Tess (23 page)
Authors: Emma Tennant
Hardy showed the portraits of those murderesses at Wellbridge (Wool Manor as it's taken to be) to Tess, to remind her that she would never be able to elude her destiny. Any more than our mother would â who was never recognized by the world, brought up with the gypsies after her foremothers lost their rightful place in the Marshwood Vale. So she blew hither and thither with the wind â a seed carrying a seed of the next violent act of destruction.
At the sharp bend in the road, past the cottage of old Mother Hum (still alive when our Tess got into trouble, but we'll come to that), we lose sight of the tree and start out on the long walk west. A red post-box â VR engraved on this tiny splash of officialdom in remote countryside (a century ago, in the last years of the old Queen's reign, this box was erected on its stick, now almost wholly concealed by an ancient box hedge) â and by the side of the red box stands a bus stop, no less! We'll risk it, we'll stop here â the bus along the coastal road that Tess and I would jump onto so often, to escape to the pictures in Weymouth and the pier afterwards as it grew dark and there was some danger in the air â the bus will take us home at last, to Abbotsbury and Ella and the Mill.
As we stand â and then sit on a hard bank by the side of the hedge, to wait â a flock of wild geese flies over. You look up, your eyes blue and clear as the sky, and I see the white birds reflected there, like clouds. Do you see where they go, I wonder? Where will you be when the mild air of a Dorset spring welcomes them back to nest? Will the digging men have found the body, will you be placed in care, as stumbling and piteous as young birds when they first
waddle from the pile of sticks and straw? Or will you be the first to break the pattern â and change the balance of the world?
What an October this is, the October of 1924!
It's not just that Florence will grieve and weep â and attack her rival for speaking âlow intimacies' to Thomas Hardy in the tea-break between the matinée and evening performance of
Tess
in Dorchester (his excuse: that Augustus John, sitting on the other side of Mrs Bugler, was the subject of discussion and would not have been amused if he had overheard).
Nor is it that all the town is abuzz now with the scandal of Hardy and his infatuation. Even the Hardy Players, no doubt because Gertrude receives so much more attention than they from the great man, spread vile gossip, giggle in corners, collect outside Mr Bugler père's confectionery shop and grunt low jokes about sweet pastries and
bonnes bouches
(they know the poet's predilection for mouths). Everyone loves the scandal, except Florence of course; and how everyone looks forward to 26th November when the world-famous poet will show his foolish love (they hope) in full view at the First Night.
No, it's none of these things that makes October 1924 so specially memorable.
It's the rise of a new phenomenon (in Dorchester, at least). A young actress becomes a Star!
And all because of the movies!
I will explain.
Thomas Hardy has seen the results of the filming of
The Mayor of Casterbridge
â he has involved himself sufficiently to accompany
film and crew to Maiden Castle. And he broods, on return, that âperhaps the cinematograph will take the place of fiction, and novels will die out, leaving only poetry'.
Clever and perceptive of the man whose last novel,
The Well-Beloved
, took the author as far as it was possible to go, into the exposure of the deepest secrets of the erotic wellspring behind creativity. But perceptive in other ways too â for surely his darling should be immortalized on screen, surely âTess lives' should become eerily, fascinatingly possible with the coming of this new great invention of the twentieth century? Hardy imagines visiting the cinematograph alone every day, long after the last curtain has gone down on the few performances of
Tess
at the Corn Exchange (at which he is expected to behave with dignity and propriety, as befits England's most famous living poet).
In his dreams Hardy imagines a small cinematograph at the end of his bed. He needn't leave Max Gate at all, and again and again he can see the haunting beauty, the great dark eyes of his Tess as she delivers the lines he has adapted for her.
Hardy dreams into the future, and the legendary screen goddesses, some he has not even heard of yet, dance before his eyes: Marilyn and Marlene, Joan and Barbara and Lana and Jean.
Always, though, Hardy is faithful to his Tess. In the silent films where he fantasizes that she moves so fast and so touchingly, her fate flickering in the last reel as the hangman ties the noose, Tess is Queen of them all.
Hardy resolves to make enquiries on the subject. After all, why not? With
The Mayor
in the can, it would seem quite unsuspicious to demand that
Tess
be committed to film next. (Not that anything the old man does appears unsuspicious in the autumn of 1924; but he's unaware of it.)
Then the blow falls.
A Goldwyn film has already been made! It is shown in â October 1924 â just by an accident of timing that reminds Hardy of the tragedies he loves to write. And oh dear, it shocks everyone to the core.
Hardy hurries to rehearsal after hearing of this travesty. His Gertrude must become the real, the only star â his Tess must
be the only Tess, the faithful mirror of the young woman he invented â and sent to the gallows â in just one moment of creative force all those years ago when he met her mother Augusta Way. Gertrude must go down in his history â must tour the world if necessary â showing the true lineaments of Tess to the waiting public.
Hardy fumes and pleads with his Players to squeeze the best performance, on the night, from his beloved
Tess
. Famous people have been invited to the première! They will write notices of
Tess
! No one will forget the pathos of her scene with Angel in Wool Manor, Wellbridge as it is in the book â no one will go away with a dry eye from this play of a âPure Woman, Faithfully Presented'. Then Hardy groans aloud and gnashes his teeth. How did he allow them to get away with balding Dr E. W. Smerdon? ⦠and for one whole minute the great poet considers playing Angel himself, thrilling to the grief of the audience as he spurns the woman he loves â¦
But the public outcry over the film helps to bring fame to Gertrude Bugler â that and the rumours of scandal with the author of
Tess
, sixty years her senior. It's just like Hollywood, really.
The wags giggle over the name of the star in the Goldwyn silent movie. Blanche Sweet, no less! They mouth her name outside Mr Bugler's confectionery shop on the corner of South Street where the chocolates, nougat and marzipan, and iced cakes ready for coming birthdays and wedding feasts, are laid out temptingly: Blanche Sweet. They mutter when they pass Gertrude, serious, deeply thoughtful, a young actress on the brink of the great role of her career, as she walks to the Corn Exchange, on the night of the First Performance: Blanche Sweet! It's enough to put anyone off their stroke. And they whistle a popular ragtime refrain of the day â for isn't it in a nightclub, in the film, that Tess meets Alec? A nightclub, no less!
Hardy, over the short, non-companionable dinners at Max Gate, tells Florence of the disaster of the Goldwyn film. It will take away the dignity of the book (by which he means it may take away the
success of Gertrude Bugler as Tess). He has a mind to sue the Hollywood studio ⦠and so on and so on.
Florence â who through all these years has been joint author with her husband of Thomas Hardy's autobiography, and whose public face is one of decorum, and of restrained anger and indignation should the slightest slur be cast on the poet's name â fails to look up from the tough wedge of meat and overcooked batter on her plate.
â It is of the utmost importance that my play is recognized as the definitive version, Hardy says peevishly, as Wessex, coming to the rescue as so often before, leaps from chair to table and scavenges on the plate of his lacklustre mistress.
Florence says nothing. But Hardy's mind is made up. Unaware of street gossip and all the hue and cry surrounding Gertrude already, he determines she shall become the most famous and respected actress of them all.
This is where, as you might say, I come in. âMy' part â played by â who else? â Gertrude's younger sister, âMiss A. Bugler'; the role of Liza-Lu, perennial younger sister to the doomed, beautiful Tess; Liza-Lu who goes off with her Angel in the end.
Now we're back at the Mill, and the door with its rusted hinges, battered wooden panels that let in the rain and need to be replaced before the tenants drive down from London in their glitzy car, has opened and let us in to the hall, with its junk mail on the mat. Now we're back here at last, Baby Tess, I can tell you the rest of the story. The sad story of Tess and Alec and Angel â and Liza-Lu. It's close on midday, and a strong September sun lights up the leaves on the fig tree outside on the terrace â we could be in Italy, the green of the leaves is so intense â we could look up into the blue sky and see angels, climbing on ladders of rosy cloud, angels coming for the soul of the child of Hardy's Tess, a child Hardy fathered and then left to die. We could see the saviour Hardy created for Tess â the âgood man', fair as Jesus Christ, the perfect balance for her dark beauty and haunted soul; the character he had the nerve to give a harp and call Angel
Clare. Angel came for Tess â and when Tess killed herself after his betrayal of her, he came for Liza-Lu.
As he did on the stage, in the Corn Exchange. As he did, years later when the story is played out again, for me. (But no one knows how Angel and the little sister-in-law got on, of course. The book ends there.)
Maybe I'm the only one to understand how involved in the life of another a younger sister can become â how she can live through her elder sibling's feelings and forget she ever had the right to any herself. As little Miss A. Bugler did on the great night, the First Night, the night Gertrude goes up like a shooting star into the night sky of Dorchester and rises so high she can be seen in London, in America even! I can feel now for the twelve-year-old âamateur', Gertrude's younger sister, as she helps Tess with her gown, checks everything is in place ⦠(but forgets one vital thing, as we shall see) â¦
The play's a smash. Hardy has invited the great and the good, the famous critics and the literary ladies with whom he has had dalliances over the past half-century or so.
Tess
will be the talk of the big city, Gertrude will personify the tragic heroine, a young woman so much more moving than France's Emma Bovary, and already as well known as Dante's Beatrice.
This is the night of the final incarnation. The
Times
sees Gertrude Bugler has âa most moving sincerity and beauty â more beauty, one imagines, than could have been achieved by one or two of the most eminent professional actresses who have longed to play the part â¦'
Poor Gertrude! Florence sits in the stalls with her husband. Her neck throbs, at the spot where the tumour was removed. She senses the lascivious admiration the old men feel for the pure, sincere actress on the stage; Augustus John, Sir James Barrie â and her husband, of course, the great Thomas Hardy.
And Sir James Barrie, no less, tells the Hardys after the performance that âthe girl should go on the London stage at once'.
Hardy dreams of escape, elopement. In a flash he sees himself in the London of his youth, the horse-drawn omnibus taking him to the shabby street at the foot of Notting Dale where he lives in sexy Bohemian style with his mistress, the beautiful young actress Gertrude Bugler â¦
Gertrude shall go to London! Yes, offers pour in already, there will be a production at the Haymarket Theatre and there's talk of going to the United States, of showing the âbeauty, calm passivity and vulnerable innocence' of Tess to the waiting audiences of America â¦
Little Miss A. Bugler so identifies with her role as Liza-Lu that she bursts into tears at the end of the performance, when Tess is taken from Stonehenge to be hanged.
â The child should be taken home at once, sniffs Florence (who has taken to frequenting rehearsals). She dreads this so-obvious manifestation of the dangerous substitution of fantasy for reality â after all, she has painfully witnessed the state her husband has been in ever since he fell into the toils (as she sees it) of Gertrude.
Little Miss A. Bugler has fallen in love with Angel, too â but here she has crossed further barriers in order to satisfy her adolescent lust for unrequited love, âcrushes', passions for the unattainable matinée idol. For even the stage-struck younger sister of the newly famous portrayer of Tess cannot bring herself to find Dr E. W. Smerdon handsome or moving in any way. (She's tried, especially when watching from the wings the scene in Wool Manor when he fastens the gems round his bride's neck â but the bald patch shines in the arc lights and her in-love feeling fades away.)
No. Liza-Lu has chosen Conrad Nagel, Tess's co-star in the Goldwyn film, now showing at the picture palace in Dorchester. She has to go secretly: Gertrude, imbued with the religious significance of her role by Thomas Hardy, would be deeply offended to learn that her sister had sneaked off to the flicks to see Satan's version, commercialized and trite. But she can't help it. She's
Liza-Lu â and it's with heart-throb Conrad Nagel, alias Angel Clare, that she wants to make love.
Making love is all in the air. Florence, back at Max Gate, hears Hardy scribbling poems late into the night and is by his wastepaper basket as soon as he shuffles out with Wessex for his morning walk. But so far she finds nothing: has the old Devil found a way of hiding his outpourings, his senile (in Florence's view) poetic declarations of his love for the star he has made to be born?
Florence hunts high and low. Nothing. Meanwhile, she has the Weymouth performance of
Tess
to look forward to now.
The ninth of December â the days crawl by. Liza-Lu's passion for Angel-on-celluloid makes her give up eating. The chocolates and whipped-cream confections in her father's bakery sicken her. Her mother becomes frantic with worry.
