by Thomas Hardy
Soon there was to occur a similar proceeding on a much larger scale by another company; the carrying of a cutting by the Midland Railway through Old St. Pancras Churchyard, which would necessitate the removal of many hundreds of coffins, and bones in huge quantities. In this business Mr. Blomfield was to represent the Bishop as before. The architect said that now there should be no mistake about his thoroughly carrying out the superintendence. Accordingly, he set a clerk-of-works in the churchyard, who was never to leave during working hours; and as the removals were effected by night, and the clerk-of-works might be lax or late, he deputed Hardy to go on evenings at uncertain hours, to see that the clerk-of-works was performing his duties; while Hardy’s chief himself was to drop in at unexpected moments during the week, presumably to see that neither his assistant nor the clerk-of-works was a defaulter.
The plan succeeded excellently, and throughout the late autumn and early winter (of probably the year 1865 or thereabouts) Hardy attended at the churchyard — each evening between five and six, as well as sometimes at other hours. There after nightfall, within a high hoarding that could not be overlooked, and by the light of flare-lamps, the exhumation went on continuously of the coffins that had been uncovered during the day, new coffins being provided for those that came apart in lifting, and for loose skeletons; and those that held together being carried to the new ground on a board merely; Hardy supervising these mournful processions when present, with what thoughts may be imagined, and Blomfield sometimes meeting him there. In one coffin that fell apart was a skeleton and two skulls. He used to tell that when, after some fifteen years of separation, he met Arthur Blomfield again and their friendship was fully renewed, among the latter’s first words were: ‘ Do you remember how we found the man with two heads at St. Pancras?’
It may conceivably have been some rumour of the possibility of this lamentable upheaval of Old St. Pancras Churchyard by the railway company in the near future which had led Sir Percy, the son of Mary Shelley, to remove the bodies of her parents therefrom to St. Peter’s, Bournemouth, where she had been buried in 1851, and where they now lie beside her, though few people seem to know that such an illustrious group is in the churchyard.
Hardy used to tell some amusing stories of his chief, a genuine humorist like his father the bishop. Among other strange ways in which he and his pupils, including Hardy, used to get on with their architecture was by singing glees and catches at intervals during office hours. Having always been musically inclined and, as has been stated, a fiddler of countless jigs and reels in his boyhood, Hardy could sing at sight with moderate accuracy from notation, though his voice was not strong. Hence Blomfield welcomed him in the office choir, where he himself took the bass, the rest waiting till he had ‘got his low E Hardy also, at Blomfield’s request, sang in the church-choir at the opening of the organ at St. Matthias’ Church, Richmond, where Blomfield took a bass part, one of his pupils being organist. But in the office the alto part was the difficulty, and Blomfield would say: ‘If you meet an alto anywhere in the Strand, Hardy, ask him to come in and join us’.
Among other things, the architect related that one day before he (Hardy) came, a Punch-and-Judy show performed outside the office in St. Martin’s Place. Presently the housekeeper, a woman London- bred, came running upstairs exclaiming, ‘Why, Mr. Arthur, I declare there’s a man inside! And I never knew it before!’
On an occasion when a builder had called on business, Hardy being present and some pupils, Blomfield airily said to the builder:
‘Well, Mr. T, what can I do for you? What will you take this morning — sherry or port?’ Though it was only between 10 and 11 Mr. Treflected earnestly and said, ‘ Port, sir, if you please’.
As they naturally had no wine or any other liquor at the offices, Blomfield was comically disconcerted at the worthy builder’s seriousness, but was as good as his word, and the office-boy was secretly dispatched to the Strand to buy a bottle of port, and to the housekeeper to borrow a glass.
Grotesque incidents that seldom happened to other people seemed to happen to Blomfield. One day he and Hardy went together to some slum near Soho to survey the site for a new building. The inspection made their boots muddy, and on the way back Blomfield suggested they should have them cleaned, as two bootblacks had come up pointing significantly. When Hardy and he had placed themselves Blomfield asked the second why he did not proceed with his brushing, like the first. “Cause he’s got no blacking nor brush’, said the first. ‘ What good is he then?’ asked Blomfield. ‘ I’ve cracked my blacking- bottle, and it goes dry; so I pay him a penny a day to spit for me.’
However, matters were graver sometimes. Hardy remembered how one morning he arrived at the Terrace to find Blomfield standing with his back to the fireplace, and with a very anxious face. The architect said slowly without any preface, ‘Hardy, that tower has fallen’. His eyes were fixed on the opposite wall where was the drawing of a new church just then finished. It was a serious matter, especially as some years earlier another well-known architect had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for manslaughter, one of his new erections having fallen and killed some people. Fortunately no one was killed in the present case, and the designer was quite exonerated by having the tower rebuilt stone by stone as it had been before, and so proving the construction to be unimpeachable, for there it has stood ever since without a crack. What had caused the fall was always a mystery.
This used to remind Hardy of another church-tower story. Mr. Hicks, with whom he served his pupillage, once told him that at the beginning of his practice he built a church-tower near Bristol, and on a night just after its erection he dreamt that on approaching it he saw a huge crack in its west wall from the parapet downwards. He was so disturbed that next morning he mounted his horse; it was before railways, and architects often then rode on horseback to the supervision of their buildings; and trotting off to the village the tower rose into his view. There was the crack in its face exactly as he had beheld it in his dream.
Having somewhat settled down with Blomfield, but feeling that architectural drawing in which the actual designing had no great part was monotonous and mechanical; having besides little inclination for pushing his way into influential sets which would help him to start a practice of his own, Hardy’s tastes reverted to the literary pursuits that he had been compelled to abandon in 1861, and had not resumed except to write the Prize Architectural Essay before mentioned. By as early as the end of 1863 he had recommenced to read a great deal, with a growing tendency towards poetry. But he was forced to consider ways and means, and it was suggested to him that he might combine literature with architecture by becoming an art- critic for the press, particularly in the province of architectural art. It is probable that he might easily have carried this out, reviewers with a speciality being then, and possibly now, in demand. His preparations for such a course were, however, quickly abandoned, and by 1865 he had begun to write verses, and by 1866 to send his productions to magazines. That these were rejected by editors, and that he paid such respect to their judgment as scarcely ever to send out a MS. twice, was in one feature fortunate for him, since in years long after he was able to examine those poems of which he kept copies, and by the mere change of a few words or the rewriting of a line or two to make them quite worthy of publication. Such of them as are dated in these years were all written in his lodgings at 16 West- bourne Park Villas. He also began turning the Book of Ecclesiastes into Spenserian stanzas, but finding the original unmatchable abandoned the task.
As another outcome of the same drift of mind, he used to deliver short addresses or talks on poets and poetry to Blomfield’s pupils and assistants on afternoons when there was not much to be done, or at all events when not much was done. There is no tradition of what Blomfield thought of this method of passing office hours instead of making architectural plans.
The only thing he got published at the time was, so far as is known, a trifle in Chambers’s Journabn 1865 entitled ‘How
I built myself a house’, written to amuse the ^pupils of Blomfield. It may have been the acceptance of this jeu d’esprit that turned his mind in the direction of prose; yet he made such notes as the following:
‘April, 1865. The form on the canvas which immortalises the painter is but the last of a series of tentative and abandoned sketches each of which contained some particular feature nearer perfection than any part of the finished product.’
‘Public opinion is of the nature of a woman.’
There is not that regular gradation among womankind that there is among men. You may meet with 999 exactly alike, and then the thousandth — not a little better, but far above them. Practically therefore it is useless for a man to seek after this thousandth to make her his.’
‘May. How often we see a vital truth flung about carelessly wrapt in a commonplace subject, without the slightest conception on the speaker’s part that his words contain an unsmelted treasure.’
‘In architecture, men who are clever in details are bunglers in generalities. So it is in everything whatsoever.’
‘More conducive to success in life than the desire for much knowledge is the being satisfied with ignorance on irrelevant subjects.’
‘The world does not despise us; it only neglects us.’
Whether or no, he did not seriously take up prose till two or three years later, when he was practically compelled to try his hand on it by finding himself perilously near coming to the ground between the two stools of architecture and literature.
Subsequent historic events brought back to his mind that this year he went with Blomfield to New Windsor, to the laying of the Memorial-stone of a church there by the Crown Princess of Germany (the English Princess Royal). She was accompanied by her husband the Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick. ‘Blomfield handed her the trowel, and during the ceremony she got her glove daubed with the mortar. In her distress she handed the trowel back to him with an impatient whisper of “Take it, take it!”‘
Here is another note of his relating to this time:
‘July 2 (1865). Worked at J. H. Newman’s Apologia, which we have all been talking about lately. A great desire to be convinced by him, because Moule likes him so much. Style charming, and his logic really human, being based not on syllogisms but on converging probabilities. Only — and here comes the fatal catastrophe — there is no first link to his excellent chain of reasoning, and down you come headlong. . . . Read some Horace; also Childe Harold and Lalla Rookh till J past 12.’
However, as yet he did not by any means abandon verse, which he wrote constantly, but kept private, through the years 1866 and most of 1867, resolving to send no more to magazines whose editors probably did not know good poetry from bad, and forming meanwhile the quixotic opinion that, as in verse was concentrated the essence of all imaginative and emotional literature, to read verse and nothing else was the shortest way to the fountain-head of such, for one who had not a great deal of spare time. And in fact for nearly or quite years he did not read a word of prose except such as came under his eye in the daily newspapers and weekly reviews. Thus his reading naturally covered a fairly large tract of English poetry, and it may be mentioned^ as showing that he had some views of his own, that he preferred Scott the poet to Scott the novelist, and never ceased to regret that the author of ‘the most Homeric poem in the English language — Marmion’ — should later have declined on prose fiction.
He was not so keenly anxious to get into print as many young men are; in this indifference, as in some qualities of his verse, curiously resembling Donne. The Horatian exhortation that he had come across in his reading — to keep his own compositions back till the ninth year — had made a deep impression on him. Nescit vox missa reverti; and by retaining his poems, and destroying those he thought irremediably bad — though he afterwards fancied he had destroyed too many — he may have been saved from the annoyance of seeing his early crude effusions crop up in later life.
At the same time there can be no doubt that some closer association with living poets and the pcetry of the moment would have afforded Hardy considerable stimulus and help. But his unfortunate shyness — or rather aloofness, for he was not shy in the ordinary sense — served him badly at this period of his life. During part of his residence at Westbourne Park Villas he was living within half a mile of Swinburne, and hardly more than a stone’s throw from Browning, to whom introductions would not have been difficult through literary friends of Blomfield’s. He might have obtained at least encouragement from these, and, if he cared, possibly have floated off some of his poems in a small volume. But such a proceeding as trying to know these contemporaries seems never to have crossed his mind.
During his residence in London he had entered himself at King’s College for the French classes, where he studied the tongue through a term or two under Professor Sti6venard, never having taken it up seriously since in his boyhood he had worked at exercises under a governess. He used to say that Stifevenard was the most charming Frenchman he ever met, as well as being a fine teacher. Hardy’s mind had, however, become at this date so deeply immersed in the practice and study of English poetry that he gave but a perfunctory attention to his French readings.
March ii. The woman at a first interview will know as much °f the man as he will know of her on the wedding morning; whilst sne will know as little of him then as he knew of her when they first shook hands. Her knowledge will have come upon her like a flood, and have as gradually soaked away.’
‘June 2. My 25 th birthday. Not very cheerful. Feel as if I had lived a long time and done very little.
‘Walked about by moonlight in the evening. Wondered what woman, if any, I should be thinking about in five years’ time.’
‘July 9. The greatest and most majestic being on the face of the earth will accept pleasure from the most insignificant.’
‘July 19. Patience is the union of moral courage with physical cowardice.’
‘End of July. The dull period in the life of an event is when it ceases to be news and has not begun to be history.’
‘August. The anguish of a defeat is most severely felt when we look upon weak ones who have believed us invincible and have made preparations for our victory.’
‘Aug. 23. The poetry of a scene varies with the minds of the perceivers. Indeed, it does not lie in the scene at all.’
About this time Hardy nourished a scheme of a highly visionary character. He perceived from the impossibility of getting his verses accepted by magazines that he could not live by poetry, and (rather strangely) thought that architecture and poetry — particularly architecture in London — would not work well together. So he formed the idea of combining poetry and the Church — towards which he had long had a leaning — and wrote to a friend in Cambridge for particulars as to matriculation at that University, which with his late classical reading would have been easy for him. He knew that what money he could not muster himself for keeping terms his father would lend him for a few years, his idea being that of a curacy in a country village. This fell through less because of its difficulty than from a conscientious feeling, after some theological study, that he could hardly take the step with honour while holding the views which on examination he found himself to hold. And so he allowed the curious scheme to drift out of sight, though not till after he had begun to practise orthodoxy. For example:
‘July 5- Sunday. To Westminster Abbey morning service. Stayed to the Sacrament. A very odd experience, amid a crowd of strangers.’
Among other incidents of his life in London during these years was also one that he used to recall with interest, when writing The Dynasts — his hearing Palmerston speak in the House of Commons a short time before his death, Palmerston having been War Secretary during the decisive hostilities with Napoleon embodied in the Third Part of Hardy’s Epic-Drama, a personal conjunction which brought its writer face to face not only with actual participants in the great struggle — as was the case with his numerous acquaintance of ran
k- and-file who had fought in the Peninsula and at Waterloo — but with one who had contributed to direct the affairs of that war. The only note on the fact that can be found is the following:
‘Oct. 18 . Wet evening. At Regent Circus, coming home saw the announcement of the death of Ld. Palmerston, whom I heard speak in the House of Commons a year or two ago.’
‘Oct. 27. To Westminster Abbey with Mr. Heaton and Lee. Took up a position in the triforium, from which spot I saw Ld. Palmerston lowered into the grae. Purcell’s service. Dead March in Saul.’
The following letter to his sister describes the ceremony:
‘Saturday, Oct. 28. 1865.
‘My dear Mary ‘I sent Barchester Towers by B. P., and you are probably by this time acquainted with Eleanor Bold, etc. This novel is considered the best of Trollope’s.
‘Yesterday Lord Palmerston was buried — the Prime Minister. I and the Lees got tickets through a friend of a friend of Mr. B’s, and we went of course. Our tickets admitted to the triforium, or monks’
walk, of Westminster Abbey, and we got from there a complete view of the ceremony. You will know wh. part of the Abbey I mean if you think of Salisbury Cathedral and of the row of small arches over the large arches, wh. throw open the space between the roof of the aisles and the vaulting.
‘Where I have put the X in the Section is where I stood; over the gj on the Plan. The mark * shows where the grave is, between L.T.H — E
Pitt’s and Fox’s and close by Canning’s. All the Cabinet Ministers were there as pall bearers. The burial service was Purcell’s. The opening sentences “I am the resurrection, etc” were sung to Croft’s music. Beethoven’s Funeral March was played as they went from the choir to the vault, and the Dead March in Saul was played at the close. I think I was never so much impressed with a ceremony in my life before, and I wd. not have missed it for anything. The Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge were present.