Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1189 page)

‘Title “self-slaughter”; “divided against ourselves”.

‘Now these 3 (or 3000) whirling through space at the rate of 40 miles a second — (God’s view). “Some of our family who” (the we of one nation speaking of the “we” of another).

‘A battle. Army as somnambulists — not knowing what it is for.

‘We were called “Artillery” etc. “We were so under the spell of habit that” (drill).

‘It is now necessary to call the reader’s attention to those of us who were harnessed and collared in blue and brass. . . .

‘Poem — the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. (Stated as by a god to the gods — i.e. as God’s story.)

‘Poem — I — First Cause, omniscient, not omnipotent — limitations, difficulties, etc., from being only able to work by Law (His only failing is lack of foresight).

‘We will now ask the reader to look eastward with us ... at what the contingent of us out that way were doing.

‘Poem. A spectral force seen acting in a man (e.g. Napoleon) and he acting under it — a pathetic sight — this compulsion.

‘Patriotism, if aggressive and at the expense of other countries, is a vice; if in sympathy with them, a virtue.’

From these notes it will be seen how The Dynasts had been slowly developing in his mind. Unfortunately they are not dated, but there is in existence a notebook filled with details of the Napoleonic wars, and reflection upon them, having been written at the time he was gathering material for The Trumpet-Major, which was first published in 1880.

During July Hardy had visits from many friends. Florence Henniker came early in the month, and went for a delightful drive with him and his wife in Blackmore Vale, and to Sherborne, the scene of The Wood.land.ers. Later Siegfried Sassoon arrived with Edmund Blunden, and then E. M. Forster, who accompanied him to an amateur performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the lawn of Trinity Rectory.

In August he was well enough to cycle (no small feat for a man of eighty-two) with his wife to Talbothays to visit his brother and his sister.

On August 11 he writes in his notebook:

‘Motored to Sturminster Newton, and back by Dogbury Gate. Walked to top of High Stoy with Flower (probably for the last time), thence back home. A beautiful drive.’

‘October 12. Walked across Boucher’s Close to Ewelease Stile.’ [Boucher’s Close is a green-wooded meadow next to Stinsford Vicarage, and the Ewelease Stile is the one whereon, more than fifty years before this date, he had sat and read the review of Desperate Remedies in the Spectator.]

On the same day Hardy wrote to J. H. Morgan as follows:

‘Dear General Morgan,

‘I had already begun to reply to your interesting letter from Berlin, which opened up so many points that had engaged me 20 years ago, but had rather faded in my memory. Now that you are at home I will write it in a more succinct form, for it is not likely that amid the many details you have to attend to after your absence you will want to think much about Napoleonic times.

‘I cannot for my life recall where I obtained the idea of N’s entry into Berlin by the Potsdamer-strasse, though I don’t think I should have written it without authority. However, you have to remember that the events generally in The Dynasts had to be pulled together into dramatic scenes, to show themselves to the mental eye of the reader as a picture viewed from one point; and hence it was sometimes necessary to see round corners, down crooked streets, and to shift buildings nearer each other than in reality (as Turner did in his landscapes); and it may possibly happen that I gave “A Public Place” in Berlin these convenient facilities without much ceremony.

‘You allude to Leipzig. That battle bothered me much more than Jena or Ulm (to which you also allude) — in fact more than any other battle I had to handle. I defy any human being to synchronize with any certainty its episodes from descriptions by historians. My time-table was, I believe, as probable a one as can be drawn up at this date. But I will go no further with these stale conjectures, now you are in London.

‘I have quite recently been reading a yellow old letter written from Berlin in June, 1815, by a Dorset man whose daughter is a friend of ours, and who lately sent it to me. The writer says what is oddly in keeping with your remarks on the arrogance of Prussian officers. “ Buonaparte has rendered Germany completely military; at the inns and post-houses a private Gentleman exacts not half the respect exacted by a soldier. This contempt for those who wear no swords displays itself in no very pleasant shape to travellers. About 3 weeks ago I might have died of damp sheets if my German servant had not taken upon him to assure a brute of a Post-master that I was an English General travelling for my health. ... I have since girded on a sabre, got a military cap, and let my moustache grow: soldiers now present arms as we pass.”

‘It would be strange to find that Napoleon was really the prime cause of German militarism! What a Nemesis for the French nation!

‘Well, I have gone back to Boney again after all: but no more of him. I hope you find the change to London agreeable, and keep well in your vicissitudes.

‘Sincerely yours,

‘Thomas Hardy.’

Early in November he was visited by Mrs. Henry Allhusen, his friend from her girlhood, when she was Miss Dorothy Stanley, daughter of Lady Jeune, afterwards Lady St. Helier. With Mrs. Allhusen and her daughter Elizabeth he motored to Dogbury Gate and other beautiful parts of Dorset. Elizabeth Allhusen, a charming girl, died soon after, to Hardy’s grief.

A few days later came a letter from the Pro-Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, to say that it had been decided to elect him to an Honorary Fellowship, which he accepted, an announcement to that effect being made in The Times on the 20th of the month.

Another entry in his notebook:

‘November 27. E’s death-day, ten years ago. Went with F. and tidied her tomb and carried flowers for her and the other two tombs.’

‘New Year’s Eve. Henry and Kate came to 1 o’clock dinner, stayed to tea, left 5.30. Did not sit up.’

Early in January 1923 Hardy was appointed Governor of the Dorchester Grammar School for three years.

‘February 26. A story (rather than a poem) might be written in the first person, in which “I” am supposed to live through the centuries in my ancestors, in one person, the particular line of descent chosen being that in which qualities are most continuous.’ (From an old note.)

A few days after this entry is the following:

‘April 5. In to-day’s Times:

“Henniker. — on the 4th April 1923, of heart failure, the Honourable Mrs. Arthur Henniker. R.I.P.”

‘After a friendship of 30 years!’

‘April 10. F. Henniker buried to-day at 1 o’clock at Thornham Magna, Eye, Suffolk.’

During the month of April Hardy finished the rough draft of his poetical play The Queen of Cornwall, and in May he made, with infinite care, his last drawing, an imaginary view of Tintagel Castle. This is delicately drawn, an amazing feat for a man in his eighty-third year, and it indicates his architectural tastes and early training. It was used as an illustration when The Queen of Cornwall was published.

In April, replying to a letter from Mr. John Galsworthy, he writes:

‘. . . The exchange of international thought is the only possible salvation for the world: and though I was decidedly premature when I wrote at the beginning of the South African War that I hoped to see patriotism not confined to realms, but circling the earth, I still maintain that such sentiments ought to prevail.

‘Whether they will do so before the year 10,000 is of course what sceptics may doubt.’

Towards the end of May Mr. and Mrs. Walter de la Mare stayed at Max Gate for two nights, and early in June, the day after Hardy’s birthday, Mr. and Mrs. Granville-Barker came to see him, bringing with them friends he had not seen for many years, Mr. and Mrs. Max Beerbohm.

‘June 10. Relativity. That things and events always were, are, and will be (e.g. Emma, Mother and Father are living still in the past).’

‘June 21. Went with F. on board the Queen Elizabeth on a visit to Sir John de Robeck, Lady de Robeck, and Admiral W. W. Fisher.’ More than once, upon the invitation of Admiral Fisher, he had had a pleasant time on board a battleship off Portland.

On June 25 Hardy and his wife went to Oxford by road to stay at Queen’s College for two nights. This was the last long journey that Hardy was to make, and the last time that he was to sleep away from Max Gate. It was a delightful drive, by way of Salisbury,

Hungerford, and Wantage. At Salisbury they stopped for a little while to look at the Cathedral, as Hardy always loved doing, and at various old buildings, including the Training College which he had visited more than fifty years before when his two sisters were students there, and which is faithfully described in Jude the Obscure.

They paused also at Fawley, that pleasant Berkshire village described in the same novel under the name of Marygreen. Here some of Hardy’s ancestors were buried, and he searched fruitlessly for their graves in the little churchyard. His father’s mother, the gentle, kindly grandmother who lived with the family at Bockhampton during Hardy’s childhood, had spent the first thirteen years of her life here as an orphan child, named Mary Head, and her memories of Fawley were so poignant that she never cared to return to the place after she had left it as a young girl. The surname of Jude was taken from this place.

So well had their journey been timed that on their arrival at Oxford they found awaiting them under the entrance gateway of Queen’s, Mr. Godfrey Elton, who was to be their cicerone, and whose impressions of their visit are given herewith.

‘Having been elected an Honorary Fellow Hardy paid Queen’s College a visit on June 25 th and 26th, just after the end of the summer term of 1923. With a colleague, Dr. Chattaway, I was delighted to meet him at the College gate — he was to come by road with Mrs. Hardy from Dorchester. Neither Chattaway nor I had met Hardy before, but I felt confident that we should recognise the now legendary figure from his portraits. It was almost like awaiting a visit from Thackeray or Dickens. . . .

‘The car arrived punctually, and a smallish, fragile, bright-eyed man, elderly certainly but as certainly not old, climbed out of it. An elderly gentleman, one would have said, who had always lived in the country and knew much of the ways of wild creatures and crops. . . .

‘We left Mr. and Mrs. Hardy at tea in the Provost’s lodgings. The Provost was only one year Mr. Hardy’s senior, but with his patriarchal white beard appeared a great deal older, and as we left the party — Hardy sitting bright-eyed and upright on the edge of his chair — it seemed almost like leaving a new boy in charge of his headmaster. . . . Next day there was a lunch in Common-room, at which the Fellows and their wives met Mr. and Mrs. Hardy, and a photograph in the Fellows’ garden in which Hardy appeared in his Doctor’s gown with his new colleagues. In the morning he was shown the sights of the College. He was obviously happy to be in Oxford, and happy, I think, too, to be of it, and I wished that it had been term-time and that he could have seen the younger life of the place, which one felt in some ways he would have preferred to Tutors and Professors. We took him round College a trifle too fast. He would pause reflectively before Garrick’s copy of the First Folio or the contemporary portrait of Henry V., and seem about to make some comment when his conductors would be passing on again and some new historical information would be being offered him. It was characteristic of him that in some pause in this perambulation he found occasion to say some kind words to me of some youthful verse of mine he had chanced to see. . . . Afterwards he asked me to take him into the High Street to see the famous curve, and we spent some minutes searching for the precise spot from which it can best be viewed, while in my mind memories of Jude the Obscure and an earlier Oxford conflicted with anxieties as to the traffic of the existing town — to which he seemed quite indifferent. Then, apparently unwearied, he asked for the Shelley Memorial. . . .

‘After this came the Common-room lunch, and afterwards Mrs. Hardy invited me to accompany them on a visit to the Masefields. We drove to Boar’s Hill, paying a visit in Christ Church on the way. Had it not been for my constant consciousness that I was sitting before a Classic, I should not have guessed that I was with a man who wrote; rather an elderly country gentleman with a bird-like alertness and a rare and charming youthfulness — interested in everything he saw, and cultured, but surely not much occupied with books: indeed almost all of us, his new colleagues, would have struck an impartial observer as far more bookish than the author of the Wessex novels. . . .

‘At the Masefields’ Hardy was asked a question or two about Jude’s village, which it was thought he might have passed on the road from Dorchester, and he spoke briefly and depreciatingly of “ that fictitious person. If there ever was such a person. . . .” When we left, Hardy holding a rose which Mr. Masefield had cut from his garden, there was still time to see more. I had expected that he would wish to rest but no; he wanted to see the Martyrs’ Memorial and New College, Cloisters. Obviously there were certain of the Oxford sights which he had resolved to see again. I am ashamed to remember that, by some error which I cannot now explain, I conducted our guests to the Chapel, instead of the Cloisters, at New College. But perhaps it was a fortunate error, for the choir were about to sing the evening service, and at Hardy’s wish we sat about twenty minutes in the ante-chapel listening in silence to the soaring boys’ voices. . . .

‘Next morning Mr. and Mrs. Hardy left. He spoke often afterwards of his pleasure at having seen his College, and he contemplated another visit. This too brief membership and his one visit remain a very happy memory to his colleagues.’

The Hardys motored back to Max Gate by way of Newbury, Winchester, and Ringwood, having lunch in a grassy glade in the New Forest in the simple way that Hardy so much preferred.

This occasion was an outstanding one during the last years of his life.