Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1172 page)

In the reception of this and later volumes of Hardy’s poems there was, he said, as regards form, the inevitable ascription to ignorance of what was really choice after full knowledge. That the author loved the art of concealing art was undiscerned. For instance, as to rhythm. Years earlier he had decided that too regular a beat was bad art. He had fortified himself in his opinion by thinking of the analogy of architecture, between which art and that of poetry he had discovered, to use his own words, that there existed a close and curious parallel, both arts, unlike some others, having to carry a rational content inside their artistic form. He knew that in architecture cunning irregularity is of enormous worth, and it is obvious that he carried on into his verse, perhaps in part unconsciously, the Gothic art-principle in which he had been trained — the principle of spontaneity, found in mouldings, tracery, and such like — resulting in the ‘unforeseen’ (as it has been called) character of his metres and stanzas, that of stress rather than of syllable, poetic texture rather than poetic veneer; the latter kind of thing, under the name of ‘constructed ornament’, being what he, in common with every Gothic student, had been taught to avoid as the plague. He shaped his poetry accordingly, introducing metrical pauses, and reversed beats; and found for his trouble that some particular line of a poem exemplifying this principle was greeted with a would-be jocular remark that such a line ‘did not make for immortality’. The same critic might have gone to one of our cathedrals (to follow up the analogy of architecture), and on discovering that the carved leafage of some capital or spandrel in the best period of Gothic art strayed freakishly out of its bounds over the moulding, where by rule it had no business to be, or that the enrichments of a string-course were not accurately spaced; or that there was a sudden blank in a wall where a window was to be expected from formal measurement, have declared with equally merry conviction, ‘This does not make for immortality’.

One case of the kind, in which the poem ‘ On Sturminster Foot- Bridge’ was quoted with the remark that one could make as good music as that out of a milk-cart, betrayed the reviewer’s ignorance of any perception that the metre was intended to be onomatopoeic, plainly as it was shown; and another in the same tone disclosed that the reviewer had tried to scan the author’s sapphics as heroics.

If any proof were wanted that Hardy was not at this time and ‘ater the apprentice at verse that he was supposed to be, it could be found in an examination of his studies over many years. Among his papers were quantities of notes on rhythm and metre: with outlines and experiments in innumerable original measures, some of which he adopted from time to time. These verse skeletons were mostly blank, and only designated by the usual marks for long and

VERSE

1899-1900

short syllables, accentuations, etc., but they were occasionally made up of ‘nonsense verses’ — such as, he said, were written when he was a boy by students of Latin prosody with the aid of a ‘Gradus’.

Lastly, Hardy had a born sense of humour, even a too keen sense occasionally: but his poetry was sometimes placed by editors in the hands of reviewers deficient in that quality. Even if they were accustomed to Dickensian humour they were not to Swiftian. Hence it unfortunately happened that verses of a satirical, dry, caustic, or farcical cast were regarded by them with the deepest seriousness. In one case the tragic nature of his verse was instanced by the ballad called ‘The Bride-night Fire’, or ‘The Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s’, the criticism being by an accomplished old friend of his own, Frederic Harrison, who deplored the painful nature of the bridegroom’s end in leaving only a bone behind him. This piece of work Hardy had written and published when quite a young man, and had hesitated to reprint because of its too pronounced obviousness as a jest.

But he had looked the before-mentioned obstacles in the face, and their consideration did not move him much. He had written his poems entirely because he liked doing them, without any ulterior thought; because he wanted to say the things they contained and would contain. He offered his publishers to take on his own shoulders the risk of producing the volume, so that if nobody bought it they should not be out of pocket. They were kind enough to refuse this offer, and took the risk on themselves; and fortunately they did not suffer.

A more serious meditation of Hardy’s at this time than that on critics was the following:

‘January (1899). No man’s poetry can be truly judged till its last line is written. What is the last line? The death of the poet. And hence there is this quaint consolation to any writer of verse — that it may be imperishable for all that anybody can tell him to the contrary; and that if worthless he can never know it, unless he be a greater adept at self-criticism than poets usually are.’

Writing to Hardy in March about her late husband’s tastes in literature Mrs. Coventry Patmore observes:

“... It shows how constant he was to his loves. From 1875 [when he first met with the book — vide ante] to 1896 he continually had A Pair of Blue Eyes read aloud to him. Each time he felt the same shock of surprise and pleasure at its consummate art and pathos. In illness, when he asked for A Pair of Blue Eyes one knew he was able to enjoy again.’

A correspondence on another matter than literature may be alluded to here. Mr. W. T. Stead had asked Hardy to express his opinion on ‘A Crusade of Peace’ in a periodical he was about to publish under the name of War against War. In the course of his reply Hardy wrote:

‘As a preliminary, all civilized nations might at least show their humanity by covenanting that no horses should be employed in battle except for transport. Soldiers, at worst, know what they are doing, but these animals are denied even the poor possibilities of glory and reward as a compensation for their sufferings.’

His reply brought upon Hardy, naturally, scoffs at his unpractical tender-heartedness, and on the other hand, strong expressions of agreement.

In the following April (1899) the Hardys were again in London where as in the previous year they took a flat in Wynnstay Gardens, though not the same one. They saw their friends as usual, on one of whom Hardy makes this observation after a call from him:

‘When a person has gone, though his or her presence was not much desired, we regret the withdrawal of the grain of value in him, and overlook the mass of chaff that spoilt it. We realise that the essence of his personality was a human heart, though the form was uninviting.’

‘It would be an amusing fact, if it were not one that leads to such bitter strife, that the conception of a First Cause which the theist calls “ God “, and the conception of the same that the so-styled atheist calls “ no-God “, are nowadays almost exactly identical. So that only a minor literary question of terminology prevents their shaking hands in agreement, and dwelling together in unity ever after.’

At the beginning of June Hardy was staying at a country-house not many miles from London, and among the guests was the young Duchess of M, a lady of great beauty, who asked him if he would conduct her to the grave of the poet Gray, which was within a walk. Hardy did so and, standing half-balanced on one foot by the grave (as is well known, it was also that of Gray’s mother) his friend recited in a soft voice the ‘Elegy’ from the first word to the last in leisurely and lengthy clearness without an error (which Hardy himself could not have done without some hitch in the order of the verses). With startling suddenness, while duly commending her Performance, he seemed to have lived through the experience before.

Then he realised what it was that had happened: in love of recitation, attitude, and poise, tone of voice, and readiness of memory, the fair lady had been the duplicate of the handsome dairymaid who had insisted on his listening to her rehearsal of the long and tedious gospels, when he taught in the Sunday school as a youth of fifteen. What a thin veneer is that of rank and education over the natural woman, he would remark.

On the 18th he met A. E. Housman (the Shropshire Lad) for the first time probably, and on the 20th he visited Swinburne at Putney, of which visit he too briefly speaks; observing, ‘Again much inclined to his engaging, fresh, frank, almost childlike manner. Showed me his interesting editions, and talked of the play he was writing. Promised to go again.’ He also went a day or two later, possibly owing to his conversation with Swinburne (though he had been there before), to St. Mildred’s, Bread Street, with Sir George Douglas, where Shelley and Mary Godwin were married, and saw the register, with the signatures of Godwin and his wife as witnesses. The church was almost unaltered since the poet and Mary had knelt there, and the vestry absolutely so, not having even received a coat of paint as it seemed. Being probably in the calling mood he visited George Meredith just afterwards, and found him ‘looking ruddy and well in the upper part; quite cheerful, enthusiastic and warm. Would gladly see him oftener, and must try to do so.’ At the end of the month he rambled in Westminster Abbey at midnight by the light of a lantern, having with some friends been admitted by Miss Bradley through the Deanery.

Hardy had suffered from rather bad influenza this summer in Town, and it left an affection of the eye behind it which he had never known before; and though he hoped it might leave him on his return to Dorchester it followed him there. He was, indeed, seldom absolutely free from it afterwards.

In July he replied to a communication from the Rationalist Press Association, of which his friend Leslie Stephen was an honourary associate:

‘Though I am interested in the Society I feel it to be one which would naturally compose itself rather of writers on philosophy, science, and history, than of writers of imaginative works, whose effect depends largely on detachment. By belonging to a philosophic association imaginative writers place themselves in this difficulty, that they are misread as propagandist when they mean to be simply artistic and delineative.’

The pleasures of bicycling were now at their highest appreciation, and many miles did Hardy and his wife, and other companions, cover during the latter part of this summer. He was not a long-distance cyclist, as was natural at fifty-nine, never exceeding forty to fifty miles a day, but he kept vigorously going within the limit, this year and for several years after. His wife, though an indifferent walker, could almost equal him in cycle distances.

In October his sonnet on the departure of the troops for the Boer War, which he witnessed at Southampton, appeared in the Daily Chronicle, and in November the veiy popular verses called ‘The Going of the Battery’ were printed in the Graphic, the scene having been witnessed at Dorchester. In December ‘The Dead Drummer’ (afterwards called ‘Drummer Hodge’) appeared in Literature, and ‘A Christmas Ghost-Story’ in the Westminster Gazette.

The latter months of this same year (1899) were saddened for him by the sudden death of Sir Arthur Blomfield, shortly before the date which had been fixed for a visit to him at Broadway by Hardy and his wife. Thus was snapped a friendship which had extended over thirty-six years.

Hardy’s memoranda on his thoughts and movements — particularly the latter — which never reached the regularity of a diary — had of late grown more and more fitful, and now (1900) that novels were past and done with, nearly ceased altogether, such notes on scenes and functions having been dictated by what he had thought practical necessity; so that it becomes difficult to ascertain what mainly occupied his mind, or what his social doings were. His personal ambition in a worldly sense, which had always been weak, dwindled to nothing, and for some years after 1895 or 1896 he requested that no record of his life should be made. His verses he kept on writing from pleasure in them. The poetic fantasy entitled ‘The Souls of the Slain’ was published in the Cornhill in the April of this year, and he and his wife went to London this month according to custom, though instead of taking a flat or house as in former years they stayed on at the West Central Hotel in Southampton Row. He possibly thought it advisable to economize, seeing that he had sacrificed the chance of making a much larger income by not producing more novels. When one considers that he might have made himself a man of affluence in a few years by taking the current of popularity j*811 served, writing ‘best sellers’, and ringing changes upon the novels e had already written, his bias towards poetry must have been »‘tinctive and disinterested.

In a pocket-book of this date appears a diagram illustrating ‘the language of verse’:

and the following note thereon:

‘The confusion of thought to be observed in Wordsworth’s teaching in his essay in the Appendix to Lyrical Ballads seems to arise chiefly out of his use of the word “imagination”. He should have put the matter somewhat like this: In works of passion and sentiment (not “imagination and sentiment”) the language of verse is the language of prose. In works of fancy (or imagination), “poetic diction” (of the real kind) is proper, and even necessary. The diagram illustrates my meaning.’

For some reason he spent time while here in hunting up Latin hymns at the British Museum, and copies that he made of several have been found, of dates ranging from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, by Thomas of Celano, Adam of S. Victor, John Mombaer, Jacob Balde, etc. That English prosody might be enriched by adapting some of the verse-forms of these is not unlikely to have been his view.