Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1190 page)

On July 20 the Prince of Wales paid a visit to Dorchester, to open the new Drill Hall for the Dorset Territorials, and Hardy was invited to meet him there, and to drive back to Max Gate where the Prince and the party accompanying him were to lunch. It was a hot day, and the whole episode might well have proved fatiguing and irksome to a man of Hardy’s years and retiring nature, but owing to the thoughtfulness of the Prince and his simple and friendly manner, all passed off pleasantly.

At lunch, besides the Prince and the Hardys, there were present Lord Shaftesbury, Admiral Sir Lionel Halsey, Sir Godfrey Thomas, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Walter Peacock, and Messrs. Proudfoot and Wilson, the Duchy Stewards.

The Prince had a friendly talk with Hardy in the garden, before leaving to visit certain Duchy farms in Dorchester: the main characteristic of the visit was its easy informality.

The next few months saw a certain activity on Hardy’s part. He visited several friends either for lunch or tea, as he did not go out in the evening except for a short walk, nor did he again sleep away from Max Gate. Many from a distance also called upon him, including his ever faithful friend Lady St. Helier, who travelled from Newbury to Max Gate on October 3rd, this being their last meeting.

On November 15 th the poetic drama The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall was published. Hardy’s plan in writing this is clearly given in a letter to Mr. Harold Child:

‘The unities are strictly preserved, whatever virtue there may be in that. (I, myself, am old-fashioned enough to think there is a virtue in it, if it can be done without artificiality. The only other case I remember attempting it in was The Return of the Native.) The original events could have been enacted in the time taken up by the performance, and they continue unbroken throughout. The change of persons on the stage is called a change of scene, there being no change of background.

‘My temerity in pulling together into the space of an hour events that in the traditional stories covered a long time will doubtless be criticized, if it is noticed. But there are so many versions of the famous romance that I felt free to adapt it to my purpose in any way — as, in fact, the Greek dramatists did in their plays — notably Euripides.

‘Wishing it to be thoroughly English I have dropped the name of Chorus for the conventional onlookers, and called them Chanters, though they play the part of a Greek Chorus to some extent. I have also called them Ghosts (I don’t for the moment recall an instance of this in a Greek play). . . . Whether the lady ghosts in our performance will submit to have their faces whitened I don’t know! . . .

‘I have tried to avoid turning the rude personages of, say, the fifth century into respectable Victorians, as was done by Tennyson, Swinburne, Arnold, etc. On the other hand it would have been impossible to present them as they really were, with their barbaric manners and surroundings.’

On the 28th of the same month the play was produced by the Hardy Players at the Corn Exchange at Dorchester. The great difficulties which the play presented to amateur actors, unaccustomed to reciting blank verse, who were at their best in rustic comedy, were more or less overcome, but naturally a poetic drama did not make a wide appeal. However, the performance, and particularly the rehearsals, gave Hardy considerable pleasure.

On December 10 the death was announced of Sir Frederick Treves, Hardy’s fellow-townsman, the eminent surgeon. Frederick Treves as a child had attended the same school as Hardy’s elder sister Mary, and it was from the shop of Treves’s father that Hardy as a boy purchased his first writing-desk. The care which he took of all his possessions during his whole life is shown by the fact that this desk was in his study without a mark or scratch upon it at the time of his death. Because of the early association and the love which they both bore to the county, there was a strong link between these two Dorset men.

On the last day but one of the year Mr. and Mrs. G. Bernard Shaw and Colonel T. E. Lawrence lunched with the Hardys and spent several hours with them. The following entry in his notebook ends his brief chronicle of the year’s doings:

‘31. New Year’s Eve. Did not sit up. Heard the bells in the evening.’

1924

‘January 2. Attended Frederick Treves’s funeral at St. Peter’s. Very wet day. Sad procession to the cemetery. Casket in a little white grave.

‘Lord Dawson of Penn and Mr. Newman Flower came out to tea afterwards.’

On January 5 a poem by Hardy, ‘In Memoriam, F. T.’, appeared in The Times, a last tribute to an old friend.

During February The Queen of Cornwall was performed in London by the Hardy Players of Dorchester, but it was not altogether a success, partly owing to the only building available having no stage suitable for the performance, a rather small concert platform having to be used.

On March 7 Hardy notes:

‘To Stinsford with F. (E. first met 54 years ago).’

And later, on April 3:

‘Mother died 20 years ago to-day.’

Among the many letters which arrived on June 2, the 84th anniversary of his birth, was one from a son of the Baptist minister, Mr. Perkins, whom, in his youth, Hardy had so respected. This correspondent was one of the young men who had met him at the Baptist Chapel at the eastern end of the town for a prayer-meeting which was hindered by the arrival of a circus.

More than sixty years had elapsed since Hardy had had any contact with this friend of his youth, and for a little while he was strongly tempted to get into touch with him again. However, too wide a gulf lay between and, as might have been told in one of his poems, the gesture was never made and the days slipped on into oblivion.

On June 11 Mr. Rutland Boughton arrived at Max Gate for a visit of two days, the purpose of which was to consult Hardy about a plan he had for setting The Queen of Cornwall to music. Hardy was greatly interested, though he had heard no modern compositions, not even the immensely popular ‘Faerie Song’ from The Immortal Hour. ‘The Blue Danube’, ‘The Morgenblatter Waltz’, and the ‘Overture to William Tell interested him more strongly, and also church music, mainly on account of the association with his early days.

But he found Mr. Boughton a stimulating companion, and was interested in his political views, though he could not share them. After Mr. Boughton’s departure he said with conviction, ‘If I had talked to him for a few hours I would soon have converted him’.

One feature of this visit was a drive the Hardys took with their guests across parts of Egdon Heath, which were then one blaze of purple with rhododendrons in full bloom.

On June 16 a poem by Hardy entitled ‘Compassion’ appeared in The Times. It was written in answer to a request, and was intended to celebrate the Centenary of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Although not one of his most successful efforts, as he was never happy when writing to order, it served to demonstrate the poet’s passionate hatred of injustice and barbarity.

Much has been won — more, maybe, than we know —

And on we labour hopeful. ‘Ailinon!’

A mighty voice calls: ‘But may the good prevail!’

And ‘ Blessed are the merciful!’

Calls a yet mightier one.

On July 1 the Balliol Players, a party of undergraduates from Oxford, visited Max Gate, during the course of a tour in the west of England, to perform on the lawn The Oresteia as The Curse of the House of Atreus. This was a pleasant and informal occasion which gave delight to Hardy. Always sympathetic to youth, and a lifelong admirer of Greek tragedy, he fully appreciated this mark of affection and respect. The performance was not without an amusing side. The day was a windy one, and cold for July, hence the players with their bare arms and legs and scanty costumes must have been none too comfortable. However, they ran about the lawn and pranced into the flower-beds with apparent enjoyment. Finding that the carrying of lighted torches in the sunlight was ineffective, they carried instead tall spikes of a giant flowering spiraea which they plucked from a border. While having tea after the play they gathered round Hardy, who talked to them with a sincerity and simplicity that few but he could have shown. Among the names of the players that he jotted down in his notebook were those of Mr. A. L. Cliffe — Clytemnestra: Mr. Anthony Asquith — Cassandra; Mr. Walter Oakshott — Orestes; Mr. H. T. Wade-Gery — Agamemnon; Mr. A. A. Farrer — Electra; and he also notes, ‘ The Balliol Players had come on bicycles, sending on their theatrical properties in a lorry that sometimes broke down’. Mr. and Mrs. Granville-Barker were present as spectators on this occasion.

A day or two later, with reference to what is not clear, Hardy copies a quotation from Emerson:

‘The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.’

On August 4, noted by Hardy as being the day on which war was declared ten years before, he and Mrs. Hardy motored to Netherton Hall in Devon to lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Granville-Barker. Two days later he received a visit from Siegfried Sassoon and Colonel T. E. Lawrence.

About this time Rutland Boughton’s music version of The Queen of Cornwall was produced at Glastonbury, and on August 28 Hardy with his wife went to see and hear it, making the journey to Glastonbury by car.

From the 25 th to the 30th Hardy was sitting to the Russian sculptor Serge Yourievitch for his bust. This was made in Hardy’s study at Max Gate, and though he enjoyed conversation with the sculptor he was tired by the sittings, probably on account of his age, and definitely announced that he would not sit again for anything of the kind.

For several years some of the members of the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society had wished to perform a dramatization of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. After much hesitation Hardy handed over his own dramatization, although, as he notes in his diary, he had come to the conclusion that to dramatize a novel was a mistake in art; moreover, that the play ruined the novel and the novel the play. However, the result was that the company, self-styled ‘The Hardy Players’, produced Tess with such unexpected success at Dorchester and Weymouth that it was asked for in London, and the following year produced there by professional actors for over a hundred nights, Miss Gwen Ffranggon-Davies taking the part of’ Tess’.

On the 22nd of October Hardy with his wife visited for the first time since childhood the old barn at the back of Kingston Maurward. Here, as a small boy, he had listened to village girls singing old ballads. He pointed out to his wife the corner where they had sat. He looked around at the dusty rafters and the debris, considering possibly the difference that seventy years had made, and his manner as he left the barn was that of one who wished he had not endeavoured to revive a scene from a distant past. Almost certainly he was the only human being left of that once gay party.

A characteristic note ends Hardy’s diary for 1924:

‘December 31. New Years Eve. Sat up and heard Big Ben and the London church bells by wireless ring in the New Year.’

On this day also he copied a quotation from an essay by L. Pearsall Smith:

‘In every representation of Nature which is a work of art there is to be found, as Professor Courthope said, something whiqh is not to be found in the aspect of Nature which it represents; and what that something is has been a matter of dispute from the earliest days of criticism.’

‘The same writer adds’, notes Hardy, ‘“Better use the word ‘inspiration’ than ‘genius’ for inborn daemonic genius as distinct from conscious artistry”.

‘(It seems to me it might be called “temperamental impulse”, which, of course, must be inborn.)’

Early in January 1925 Hardy sent to the Nineteenth Century Magazine a poem entitled ‘ The Absolute Explains’.

In the spring of this year, in connection with Hardy’s dog ‘Wessex’, an incident occurred which was impossible to explain. This dog, a wire-haired terrier, was of great intelligence and very friendly to many who visited Max Gate, though he had defects of temper, due perhaps to a want of thorough training. Among those to whom he showed a partiality was Mr. William Watkins, the honourary secretary to the Society of Dorset Men in London.

About nine o’clock on the evening of April 18, Mr. Watkins called at Max Gate to discuss with Hardy certain matters connected with his society. The dog, as was his wont, rushed into the hall and greeted his friend with vociferous barks. Suddenly these gave way to a piteous whine, and the change was so staftling that Wessex’s mistress went to see what had happened.

Nothing, however, seemed amiss, and the dog returned into the room where Hardy was sitting and where he was joined by Mr. Watkins. But even here Wessex seemed ill at ease, and from time to time went to the visitor and touched his coat solicitously with his paw, which he always withdrew giving a sharp cry of distress.

Mr. Watkins left a little after ten o’clock, apparently in very good spirits. Early the next morning there came a telephone message from his son to say that the father, Hardy’s guest of the night before, had died quite suddenly about an hour after his return to the hotel from Max Gate. As a rule the dog barked furiously when he heard the telephone ring, but on this occasion he remained silent, his nose between his paws.

On May 26 a letter and a leading article appeared in The Times on the subject of a Thomas Hardy Chair of Literature and a Wessex University. The letter was signed by many eminent writers and educationalists. At the date of writing, however, the Chair has not been endowed.

Later in the summer, on July 15, a deputation from Bristol University arrived at Max Gate to confer on Hardy the honourary degree of Doctor of Literature. This was the fifth degree he had received from English and Scottish Universities, the others being, in the order in which the degrees were bestowed — Aberdeen, Cambridge, Oxford, and St. Andrews.

At the end of July Hardy sent off the manuscript of his volume of poems, Human Shows, to the publishers, and a month later he made arrangements for the performance of his dramatization of Tess at the Barnes Theatre. About this time he enters in his notebook: