by Thomas Hardy
Hardy had replied that he feared the date at which he could write a story for the Cornhill would be too late for Mr. Stephen’s purpose, since he already had on hand a succeeding novel (i.e. A Pair of Blue Eyes), which was arranged for; but that the next after should be at Mr. Stephen’s disposal. He had thought of making it a pastoral tale with the title of Far from the Madding Crowd — and that the chief characters would probably be a young woman-farmer, a shepherd, and a sergeant of cavalry. That was all he had done. Mr. Stephen had rejoined that he was sorry he could not expect a story from Hardy at an earlier date; that he did not, however, mean to fix any particular time; that the idea of the story attracted him j also the proposed title; and that he would like Hardy to call and talk it over when he came to Town. There the matter had been left. Now Hardy set about the pastoral tale, the success of A Pair of Blue Eyes meanwhile surpassing his expectations, the influential Saturday Review pronouncing it to be the most artistically constructed of the novels of its time — a quality which, by the bye, would carry little recommendation in these days of loose construction and indifference to organic homogeneity.
But Hardy did not call on Stephen just then.
It was, indeed, by the merest chance that he had ever got the Cornhill letter at all. The postal arrangements in Dorset were still so primitive at this date that the only delivery of letters at Hardy’s father’s house was by the hand of some friendly neighbour who had come from the next village, and Stephen’s request for a story had been picked up in the mud of the lane by a labouring man, the school children to whom it had been entrusted having dropped it on the way.
While thus in the seclusion of Bockhampton, writing Far from the Madding Crowd, we find him on September 21, walking to Woodbury-Hill Fair, approximately described in the novel as ‘ Green- hill Fair’. On the 24th he was shocked at hearing of the tragic death of his friend Horace Moule, from whom he had parted cheerfully at Cambridge in June. The body was brought to be buried at Ford- ington, Dorchester, and Hardy attended the funeral. It was a matter of keen regret to him now, and for a long time after, that Moule and the woman to whom Hardy was warmly attached had never set eyes on each other; and that she could never make Moule’s acquaintance, or be his friend.
On the 30th of September he sent to Leslie Stephen at his request as much of the MS. of Far from the Madding Crowd as was written — apparently between two and three monthly parts, though some of it only in rough outline — and a few days after a letter came from Stephen stating that the story suited him admirably as far as it had gone, and that though as a rule it was desirable to see the whole of a novel before definitely accepting it, under the circumstances he decided to accept it at once.
So Hardy went on writing Far from the Madding Crowd — sometimes indoors, sometimes out — when he would occasionally find himself without a scrap of paper at the very moment that he felt volumes. In such circumstances he would use large dead leaves, white chips left by the wood-cutters, or pieces of stone or slate that came to hand. He used to say that when he carried a pocket-book his mind was barren as the Sahara.
This autumn Hardy assisted at his father’s cider-making — a proceeding he had always enjoyed from childhood — the apples being from huge old trees that have now long perished. It was the last time he ever took part in a work whose sweet smells and oozings in the crisp autumn air can never be forgotten by those who have had a hand in it.
Memorandum by T. H.:
‘Met J. D., one of the old Mellstock fiddlers — who kept me talking interminably: a man who speaks neither truth nor lies, but a sort of Not Proven compound which is very relishable. Told me of Jack, who spent all the money he had — sixpence — at the Oak Inn, took his sixpence out of the till when the landlady’s back was turned, and spent it over again; then stole it again, and again spent it, till he had had a real skinful. “ Was too honest to take any money but his own”, said J. D.’ (Some of J. D.’s characterisitics appear in ‘the Tranter’ of Under the Greenwood Tree.)
At the end of October an unexpected note from the Cornhill editor asked if, supposing he were to start Far from the Madding Crowd in the January number (which would be out the third week in December) instead of the spring, as intended, Hardy could keep in front of the printers with his copy. He learnt afterwards that what had happened was that the MS. of a novel which the editor had arranged to begin in his pages in January had been lost in the post, according, at any rate, to its author’s account. Hardy thought January not too soon for him, and that he could keep the printers going. Terms were consequently arranged with the publishers and proofs of the first number sent forthwith, Hardy incidentally expressing with regard to any illustrations, in a letter of October 1873,
No response had been made to this, and he was not quite clear whether, after all, Leslie Stephen had finally decided to begin so soon, when, returning from Cornwall on a fine December noontide (being New Year’s Eve 1873-74), he opened on Plymouth Hoe a copy of the Cornhill that he had bought at the station, and there to his surprise saw his story placed at the beginning of the magazine, with a striking illustration, the artist being — also to his surprise — not a man but a woman, Miss Helen Paterson. He had only expected, from the undistinguished rank of the characters in the tale, that it would be put at the end, and possibly without a picture. Why this had come without warning to him was owing to the accident of his being away from his permanent address for several days, and nothing having been forwarded. It can be imagined how delighted Miss Gifford was to receive the first number of the story, whose nature he had kept from her to give her a pleasant surprise, and to find that her desire of a literary course for Hardy was in fair way of being justified.
In the first week of January 1874 the story was noticed in a marked degree by the Spectator, and a guess hazarded that it might be from the pen of George Eliot — why, the author could never understand, since, so far as he had read that great thinker — one of the greatest living, he thought, though not a born storyteller by any means — she had never touched the life of the fields: her country-people having seemed to him, too, more like small townsfolk than rustics; and as evidencing a woman’s wit cast in country dialogue rather than real country humour, which he regarded as rather of the Shakespeare and Fielding sort. However, he conjectured, as a possible reason for the flattering guess, that he had latterly been reading Comte’s Positive Philosophy, and writings of that school, some of whose expressions had thus passed into his vocabulary, expressions which were also common to George Eliot. Leslie Stephen wrote:
‘I am glad to congratulate you on the reception of your first number. Besides the gentle Spectator, which thinks that you must be George Eliot because you know the names of the stars, several good judges have spoken to me warmly of the Madding Crowd. Moreover the Spectator, though flighty in its head, has really a good deal of critical feeling. I always like to be praised by it — and indeed by other people! . . . The story comes out very well, I think, and I have no criticism to make.’
Respecting the public interest in the opening of the story, in later days Miss Thackeray informed him, with some of her father’s humour, that to inquiries with which she was besieged on the sex of the author, and requests to be given an introduction to him or her, she would reply: ‘It lives in the country, and I could not very well introduce you to it in Town.’
A passage may be quoted here from Mr. F. W. Maitland’s Life of Leslie Stephen (to which Hardy contributed half a
chapter or so, on Stephen as editor) which affords a humorous illustration of the difficulties of’ serial’ writing in Victorian days. Stephen had written to say that the seduction of Fanny Robin must be treated in ‘a gingerly fashion’, adding that it was owing to an ‘excessive prudery of which I am ashamed’.
‘I wondered what had so suddenly caused, in one who had seemed anything but a prude, the “excessive prudery” alluded to. But I did not learn till I saw him in April. Then he told me that an unexpected Grundian cloud, though no bigger than a man’s hand as yet, had appeared on our serene horizon. Three respectable ladies and subscribers, representing he knew not how many more, had written to upbraid him for an improper passage in a page of the story which had already been published.
‘I was struck mute, till I said, “Well, if you value the opinion of such people, why didn’t you think of them beforehand, and strike out the passage?” — “I ought to have, since it is their opinion, whether I value it or no”, he said with a half groan. “But it didn’t occur to me that there was anything to object to!” I reminded him that though three objectors who disliked the passage, or pretended to, might write their disapproval, three hundred who possibly approved of it would not take the trouble to write, and hence he might have a false impression of the public as a body. “ Yes; I agree. Still I suppose I ought to have foreseen these gentry, and have omitted it,” he murmured.
‘It may be added here, to finish with this detail (though it anticipates dates), that when the novel came out in volume form The Times quoted in a commendatory review the very passage that had offended. As soon as I met him, I said, “You see what The Times says about that paragraph; and you cannot say that The Times is not respectable.” He was smoking and answered tardily: “No, I can’t say that The Times is not respectable.” I then urged that if he had omitted the sentences, as he had wished he had done, I should never have taken the trouble to restore them in the reprint, and The Times could not have quoted them with approbation. I suppose my manner was slightly triumphant; at any rate, he said, “I spoke as an editor, not as a man. You have no more consciousness of these things than a child.’“
To go back for a moment. Having attracted so much attention Hardy now again withdrew into retreat at Bockhampton to get ahead with the novel, which was in a lamentably unadvanced condition, writing to Stephen, when requesting that the proofs might be sent to that hermitage: ‘I have decided to finish it here, which is within a walk of the district in which the incidents are supposed to occur. I find it a great advantage to be actually among the people described at the time of describing them.’
However, that he did not care much for a reputation as a novelist in lieu of being able to follow the pursuit of poetry — now for ever hindered, as it seemed — becomes obvious from a remark written to Mr. Stephen about this time:
‘The truth is that I am willing, and indeed anxious, to give up any points which may be desirable in a story when read as a whole, for the sake of others which shall please those who read it in numbers. Perhaps I may have higher aims some day, and be a great stickler for the proper artistic balance of the completed work, but for the present circumstances lead me to wish merely to be considered a good hand at a serial.’
The fact was that at this date he was bent on carrying out later in the year an intention beside which a high repute as an artistic novelist loomed even less importantly than in ordinary — an intention to be presently mentioned.
He found he had drifted anew into a position he had vowed after his past experience he would in future keep clear of — that of having unfinished on his hands a novel of which the beginning was already before the public, and so having to write against time. He wrote so rapidly in fact that by February he was able to send the editor an instalment of copy sufficient for two or three months further, and another instalment in April.
On a visit to London in the winter Hardy had made the personal acquaintance of Leslie Stephen, the man whose philosophy was to influence his own for many years, indeed, more than that of any other contemporary, and received a welcome in his household, which was renewed from time to time, whereby he became acquainted with Mrs. Stephen and her sister Miss Thackeray. He also made acquaintance with Mr. G. Murray Smith, the publisher, and his family in April. At dinner there in May he met his skilful illustrator, Miss Helen Paterson, and gave her a few points; Mr. Frederick Greenwood; and Mrs. Procter, wife and soon after widow of ‘ Barry Cornwall’ the poet. The enormous acquaintance of Mrs. Procter with past celebrities was astonishing, and her humour in relating anecdotes of them charmed Hardy. She used to tell him that sometimes after avowing to Americans her acquaintance with a long list of famous bygone people, she had been compelled to deny knowledge of certain others she had equally well known, to re-establish her listener’s wavering faith in her veracity.
Back again in Dorsetshire he continued his application to the story, and by July had written it all, the last few chapters having been done at a gallop, for a reason to be told directly. In the middle of the month he resumed residence in London, where he hurriedly corrected the concluding pages and posted the end of the MS. to the editor early in August.
The next month Thomas Hardy and Miss Emma Lavinia Gifford were married at St. Peter’s, Elgin Avenue, Paddington, by her uncle Dr. E. Hamilton Gifford, Canon of Worcester, and afterwards Archdeacon of London. In the November following Far from the Madding Crowd was published in two volumes, with the illustrations by Miss Helen Paterson, who by an odd coincidence had also thought fit to marry William Allingham during the progress of the story. It may be said in passing that the development of the chapters month by month had brought these lines from Mrs. Procter:
‘You would be gratified to know what a shock the marriage of Bathsheba was. I resembled Mr. Boldwood — and to deceive such an old novel-reader as myself is a triumph. We are always looking out for traps, and scent a long way off a surprise. . . .
‘I hear that you are coming to live iri stony-hearted London. Our great fault is that we are all alike. . . . We press so closely against each other that any small shoots are cut off at once, and the young tree grows in shape like the old one.’
When the book appeared complete the author and his wife, after a short visit to the Continent — their first Continental days having been spent at Rouen — had temporarily gone to live at Surbiton, and remained there for a considerable time without nearly realising the full extent of the interest that had been excited among the reading public by the novel, which unsophistication was only partially removed by their seeing with unusual frequency, during their journeys to and from London, ladies carrying about copies of it with Mudie’s label on the covers.
Meanwhile Mr. George Smith, head of the firm of Smith and Elder — a man of wide experience, who had brought Charlotte Bronte before the reading public, and who became a disinterested friend of Hardy’s — suggested to him that he should if possible get back the copyright of Under the Greenwood Tree, which he had sold to Tinsley Brothers for £30. Tinsley at first replied that he would not return it for any sum: then that he would sell it for £300. Hardy offered half, which offer Tinsley did not respond to, and there the matter dropped.
Among the curious consequences of the popularity of Far from the Madding Crowd was a letter from the lady he had so admired as a child, when she was the grande dame of the parish in which he was born. He had seen her only once since — at her town-house in Bruton Street as aforesaid. But it should be stated in justice to her that her writing was not merely a rekindled interest on account of his book’s popularity, for she had written to him in his obscurity, before he had published a line, asking him to come and see her, and addressing him as her dear Tommy, as when he was a small boy, apologizing for doing so on the ground that she could not help it. She was now quite an elderly lady, but by signing her letter ‘Julia Augusta’ she revived throbs of tender feeling in him, and brought back to his memory the thrilling ‘frou-frou’ of her four grey silk flounces when she had used
to bend over him, and when they brushed against the font as she entered church on Sundays. He replied, but, as it appears, did not go to see her.
Meanwhile the more tangible result of the demand for Far from the Madding Crowd was an immediate request from the editor and publishers of the Cornhill for another story, which should begin as early as possible in 1875.
This was the means of urging Hardy into the unfortunate course of hurrying forward a further production before he was aware of what there had been of value in his previous one: before learning, that is, not only what had attracted the public, but what was of true and genuine substance on which to build a career as a writer with a real literary message. For mere popularity he cared little, as little as he did for large payments; but having now to live by the pen — or, as he would quote, ‘to keep base life afoot’ — he had to consider popularity. This request for more of his writing not only from the Cornhill but from other quarters coincided with quizzing personal gossip, among other paragraphs being one that novel-writing was coming to a pretty pass, the author of Lorna Doone having avowed himself a market-gardener, and the author of Far from the Madding Crowd having been discovered to be a house-decorator (!). Criticism like this influenced him to put aside a woodland story he had thought of (which later took shape in The Woodlanders), and make a plunge in a new and untried direction. He was aware of the pecuniary value of a reputation for a speciality; and as above stated, the acquisition of something like a regular income had become important. Yet he had not the slightest intention of writing for ever about sheepfarming, as the reading public was apparently expecting him to do, and as, in fact, they presently resented his not doing. Hence, to the consternation of his editor and publishers, in March he sent up as a response to their requests the beginning of a tale called The Hand of Ethelberta — A Comedy in Chapters which had nothing whatever in common with anything he had written before.