Thomas Hardy I died in 1837 which, as already mentioned, was the year in which the Revd Murray was replaced by the Revd Arthur Shirley as vicar of Stinsford. Shirley was a vigorous reformer and innovator who embraced the ideas of the High Church, as advocated by the leaders of the ‘Tractarian Movement’ (the aim of which was to assert the authority of the Anglican Church). This, for the Hardys, was no less than a disaster, and the ‘ecclesiastical changes’ which were imposed by the new vicar led Thomas Hardy II to abandon (in 1841 or 1842) all connection with the Stinsford string choir, in which he had played the bass viol, voluntarily, every Sunday for thirty-five years. Nevertheless, the Hardys continued to attend church every Sunday; the ‘Hardy’ pew being situated in the aisle adjacent to the north wall.
Nor did the rift between Shirley and Thomas II dissuade the latter’s son, Thomas III, from attending the Sunday School (established by Shirley) where, in due course, he became an instructor along with the vicar’s two sons. In this way he gained an extensive knowledge of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, and was said to know the morning and evening services by heart, as well as the rubrics and large portions of the psalms.1
There was a great deal of antipathy on the part of Anglicans towards Catholics at the time. This was apparent when Thomas II took his son to Dorchester’s Roman amphitheatre, Maumbury Rings, to see an effigy of the Pope, and of Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman (the first Archbishop of Westminster), being burnt during anti-Papist riots. As for Thomas III, despite the rigour and intensity of his Anglican upbringing, the age-old conundrum of religion was one which he would struggle with and agonise over throughout his life.
Quite apart from his infatuation with Julia Martin, and hers with him, Thomas III, like many people of artistic bent, was of a deeply romantic and impressionable disposition and likely to fall in love at any moment. However because of his natural shyness the objects of his desire were, as often as not, completely unaware of his lovelorn state. Such young ladies included one who passed him by on horseback in South Walk (one of Dorchester’s several tree-lined streets), and unaccountably smiled at him. Another was from Windsor; a third was the pretty daughter of the local gamekeeper who possessed a beautiful head of ‘bay-red’ hair – and was later to be recalled in his poem To Lisbie Brown. 2 Finally, there was Louisa, whom he recalled in another poem, To Louisa in the Lane. Thomas III would also immortalise the first romantic meeting of his own parents in his poem A Church Romance.
Doubtless the young man was destined one day for a great but more tangible romance. When it came, however, the question was, would it live up to his expectations?
Despite the seemingly idyllic and tranquil surroundings of the Hardys’ Bockhampton abode, woe betide anyone who dared to transgress the law or to flout the authorities; for if they did, harsh penalties awaited them. Thomas III’s fascination with hanging may have been the result of his father telling him that in his day he had seen four men hanged for setting fire to a hayrick, one of whom, a youth of 18, had not participated in the burnings but had merely been present at the scene. As the youth was underfed and therefore frail, the prison master had ordered weights to be tied to his feet in order to be sure that his neck would be broken by the noose. ‘Nothing my father ever said,’declared Thomas III, ‘drove the tragedy of life so deeply into my mind’ as this account of the unfortunate youth.3 Thomas II also told his son that when he was a boy and there was a hanging at Dorchester Prison, it was always carried out at 1 p.m. in case the incoming mail-coach subsequently brought notice of a reprieve of sentence. Another piece of information that Thomas III gleaned was that the notorious hangman, Jack Ketch, used to perform public whippings by the town’s water pump, using the cat-o’-nine-tails.
As a youth himself, Thomas III was to witness two executions. The first was of a woman, when he stood ‘close to the gallows’ at the entrance to Dorchester Gaol.4 The night before he had deliberately gone down to Hangman’s Cottage, situated at the bottom of the hill below the prison beside the River Frome, and peered through the window, where he observed the hangman inside as he ate a hearty supper.5 The woman to be hanged was Elizabeth Martha Brown, who paid the ultimate penalty for murdering her husband. ‘I remember what a fine figure she [Brown] showed against the sky as she hung in the misty rain,’ wrote Thomas III later, and ‘how the tight black silk gown set off her shape as she wheeled half-round & back [on the end of the rope]’ – an indication that perhaps the incident induced in him not revulsion, but a measure of sexual excitement.6
The second hanging occurred one summer morning two or three years later. Having heard that it was to take place, Thomas III took his telescope to a vantage point, focused the instrument on Dorchester’s prison, and as the clock struck eight, witnessed the public execution of another murderer, this time a male.
Again, images of these harrowing events made a permanent impression on the sensitive mind of the young Thomas III.
Thomas III had been brought up to believe that his family was connected, albeit distantly, with other more illustrious ‘Hardy’ personages in the county – past and present – such as Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy, his namesake; Thomas Hardy, who had endowed Dorchester’s grammar school in Elizabethan times; and several others including, of course, the Channel Island Hardys and in particular one Clement le Hardy, Baillie of Jersey. From this it may be inferred that his family was desperately anxious for the young Thomas III to succeed in the world and make something of himself; to reverse what was seen as the trend, in their case, of a family in decline. However, before he embarked upon the journey of life, his mother Jemima issued him with a warning. Said he, it was ‘Mother’s notion (and also mine) that a figure stands in our van [path] with arm uplifted, to knock us back from any pleasant prospect we indulge in’.7
While Thomas II was working on the Earl of Ilchester’s Woodford Castle, it so happened that an associate of his, one John Hicks, architect and church restorer, was present there with him. Thomas II duly introduced Hicks to his son Thomas III – who also happened to be present on the day – and on the strength of this meeting Hicks invited Thomas III to assist him in a survey. Hicks liked what he saw, and the outcome was that he invited Thomas III to be his pupil. Thomas II duly agreed to pay Hicks the sum of £40 for his son to undergo a three-year course of architectural drawing and surveying. So, in 1856, when he was aged 16, the young Thomas started work at Hicks’ office in Dorchester’s South Street.
By now, Thomas III had progressed from the frailness and fragility of his childhood into a vigorous manhood. He threw himself with gusto into his new apprenticeship, but at the same time, this did not prevent him from pursuing his study of the Latin language, which enabled him to read the New Testament, Horace, Ovid and Virgil in the original. Likewise, by teaching himself Greek, he was able to read Homer’s epic poem Iliad. This necessitated him rising at 5 a.m., or 4 a.m. in the summer months, in order to fit everything into the day. Hicks, being a classical scholar himself, was well-disposed to Thomas III’s efforts in this respect.
With fellow-pupil Robert Bastow and two other youths – both recent graduates of Aberdeen University, who were the sons of Frederick Perkins, Dorchester’s Baptist minister – Thomas III had furious arguments as to the merits and de-merits of ‘Paedo-Baptism’ (the baptism of infants). This led the latter to consider whether, having himself been baptised as an infant at Stinsford’s church of St Michael, he should now be re-baptised as an adult.
Adjacent to Hicks’ office in South Street was the school of poet and philologist William Barnes, who would often be called upon to adjudicate in matters of dispute between Thomas III and Bastow on the subject of classical grammar. Barnes, a Latin and oriental scholar of great distinction, had compiled A Philological Grammar in which more than sixty languages were compared.
The year is 1859 and Thomas III (who henceforth will be called Hardy) is aged 19. His three-year apprenticeship is over and he is now given the task, by Hicks, of making surveys of churches with a view to their ‘restoration’. In reality, this was a euphemism for what Hardy regarded as ‘ruination’, and the fact that he had become a participant (albeit unwilling) in this process would, in later years, cause him enormous regret. Its legacy remains to this day and is easily borne out by a comparison of, say, the ‘restored’ Stinsford church of St Michael and Puddletown’s church of St Mary, which escaped restoration and in consequence has retained its exquisite and fascinating historical artefacts in their original condition and situation.
The restoration of Stinsford church had begun under the aegis of the Revd Shirley in 1843, when the main part of the west (‘minstrels’) gallery was removed. Shirley also removed the chancel pews and replaced the string choir with a barrel organ. For this, the Hardy family never forgave him. Hardy would one day get his revenge (although these traumatic events had occurred when he was a mere infant) in a poem, The Choirmaster’s Burial, in which ‘an unsympathetic vicar forbids [deceased choirmaster] William Dewey old-fashioned grave-side musical rites’.8
Hardy was now at a crossroads: the question being whether he should pursue a career in architecture or immerse himself ever more deeply in the Classics, and in particular, the Greek plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. In this, he was to be guided by his literary friend and mentor Horace Moule, son of the Revd Henry Moule, vicar of nearby Fordington. Born in 1832 and therefore eight years his senior, Horace Moule had studied at both Oxford and Cambridge universities and had recently commenced work as an author and reviewer. It was he who introduced Hardy to the Saturday Review – a radical London weekly publication which attributed the majority of social evils to social inequality – and who also made Hardy gifts of books, including Johann Goethe’s Faust.
Hardy now commenced writing, in the hope of being published. He was successful, and his first article, an anonymous account of the disappearance of the clock from the almshouse in Dorchester’s South Street, appeared in a Dorchester newspaper. The poem Domicilium followed, together with articles published by the Dorset Chronicle about church restorations carried out by his employer Hicks. Meanwhile, Horace Moule’s advice to Hardy was that if he wished to make his living in architecture, then he ought not to continue with his study of the Greek plays. This advice was accepted, albeit reluctantly.
Why did Hardy now make the decision – bold for a country youth – to leave Dorset for London? Was it because he did not find working in Dorchester for Hicks challenging enough, and hoped to better himself in the capital? Or did he have a pecuniary motive, as Desmond MacCarthy (an acquaintance of his) implies? According to MacCarthy, Hardy’s thoughts turned to writing when he heard that George Meredith – poet, novelist and reader for publishers Chapman & Hall – had received the sum of £100 for writing a novel. It was, therefore, Hardy’s ‘desire to make a little money that first made him turn to fiction’.9 And if he did not succeed, at least he would have the consolation, when in London, of getting a glimpse of some of the great writers and poets of the day whom he wished to emulate.
In April 1862 Hardy found temporary employment making drawings for one John Norton, architect of Old Bond Street. This introduction was made by Hicks who was a friend of Norton’s. Soon, Norton in turn introduced Hardy to a Mr Arthur Blomfield, whom Norton had met at the Institute of British Architects. On 5 May Hardy began work as Blomfield’s assistant architect.
One of the duties which Blomfield assigned to his 21-year-old assistant was to supervise the removal of bodies from the churchyard of Old St Pancras, through which the Midland Railway Company proposed to make a cutting. On a more cheerful note, Blomfield invited Hardy to sing in his office choir, and also in the choir of St Matthias’ church, Richmond, where he himself sang bass.
In August 1862 Hardy wrote to his sister, Mary, describing how he had attended evening service at St Mary’s church, Kilburn; and also how he had received a visit from his friend, Horace Moule, who had accompanied him to a Roman Catholic chapel built by the architect Augustus Pugin (1812–52). Two months later, Hardy told Mary how their father (who had evidently made the journey up from Dorset) had been to an opera at Covent Garden and had insisted on seeing the Thames Tunnel (which linked Wapping on the north bank of the river to Rotherhithe on the south bank).10 This was the year in which Hardy made a proposal of marriage to Mary Waight, who was employed in the high-class ‘mantle showroom’ (retail shop selling women’s cloaks) in Dorchester and who, at 29, was seven years his senior. Mary, however, rejected his offer.11
Early in 1863, again in a letter to his sister Mary, Hardy describes his office which overlooks the River Thames and all its bridges, and tells her how he has visited the underground railway, then in its infancy. The smog, however, which hangs over the city like ‘brown paper or pea-soup’ had been a problem. He tells Mary how he intends to enter a competition for a prize, offered by Sir William Tite (the architect who rebuilt the Royal Exchange and designed many of England’s early railway stations). The competition is open to members of the Architectural Association, of which he is one, and his entry is to be his own design for a ‘Country Mansion’ – Hardy subsequently won the prize. He had also entered the Prize Architectural Essay competition of the Royal Institute of British Architects: the subject of his dissertation being ‘The Application of Bricks and Terra Cotta to Modern Architecture’. For this he was awarded a silver medal.12
In the latter part of 1863, Hardy recommends to Mary that she read the works of William Makepeace Thackeray, whose writing he esteems as being of the ‘highest kind’, and a ‘perfect and truthful representation of actual life’. He himself is now, in his spare time, throwing himself once more into the study of literature.
The funeral of former British Liberal Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, took place on 27 October 1865, which Hardy was able to attend, having purchased the necessary ticket. The following day he writes again to Mary, recommending Anthony Trollope’s novel Barchester Towers to her as the author’s best work. Hardy also mentions that his father (who is apparently again staying with him at the time) has ‘taken to reading newspapers’. He himself has resumed his study of French and is spending much time in the National Gallery studying, one by one, the great masters; attending a series of Shakespeare’s plays, and also live readings of the works of Charles Dickens by the author himself.13
A formative influence on Hardy was the poet and writer Algernon Charles Swinburne, born in 1837 and educated at Eton and Oxford. Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, published in 1865, showed contempt for conventional morality in favour of sensuality and paganism. Although this evoked violent criticism, Hardy, who was yet to meet Swinburne, was one of his earliest admirers, and later described that ‘buoyant time of thirty years ago, when I used to read your early works walking along the crowded London streets, to my imminent risk of being knocked down’.14 Swinburne’s views were expressed in his Hymn of Man as ‘Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of things’.
In 1866 Hardy revealed to his sister, Mary, that it had been his serious intention to enter the Church. To this end, Horace Moule had sent him the Students Guide to the University of Cambridge (Moule’s own university), but Hardy eventually decided that this ‘notion was too far-fetched to be worth entertaining’. It would take three years, and then another three, and then almost another one, in order to get ‘a title’15 – which was a necessary prerequisite for those intending to enter the ministry.
The words of Hardy’s poem, The Impercipient (subtitled ‘At a Cathedral Service’ and believed to have been written when he was in his twenties), indicate that this decision was the correct one, for the added reason that he had decided that the Christian faith was something he found impossible to embrace. This, Hardy reveals in his reference to worshippers:
That with this bright believing band
I have no claim to be,
That faiths by which my comrades stand
Seem fantasies to me …
It should also be mentioned that a few years previously, in 1858, the conflict between religion and science had been brought into sharp focus when Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace published a joint paper entitled On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties. The following year, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published by Darwin alone. Hardy, with his voracious thirst for knowledge, was familiar with this latter work, and ‘had been among the earliest acclaimers’ of it.16
Hardy now began sending poems, which he had recently written, to various magazines with a view to publication, only to have them rejected by their editors.
While in London, Hardy demonstrated that his love of music was as strong as ever, and took every opportunity to visit art galleries and the opera; neither of which had hitherto been available to him. Unfortunately, however, his health had deteriorated; perhaps from the polluted air of the metropolis (his lodgings fronted the River Thames, which was then little more than an open sewer). So, on the advice of Blomfield, he returned to Dorset in July 1867. Blomfield believed that this would be for convalescence. Yet Hardy had already been contacted by his former employer, Hicks of Dorchester, who told him that he, Hicks, was in need of an assistant to help with church restoration work.
Having returned to the house of his parents at Higher Bockhampton – where he regained his strength and health – Hardy resumed his habit of walking to work in Dorchester every day. This time, however, the work was of an irregular nature, and in his spare time Hardy wrote his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady. This was read by Horace Moule, now a regular contributor to the Saturday Review, who must have liked it because he furnished Hardy with a letter of introduction to publisher Alexander Macmillan, to whom Hardy sent the manuscript on 25 July the following year. Anxious and impatient to hear Macmillan’s opinion, he wrote again to the publisher on 10 September, saying that he, Hardy, had it in mind to write another story, but had not the courage to do so ‘till something comes of the first’.17
Macmillan declined to publish the work, although he commented that much of it was ‘admirable’, and one scene in particular was ‘full of power and insight’. He ultimately saw it as an excessive attack, by Hardy, on the upper classes, which were portrayed as ‘heartless’ in their dealings with the ‘working classes’. These sentiments were echoed by John Morley, a friend of Macmillan to whom the latter had shown the work. Nevertheless, Morley did at least admit that the author ‘has stuff and purpose in him’.18
Unwilling to take no for an answer, Hardy, in the December of 1868, made a brief visit to London to see Macmillan personally. The answer remained the same, but Macmillan did suggest that he approach Frederick Chapman of publishers Chapman & Hall. Hardy duly met Chapman the following day, left the work with him and returned to Dorchester.
He revisited London in January 1869, when the reply from Chapman & Hall finally arrived. They would publish The Poor Man and the Lady, but only if Hardy guaranteed to furnish them with the sum of £20 to cover any losses which the firm might incur. By the time March came, Hardy, Instead of being sent the proofs of the book as he expected, was asked by Chapman & Hall to visit London yet again. Here he met George Meredith, who expressed the opinion that the book would be perceived as ‘socialistic’, or even ‘revolutionary’. As such, it would be liable to be attacked, on all sides, by conventional reviewers, and this might prove a handicap to Hardy in the future. Hardy should either rewrite the story or write another novel with a more interesting plot.19
What had prompted Hardy to make an assault on the nobility and squirearchy in this fashion? Was it simply that, as an Englishman, his sympathies naturally lay with the underdog? The ‘establishment’, as he was well aware, wielded immense power and bore down very heavily on those who dared to cross the boundaries which it had laid down. A classical example of this was the case of the six Dorset farm labourers – the so-called ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ – whose ‘crime’ had been to swear an illegal oath. This they had done in an attempt to organise and thus defend themselves against the progressive reduction of their wages from eight, to seven, and then to a threatened six shillings per week: an insufficient sum with which to support themselves and their starving families. For this, they had been sentenced in 1834 to be transported to Australia and Tasmania. Hardy was no doubt aware that their trial had taken place in Dorchester, even though this had occurred six years prior to his birth. He may also have been influenced both by the heroic work of Horace Moule’s father, the Revd Henry Moule, who as vicar of Fordington struggled to improve the lot of the poor of his parish, particularly during the cholera epidemic of 1854, and by Moule’s son Horace, who was an ardent socialist.
Despite George Meredith’s adverse comments, Hardy, in April 1869, sent the manuscript of The Poor Man and the Lady to Smith, Elder & Company, who also rejected it. In December 1870, with dogged determination, he sent it to Tinsley Brothers, only to be offered terms for publication by them which were unacceptable to him.
John Hicks died in the winter of 1868/69. In April 1869 Hardy was asked by G.R. Crickmay – a Weymouth architect who had purchased Hicks’ practice – if he would assist him in continuing with the work on church restorations. To this, Hardy agreed, and in July he commenced work at Crickmay’s office in Weymouth.
Having found lodgings in Weymouth at 3 Wooperton Street, Hardy was able to avail himself of the amenities which the town provided. For him, pleasant summer diversions included listening to the town band playing waltzes (newly composed by Johann Strauss); bathing each morning, and rowing in the bay each evening. He also joined a dancing class to learn the quadrille. It was at about this time that he formed an attachment to his cousin Tryphena Sparks, a student teacher from Puddletown who was eleven years his junior, he even went as far as to buy her a ring.
By the time winter arrived, Hardy had completed the work set for him by Crickmay. Nonetheless, he chose to remain at Weymouth where he would commence work on a new novel entitled Desperate Remedies. In February 1870, however, he returned to the peace and quiet of his home at Bockhampton in order to concentrate more fully on the manuscript. Chapman & Hall’s reader, George Meredith, had criticised The Poor Man and the Lady for the weakness of its plot. Hardy, therefore, resolved that the plot of Desperate Remedies would be nothing less than sensational.20
Within a week, Crickmay was in touch again, requesting that he depart as soon as possible for Cornwall, in order ‘to take a plan and particulars of a church I am about to rebuild there’.21 This was a reference to the church of St Juliot near Boscastle, on Cornwall’s north coast. This visit to Cornwall was one which would change the life of the young Hardy dramatically and irrevocably.