Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1183 page)

‘September 10. Sunday. To Tintagel Church. We sat down in a seat bordering the passage to the transept, but the vicar appalled us by coming to us in his surplice and saying we were in the way of the choir, who would have to pass there. He banished us to the back of the transept. However, when he began his sermon we walked out. He thought it was done to be even with him, and looked his indignation; but it was really because we could not see the nave lengthwise, which my wife, Emma, had sketched in watercolours when she was a young woman before it was “ restored”, so that I was interested in noting the changes, as also was F., who was familiar with the sketch. It was saddening enough, though doubtless only a chance, that we were inhospitably received in a church so much visited and appreciated by one we both had known so well. The matter was somewhat mended, however, by their singing the beautiful 34th Psalm to Smart’s fine tune, “Wiltshire”. By the by, that the most poetical verse of that psalm is omitted from it in Hymns Ancient and Modern shows the usual ineptness of hymn selectors. We always sang it at Stinsford. But then, we sang there in the good old High-and-Dry Church way — straight from the New Version.’

Multifarious matters filled up the autumn — among others a visit to the large camp of some 5000 German prisoners in Dorchester; also visits to the English wounded in hospital, which conjunction led him to say:

‘At the German prisoners’ camp, including the hospital, operating- room, etc., were many sufferers. One Prussian, in much pain, died whilst I was with him — to my great relief, and his own. Men lie helpless here from wounds: in the hospital a hundred yards off other men, English, lie helpless from wounds — each scene of suffering caused by the other!

‘These German prisoners seem to think that we are fighting to exterminate Germany, and though it has been said that, so far from it, we are fighting to save what is best in Germany, Cabinet ministers do not in my opinion speak this out clearly enough.’

In October the Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy were published in Macmillan’s Golden Treasury Series, a little book that received some very good reviews; and in December the JVessex Scenes from The Dynasts, which had been produced earlier at Weymouth, were performed at Dorchester. Some of Hardy’s friends, including Sir James Barrie and Mr. Sydney Cockerell, came to see the piece, but Hardy could not accompany them, being kept in bed by another cold. The performances were for Red Cross Societies.

‘January 1, 1917. Am scarcely conscious of New Year’s Day.’

‘January 6. I find I wrote in 1888 that “Art is concerned with seemings only”, which is true:’

To the Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature ‘February 8, 1917.

‘Dear Sir,

‘I regret that as I live in a remote part of the country I cannot attend the meeting of the Entente Committee.

‘In respect of the Memorandum proposing certain basic principles of international education for promoting ethical ideals that shall conduce to a League of Peace, I am in hearty agreement with the proposition.

‘I would say in considering a modus operandi:

‘That nothing effectual will be accomplished in the cause of Peace till the sentiment of Patriotism be freed from the narrow meaning attaching to it in the past (still upheld by Junkers and Jingo- ists) and be extended to the whole globe.

‘On the other hand, that the sentiment of Foreignness — if the sense of a contrast be really rhetorically necessary — attach only to other planets and their inhabitants, if any.

‘I may add that I have been writing in advocacy of those views for the last twenty years.’

To Dr. L. Litwinski ‘March 7, 1917.

‘Dear Sir,

‘I feel much honoured by your request that I should be a member of the Committee for commemorating two such writers of distinction as Verhaeren and Sienkiewicz. But for reasons of increasing years and my living so far from London I have latterly been compelled to give up membership with several associations; and I am therefore sorry to say that I must refrain from joining any new committee in which I should be unable actively to support the cause, even when so worthy as the present one.’

In this March also a sonnet by him named ‘A Call to National Service’ was printed in the newspapers. An article in the April Fortnightly by Mr. Courtney, the editor, on Hardy’s writings, especially The Dynasts, interested him not only by its appreciativeness, but also by the aspect some features of the drama assumed in the reviewer’s mind:

‘Like so many critics, Mr. Courtney treats my works of art as if they were a scientific system of philosophy, although I have repeatedly stated in prefaces and elsewhere that the views in them are seemings, provisional impressions only, used for artistic purposes because they represent approximately the impressions of the age, and are plausible, till somebody produces better theories of the universe.

‘As to his winding up about a God of Mercy, etc. — if I wished to make a smart retort, which I really should hate doing, I might say that the Good-God theory having, after some thousands of years of trial, produced the present infamous and disgraceful state of Europe — that most Christian Continent! — a theory of a Goodless-and-Badless God (as in The Dynasts) might perhaps be given a trial with advantage.

‘Much confusion has arisen and much nonsense has been talked latterly in connection with the word “atheist”. I have never understood how anybody can be one except in the sense of disbelieving in a tribal god, man-shaped, fiery-faced and tyrannous, who flies into a rage on the slightest provocation; or as (according to Horace Walpole) Sir Francis Dashwood defined the Providence believed in by the Lord Shrewsbury of that date to be — a figure like an old angry man in a blue cloak. . . . Fifty meanings attach to the word “God” nowadays, the only reasonable meaning being the Cause of Things, whatever that cause may be.1 Thus no modern thinker can be an atheist in the modern sense, while all modern thinkers are atheists in the ancient and exploded sense.’

In this connection he said once — perhaps oftener — that although invidious critics had cast slurs upon him as Nonconformist, Agnostic, Atheist, Infidel, Immoralist, Heretic, Pessimist, or something else equally opprobrious in their eyes, they had never thought of calling him what they might have called him much more plausibly — churchy; not in an intellectual sense, but in so far as instincts and emotions ruled. As a child, to be a parson had been his dream; moreover, he had had several clerical relatives who held livings; while his grandfather, father, uncle, brother, wife, cousin, and two sisters had been musicians in various churches over a period covering altogether more than a hundred years. He himself had frequently read the church lessons, and had at one time as a young man begun reading for Cambridge with a view to taking Orders.

His vision had often been that of so many people brought up under Church of England influences, a giving of liturgical form to modern ideas, and expressing them in the same old buildings that had already seen previous reforms successfully carried out. He would say to his friends, the Warden of Keble, Arthur Benson, and others, that if the bishops only had a little courage, and would modify the liturgy by dropping preternatural assumptions out of it, few churchgoers would object to the change for long, and congregations would be trebled in a brief time. The idea was clearly expressed in the ‘Apology’ prefixed to Late Lyrics and Earlier.

‘June 9. It is now the time of long days, when the sun seems reluctant to take leave of the trees at evening — - the shine climbing 1 In another place he says ‘ Cause’ means really but the ‘ invariable antecedent up the trunks, reappearing higher, and still fondly grasping the tree- tops till long after.’

Later in the month his friend J. M. Barrie suggested that Hardy should go with him to France, to which proposal Hardy replied:

‘Max Gate, Dorchester, ‘23 June 1917.

‘My dear Barrie,

‘It was so kind of you to concoct that scheme for my accompanying you to the Front — or Back — in France. I thought it over carefully, as it was an attractive idea. But I have had to come to the conclusion that old men cannot be young men, and that I must content myself with the past battles of our country if I want to feel military. If I had been ten years younger I would have gone.

‘I hope you will have a pleasant, or rather, impressive, time, and the good company you will be in will be helpful all round. I am living in hope of seeing you on the date my wife has fixed and of renewing acquaintance with my old friend Adelphi Terrace.

‘Always sincerely yours,

‘Thomas Hardy.’

In July his poem ‘Then and Now’ was printed in The Times, and in the latter half of the month he and his wife paid a visit of two days to J. M. Barrie at Adelphi Terrace — a spot with which Hardy had had years of familiarity when their entertainer was still a child, and which was attractive to him on that account. Here they had some interesting meetings with other writers. Upon one memorable evening they sat in a large empty room, which was afterwards to be Sir James’s study but was then being altered and decorated. From the windows they had a fine view over the Thames, and searchlights wheeled across the sky. The only illumination within the room was from candles placed on the floor to avoid breaking war regulations, which forbade too bright lighting.

He came back to pack up in August his MS. of Moments of Vision and send to the Messrs. Macmillan.

In October he went with Mrs. Hardy to Plymouth, calling for a day or two upon Mr. and Mrs. Eden Phillpotts at Torquay on their way. But the weather being wet at Plymouth they abandoned their stay there and came home.

‘I hold that the mission of poetry is to record impressions, not convictions. Wordsworth in his later writings fell into the error of recording the latter. So also did Tennyson, and so do many poets when they grow old. Absit omen!

‘I fear I have always been considered the Dark Horse of contemporary English literature.

‘I was quick to bloom; late to ripen.

‘I believe it would be said by people who knew me well that I have a faculty (possibly not uncommon) for burying an emotion in my heart or brain for forty years, and exhuming it at the end of that time as fresh as when interred. For instance, the poem entitled “ The Breaking of Nations” contains a feeling that moved me in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war, when I chanced to be looking at such an agricultural incident in Cornwall. But I did not write the verses till during the war with Germany of 1914, and onwards. Query: where was that sentiment hiding itself during more than forty years?’

Hardy’s mind seems to have been running on himself at this time to a degree quite unusual with him, who often said — and his actions showed it — that he took no interest in himself as a personage.

‘November 13. I was a child till I was 16; a youth till I was 25; a young man till I was 40 or 50.’

The above note on his being considered a Dark Horse was apt enough, when it is known that none of the society men who met him suspected from his simple manner the potentialities of observation that were in him. This unassertive air, unconsciously worn, served him as an invisible coat almost to uncanniness. At houses and clubs where he encountered other writers and critics and world-practised readers of character, whose bearing towards him was often as towards one who did not reach their altitudes, he was seeing through them as though they were glass. He set down some cutting and satirical notes on their qualities and compass, but destroyed all of them, not wishing to leave behind him anything which could be deemed a gratuitous belittling of others.

This month Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses was published, and it may have been his occupation with the proofs that had set him thinking of himself; and also caused him to make the following entry: ‘ I do not expect much notice will be taken of these poems: they mortify the human sense of self-importance by showing, or suggesting, that human beings are of no matter or appreciable value in this nonchalant universe.’ He subjoined the Dedication of Sordello, where the author remarks: ‘My own faults of expression are many; but with care for a man or book such would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either?’

It was in this mood that he read such reviews of the book as were sent him.

‘December 31. New Year’s Eve. Went to bed at eleven. East wind. No bells heard. Slept in the New Year, as did also those “out there”.’

This refers to the poem called ‘Looking Across’ published in the new volume, Stinsford Churchyard lying across the mead from Max Gate.

PART IV - LIFE’S DECLINE

CHAPTER XXXIV

REFLECTIONS ON POETRY

1918: Aet. 77-78

On January 2 Hardy attended a performance of the women land- workers in the Corn Exchange. ‘Met there Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, Lady Shaftesbury, and other supporters of the movement. The girls looked most picturesque in their raiment of emancipation, which they evidently enjoyed wearing.’

Meanwhile the shadows lengthened. In the second week of the month he lost his warm-hearted neighbour, Mrs. A. Brinsley Sheridan, nee Motley, of Frampton Court. ‘An old friend of thirty-two years’ standing. She was, I believe, the first to call when we entered this house at Max Gate, and she remained staunch to the end of her days.’

‘January 16. As to reviewing. Apart from a few brilliant exceptions, poetry is not at bottom criticized as such, that is, as a particular man’s artistic interpretation of life, but with a secret eye on its theological and political propriety. Swinburne used to say to me that so it would be two thousand years hence; but I doubt it.

‘As to pessimism. My motto is, first correctly diagnose the complaint — in this case human ills — and ascertain the cause: then set about finding a remedy if one exists. The motto or practice of the optimists is: Blind the eyes to the real malady, and use empirical panaceas to suppress the symptoms.

‘Browning said (in a line cited against me so often):