Born in 1840, the young Thomas Hardy watched public executions in Dorchester, and lived to write verses about Einstein in the 1920s. In the course of his long life, however, a life filled with many remarkable encounters, probably the oddest happened in July 1923.
In 1923, Hardy was a bestselling novelist whom many ‘modern’ writers and critics also rated highly, and was something of a national institution. He corresponded with young guns such as Ezra Pound and was visited by Lawrence of Arabia (see 1922: W E Johns enlists Aircraftman Ross). At 82, he began to study Einstein and noted, in June 1923, "Relativity. That things and events always were, are, and will be’. He already believed that necessity governed the universe, not chance. While Edward, Prince of Wales, was visiting the English West Country, says Hardy’s biographer Claire Tomalin, someone in Edward’s entourage, whether through necessity or chance remains unknown, came up with ‘the bright idea that the visit might be more entertaining’ if the Prince had lunch at Thomas Hardy’s house in Dorset.
This was never going to be a jolly encounter. Florence, Hardy’s wife, found the idea of entertaining the prince and his retinue fairly scary, but Hardy was blasé about the whole thing, suggesting to his sister Kate that she could hide in ‘the bedroom behind the jessamine – you would then see him come, and go: we could probably send you up a snack’. Edward said to Hardy: ‘My mother tells me you have written a book called Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I must try to read it some time’. This seems an appallingly rude thing to say, but Edward, like others of Victoria’s descendants, somehow failed to inherit her ability to be at ease with others (see 1887: Queen Victoria tells Black Elk what would happen if the Lakota were her subjects). Edward was not the first nor the last royal to be no gentleman. Also, he was not a reader: when given a copy of Wuthering Heights, he said ‘Who is this woman Brunt?’
Edward ascended with his valet to a bedroom and Florence looked out of a window in time to see a scrunched up waistcoat fly out of the bedroom They all had lunch together (Edward waistcoat-less) under the trees, and everything went quite well – as Tomalin says, someone had the good sense to lock up the Hardys’ bad-tempered terrier.
The encounter amused many contemporaries, and inspired a neat little Max Beerbohm poem in the Hardy style: ‘A Luncheon’: ’. . . Yes, Sir, I’ve written several books. . .\ We are both of us aged by our strange brief nighness \But each of us lives to tell the tale. \Farewell, farewell, Your Royal Highness.’
What Happened Next
The next day, the Hardys motored over to visit the great apostle of birth control, Marie Stopes. Hardy died in 1928, mourned by a nation. Edward became Edward VIII but abdicated his throne in 1936 for love of Wallis Simpson; he then became the Duke of Windsor, and possibly also less of a Philistine, but sadly, there was no one left to pick his company for him except Wallis. See 1937: The Windsors meet Hitler and the Duke gives a Nazi salute