Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1163 page)
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Authors: Thomas Hardy
Tess of the d’Urbervilles; a Pure Woman faithfully Presented was published complete about the last day of November, with what results Hardy could scarcely have foreseen, since the book, notwithstanding its exceptional popularity, was the beginning of the end of his career as a novelist.
THE LATER YEARS OF THOMAS HARDY, 1892–1928 by Florence Hardy
Hardy’s wife Florence published this second biography following the success and eager reception of the first. Now, critics believe both biographies were mostly written by Hardy himself.
Hardy and his second wife Florence
CONTENTS
PART 1 - ‘TESS’, ‘JUDE’, AND THE END OF PROSE
VISITS AND INTERMITTENT READING
ANOTHER NOVEL FINISHED, MUTILATED, AND RESTORED
MORE ON ‘JUDE’, AND ISSUE OF ‘THE WELL-BELOVED’
COLLECTING OLD POEMS AND MAKING NEW
‘POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT’, AND OTHERS
THE REMAINDER OF ‘THE DYNASTS’
DEATHS OF SWINBURNE AND MEREDITH
REVISITINGS, SECOND MARRIAGE, AND WAR WRITINGS
POETICAL QUESTIONS: AND MELLSTOCK CLUB-ROOM
‘THE DYNASTS’ AT OXFORD; HON. DEGREE; A DEPUTATION; A CONTROVERSY
PART 1 - ‘TESS’, ‘JUDE’, AND THE END OF PROSE
Florence Hardy, several years after her husband’s death
CHAPTER XX
THE RECEPTION OF THE BOOK
1892: Aet. 51-52
As Tess of the d’Urbervilles got into general circulation it attracted an attention that Hardy had apparently not foreseen, for at the time of its publication he was planning something of quite a different kind, according to an entry he made:
‘Title: — “Songs of Five-and-Twenty Years”. Arrangement of the songs: Lyric Ecstasy inspired by music to have precedence.’
However, reviews, letters, and other intelligence speedily called him from these casual thoughts back to the novel, which the tedious- ness of the alterations and restorations had made him wear.y of. From the prefaces to later editions can be gathered more or less clearly what happened to the book as, passing into great popularity, an endeavour was made by some critics to change it to scandalous notoriety — the latter kind of clamour, raised by a certain small section of the public and the press, being quite inexplicable to the writer himself.
Among other curious results from the publication of the book was that it started a rumour of Hardy’s theological beliefs, which lived, and spread, and grew, so that it was never completely extinguished. Near the end of the story he had used the sentence, ‘The President of the Immortals had finished his sport with Tess’, and the first five words were, as Hardy often explained to his reviewers, but a literal translation of Aesch. Prom. 169: MaKapiov 7rpvravis. The classical sense in which he had used them is best shown by quoting a reply he wrote thirty years later to some unknown critic who had said in an article:
‘Hardy postulates an all-powerful being endowed with the baser human passions, who turns everything to evil and rejoices in the mischief he has wrought’; another critic taking up the tale by adding: ‘ To him evil is not so much a mystery, a problem, as the wilful malice of his god.’
Hardy’s reply was written down but (it is believed), as in so many cases with him, never posted; though I am able to give it from the rough draft:
‘As I need hardly inform any thinking reader, I do not hold, and never have held, the ludicrous opinions here assumed to be mine — which are really, or approximately, those of the primitive believer in his man-shaped tribal god. And in seeking to ascertain how any exponent of English literature could have supposed that I held them I find that the writer of the estimate has harked back to a passage in a novel of mine, printed many years ago, in which the forces opposed to the heroine were allegorized as a personality (a method not unusual in imaginative prose or poetry) by the use of a well-known trope, explained in that venerable work, Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric, as “one in which life, perception, activity, design, passion, or any property of sentient beings, is attributed to things inanimate”.
‘Under this species of criticism if an author were to say “Aeolus maliciously tugged at her garments, and tore her hair in his wrath”, the sapient critic would no doubt announce that author’s evil creed to be that the wind is “a powerful being endowed with the baser human passions”, etc., etc.
‘However, I must put up with it, and say as Parrhasius of Ephesus said about his pictures: There is nothing that men will not find fault with.’
The deep impression produced on the general and uncritical public by the story was the occasion of Hardy’s receiving strange letters — some from husbands whose experiences had borne a resemblance to that of Angel Clare, though more, many more, from wives with a past like that of Tess, but who had not told their husbands, and asking for his counsel under the burden of their concealment. Some of these were educated women of good position, and Hardy used to say the singular thing was that they should have put themselves in the power of a stranger by these revelations (their names having often been given, though sometimes initials at a post-office only), when they would not trust persons nearest to them with their secret. However, they did themselves no harm, he would add, for though he was unable to advise them, he carefully destroyed their letters, and never mentioned their names, or suspected names, to a living soul. He owed them that much, he said, for their trust in his good faith. A few, too, begged that he would meet them privately, or call on them, and hear their story instead of their writing it. He talked the matter over with his friend Sir Francis Jeune, who had had abundant experience of the like things in the Divorce Court, where he presided, and who recommended him not to meet the writers alone, in case they should not be genuine. He himself, he said, also got such letters, but made it a rule never to notice them. Nor did Hardy, though he sometimes sadly thought that they came from sincere women in trouble.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles was also the cause of Hardy’s meeting a good many people of every rank during that spring, summer, and onwards, and of opportunity for meeting a good many more if he had chosen to avail himself of it. Many of the details that follow concerning his adventures in the world of fashion at dinner-parties, crushes, and other social functions, which Hardy himself did not think worth recording, have been obtained from diaries kept by the late Mrs. Hardy.
It must be repeated that his own notes on these meetings were set down by him as private memoranda only; and that they, or some of them, are reproduced here to illustrate what contrasting planes of existence he moved in — vibrating at a swing between the artificial gaieties of a London season and the quaintnesses of a primitive rustic life.
Society remarks on Tess were curious and humorous. Strangely enough, Lord Salisbury, with whom Hardy had a slight acquaintance, was a supporter of the story. Also: ‘ The Duchess of Abercorn tells me that the novel has saved her all future trouble in the assortment of her friends. They have been almost fighting across her dinner-table over Tess’s character. What she now says to them is “ Do you support her or not? “ If they say “ No indeed. She deserved hanging. A little harlot!” she puts them in one group. If they say “Poor wronged innocent!” and pity her, she puts them in the other group where she is herself.’ He was discussing the question thus with another noble dame who sat next him at a large dinner-party, when they waxed so contentious that they were startled to find the whole table of two-and-twenty silent, listening to their theories on this vexed question. And a well-known beauty and statesman’s wife, also present, snapped out at him: ‘ Hanged? They ought all to have been hanged!’
‘Took Arthur Balfour’s sister in to dinner at the Jeunes’. Liked her frank, sensible, womanly way of talking. The reviews have made me shy of presenting copies of Tess, and I told her plainly that if I gave her one it might be the means of getting me into hot water with her. She said: “ Now don’t I really look old enough to read any novel with safety by this time!” Some of the best women don’t marry — perhaps wisely.’
‘April 10. Leslie Ward, in illustration of the calamities of artists, tells me of a lady’s portrait, life-size, he has on his hands, that he was requested by her husband to paint. When he had just completed the picture she eloped with a noble earl, whereupon her husband wrote to say he did not want the painting, and Ward’s labour was wasted, there being no contract. The end of the story was that the husband divorced her, and, like Edith in Browning’s “Too Late”, she “married the other”, and brought him a son and heir. At a dinner the very same evening the lady who was my neighbour at the table told me that her husband was counsel in the case, which was hurried through, that the decree might be made absolute and the remarriage take place before the baby was born.’
‘11. In the evening with Sir F. and Lady J. to the Gaiety Theatre to hear Lottie Collins in her song “Ta-ra-ra”. A rather striking tune and performance, to foolish words.’
‘15. Good Friday. Read review of Tess in The Quarterly. A smart and amusing article; but it is easy to be smart and amusing if a man will forgo veracity and sincerity. . . . How strange that one may write a book without knowing what one puts into it — or rather, the reader reads into it. Well, if this sort of thing continues no more novel-writing for me. A man must be a fool to deliberately stand up to be shot at.’
Moreover, the repute of the book was spreading not only through England, and America, and the Colonies, but through the European Continent and Asia; and during this year translations appeared in various languages, its publication in Russia exciting great interest. On the other hand, some local libraries in English-speaking countries ‘ suppressed’ the novel — with what effect was not ascertained. Hardy’s good-natured friends Henry James and R. L. Stevenson (whom he afterward! called the Polonius and the Osric of novelists) corresponded about it in this vein: ‘ Oh, yes, dear Louis: “ Tess of the d’Urbervilles “ is vile. The pretence of sexuality is only equalled by the absence of it [?], and the abomination of the language by the author’s reputation for style.’ (.Letters of Henry James.)