Thomas Hardy (24 page)

In
The Dynasts
, where Hardy postulates the existence of an ‘Immanent (all-pervading, universal) Will’, the words ‘This Tale of Will, And life’s impulsion by Incognizance’ sum up the situation succinctly. The peoples of the Earth are being continually pushed hither and thither by some great force which he calls the ‘Urging Immanence’,
²⁵
of which they are completely unaware; and hence, Hardy’s comment that the Napoleonic Wars were brought about ‘artificially’.

Despite his protestations to the contrary, Hardy has provided an explanation for how life on Earth progresses: that human beings, without their knowledge, are being manipulated by an external force. The corollary to this is that everything they experience is predetermined. What motivates this ‘Will’, what its values are, if any, and where it has its origins, is not explained, except to say that it ‘reasonest not’ and is both ‘Loveless’ and ‘Hateless’ at the same time.
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The fact that it drove Napoleon to fight Wellington, together with the Prussians and the Russians, and vice-versa, suggests that it may even have a malicious, destructive component.
The Dynasts
, nevertheless, ends on a note of hope:

… the rages

Of the ages

Shall be cancelled.

And the Chorus sings out, ‘deliverance’ will be ‘offered from the darts that were …’, so that finally, ‘Consciousness the Will informing’ will finally ‘fashion all things fair’. In other words, the ‘Will’ will make sure that everything comes right in the end. (For Hardy, alleged to be an inveterate pessimist, this is a surprising conclusion for him to have come to.) He appears to be saying that until the universal ‘Will’ makes itself known to us, it is not possible for us to understand why things happen. Until then, human beings will continue to act, in his words, like ‘puppets’, like ‘the mindless minions of the spell’,
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and will continue to become enmeshed in events not of their choosing, such as war.

In 1908 Hardy was as active as ever: receiving a visit from Lady St Helier; dining at the Royal Academy; attending a performance of some scenes from
The Dynasts
enacted by a Dorchester dramatic society; visiting Cambridge, and attending the Mansion House for a dinner commemorating the poet John Milton. However, because Emma felt ‘too weak to undertake housekeeping up there’, the Hardys did not take lodgings in London that year, as was their usual practice.
²⁸

In September Hardy wrote at length about ‘Marky’, a favourite cat. In the process of making a bed for her forthcoming kittens, Marky had visited the bedroom of Jane, one of Max Gate’s servants, and ‘torn her Sunday hat in rents, so that she cannot wear it anymore’. The hat cost 4
s
2
d
, said Hardy, who gave her 5
s
to buy another; whereupon, she was ‘quite content’. When Marky duly gave birth to her kittens, Hardy stated that all but one were to be drowned the following morning. This may at first seem out of character for a professed animal lover such as himself. Nevertheless, it reflects the practicalities of country living.
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Having been comforted by her feline companion, ‘Daisy’, until she got over the loss of her kittens, Marky recovered from her grief and excelled herself a month later by catching a leveret, which the Hardys cooked and ate.

In January 1909 Hardy admitted that while writing
The Dynasts
, he had experienced ‘periodic frights, lest I should never live to finish the book’. In consequence, ‘alas’, he had ‘rattled along too hurriedly [with the writing of it]’.
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(This sentiment will ring a bell with any author over the age of about 65.) That year, Hardy was appointed governor of Dorchester Grammar School.

When his friend, the poet Algernon Swinburne, died, Hardy’s rheumatism prevented him from attending the funeral, which took place on 15 April 1909. He deplored the attitude of the nation to Swinburne’s death, describing it as ‘ignoring and almost contemptuous’. That autumn he visited more cathedral cities: this time Chichester, York, Edinburgh and Durham.

In late April 1909 Hardy was to be found advising the Stinsford Church Restoration Committee. ‘The only legitimate principle for guidance,’ he said, was ‘to limit all renewals to
repairs for preservation
, and never to indulge in alterations.’ This was ‘an interesting building, and one very easy to injure beyond remedy’. He gave detailed instructions to the committee, and included a sketch to illustrate how the replacement guttering should be applied. He could not help commenting, however, on how the erection, in about 1870, of the ‘imitation Early English nave roof … in place of the good old sixteenth century waggon roof with bosses, which had become decayed’, had irrevocably altered the relation of tower to nave. Not only that, but the ‘Cholmondeley monument’ (to Marcia Cholmondeley, a member of the Pitt family) had been destroyed to create a corbel.
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In May 1909 Hardy spoke of the good that he believed would come if women were given the vote. They would help abolish the ‘slaughter-house inhumanities’ of blood sports and the ‘present blackguard treatment of animals generally’. Also, men would then feel free to knock down or rationalise ‘all superstitious institutions’ such as ‘theologies, marriage, wealth-worship, labour-worship’ and ‘hypocritical optimism’.
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In a letter to Florence Henniker later that year, Hardy confessed to being ‘not in the brightest of spirits [but] who can expect to be at my age, with no children to be interested in?’
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Time’s Laughingstocks
, a collection of poems by Hardy, some dating back to the mid-1860s, was published by Macmillan in December 1909. Titles include
The Fiddler
,
The Dead Quire
(in memory of those who used to sing and play in Stinsford church), and
Former Beauties
(remembering the ‘young things … we loved in years agone’). But, as always with Hardy, it is the personal poems which hold the greatest fascination. In
To Carrey Clavel
(yet another of the numerous pseudonyms that he used for Emma), Hardy complains:

You turn your back, you turn your back,

And never your face to me,

Alone you take your homeward track,

And scorn my company.

The Division
, meanwhile, speaks of ‘our severance’:

… that thwart thing betwixt us twain,

Which nothing cleaves or clears …

In
Bereft
he talks of ‘my lone bed’. Whilst in
He Abjures Love
Hardy enquires:

… after love what comes?

A scene that lours,

A few sad vacant hours,

And then, the Curtain.

The Dead Man Walking
begins:

They hail me as one living

But don’t they know

That I have died of late years,

Untombed although?

These poems, which speak for themselves, are yet another terrible indictment of Hardy’s marriage.

The portrait painted of Emma has thus far relied largely on the testimony of her husband. But what of her own thoughts and feelings? How did she view him? Although Hardy destroyed Emma’s manuscript entitled
What I Think of My Husband
, some of her letters have survived, together with her
Recollections
and a portion of her
Diaries
. So we may let her speak for herself in her own words.

Emma described the home in Plymouth where she was brought up as ‘a most intellectual one and not only so but one of exquisite home-training and refinement – alas the difference the loss of these amenities and gentilities has made to me’.
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She went on to describe her dancing lessons and the pretty dresses which she wore to parties, where ‘the military and navy [were] usually present’.
²
She made her disdain for Hardy quite clear; for example, she told Edward Clodd that ‘A man who had humble relations shouldn’t live in the place where he was brought up’.
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And subsequently, with his relatives in mind, she referred scathingly to ‘the peasant class’.
⁴
(Here, it will be recalled that Hardy wrote his first novel,
The Poor Man and the Lady
, in the year 1867, whereas he first met Emma in 1870. Therefore, he was preoccupied with feelings of inadequacy in regard to his social status well before he first met her, and she merely reinforced these feelings in him.) In November 1894 she complained that Hardy’s interest in the cause of women’s suffrage was ‘nil’: ‘He understands only the women he
invents
– the others not at all.’
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In a letter to Mary Hardy (currently headmistress of Bell Street Junior School for Girls in Dorchester), dated February 1896, Emma launched a diatribe of invective against her sister-in-law:

I dare you, or anyone to spread evil reports of me – such as that I have been unkind to your brother, (which you actually said to my face,) or that I have ‘errors’ in my mind (which you have also said to me), and I hear that you repeat to others.

Your brother has been outrageously unkind to me – which is
entirely your
fault: ever since I have been his wife you have done all you can to make division between us; also, you have set your family against me, though neither you nor they can truly say that I have ever been anything but just, considerate, & kind towards you all, notwithstanding frequent low insults.

As you are in the habit of saying of people whom you dislike that they are ‘mad’ you should, & may well, fear, least (lest) the same be said of you … it is a wicked, spiteful & most malicious habit of yours.

You have ever been my causeless enemy – causeless, except that I stand in the way of your evil ambition to be on the same level with your brother by trampling upon me … doubtless you are elated that you have spoiled my life as you love power of any kind, but you have spoiled your brother’s & your own punishment must inevitably follow – for God’s promises are true for ever.

You are a witch-like creature and quite equal to any amount of evil-wishing & speaking – I can imagine you, & your mother & sister on your native heath raising a storm on a Walpurgis night [the eve of 1 May when witches convene and hold revels with the devil].
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This letter may have had a basis of truth, insofar as Mary may, in her exasperation at the situation which pertained at Max Gate, have been critical of Emma and expressed this criticism to her face. However, its extreme language, and the fact that it relates not only to Mary but to her sister Katharine and her mother Jemima – all thoroughly respectable people – is perhaps more a reflection of Emma’s paranoid mental state than of the real situation on the ground. More will be said about this shortly.

Emma subsequently elaborated further, on the subject of witches:

Well you know they always live on
Heaths
, or Moors or desolate plains or Mountains – but have no mediaval [sic] ways or any broom-sticks etc, but are
modern evil
-
wishers
as the name means … [and] they can throw the odium of their evil doings & wishings on the innocent. There are, as a matter of fact, many malicious defamers
here
in, ah even, In ‘Casterbridge’ [Hardy’s name for Dorchester].
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Another of Emma’s fears – a more rational one – was that the French would invade England and enforce the Catholic faith. For this reason, she always kept a suitcase filled with provisions to hand, so that should the necessity arise, she could take flight.
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By February 1897, Emma’s comments about Hardy were becoming increasingly acidulated. Said she: ‘One thing I abhor in Authors … is their blank materialism … I get irritated at their pride of intellect.’
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In August 1899, in another thinly veiled criticism of her husband, she said: ‘I can scarcely think that love proper, and enduring, is in the nature of men. There is ever a desire to give but little in return for our devotion, & affection.’

She spoke of her ‘years of devotion’ to Hardy, but warned: ‘Interference from others is greatly to be feared – members of either family too often are the cause of estrangement.’
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