Thomas Hardy's Dorset

by R. Thurston Hopkins

Come into this old-world dwelling itself. The living-room is grey and white and dim. Ivy peers in at the open windows set deep in the thick walls. The floor is grey and shining, stone-flagged; the ceiling cross-beamed with rich old oak; the fireplace wide and deep, and the whole building covered with a fine roof of thatch. Here the earlier years of the novelist were spent, here the aroma of the earth and woods invaded his heart when it was young. The environment helped to feed the long, long thoughts of the boy and gave him the image of the beginning of man living in the woods in the darkness, outwitting the wolves. It was here in the cradle of nature that Hardy first gained his minute knowledge of nature, and learnt how life and the meaning of life must be linked with place and the meaning of place. As in old Greek drama the chorus was directed to the audience at certain stages, so does Hardy turn the place spirit upon the progress of the story at certain moments with a vital bearing upon the action. He sees, as only the artist can see, how all the world is interwoven, and how the human spirit cannot be divorced from the plain course of nature without pity and disaster. To Hardy's delicate subtlety of mind in perceiving the right values of character and environment we owe the tremendous effect of certain great scenes: the selection of Woolbridge House, the antique and dismal old home of the Turbervilles, for the scene of Tess's confession; the thunderstorm during which Oak saved his beloved Bathsheba's ricks; the mist that rolled wickedly over the cart conveying Fanny Robin's body from the workhouse, and produced the horrible drip-drip-drip on the coffin while the drivers caroused in an inn; the strange scene where Wildeve, "the Rousseau of Egdon," and the travelling ruddleman dice for Mrs Yeobright's money by the light of glow-worms. The delineation of Norcombe Hill at the commencement of Far from the Madding Crowd sets the key to which the theme of the story must always return after many delightful changes, and the vivid account of the lonely monarchy of the shepherd's night with his sheep, and the opulent silence when "the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement" show the power and relentless grip of Hardy's work. Incidentally, also, with what fascinating detail does he introduce Bathsheba Everdene to the reader, so that we at once perceive what a curious blend of joyfulness, pride, astuteness and irresponsibility she would gradually develop as the years pass on—witness the little incident at the toll-gate, where, seated on the top of the loaded wagon, she refused to concede his rightful pence to the aggrieved turnpike-keeper.

The name of Hardy is very frequently encountered in Dorset, but the novelist's family is commonly said to be of the same blood as Nelson's Hardy. That Hardy's family possessed the sprightliness and resource of the Dorset people there can be little doubt, and this fact is accentuated by an anecdote concerning Hardy's grandfather, told by Mr Alfred Pope, a member of the Dorset Field Club, at a meeting of the society. About a century ago Mr Hardy's grandfather was crossing a lonely heath one midnight in June when he discovered he was being followed by two footpads. He rolled a furze faggot on to the path, sat down on it, took off his hat, stuck two fern fronds behind his ears to represent horns, and then pretended to read a letter, which he took from his pocket, by the light of the glow-worms he had picked up and placed round the brim of his hat. The men took fright and bolted on seeing him, and a rumour soon got abroad in the neighbourhood that the devil had been seen at midnight near Greenhill Pond.

At the age of seventeen Hardy was articled to an ecclesiastical architect of Dorchester named Hicks, and it was in pursuance of this calling that he enjoyed many opportunities of studying not only architecture, but also the country folk, whose types he has been so successful in delineating. Architecture has deeply coloured all his work, from Desperate Remedies to Jude the Obscure. The former of these stories (in which, as it will be remembered, three of the characters are architects practising the miscellaneous vocations of stewards, land surveyors and the like, familiar to architects in country towns) appeared in 1871, signed only with initials. It was followed in the next year by Under the Greenwood Tree, and at this date Hardy departed from architecture (in which he had distinguished himself so far as to be a prize-winner at a Royal Society's competition). In 1873 A Pair of Blue Eyes appeared, and in 1874 Far from the Madding Crowd ran through the Cornhill. It was the first of his books to be published in yellow-backed form, which was then a sign that the novel had reached the highest point of popularity.

His first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, was never published, and probably never will be, having been suppressed at Hardy's own request, although accepted for publication on the advice of George Meredith. But it was not long before he had finished a second story, Desperate Remedies, which first saw the light through the agency of Tinsley Brothers in 1871.

His first published article appeared without signature in Chambers's Journal, on 18th March 1865, entitled, "How I Built Myself a House," and was of a semi-humorous character. But previous to this Hardy had written a considerable amount of verse, all of which, with the exception of one poem, The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's, was unfortunately destroyed. This Wessex ballad appeared, bowdlerised, in The Gentleman's Magazine in November 1875. The ballad was first reproduced in its original form at the end of Mr Lane's bibliography, together with the novelist's biographical note on his friend and neighbour, the Rev. William Barnes, the Dorset poet, contributed to The Athenæum in October 1886. Of Mr Hardy's remaining contributions to periodical literature in other directions than fiction I need, perhaps, only mention his paper on "The Dorset Labourer," published in Longmans' in July 1893.

The Trumpet Major was published in 1881, and the next novel was A Laodicean, which appeared originally in Harper's Magazine.

"The writing of this tale," says Mr Hardy in the new preface to the book, "was rendered memorable, to two persons at least, by a tedious illness of five months that laid hold of the author soon after the story was begun in a well-known magazine, during which period the narrative had to be strenuously continued by dictation to a predetermined cheerful ending. As some of these novels of Wessex life address themselves more especially to readers into whose soul the iron has entered, and whose years have less pleasure in them now than heretofore, so A Laodicean may perhaps help to wile away an idle afternoon of the comfortable ones whose lines have fallen to them in pleasant places; above all, of that large and happy section of the reading public which has not yet reached ripeness of years; those to whom marriage is the pilgrim's Eternal City, and not a milestone on the way."

Hardy's next novel, Two on a Tower, was published in three volumes in 1882. Four years elapsed before Mr Hardy's tenth novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, made its appearance, though his story of The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid, which came out in The Graphic Summer Number in 1883, was reprinted in book form in America in 1884. The Woodlanders came next, this time through Messrs Macmillan, who published it in 1887 in three volumes. Wessex Tales, in two volumes, appeared in 1888, though the stories had been making their appearance in various periodicals since 1879.