It is good that we should all be reminded, especially those of us who live on little islands of comfort and complacency, of the sea of misery in which so many swim desperately and ultimately founder. But is it good that we should be told, in very beautiful English, that the victims of such misery are simply the sport of the Immortals, that man struggles for ever helplessly in the grip of Fate, that this helpless struggle has been going on for all time, and that it will go on for all further time? Dickens, the unrepentant optimist, was like a jolly man in a tap-room who leads the chorus of roysterers, insists that milk-punch is the jolliest thing imaginable, snaps his finger at last week’s dun and to-morrow’s headache, and intimates that it would be folly (and even sin) to go home till morning—at any rate until justice has been done to the bitter ale and broiled bones which the thoughtful landlord has in view for the small hours. But half-way through the revel this jolly person, going outside for a moment, comes across a starving waif. He returns at once to his boon companions, makes their hearts bleed with his pathos (which is none the less roughly effective because it is a little tinged with the milk-punch), organises a “whip-round” of a few shillings each, and so does really simplify the problem of that individual waif. True, only a very insignificant impression has been made on the mass of unseen misery. But the one item of visible misery has been relieved, and (perhaps more important) a disposition has been created on a number of not unpleasant people to recognise and relieve misery when they see it.
But Mr. Hardy, the pessimist, his beautiful style never vulgarised and his fine intellect never flustered by milk-punch, has no such effect. He deftly exhibits his samples of hell, intimates that there is a quite unlimited stock fully up to specification, and rather hopes that he will be able to show you something even more striking by the opening of the spring season. Tess is not bad. But “Jude the Obscure” has also his points; in fact, the wholesale house for which we travel is not to be surpassed for variety and quality of misery. Somebody accused Carlyle (I think) of bringing a load of woe to one’s doorstep and leaving it there. Mr. Hardy does not exactly leave it. He is far more thoughtful than that. He rings the bell, explains with perfect charm and lucidity every item in the pack of trouble, and carefully explains to the householder that, however mean he may feel, it is no good his trying to do anything. That highly human (and not undesirable) instinct of Mr. Snagsby to try on all occasions what a half-crown will do is frozen by a sense not only of helplessness but almost of impiety. Is not one even a presumptuous worm to think of opposing a miserable thirty pence to the implacable operation of Circumstance?
Mr. Hardy’s depression steadily grows as he gets older. There is, it is true, much bitterness in his more youthful poems. But it is the sort of bitterness that goes with clever youth. A somewhat more buoyant note distinguishes the work of his early manhood; but with middle age the shadows deepen, and a deep and almost unrelieved sadness broods over all. It would be untrue to say that Mr. Hardy has no humour; is there no humour in that question of the rustic, in defending the ways of Providence, “D’ye think the man’s a fool?” But it is scarcely untrue to say that Mr. Hardy’s humour is commonly as depressing as his gloom; it has much the same mournful effect as those infrequent flashes of the comic spirit which emphasise the determined dismalness of Mr. Galsworthy. Mr. Hardy’s humour has nothing sunny in it; it is rather like the arc-light which, on a frosty night, makes us see the cold as well as feel it. One can hardly recall another great English novelist who has no hearty, genial, enjoying laugh in him. But one can find many foreign counterparts to Mr. Hardy, ancient and modern; if he seems colder than they, it is only a question of climate. It is often chilly round the Mediterranean, but one can do without a fire; in England one wants, if not the grateful open blaze, at least some efficient system of central heating. Reading much Hardy has the effect of sitting in a beautifully furnished room on a February day without a fire; but the simile is not quite exact—there should be all the elements of the fire, except the heat.
Possibly it is in the very gentleness of Mr. Hardy that we may look for the secret of this pessimism. His detestation of any form of cruelty may have embittered his indictment of the cruelty of Fate. In one of his books he dwells for a moment on the pain of a wounded pheasant, and turns away with an imprecation against its wounders. But there would be no pheasants without shooters, and most pheasants live happily and die painlessly. Equally are Tess and Jude the exceptions. It is the defect—and even the artistic defect—of Mr. Hardy that he manages to convey the impression that they are the rule.
CHAPTER XXII
EARL SPENCER
In a famous passage Lord Morley of Blackburn referred to a meeting during the early Nineties in the famous library at Althorp:
“A picture to remember. Spencer with his noble carriage and fine red beard. Mr. Gladstone, seated on a low stool, discoursing as usual, playful, keen, versatile; Rosebery, saying little, but now and then launching a pleasant mot; Harcourt, cheery, expansive, witty. Like a scene from one of Dizzy’s novels, and all the actors men with parts to play.”