by Thomas Hardy
One day this month he spent in Stinsford Churchyard with his brother, superintending the erection of their father’s tombstone.
At Londonderry House the subject arose of social blunders. The hostess related some amusing ones of hers; but Sir Redvers Buller capped everybody by describing what he called a ‘double-barrelled’ one of his own. He inquired of a lady next him at dinner who a certain gentleman was, ‘like a hippopotamus’, sitting opposite them. He was the lady’s husband; and Sir Redvers was so depressed by the disaster that had befallen him that he could not get it off his mind; hence at a dinner the next evening he sought the condolences of an elderly lady, to whom he related his misfortune; and remembered when he had told the story that his listener was the gentleman’s mother.
At a very interesting luncheon at the Bachelors’ Club given by his friend George Curzon he made the acquaintance of Mr. F. C. Selous, the mighty hunter, with the nature of whose fame he was not, however, quite in sympathy, wondering how such a seemingly humane man could live for killing; and also of Lord Roberts and Lord Lansdowne.
After these cheerful doings he returned to Max Gate for a while, but when in London again, to look for a house for the spring and summer, he occasionally visited a friend he had earlier known by 262
correspondence, Lord Pembroke, author of South Sea Bubbles, a fellow Wessex man, as he called himself, for whom Hardy acquired a very warm feeling. He was now ill at a nursing home in London, and an amusing incident occurred while his visitor was sitting by his bedside one afternoon, thinking what havoc of good material it was that such a fine and handsome man should be prostrated. He whispered to Hardy that there was a ‘Tess’ in the establishment, who always came if he rang at that time of the day, and that he would do so then that Hardy might see her. He accordingly rang, whereupon Tess’s chronicler was much disappointed at the result; but endeavoured to discern beauty in the very indifferent figure who responded, and at last persuaded himself that he could do so. When she had gone the patient apologized, saying that for the first time since he had lain there a stranger had attended to his summons.
On Hardy’s next visit to his friend Pembroke said with the faintest reproach: ‘ You go to the fashionable house in front, and you might come round to the back to see me.’ The nursing home was at the back of Lady Londonderry’s. They never met again, and when he heard of Pembroke’s unexpected death Hardy remembered the words and grieved.
‘April 7. Wrote to Harper’s asking to be allowed to cancel the agreement to supply a serial story to Harper s Magaiine.’ This agreement was the cause of a good deal of difficulty afterwards (the story being Jude the Obscure), as will be seen.
This year they found a house at South Kensington, and moved into it with servants brought from the country, to be surprised a little later by the great attention their house received from butchers’ and bakers’ young men, postmen, and other passers-by; when they found their innocent country servants to have set up flirtations with all these in a bold style which the Lbndon servant was far too cautious to adopt.
At the end of April he paid a visit to George Meredith at his house near Box Hill, and had an interesting and friendly evening there, his son and daughter-in-law being present. ‘Meredith’, he said, ‘is a shade artificial in manner at first, but not unpleasantly so, and he soon forgets to maintain it, so that it goes off quite.’
At a dinner at the Grand Hotel given by Mr. Astor to his contributors in May, Hardy had a talk with Lord Roberts, who spoke most modestly of his achievements. It was ‘an artistic and luxuriant banquet, with beds of roses on the tables, electric lights shining up like glow-worms through their leaves and petals [an arrangement somewhat of a novelty then], and a band playing behind the palms’.
This month he spared two or three days from London to go to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, where at the house of Mr. Edward Clodd, his host, he met Grant Allen and Whymper, the mountaineer, who told of the tragedy on the Matterhorn in 1865 in which he was the only survivor of the four Englishmen present — a reminiscence which specially impressed Hardy from the fact that he remembered the particular day, thirty years before, of the arrival of the news in this country. He had walked from his lodgings in Westbourne Park Villas to Harrow that afternoon, and on entering the place was surprised to notice people standing at the doors discussing something with a serious look. It turned out to be the catastrophe, two of the victims being residents of Harrow. The event lost nothing by Whymper’s relation of it. He afterwards marked for Hardy on a sketch of the Matterhorn a red line showing the track of the adventurers to the top and the spot of the accident — a sketch which is still at Max Gate with his signature.
On a day in the week following he was at the Women Writers’ Club — probably its first anniversary meeting — and, knowing what women writers mostly had to put up with, was surprised to find himself in a group of fashionably dressed youngish ladies, the Princess Christian being present with other women of rank. ‘Dear me — are women-writers like this!’ he said with changed views.
During the same week they fulfilled likewise day or night invitations to Lady Carnarvon’s, Mrs. Pitt-Rivers’s, and other houses. At Lady Malmesbury’s one of her green linnets escaped from its cage, and he caught it — reluctantly, but feeling that a green linnet at large in London would be in a worse predicament than as a prisoner. At the Countess of’s ‘a woman very rich and very pretty’ [Marcia,
Lady Yarborough] informed him mournfully in tite-h-tite that people snubbed her, which so surprised him that he could hardly believe it, and frankly told her it was her own imagination. She was the lady of the ‘Pretty pink frock’ poem, though it should be stated that the deceased was not her husband but an uncle. And at an evening party at her house later he found her in a state of nerves, lest a sudden downpour of rain which had occurred should prevent people coming, and spoil her grand gathering. However, when the worst of the thunderstorm was over they duly streamed in, and she touched him joyfully on the shoulder and said, ‘You’ve conjured them!’ ‘My entertainer’s sister, Lady P — , was the most beautiful woman there.
On coming away there were no cabs to be got [on account of a strike it seems], and I returned to S.K. on the top of a ‘bus. No sooner was I up there than the rain began again. A girl who had scrambled up after me asked for the shelter of my umbrella and I gave it — when she startled me by holding on tight to my arm and bestowing on me many kisses for the trivial kindness. She told me she had been to “The Pav”, and was tired, and was going home. She had not been drinking. I descended at the South Kensington Station and watched the ‘bus bearing her away. An affectionate nature wasted on the streets! It was a strange contrast to the scene I had just left.’
Early in June they were at the first performance of a play by Mrs. Craigie at Daly’s Theatre, and did some entertaining at their own house, after which Mrs. Hardy was unwell, and went to Hastings for a change of air, Hardy going to Dorchester to look at some alterations he was making in his Max Gate house. At the end of a week he fetched his wife from Hastings, and after more dinners and luncheons he went to a melodrama at the Adelphi, which was said to be based without acknowledgement on Tess of the d’Urbervilles. He had received many requests for a dramatic version of the novel, but he found that nothing could be done with it among London actor-managers, all of them in their notorious timidity being afraid of the censure from conventional critics that had resisted Ibsen; and he abandoned all idea of producing it, one prominent actor telling him frankly that he could not play such a dubious character as Angel Clare (which would have suited him precisely) ‘because I have my name to make, and it would risk my reputation with the public if I played anything but a heroic character without spot’. Hardy thought of the limited artistic sense of even a leading English actor. Yet before and after this time Hardy received letters or oral messages from almost every actress of note in Europe asking for an opportunity of appearing in the part of ‘Tess’ — among them being Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Ellen Terry, Sara
h Bernhardt, and Eleanora Duse.
During July Hardy met Mrs. Asquith for the first time; and at another house he had an interesting conversation with Dr. W. H. Russell on the battles in the Franco-Prussian war, where Russell had been correspondent for The Times, and was blamed by some readers for putting too much realism into his accounts. Russell told Hardy a distressing story of a horse with no under jaw, laying its head upon his thigh in a dumb appeal for sympathy, two or three days after the battle of Gravelotte, when he was riding over the field; and other such sickening experiences.
Whether because he was assumed to have written a notorious novel or not Hardy could not say, but he found himself continually invited hither and thither to see famous beauties of the time — some of whom disappointed him; but some he owned to be very beautiful, such as Lady Powis, Lady Yarborough, Lady de Grey — ‘ handsome, tall, glance-giving, arch, friendly’ — the Duchess of Montrose, Mrs. John Hanbury, Lady Cynthia Graham, Amelie Rives, and many others. A crush at Lady Spencer’s at the Admiralty was one of the last of the parties they attended this season. But he mostly was compelled to slip away as soon as he could from these gatherings, finding that they exhausted him both of strength and ideas, few of the latter being given him in return for his own, because the fashionable throng either would not part from those it possessed, or did not possess any.
On the day of their giving up their house at South Kensington a curious mishap befell him. He had dispatched the servants and luggage in the morning; Mrs. Hardy also had driven off to the station, leaving him, as they had arranged, to look over the house, see all was right, and await the caretaker, when he and his portmanteau would follow the rest to Dorchester. He was coming down the stairs of the silent house dragging the portmanteau behind him when his back gave way, and there he had to sit till the woman arrived to help him. In the course of the afternoon he was better and managed to get off, the acute pain turning out to be rheumatism aggravated by lifting the portmanteau.
‘August 1 — 7. Dorchester: Seedy: back got better by degrees.’
‘October 16. To London to meet Henry Harper on business.’
‘October 20. Dined at the Guards’ Mess, St. James’s, with Major Henniker. After dinner went round with him to the sentries with a lantern.’
‘October 23. Dining at the Savile last Sunday with Ray Lankester we talked of hypnotism, will, etc. He did not believe in silent influence, such as making a person turn round by force of will without communication. But of willing, for example, certain types of women by speech to do as you desire — such as “ You shall, or you are to, marry me”, he seemed to have not much doubt. If true, it seems to open up unpleasant possibilities.’
‘November. Painful story. Old P, who narrowly escaped hanging for arson about 1830, returned after his imprisonment, died at West Stafford, his native village, and was buried there. His widow long after died in Fordington, having saved £5 to be buried with her husband. The rector of the village made no objection, and the grave was dug. Meanwhile the daughter had come home, and said the money was not enough to pay for carrying the body of her mother out there in the country; so the grave was filled in, and the woman buried where she died.’
‘November 11. Old song heard:
“And then she arose,
And put on her best clothes,
And went off to the north with the Blues.”
‘Another:
“Come ashore, Jolly Tar, with your trousers on.”
‘Another (sung at J. D.’s wedding):
“Somebody here has been . . .
Or else some charming shepherdess
That wears the gown of green.’“
In December he ran up to London alone on publishing business, and stayed at a temporary room off Piccadilly, to be near his club. It was then that there seems to have occurred, according to what he said later, some incident of the kind possibly adumbrated in the verses called ‘At Mayfair Lodgings’, in Moments of Vision. He watched during a sleepless night a lighted window close by, wondering who might be lying there ill. Afterwards he discovered that a woman had lain there dying, and that she was one whom he had cared for in his youth, when she was a girl in a neighbouring village.
In March of the next year (1895) Hardy was going about the neighbourhood of Dorchester and other places in Wessex with Mr. Macbeth Raeburn, the well-known etcher, who had been commissioned by the publishers to make sketches on the spot for frontispieces to the Wessex Novels. To those scenes which Hardy could not visit himself he sent the artist alone, one of which places, Char- borough Park, the scene of Two on a Tower, was extremely difficult of access, the owner jealously guarding ingress upon her estate, and particularly to her park and house. Raeburn came back in the evening full of his adventures. Reaching the outer park-gate he found it locked, but the lodge-keeper opened it on his saying he had important business at the house. He then reached the second park-gate, which was unfastened to him on the same representation of urgency, but more dubiously. He then got to the front door of the mansion, rang, and asked permission to sketch the house. ‘Good God!’ said the butler, ‘ you don’t know what you are asking. You had better be off before the mis’ess sees you, or the bailiff comes across you!’ He started away discomfited, but thought he would make an attempt at a sketch behind the shadow of a tree. Whilst doing this he heard a voice shouting, and beheld a man running up to him — the redoubtable bailiff — who promptly ordered him out of the park. Raeburn as he moved off thought he detected something familiar in the accent of the bailiff, and turning, said, ‘Surely you come from my country?’ ‘An’ faith, man, it may be so!’ the bailiff suddenly replied, whereon they compared notes, and found they had grown up in the same Scottish village. Then matters changed. ‘ Draw where you like and what you like, only don’t let her see you from the windows at a’. She’s a queer auld body, not bad at bottom, though it’s rather far down. Draw as ye will, an’ if I see her coming I’ll haud up my hand.’ Mr. Raeburn finished his sketch in peace and comfort, and it stands to this day at the beginning of the novel as evidence of the same.
During the spring they paid a visit of a few days to the Jeunes at Arlington Manor, where they also found Sir H. Drummond Wolff, home from Madrid, Lady Dorothy Nevill, Sir Henry Thompson, and other friends; and in May entered a flat at Ashley Gardens, Westminster, for the season. While here a portrait of Hardy was painted by Miss Winifred Thomson. A somewhat new feature in their doings this summer was going to teas on the terrace of the House of Commons — in those days a newly fashionable form of entertainment. Hardy was not a bit of a politician, but he attended several of these, and of course met many Members there.
On June 29 Hardy attended the laying of the foundation stone of the Westminster Cathedral, possibly because the site was close to the flat he occupied, for he had no leanings to Roman Catholicism. However, there he was, and deeply impressed by the scene. In July he visited St. Saviour’s, Southwark, by arrangement with Sir Arthur Blomfield, to see how he was getting on with the restoration. Dinners and theatres carried them through the month, in which he also paid a visit to Burford Bridge, to dine at the hotel with the Omar Khayyam Club and meet George Meredith, where the latter made a speech, and Hardy likewise, said to be the first and last ever made by either of them; at any rate it was the first, and last but one or two, by Hardy.
Hardy’s entries of his doings were always of a fitful and irregular kind, and now there occurs a hiatus which cannot be filled. But it is clear that at the end of the summer at Max Gate he was ‘ restoring the MS. of Jude the Obscure to its original state’ — on which process he sets down an undated remark, probably about the end of August, when he sent off the restored copy to the publishers:
‘On account of the labour of altering Jude the Obscure to suit the magazine, and then having to alter it back, I have lost energy for revising and improving the original as I meant to do.’
In September they paid a week’s visit to General and Mrs. Pitt- Rivers at Rushmore, and muc
h enjoyed the time. It was on the occasion of the annual sports at the Larmer Tree, and a full moon and clear sky favouring, the dancing on the green was a great success. The local paper gives more than a readable description of the festivity for this particular year:
‘After nightfall the scene was one of extraordinary picturesqueness and poetry, its great features being the illumination of the grounds by thousands of Vauxhall lamps, and the dancing of hundreds of couples under these lights and the mellow radiance of the full moon. For the dancing a space was especially enclosed, the figures chosen being mostly the polka-mazurka and schottische, though some country dances were started by the house-party, and led off by the beautiful Mrs. Grove, the daughter of General Pitt-Rivers, and her charming sister-in-law, Mrs. Pitt. Probably at no other spot in England could such a spectacle have been witnessed at any time. One could hardly believe that one was not in a suburb of Paris, instead of a corner in old-fashioned Wiltshire, nearly ten miles from a railway-station in any direction.’
It may be worth mentioning that, passionately fond of dancing as Hardy had been from earliest childhood, this was the last occasion on which he ever trod a measure, according to his own recollection; at any rate on the greensward, which is by no means so springy to the foot as it looks, and left him stiff in the knees for some succeeding days. It was he who started the country dances, his partner being the above-mentioned Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Grove.
A garden-party of their own at Max Gate finished the summer doings of the Hardys this year; and a very different atmosphere from that of dancing on the green soon succeeded for him, of the coming of which, by a strange divination, he must have had a suspicion, else why should he have made the following note beforehand?
‘“ Never retract. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.” Words said to Jowett by a very practical friend.’