Thomas Hardy (8 page)

Horace Moule, in a chance meeting with Hardy, also advised him to continue with his writing;one reason being that in the event of his eyesight deteriorating, at some time in the future, and thus halting his architectural career, then this would provide him with an alternative occupation.

By another coincidence Hardy encountered Tinsley, who asked him whether he had any other manuscripts for him to look at. Hardy accordingly sent him, in April 1872, the manuscript of
Under the Greenwood Tree
. This was duly published two months later in June. The book was reviewed favourably by both the
Athenaeum
and the
Pall Mall Gazette
. On the strength of this, Tinsley asked Hardy to write a story for his
Tinsley’s Magazine
, to be serialised over a period of twelve months. (In Victorian times, to be published in a popular magazine provided a lucrative source of income for an aspiring new writer.) To this end, Hardy took a break from work and commenced his next novel,
A Pair of Blue Eyes
, which was inspired by his visit to Cornwall and his meeting with Emma, two and a half years previously.

Meanwhile, on Thursday 11 April 1872, the newly restored church of St Juliot was reopened, although neither Hardy nor Crickmay attended the ceremony. Morning and afternoon services were held. At the former, there was a much more numerous congregation than could have been expected, considering the busy season and the scattered population of this agricultural district. In the afternoon the beautiful building was filled with a devout audience.

It was reported that many clergymen from other parishes round about were also in attendance, including the Revd Henry M. A. Serjeant of St Clether – a village situated 7 miles from St Juliot – of whom more will be said shortly.
¹⁹
The ‘Statement of Receipts … on the Restoration of St Juliot Church, 1871–2’
²⁰
makes for interesting reading:

Emma’s father was conspicuous by his absence. The editor of the
Royal Cornwall Gazette
, however, could not hide his displeasure at the ‘restoration’ and the fact that:

Many old architectural features in the original building … are now destroyed and swept away for ever, adding another unmistakable specimen of Vandalism to what has already taken place at Tintagel, Lesnewth, and Forrabury.
²¹

In August 1872 Hardy made another visit to Cornwall, this time to Kirland House on the outskirts of Bodmin Town, where Emma’s parents, the Giffords, were now living. It is likely that the purpose of this visit was for Hardy to ask Emma’s father, John Attersoll Gifford, for permission to marry his daughter. Strictly speaking, this was not necessary as both parties were of age. Nevertheless, it was the convention of the times.

In the event the visit was not a happy one, and this is reflected in a poem which Hardy later wrote entitled
I Rose and Went to Rou’tor Town
(‘Rou’tor’ being his name for Bodmin). The poem purports to express the views of a female; a thin attempt at disguise by Hardy, for the sentiments expressed are undoubtedly his. It commences with a sense of cheerful anticipation:

I ROSE and went to Rou’tor Town

With gaiety and good heart,

And ardour for the start …

It continues:

When sojourn soon at Rou’tor Town

Wrote sorrows on my face …

And it ends in bitterness:

The evil wrought at Rou’tor Town

On him I’d loved so true

I cannot tell anew:

But nought can quench, but nought can drown

The evil wrought at Rou’tor Town

On him I’d loved so true.

Hardy was subsequently questioned about this poem by writer Vere H. Collins.
²²
What is ‘the evil wrought at Rou’tor Town’, asked Collins; to which Hardy replied: ‘Slander, or something of that sort.’ In other words, Emma’s father, who was violently opposed to any future attachment between Hardy and his daughter, was slanderously abusive to Hardy on the occasion in question.
²³
It is possible that Gifford was drunk, for as Emma states:

He married my mother after the death of her sister – a lovely golden haired girl of eighteen to whom he was engaged, shortly to be married … [immediately after whose death] he drank heavily, and in after life never a wedding, removal, or death occurred in the family but he broke out again.
²⁴

Gifford would subsequently refer to Hardy as ‘a low-born churl who has presumed to marry into my family’.
²⁵

Faced with this setback, how the cautionary words spoken to him by his mother must have echoed in Hardy’s mind, when she had warned him of the figure which ‘stands in our van (path) with arm uplifted, to knock us back from any pleasant prospect we indulge in’. Also, the effect on Hardy, with his sensitive nature, was to reinforce his pre-existing feelings of inferiority with regard to himself. So how was he to express his outrage and frustration about the way he had been treated by Emma’s father, and about the rigid class distinctions which pervaded Victorian society of which he was now a victim? Why, in the best way he knew how – through his writings.

Having extricated himself from this unpleasant interview with Gifford, Hardy subsequently relocated to St Benet’s Abbey, near Lanivet, the home of Captain Charles Eldon Serjeant
²⁶
and his wife Jane, who were friends of Emma’s. The captain was the first cousin of William Henry Serjeant, son of the curate of St Clether. Emma had formed a deep attachment to William, as will shortly be seen, but he had died seven months earlier in January 1872, at the young age of 23.

It is likely that Emma joined Hardy during his brief sojourn at St Benet’s Abbey in August 1872, and that it was then, notwithstanding the hostility of Emma’s father, that the couple became engaged. They also visited the Holders at St Juliot, where they received a more agreeable reception than they had at Kirland House.

Hardy went back to London, but quickly decided to return to the tranquillity of his family home at Bockhampton in order to give
A Pair of Blue Eyes
his full attention. An invitation from Professor Smith to revisit the capital was refused, despite the cordial relationship which existed between them.

Hardy’s visit to Cornwall in August 1872 prompted him to write another poem (which was subsequently published as part of his
Moments of Vision
collection):

Near Lanivet

THERE was a stunted handpost just on the crest,

Only a few feet high:

She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest,

At the crossways close thereby.

She leant back, being so weary, against its stem,

And laid her arms on its own,

Each open palm stretched out to each end of them,

Her sad face sideways thrown.

Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day

Made her look as one crucified

In my gaze at her from the midst of the dusty way,

And hurriedly ‘Don’t,’ I cried.

I do not think she heard. Loosing thence she said,

As she stepped forth ready to go,

‘I am rested now. – Something strange came into my head;

I wish I had not leant so!’

And wordless we moved onward down from the hill

In the west cloud’s murked obscure,

And looking back we could see the handpost still

In the solitude of the moor.

‘It struck her too,’ I thought, for as if afraid

She heavily breathed as we trailed;

Till she said, ‘I did not think how ‘twould look in the shade,

When I leant there like one nailed.’

I, lightly: ‘There’s nothing in it. For
you
, anyhow!’

– ‘O I know there is not,’ said she …

‘Yet I wonder … If no one is bodily crucified now,

In spirit one may be!’

And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see

In the running of Time’s far glass

Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be

Some day. – Alas, alas!

Almost half a century was to pass before Hardy confided to author, critic and writer of his biography
Thomas Hardy
, Harold Child, that the ‘the strange incident’ related by him in the poem ‘really happened’.
²⁷
He also admitted to his friend, florence Henniker, That the poem was ‘literally true’.
²⁸
And finally, he told his friend, the poet, author and critic, Edmund Gosse, that the scene described ‘occurred between us [himself and Emma] before our marriage’.
²⁹

It seems that the signpost (‘handpost’) which stood on the hill reminded Emma of Calvary, and the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. But why did she then choose, to Hardy’s horror, to mimic Christ and his posture on the cross? And why afterwards did she ask him, again to his horror, if it was possible for a person to be crucified in spirit, rather than in body? Given the time and context in which the poem was written – that is, shortly after Hardy’s visit to Kirland House, and his unfortunate interview with Emma’s father – its meaning is not difficult to deduce.

When Christ was crucified he was making atonement for the sins of the world. Emma, as a devout Christian, would therefore have regarded crucifixion as a punishment for sin, and it was because of her own feelings of guilt that she chose, on that gloomy evening spent with Hardy, to mimic Christ on the cross. Possible sources of this guilt are as follows. In promising herself to Hardy, Emma had gone against the express wishes of her father, who regarded the young architect as ‘a low-born churl’. But even more serious was the fact that she did not love Hardy: her thoughts were not with him, but with another, and for this reason she had no intention of ever having a sexual relationship with him. Extraordinary as this latter statement may seem, evidence of its veracity will be produced in due course.

This being the case, why did Emma consent to marry Hardy? According to a reliable source, it was because her sister Helen, wife of the Revd Caddell Holder, ‘was trying to marry her younger sister … to any man who would have her’. Also, Emma ‘was nearly thirty then &nd the sisters had violent quarrels’.
³⁰

Hardy would set his novels in an area which included the counties of south-west and central-southern England, which he called ‘Wessex’ (after a previous Saxon kingdom of that name), but he invented his own names for the real-life places which existed within this region. For example, ‘Knollsea’ is Swanage; ‘Casterbridge’ is Dorchester; ‘Weatherbury’ is Puddletown; ‘Budmouth Regis’ is Weymouth.
¹

As for the content of his novels, Hardy, as already mentioned, once told his friend Edward Clodd that ‘every superstition, custom, &c., described therein may be depended on as true records of the same – & not inventions of mine’.
²
This fact is borne out by a surviving notebook of Hardy’s which contains extracts collected from
The Dorset County Chronicle
, which was a primary source for the plots of many of his novels, together with extracts of histories and biographies which he had studied. However, Hardy also had a habit of blending into the fabric of his novels some of his own experiences, and in this, his third published novel,
A Pair of Blue Eyes
, was to be no exception. To begin with, it is surely no coincidence that Emma Gifford, with whom Hardy had fallen in love, had eyes of blue.

In
A Pair of Blue Eyes
, the reader is brought face to face with a drama involving love, betrayal and death; played out in the equally dramatic countryside of Cornwall. It was published in May 1873 by Tinsley Brothers, when Hardy was aged 32.