdon Pen.

‘3. New Forest vistas near Brockenhurst.

‘4. The River Dart.

‘5. The coast from Trebarwith Strand to Beeny Cliff, Cornwall.’

From London he returned to Max Gate, and with Mrs. Hardy wandered off to Wells Cathedral, and onwards to Frome and Longleat, whence after examining the library and the architecture he proceeded to Salisbury, a place in which he was never tired of sojourning, partly from personal associations and partly because its graceful cathedral pile was the most marked instance in England of an architectural  mention carried out to the full.

‘August 10, Salisbury. Went into the Close late at night. The moon was visible through both the north and south clerestory windows to me standing on the turf on the north side. . . . Walked to the west front, and watched the moonlight creep round upon the statuary of the fagade — stroking tentatively and then more and more firmly the prophets, the martyrs, the bishops, the kings, and the queens. . . . Upon the whole the Close of Salisbury, under the full summer moon on a windless midnight, is as beautiful a scene as any I know in England — or for the matter of that elsewhere.

‘Colonel T. W. Higginson of the United States, who is staying at the same hotel as ourselves, introduced himself to us. An amiable well-read man, whom I was glad to meet. He fought in the Civil War. Went with him to hunt up the spot of the execution of the Duke of Buckingham, whose spirit is said to haunt King’s House still.’

After revisiting Stonehenge he remarks:

‘The misfortune of ruins — to be beheld nearly always at noonday by visitors, and not at twilight.

‘August 10, continued. “The day goeth away . . . the shadows of the evening are stretched out ... I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken. Therefore hear, ye nations. ... To what purpose cometh there to me incense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices sweet unto me.” Passages from the first lesson (Jer. vi.) at the Cathedral this afternoon. E. and I present. A beautiful chapter, beautifully read by the old Canon.’

‘August 13. All tragedy is grotesque — if you allow yourself to see it as such. A risky indulgence for any who have an aspiration towards a little goodness or greatness of heart! Yet there are those who do.’

‘August 15. It is so easy nowadays to call any force above or under the sky by the name of “God” — and so pass as orthodox cheaply, and fill the pocket!’

In September he passed a few pleasant days in bicycling about the neighbourhood with Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who had an idea just at that time that he would like to buy a house near Weymouth. They found a suitable house for sale at Rodwell, commanding a full view of Portland Roads; but difficulties arose when inquiries were made, and Mr. Kipling abandoned the idea.

Bicycling was now in full spirit with the Hardys — and, indeed,

with everybody — and many were the places they visited by that means.

‘October 10. Am told a singularly creepy story- — absolutely true, I am assured — of a village girl near here who was about to be married. A watch had been given her by a former lover, his own watch, just before their marriage was prevented by his unexpected death of consumption. She heard it going in her box at waking on the morning of the wedding with the second lover, though it had not been touched for years.

‘Lizzy D[the monthly nurse who had attended at Hardy’s birth] told my mother that she walked eighteen (?) miles the day after her own baby was born. . . . She was an excellent nurse, much in demand; of infinite kindheartedness, humour, and quaintness, and as she lived in a cottage quite near our house at Bockhampton, she as it were kept an eye upon the Hardy family always, and being her neighbour gave my mother the preference in clashing cases. She used to tell a story of a woman who came to her to consult her about the ghost of another woman she declared she had seen, and who “troubled her” — the deceased wife of the man who was courting her.

‘“How long hev’ the woman been dead?” I said.

‘“Many years!”

‘“ Oh, that were no ghost. Now if she’d only been dead a month or two, and you were making her husband your fancy-man, there might have been something in your story. But Lord, much can she care about him after years and years in better company!”‘

To return to 1897. Nothing more of much account occurred to Hardy during its lapse, though it may be mentioned that Jude, of which only a mutilated version could be printed as a serial in England and America, appeared in a literal translation in Germany, running through several months of a well-known periodical in Berlin and Stuttgart without a single abridgement.

‘1898. February 5. Write a prayer, or hymn, to One not Omnipotent, but hampered; striving for our good, but unable to achieve it except occasionally.’ [This idea of a limited God of goodness, often dwelt on by Hardy, was expounded ably and at length in MacTaggart’s Some Dogmas of Religion several years later, and led to a friendship which ended only with the latter’s death.]

As the spring drew on they entered upon their yearly residence of a few months in London — this time taking a flat in Wynnstay Gardens, Kensington. Hardy did some reading at the British Museum with a view to The Dynasts, and incidentally stumbled upon some details that suggested to him the Waterloo episode embodied in a poem called ‘The Peasant’s Confession’. He also followed up the concerts at the Imperial Institute, mostly neglected by Londoners. One visit gave him occasion for the following note, the orchestra this year being from the Scala, Milan:

‘Scene at the Imperial Institute this afternoon. Rain floating down in wayward drops. Not a soul except myself having tea in the gardens. The west sky begins to brighten. The red, blue, and white fairy lamps are like rubies, sapphires, turquoises, and pearls in the wet. The leaves of the trees, not yet of full size, are dripping, and the waiting-maids stand in a group with nothing to do. Band playing a “Contemplazione” by Luzzi.’

On June 24th, declining to write an Introduction to a proposed Library Edition of Fielding’s novels, he remarks:

‘Fielding as a local novelist has never been clearly regarded, to my mind: and his aristocratic, even feudal, attitude towards the peasantry {e.g. his view of Molly as a “slut” to be ridiculed, not as a simple girl, as worthy a creation of Nature as the lovely Sophia) should be exhibited strongly. But the writer could not well be a working novelist without his bringing upon himself a charge of invidiousness.’

Back in Dorset in July he resumed cycling more vigorously than ever, and during the summer went to Bristol, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Sherborne, Poole, Weymouth, and many other places — sometimes with Mrs. Hardy, sometimes with his brother.

In the middle of December IVessex Poems was published; and verse being a new mode of expression with him in print he sent copies to friends, among them one to Leslie Stephen, who said:

‘It gave me a real pleasure. I am glad to think that you remember me as a friend. ... I am always pleased to remember that Far from the Madding Crowd came out under my command. I then admired the poetry which was diffused through the prose; and can recognize the same note in the versified form. ... I will not try to criticize or distinguish, but will simply say that they have pleased me and reminded me vividly of the old time. I have, as you probably know, gone through much since then. . . .’

CHAPTER XXV

‘WESSEX POEMS’ AND OTHERS

1899-1900: Aet. 58-60

In the early weeks of this year the poems were reviewed in the customary periodicals — mostly in a friendly tone, even in a tone of respect, and with praise for many pieces in the volume; though by some critics not without umbrage at Hardy’s having taken the liberty to adopt another vehicle of expression than prose-fiction without consulting them. It was probably these reviews that suggested to Hardy several reflections on poetry and criticism about this time, and the following gleanings of his opinions are from the rough entries he made thereon. Some no doubt were jotted down hastily, and might have been afterwards revised.

He observes that he had been under no delusion about the coldness and even opposition he would have to encounter — at any rate from some voices — in openly issuing verse after printing nothing (with trifling exceptions) but prose for so many years.

Almost all the fault-finding was, in fact, based on the one great antecedent conclusion that an author who has published prose first, and that largely, must necessarily express himself badly in verse, no reservation being added to except cases in which he may have published prose for temporary or compulsory reasons, or prose of a poetical kind, or have written verse first of all, or for a long time intermediately.

In criticism generally, the fact that the date of publication is but an accident in the life of a literary creation, that the printing of a book is the least individual occurrence in the history of its contents, is often overlooked. In its visible history the publication is what counts, and that alone. It is then that the contents start into being for the outside public. In the present case, although it was shown that many of the verses had been written before their author dreamt of novels, the critics’ view was little affected that he had ‘at the eleventh hour’, as they untruly put it, taken up a hitherto uncared- for art.

3°oVERSE1899-1900

It may be observed that in the art-history of the century there was an example staring them in the face of a similar modulation from one style into another by a great artist. Verdi was the instance, ‘that amazing old man’ as he was called. Someone of insight wrote concerning him: ‘From the ashes of his early popularity, from II Trova- tore and its kind, there arose on a sudden a sort of phoenix Verdi. Had he died at Mozart’s death-age he would now be practically unknown.’ And another: ‘With long life enough Verdi might have done almost anything; but the trouble with him was that he had only just arrived at maturity at the age of threescore and ten or thereabouts, so that to complete his life he ought to have lived a hundred and fifty years.’

But probably few literary critics discern the solidarity of all the arts. Curiously enough Hardy himself dwelt upon it in a poem that seems to have been little understood, though the subject is of such interest. It is called ‘Rome: The Vatican: Sala delle Muse’; in which a sort of composite Muse addresses him:

‘Be not perturbed’, said she. ‘ Though apart in fame, 1 and my sisters are one.’

In short, this was a particular instance of the general and rather appalling conclusion to which he came — had indeed known before — that a volume of poetry, by clever manipulation, can be made to support any a priori theory about its quality. Presuppose its outstanding feature to be the defects aforesaid; instances can be found. Presuppose, as here was done, that it is overloaded with derivations from the Latin or Greek when really below the average in such words; they can be found. Presuppose that Wordsworth is unorthodox: instances can be found; that Byron is devout; instances can also be found. [The foregoing paragraphs are abridged from memoranda which Hardy set down, apparently for publication; though he never published them.]

He wrote somewhere: ‘There is no new poetry; but the new poet — if he carry the flame on further (and if not he is no new poet)

— comes with a new note. And that new note it is that troubles the critical waters.

‘Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.’