Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, the first of the four children of Thomas Hardy (1811–1892) and and his wife, Jemima (1813–1904), was born in Upper Bockhampton, near Dorchester, on 2nd June 1840. His father was a stonemason and jobbing builder.
According to his biographer, Michael Millgate: "As a sickly child, not confidently expected to survive into adulthood and kept mostly at home, Hardy gained an intimate knowledge of the surrounding countryside, the hard and sometimes violent lives of neighbouring rural families, and the songs, stories, superstitions, seasonal rituals, and day-to-day gossip of a still predominantly oral culture."
At eight Hardy went to the new national school in local school in Bockhampton. His mother was determined that he had a good education, and after a year arranged for him to study Latin, French and German at a nonconformist school in Dorchester. This involved a 3 miles walk, twice daily for several years.
At the age of 16 Hardy he was articled to John Hicks, an architect. During this period he became friends with Horace Moule, the socialist son of Horace Moule and evangelical vicar in Fordington. Moule was eight years older than Hardy. Moule has been described as "a charming and gentle man as well as a brilliant teacher". Moule also introduced him to socialism and to the radical ideas being expressed in the Saturday Review. Edited by John Douglas Cook, it attributed the majority of social evils to social inequality. Hardy became a great admirer of Percy Bysshe Shelley for his "genuineness, earnestness, and enthusiasms on behalf of the oppressed".
Once qualified, he moved to London and found work with a company that specialized in church architecture. In his spare-time he continued his education with visits to the theatre, opera and art galleries. It was at this time he began to write poetry, and although he submitted them to several magazines, they were all rejected.
Primary Sources
In The Woodlanders, many of Hardy's favourite themes resurface. They include the problems encountered when two persons of different social status fall in love, and when two men compete with one another for the hand of one woman, together with the problems men and women may have of understanding one another. Hardy also stresses that qualities such as loyalty, devotion and steadfastness in a male suitor, ought always to triumph over wealth, property and title.
The chief impression left on my mind is of the interesting house party at Mr. Clodd's. Besides M. Huchon and Clement Shorter and his wife (Dora Sigerson the poet), Henry Nevinson and Thomas Hardy were both there. I had already met Hardy in town, one afternoon at tea, and remember his saying, in answer to a question, that he did not find people on the whole much more brilliant in London than in Dorset. " At first," he said, " you think, when someone says something that is new to you, "How clever!" Then, wherever you go, you find everybody else saying the same thing, and you discover that people are not more original in London than they are anywhere else."
The chief thing I noticed about Thomas Hardy, during the Aldeburgh visit, was his modesty. In spite
of Clement Shorter's typical attempts to draw him out and make him play to the gallery, he remained unobtrusively himself, speaking in his gentle refined voice when he had something to say, but never for politeness' sake or for any other conventional reason. It was a delight to watch his face, especially in repose, so wise and so sensitive, already the face of an old man, in which, for all that, shone eyes that could not grow old because they were always on the watch. I have only occasionally seen eyes like his - in Edward Carpenter, for instance and in each case they betokened, I think, that eternal vigilance which allows no cruelty or injustice to pass unchallenged.
Hardy's tendency to relate gruesome and horrible incidents he had experienced or heard of, particularly in connection with the Boer War, then fresh in people's minds, struck me as slightly morbid: it seemed as though we could not avoid the macabre in any conversation to which he contributed. He was particularly concerned over the sufferings of horses in war-time, and declared emphatically that they should never be sent to the Front. That was before the Great War had by comparison reduced the atrocities of the South African campaign almost to unimportance.
I understood better the meaning of Thomas Hardy's obsession by the darker side of life when I met him again, in the summer of 1907, almost literally on his native heath. I was spending the holidays with my sister and her husband, Malcolm McCall, and their little daughter May (afterwards Mrs. Maurice Caillard), at Lulworth Cove; and I cycled over to Dorchester, one day, to lunch with the John Lanes, who were staying at the Antelope. I met Thomas Hardy in the town and spent a memorable hour or so in his company while he took me round his old haunts and told me stories of his boyhood. Among other places, we visited the china shop behind which he had discovered an Elizabethan playhouse; at least, he said it was an Elizabethan play-house, and I was quite ready to take his word for it as we clambered over packing-cases and a litter of straw to explore the raised platform at the back of the shop, which, he explained, was formerly the stage. The scepticism in the matter displayed by the proprietor of the shop was perhaps only local inability to appreciate a theory advanced by a genius who had once played as a boy in the streets of Dorchester. " Oh, aye," he observed indulgently, when I made polite remarks about the distinction of possessing a Shakespearean relic in his backyard, " Mr. Hardy does say something of the kind."
The psychology of that schoolboy who had once haunted the streets of Dorchester was revealed in flashes during our stroll about the town. Thomas Hardy told me he could just remember the public executions there, and added the tale of one revolting atrocity in connection with a woman which made one feel that, in spite of lingering barbarities in our penal system, we have moved slightly forward in our time. The hangings took place, he said, outside the King's Arms, always at ten minutes past twelve in order to allow for the arrival of a possible reprieve by the London coach, which came in at midday.
He also took me down by the river to point out the thatched cottage still known as the hangman's house, where, with other boys, he used to go after dark, to climb on the window-sill and peep through a chink in the blind at the dreaded executioner.
(3) Emma Hardy, letter to Mary Hardy (February 1896)
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, and 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, and may well, fear, lest the same be said of you... it is wicked, spiteful and 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 and 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, and your mother and sister on your native heath raising a storm on a Walpurgis (the eve of 1st May when witches convene and hold revels with the devil).
(4) Arthur C. Benson, diary entry (September, 1912)
Mrs Hardy is a small, pretty, rather mincing elderly lady with hair curiously puffed and padded and rather fantastically dressed. It was hard to talk to Mrs Hardy who rambled along in a very inconsequentional way, with a bird-like sort of wit, looking sideways and treating my remarks as amiable interruptions... It gave me a sense of something intolerable the thought of his having to live day and night with the absurd, inconsequent, huffy, rambling old lady. They don't get on together at all. The marriage was thought a misalliance for her, when he was poor and undistinguished, and she continues to resent it.... He is not agreeable to her either, but his patience must be incredibly tried. She is so queer, and yet has to be treated as rational, while she is full, I imagine, of suspicions and jealousies and affronts which must be half insane.
Why, in view of the trauma that he had suffered, did Hardy not simply walk away from Emma and petition for a divorce? There were several possible reasons: one was pride - in that he wished to avoid a scandal, which may have led to him being ostracised by society and shunned by his publisher; also, lie still felt responsible for Emma's welfare, and he could not bear the thought of the upheaval which this would entail, including the disruption to his writing. The over-riding reason, however, may have been that, as will be seen, the vision of Emma as he had once perceived her - the beautiful woman who had transfixed him, perhaps at first sight - had not left him, and it never would. And he would spend the remainder of his days in bewilderment, searching for his lost Emma, and hoping against hope that the vision would return.
