Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1133 page)

‘May. How often we see a vital truth flung about carelessly wrapt in a commonplace subject, without the slightest conception on the speaker’s part that his words contain an unsmelted treasure.’

‘In architecture, men who are clever in details are bunglers in generalities. So it is in everything whatsoever.’

‘More conducive to success in life than the desire for much knowledge is the being satisfied with ignorance on irrelevant subjects.’

‘The world does not despise us; it only neglects us.’

Whether or no, he did not seriously take up prose till two or three years later, when he was practically compelled to try his hand on it by finding himself perilously near coming to the ground between the two stools of architecture and literature.

Subsequent historic events brought back to his mind that this year he went with Blomfield to New Windsor, to the laying of the Memorial-stone of a church there by the Crown Princess of Germany (the English Princess Royal). She was accompanied by her husband the Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick. ‘Blomfield handed her the trowel, and during the ceremony she got her glove daubed with the mortar. In her distress she handed the trowel back to him with an impatient whisper of “Take it, take it!”‘

Here is another note of his relating to this time:

‘July 2 (1865). Worked at J. H. Newman’s Apologia, which we have all been talking about lately. A great desire to be convinced by him, because Moule likes him so much. Style charming, and his logic really human, being based not on syllogisms but on converging probabilities. Only — and here comes the fatal catastrophe — there is no first link to his excellent chain of reasoning, and down you come headlong. . . . Read some Horace; also Childe Harold and Lalla Rookh till J past 12.’

However, as yet he did not by any means abandon verse, which he wrote constantly, but kept private, through the years 1866 and most of 1867, resolving to send no more to magazines whose editors probably did not know good poetry from bad, and forming meanwhile the quixotic opinion that, as in verse was concentrated the essence of all imaginative and emotional literature, to read verse and nothing else was the shortest way to the fountain-head of such, for one who had not a great deal of spare time. And in fact for nearly or quite years he did not read a word of prose except such as came under his eye in the daily newspapers and weekly reviews. Thus his reading naturally covered a fairly large tract of English poetry, and it may be mentioned^ as showing that he had some views of his own, that he preferred Scott the poet to Scott the novelist, and never ceased to regret that the author of ‘the most Homeric poem in the English language — Marmion’ — should later have declined on prose fiction.

He was not so keenly anxious to get into print as many young men are; in this indifference, as in some qualities of his verse, curiously resembling Donne. The Horatian exhortation that he had come across in his reading — to keep his own compositions back till the ninth year — had made a deep impression on him. Nescit vox missa reverti; and by retaining his poems, and destroying those he thought irremediably bad — though he afterwards fancied he had destroyed too many — he may have been saved from the annoyance of seeing his early crude effusions crop up in later life.

At the same time there can be no doubt that some closer association with living poets and the pcetry of the moment would have afforded Hardy considerable stimulus and help. But his unfortunate shyness — or rather aloofness, for he was not shy in the ordinary sense — served him badly at this period of his life. During part of his residence at Westbourne Park Villas he was living within half a mile of Swinburne, and hardly more than a stone’s throw from Browning, to whom introductions would not have been difficult through literary friends of Blomfield’s. He might have obtained at least encouragement from these, and, if he cared, possibly have floated off some of his poems in a small volume. But such a proceeding as trying to know these contemporaries seems never to have crossed his mind.

During his residence in London he had entered himself at King’s College for the French classes, where he studied the tongue through a term or two under Professor Sti6venard, never having taken it up seriously since in his boyhood he had worked at exercises under a governess. He used to say that Stifevenard was the most charming Frenchman he ever met, as well as being a fine teacher. Hardy’s mind had, however, become at this date so deeply immersed in the practice and study of English poetry that he gave but a perfunctory attention to his French readings.

March ii. The woman at a first interview will know as much °f the man as he will know of her on the wedding morning; whilst sne will know as little of him then as he knew of her when they first shook hands. Her knowledge will have come upon her like a flood, and have as gradually soaked away.’

‘June 2. My 25 th birthday. Not very cheerful. Feel as if I had lived a long time and done very little.

‘Walked about by moonlight in the evening. Wondered what woman, if any, I should be thinking about in five years’ time.’

‘July 9. The greatest and most majestic being on the face of the earth will accept pleasure from the most insignificant.’

‘July 19. Patience is the union of moral courage with physical cowardice.’

‘End of July. The dull period in the life of an event is when it ceases to be news and has not begun to be history.’

‘August. The anguish of a defeat is most severely felt when we look upon weak ones who have believed us invincible and have made preparations for our victory.’

‘Aug. 23. The poetry of a scene varies with the minds of the perceivers. Indeed, it does not lie in the scene at all.’

About this time Hardy nourished a scheme of a highly visionary character. He perceived from the impossibility of getting his verses accepted by magazines that he could not live by poetry, and (rather strangely) thought that architecture and poetry — particularly architecture in London — would not work well together. So he formed the idea of combining poetry and the Church — towards which he had long had a leaning — and wrote to a friend in Cambridge for particulars as to matriculation at that University, which with his late classical reading would have been easy for him. He knew that what money he could not muster himself for keeping terms his father would lend him for a few years, his idea being that of a curacy in a country village. This fell through less because of its difficulty than from a conscientious feeling, after some theological study, that he could hardly take the step with honour while holding the views which on examination he found himself to hold. And so he allowed the curious scheme to drift out of sight, though not till after he had begun to practise orthodoxy. For example:

‘July 5- Sunday. To Westminster Abbey morning service. Stayed to the Sacrament. A very odd experience, amid a crowd of strangers.’

Among other incidents of his life in London during these years was also one that he used to recall with interest, when writing The Dynasts — his hearing Palmerston speak in the House of Commons a short time before his death, Palmerston having been War Secretary during the decisive hostilities with Napoleon embodied in the Third Part of Hardy’s Epic-Drama, a personal conjunction which brought its writer face to face not only with actual participants in the great struggle — as was the case with his numerous acquaintance of rank- and-file who had fought in the Peninsula and at Waterloo — but with one who had contributed to direct the affairs of that war. The only note on the fact that can be found is the following:

‘Oct. 18 . Wet evening. At Regent Circus, coming home saw the announcement of the death of Ld. Palmerston, whom I heard speak in the House of Commons a year or two ago.’

‘Oct. 27. To Westminster Abbey with Mr. Heaton and Lee. Took up a position in the triforium, from which spot I saw Ld. Palmerston lowered into the gra\e. Purcell’s service. Dead March in Saul.’

The following letter to his sister describes the ceremony:

‘Saturday, Oct. 28. 1865.

‘My dear Mary ‘I sent Barchester Towers by B. P., and you are probably by this time acquainted with Eleanor Bold, etc. This novel is considered the best of Trollope’s.

‘Yesterday Lord Palmerston was buried — the Prime Minister. I and the Lees got tickets through a friend of a friend of Mr. B’s, and we went of course. Our tickets admitted to the triforium, or monks’

walk, of Westminster Abbey, and we got from there a complete view of the ceremony. You will know wh. part of the Abbey I mean if you think of Salisbury Cathedral and of the row of small arches over the large arches, wh. throw open the space between the roof of the aisles and the vaulting.

‘Where I have put the X in the Section is where I stood; over the gj on the Plan. The mark * shows where the grave is, between L.T.H — E

Pitt’s and Fox’s and close by Canning’s. All the Cabinet Ministers were there as pall bearers. The burial service was Purcell’s. The opening sentences “I am the resurrection, etc” were sung to Croft’s music. Beethoven’s Funeral March was played as they went from the choir to the vault, and the Dead March in Saul was played at the close. I think I was never so much impressed with a ceremony in my life before, and I wd. not have missed it for anything. The Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge were present.

‘Ld. John Russell, or Earl Russell as he is now, is to be Prime Minister in Pam’s place. Only fancy, Ld. P. has been connected with the govt, off and on for the last 60 years, and that he was contemporaneous with Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Burke, etc. I mean to say his life overlapped theirs so to speak. I sent father a newspaper containing an account of his life, and today one with an account of the funeral. As you are not a politician I didn’t send you one, but these things interest him.

‘If you can get Pelham, read it when you want something. Do not hurry over Barchester, for I have enough to do. I think Wells is the place intended. Will it be a good thing or will it be awkward for you if H. A. and I come down for Xmas day and the next?

‘I am rather glad that hot close weather is gone and the bracing air come again. I think I told you I had joined the French class at King’s College.

‘Ever sincerely.

‘T. H.’

‘A tall man went to see Chang the Chinese Giant, and on his offering to pay, the doorkeeper said “Not at all Sir, we don’t take money from the profession!” at least so Punch says.’

Through this winter the following note continually occurs: ‘Read some more Horace’.

His interest in painting led him to devote for many months, on every day that the National Gallery was open, twenty minutes after lunch to an inspection of the masters hung there, confining his attention to a single master on each visit, and forbidding his eyes to stray to any other. He went there from sheer liking, and not with any practical object; but he used to recommend the plan to young people, telling them that they would insensibly acquire a greater insight into schools and styles by this means than from any guide-books to the painters’ works and manners.

During Phelps’s series of Shakespeare plays at Drury Lane Hardy followed up every one, his companion being one of Blomfield’s pupils. They used to carry a good edition of the play with them, and be amongst the first of the pit crowd, holding the book edgewise on the barrier in front (which in those days was close to the orchestra) during the performance — a severe enough test for the actors, if they noticed the two enthusiasts. He always said that Phelps never received his due as a Shakespearean actor — particularly as Falstaff.

He also frequented the later readings by Charles Dickens at the Hanover Square Rooms, and oratorios at Exeter Hall.

Summer 1867

Adelphi Terrace, as everybody knows, faces the river, and in the heat of summer, while Hardy was there, the stench from the mud at low water increased, the Metropolitan main-drainage system not having been yet constructed. Whether from the effects of this smell upon a constitution that had grown up in a pure country atmosphere (as he himself supposed), or because he had been accustomed to shut himself up in his rooms at Westbourne Park Villas every evening from six to twelve, reading incessantly, instead of getting out for air after the day’s confinement, Hardy’s health had become much weakened. He used to say that on sitting down to begin drawing in the morning he had scarcely physical power left him to hold the pencil and square. When he visited his friends in Dorset they were shocked at the pallor which sheeted a countenance formerly ruddy with health. His languor increased month by month. Blomfield, who must have been inconvenienced by it, suggested to Hardy that he should go into the country for a time to regain vigour. Hardy was beginning to feel that he would rather go into the country altogether. He constitutionally shrank from the business of social advancement, caring for life as an emotion rather than for life as a science of climbing, in which respect he was quizzed by his acquaintance for his lack of ambition. However, Blomfield thought that to stay permanently in the country would be a mistake, advising him to return to London by the following October at latest.