by Thomas Hardy
‘It was the period of Church restoration, most churches being dilapidated more or less. My life now began. . . .
‘Scarcely any author and his wife could have had a much more romantic meeting, with its unusual circumstances in bringing them together from two different, though neighbouring counties to this one at this very remote spot, with a beautiful sea-coast, and the wild Atlantic Ocean rolling in with its magnificent waves and spray, its white gulls, and black choughs and grey puffins, its cliffs and rocks and gorgeous sunsettings, sparkling redness in a track widening from the horizon to the shore. All this should be seen in the winter to be truly appreciated. No summer visitors can have a true idea of its power to awaken heart and soul. [It was] an unforgettable experience to me, scampering up and down the hills on my beloved mare alone, wanting no protection, the rain going down my back often, and my hair floating on the wind.
‘I wore a soft deep dark coloured brown habit longer than to my heels, (as worn then), which had to be caught up to one side when walking, and thrown over the left arm gracefully and carefully, and this to be practised during the riding instruction — all of which my father [had] taught me with great pleasure and pride in my appearance and aptitude. I also wore a brown felt hat turned up at the sides. Fanny and I were one creature, and very happy. She was a lovely brown colour too, stopping where she liked, to drink or munch, I often getting off sketching and gathering flowers. The villagers stopped to gaze when I rushed down the hills, and a butterman laid down his basket once to exclaim loudly. No one except myself dared to ride in such fashion.
‘Sometimes I left Fanny, and clambered down to the rocks and seal-caves. Sometimes I visited a favourite in the scattered parish. . . .
‘When it was known that the Church-restoration was to be gone on with, the whole village was alive about it. Mr. Crickmay of Weymouth undertook it — Mr. Hicks, the first architect consulted, having died in the interval. The [assistant-architect] of his office was to come on a certain day. The letter that brought this intelligence interested the whole house, and afterwards, later in the day, the whole parish too; it seemed almost wonderful that a fixed date should at last be given and the work set in hand, after so many years of waiting, of difficulties, and delays, since back in the time of the previous incumbent. All were delighted. I had myself worked hard for my brother-in-law, collecting small sums from time to time and selling water-colour sketches I had painted, and saving household expenses in order that the historic old church might be rebuilt — there being no landed proprietor, no “equals” in the parish (as the rector often explained plaintively). So we were all ready to see the fruition of our endeavours, that is, my sister’s and mine particularly.
‘I must confess to a curiosity started by the coming event as to what the Architect would be like; seeing few strangers we had a vivid interest in every one who came: a strange clergyman, an occasional locum-tenens, a school-inspector, a stray missionary, or school- lecturer — all were welcome, including this architect to put us to rights at once.
‘It was a, lovely Monday evening in March , after a wild winter, that we were on the qui-vive for the stranger,1 who would have a tedious journey, his home being two counties off by the route necessitated changing trains many times, and waiting at stations, a sort of cross-jump journey like a chess-knight’s move. The only damp to our gladness was the sudden laying up of my brother-in-law by gout, and he who was the chief person could not be present on the arrival of our guest. The dinner-cloth was laid; my sister had gone to her husband who required her constant attention. At that very moment the front-door bell rang, and the architect was ushered in. I had to receive him alone, and felt a curious uneasy embarrassment at receiving anyone, especially so necessary a person as the architect. I was immediately arrested by his familiar appearance, as if I had seen him in a dream — his slightly different accent, his soft voice; also I noticed a blue paper sticking out of his pocket. I was explaining who I was, as I saw that he took me for the parson’s daughter or wife, when my sister appeared, to my great relief, and he went up to Mr. Holder’s room with her.
‘So I met my husband. I thought him much older than he was. He had a beard, and a rather shabby greatcoat, and had quite a business appearance. Afterwards he seemed younger, and by daylight especially so. . . . The blue paper proved to be the MS. of a poem, and not a plan of the church, he informed me, to my surprise.
‘After this our first meeting there had to be many visits to the church, and these visits, of deep interest to both, merged in those of 1 The verses entitled ‘A Man was drawing near to Me’ obviously relate to this arrival. But in them Hardy assumes that she was not thinking about his coming, though from this diary one gathers that she was; which seems to show that when writing them he had either not read her reminiscence of the evening as printed above, or had forgotten it.
further acquaintance and affection, to end in marriage, but not till after four years.
‘At first, though I was interested in him, the church-matters were paramount, and in due time I laid the foundation stone one morning [for the aisle and tower that were to be rebuilt]; with a bottle containing a record of the proceedings, the school-children attending. I plastered it well, the foreman said. Mr. Holder made a speech to the young ones to remember the event and speak of it to their descendants — just as if it had been a matter of world-wide interest. I wonder if they do remember it, and me.
‘The work went rapidly on under the direction of the Architect, who had stayed on his first visit rather longer than intended. We showed him some of the neighbourhood, some clergymen and their wives came to visit us: we were all much pleased at the beginning. Mr. Holder got well again. The Patron of the living, who lived in Antigua, wrote to inquire about it; an account was duly sent, and he replied that he was coming to see it if he could, and would certainly be at the opening.
‘My Architect came two or three times a year from that time to visit me. I rode my pretty mare Fanny and he walked by my side, and I showed him some [more] of the neighbourhood — the cliffs, along the roads, and through the scattered hamlets, sometimes gazing down at the solemn small shores below, where the seals lived, coming out of great deep caverns very occasionally. We sketched and talked of books; often we walked to Boscastle Harbour down the beautiful Vallency Valley where we had to jump over stones and climb over a low wall by rough steps, or get through a narrow pathway, to come out on great wide spaces suddenly, with a sparkling little brook going the same way, in which we once lost a tiny picnic-tumbler, and there it is to this day no doubt between two of the boulders.1
‘Sometimes we all drove to Tintagel, and Trebarwith Strand where donkeys [word illegible] employed to carry seaweed to the farmers; Strangles Beach also, Bossiney, Bude, and other places on the coast. Lovely drives they were, with sea-views all along at intervals, and very dawdling enjoyable slow ones; sometimes to visit a neighbouring clergyman and his family. We grew much interested in each other. I found him a perfectly new subject of study and delight and he found a “mine” in me he said. He was quite unlike any other person who came to see us, for they were slow of speech and ideas.
‘In the intervals of his visits we corresponded, and I studied, and sketched, and drove my brother-in-law and sister to the nearest market- 1 This incident was versified by Hardy afterwards, and entitled ‘ Under the Waterfall”.
town, Camelford, nine miles off, or to Launceston to see my cousins. The man-servant taught me to jump hurdles on Fanny, but Fanny, though not at all objecting, got a little lame, so we stopped jumping.
‘I like to think of those details and small events, and am fancying some other people may like to have them.
‘It was a pleasant time, though there were difficulties in the parish. I have never liked the Cornish working-orders as I do Devonshire folk; their so-called admirable independence of character was most disagreeable to live with, and usually amounted to absence of kindly interest in others, though it was unnoticeable by casual acquaintance. .
. . Nevertheless their nature had a glamour about it — that of an old-world romantic expression; and then sometimes there came to one’s cognizance in the hamlets a dear heart-whole person.
‘So the days went on between the visits. The church-opening was somewhat impressive, the element of unusualness being more conspicuous however by the immense numbers of people outside waiting for it to be over and the lunch to begin, than the many attentive and admiring parishioners within, collected imperatively by the rector’s wife and himself. Mr. Holder was in a good state of health and spirits; my sister was very important. The patron of the living, the Rev. Richard Rawle, [who owned land in the parish, and was about this time consecrated as Bishop of Trinidad] was present; but no architect came on that brilliant occasion.1 He appeared, however, on the same scene from time to time afterwards.
‘I had two pleasant changes — one to stay at Bath with an old friend of the family; and when my chosen came there too, by her kindness, we had together an interesting time. And I went as country cousin to my brother in London, and was duly astonished, which gave him even more pleasure than it did me.
‘After a little time I copied a good deal of manuscript, which went to and fro by post, and I was very proud and happy doing this — which I did in the privacy of my own room, where I also read and wrote the letters.
‘The rarity ‘of the visits made them highly delightful to both; we talked much of plots, possible scenes, tales and poetry, and of his own work. He came either from Dorset or London, driving from Launceston station eighteen [sixteen and a half] miles off.
‘The day we were married was a perfect September day — the 17th of the month — 1874, — not of brilliant sunshine, but wearing a soft sunny luminousness; just as it should be.
1 Neither Hardy nor Crickmay was able to attend, for some unknown reason.
‘I have had various experiences, interesting some, sad others, since that lovely day, but all showing that an Unseen Power of great benevolence directs my ways; I have some philosophy, and mysti- cism, and an ardent belief in Christianity and the life beyond this present one, all which makes any existence curiously interesting. As one watches happenings (and even if should occur unhappy happenings), outward circumstances are of less importance if Christ is our highest ideal. A strange unearthly brilliance shines around our path, penetrating and dispersing difficulties with its warmth and glow.
‘E. L. Hardy.
‘Max Gate. January 4th, 1911.’1
This transcript from the first Mrs. Hardy’s ‘Recollections’ (of the existence of which he was unaware till after her death) has carried us onward four years further than the date of Thomas Hardy’s arrival in Cornwall on that evening of March 1870. He himself entered in a memorandum-book a few rough notes of his visit, and from these we are able to glean vaguely his impressions of the experience.
It is apparent that he was soon, if not immediately, struck by the nature and appearance of the lady who received him. She was so living, he used to say. Though her features were not regular her complexion at this date was perfect in hue, her figure and movement graceful, and her corn-coloured hair abundant in its coils.
It may be mentioned here that the story A Pair of Blue Eyes (which Hardy himself classes among his Romances and Fantasies — as if to suggest its visionary nature) has been considered to show a picture of his own personality as the architect on this visit. But in addition to Hardy’s own testimony there is proof that this is not the case, he having ever been shy of putting his personal characteristics into his novels. The Adonis depicted was known to be both in appearance and temperament an idealization of a pupil whom Hardy found at Mr. John Hicks’s on his return there temporarily from London; a nephew of that architect, and exactly of the age attributed to Stephen Smith. He is represented as altogether more youthful and sanguine in nature than Hardy, a thoughtful man of twenty-nine, with years of London buffeting and architectural and literary experiences, was at this time. Many of his verses with which readers have since grown familiar in JVessex Poems had already been written. Stephen Smith’s father was a mason in Hardy’s father’s employ, combined with one near Boscastle, while Smith’s ingenious mode of being 1 It will be seen later that she died the year after this was written.
tutored in Latin was based on a story Hardy had from Holder, as that of a man he had known. Its practicability is, however, doubtful, Henry Knight the reviewer, Elfride’s second lover, was really much more like Thomas Hardy as described in his future wife’s diary just given; while th° event of the young man arriving as a town-stranger at a village with which he was quite familiar, and the catastrophe that ensued when his familiarity with it was discovered, was an experience of an uncle of his, of which the dramatic possibilities had long arrested him. His own wooing in the ‘Delectable Duchy’ ran, in fact, without a hitch from beginning to end, and with encouragement from all parties concerned.
But the whole story, except as to the lonely drive across the hills towards the coast, the architectural detail, and a few other external scenes and incidents, is so at variance with any possible facts as to be quite misleading, Hardy’s wilful purpose in his early novels until Far from the Madding Crowd appeared, if not later, having been to mystify the reader as to their locality, origin, and authorship by various interchanges and inventions, probably owing at first to his doubt if he would pursue the craft, and his sense of the shadow that would fall on an architect who had failed as a novelist. He modified the landscape, and called the Rectory a vicarage in early editions, showing a church with the sea visible from it, which was not true of St. Juliot. The character and appearance of Elfride have points in common with those of Mrs. Hardy in quite young womanhood, a few years before Hardy met her (though her eyes would have been described as deep grey, not as blue); moreover, like Elfride, the moment she was on a horse she was part of the animal. But this is all that can be asserted, the plot of the story being one that he had thought of and written down long before he knew her.
What he says about the visit is laconic and hurried, but interesting enough to be given here:
‘March 7. The dreary yet poetical drive over the hills. Arrived at St. Juliot Rectory between 6 and 7. Received by young lady in brown (Miss Gifford, the rector’s sister-in-law). Mr. Holder gout. Saw Mrs. Holder. The meal. Talk. To Mr. Holder’s room. Returned downstairs. Music.
‘March 8. Austere grey view of hills from bedroom window. A funeral. Man tolled the bell (which stood inverted on the ground in the neglected transept) by lifting the clapper and letting it fall against the side. Five bells stood thus in a row (having been taken down from the cracked tower for safety). Staying there drawing jnd measuring all day, with intervals for meals at rectory.
‘March 9. Drove with Mrs. Holder and Miss Gifford to Boscastle, and on to Tintagel and Penpethy slate-quarries, with a view to the church roofing. Mr. Symons accompanied us to the quarries. Mr. Symons did not think himself a native; he was only born there. Now Mrs. Symons was a native; her family had been there 500 years. Talked about Douglas Cook coming home [the first editor of the Saturday Review, whom the Holders had known; buried on the hill above Tintagel]. . . . Music in the evening. The two ladies sang duets, including “The Elfin Call”, “Let us dance on the sands”, etc. . • • Miss Gifford said that a man asked her for “a drop o’ that that isn’t gin, please, Miss”. He meant hollands, which they kept at the Rectory, as he knew.
‘March 10. Went with E. L. G. to Beeny Cliff. She on horseback. ... On the cliff. . . . “The tender grace of a day”, etc. The run down to the edge. The coming home.
‘In the afternoon I walked to Boscastle, Mrs. H. and E. L. G. accompanying me three-quarters of the way: the overshot mill: E. provokingly reading as she walked; evening in garden; music later in evening.
‘March 11. Dawn. Adieu. E. L. G. had struck a light six times in her anxiety to call the servants early enough for me. The journey home. Photo of Bishop of Exeter (for Mrs. Holder). . . .’
The poem entitled
‘At the Word “Farewell”‘ seems to refer either to this or the following visit; and the one called ‘ When I set out for Lyonnesse’ refers certainly to this first visit, it having been his custom to apply the name ‘Lyonnesse’ to the whole of Cornwall. The latter poem, it may be mentioned, was hailed by a distant voice from the West of America as his sweetest lyric, an opinion from which he himself did not dissent.
‘March 12. (Sat.) Went to Weymouth. Mr. Crickmay’s account £6:10: 9.’
On April 5, having resumed lodgings at Weymouth, to proceed, probably, with the detailed drawings for the restoration of St. Juliot Church by the light of the survey and measurements he had made, Hardy received a letter from the Messrs. Macmillan declining to publish Desperate Remedies, the MS. of which they returned, on the ground (it is conjectured) of their disapproval of the incidents. By this time it seemed to have dawned upon him that the Macmillan publishing-house was not in the way of issuing novels of a sensational kind: and accordingly he packed up the MS. again and posted it to the Messrs. Tinsley, a firm to which he was a stranger, but which did publish such novels. Why he did not send it to Messrs. Chapman and Hall, with whom he had now a slight link, and whose reader, George Meredith, had recommended him to write what Hardy understood to be a story of this kind, is inexplicable. Possibly it was from an adventurous feeling that he would like the story to be judged on its own merits by a house which had no knowledge of how it came into existence; possibly from inexperience. Anyhow it was a mistake from which he suffered, for there is no doubt that Meredith would have taken an interest in a book he had, or was supposed to have, instigated; and would have offered some suggestions on how to make a better use of the good material at the back of the book. However, to Tinsley’s it had gone, and on May 6 Tinsley wrote, stating the terms on which he would publish it, if Hardy would complete the remaining three or four chapters of which a pricis only had been sent.