He takes note of that language which, though not articulate, is in common use among yeomen, dairymen, farmers, and the townsfolk of his little world. It is a language superimposed upon the ordinary language. ‘To express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added to his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes, a throwing back of the shoulders.’ ‘If he wondered … you knew it from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth and the target-like circling of his eyes.’ The language of deliberation expressed itself in the form of ‘sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with the end of his stick’ or a ‘change of his hat from the horizontal to the less so.’
The novel called The Woodlanders is filled with notable illustrations of an interest in minute things. The facts are introduced unobtrusively and no great emphasis is laid upon them. But they cling to the memory. Giles Winterbourne, a chief character in this story, ‘had a marvelous power in making trees grow. Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly there was a sort of sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that he was operating on; so that the roots took hold of the soil in a few days.’ When any of the journeymen planted, one quarter of the trees died away. There is a graphic little scene where Winterbourne plants and Marty South holds the trees for him. ‘Winterbourne’s fingers were endowed with a gentle conjurer’s touch in spreading the roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress under which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their proper direction for growth.’ Marty declared that the trees began to ‘sigh’ as soon as they were put upright, ‘though when they are lying down they don’t sigh at all.’ Winterbourne had never noticed it. ‘She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled—probably long after the two planters had been felled themselves.’
Later on in the story there is a description of this same Giles Winterbourne returning with his horses and his cider apparatus from a neighboring village. ‘He looked and smelt like autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat color, his eyes blue as corn flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards.’
Hardy throws off little sketches of this sort with an air of unconsciousness which is fascinating…. It may be a sunset, or it may be only a flake of snow falling upon a young girl’s hair, or the light from lanterns penetrating the shutters and flickering over the ceiling of a room in the early winter morning,—no matter what the circumstance or happening is, it is caught in the act, photographed in permanent colors, made indelible and beautiful.
Hardy’s art is tyrannical. It compels one to be interested in that which delights him. It imposes its own standards. There is a rude strength about the man which readers endure because they are not unwilling to be slaves to genius. You may dislike sheep, and care but little for the poetical aspect of cows, if indeed you are not inclined to question the existence of poetry in cows; but if you read Far from the Madding Crowd you can never again pass a flock of sheep without being conscious of a multitude of new thoughts, new images, new matters for comparison. All that dormant section of your soul which for years was in a comatose condition on the subject of sheep is suddenly and broadly awake. Read Tess and at once cows and a dairy have a new meaning to you. They are a conspicuous part of the setting of that stage upon which poor Tess Durbeyfield’s life drama was played.
But Hardy does not flaunt his knowledge in his reader’s face. These things are distinctly means to an end, not ends in themselves. He has no theory to advance about keeping bees or making cider. He has taken no little journeys in the world. On the contrary, where he has traveled at all, he has traveled extensively. He is like a tourist who has been so many times abroad that his allusions are naturally and unaffectedly made. But the man just back from a first trip on the continent has astonishment stamped upon his face, and he speaks of Paris and of the Alps as if he had discovered both. Zola is one of those practitioners who, big with recently acquired knowledge, appear to labor under the idea that the chief end of a novel is to convey miscellaneous information. This is probably a mistake. Novels are not handbooks on floriculture, banking, railways, or the management of department stores. One may make a parade of minute details and endlessly wearisome learning and gain a certain credit thereby; but what if the details and the learning are chiefly of value in a dictionary of sciences and commerce? Wisdom of this sort is to be sparingly used in a work of art.
In these matters I cannot but feel that Hardy has a reticence so commendable that praise of it is superfluous and impertinent. After all, men and women are better than sheep and cows, and had he been more explicit, he would have tempted one to inquire whether he proposed making a story or a volume which might bear the title The Wessex Farmer’s Own Hand-Book, and containing wise advice as to pigs, poultry, and the useful art of making two heads of cabbage grow where only one had grown before.
III
Among the most engaging qualities of this writer is humor. Hardy is a humorous man himself and entirely appreciative of the humor that is in others. According to a distinguished philosopher, wit and humor produce love. Hardy must then be in daily receipt of large measures of this ‘improving passion’ from his innumerable readers on both sides of the Atlantic.
His humor manifests itself in a variety of ways; by the use of witty epithet; by ingenious description of a thing which is not strikingly laughable in itself, but which becomes so from the closeness of his rendering; by a leisurely and ample account of a character with humorous traits,—traits which are brought artistically into prominence as an actor heightens the complexion in stage make-up; and finally by his lively reproductions of the talk of village and country people,—a class of society whose everyday speech has only to be heard to be enjoyed. I do not pretend that the sources of Hardy’s humor are exhausted in this analysis, but the majority of illustrations can be assigned to some one of these divisions.