Hardy’s journey from Weymouth to Cornwall, on Monday 7 March 1870, involved him rising at four in the morning, catching the train at Dorchester station and changing several times before reaching the station at Launceston. For the remaining 16 miles he was obliged to hire a pony and trap, and by the time he arrived at St Juliot rectory, it was dark. Here, at the front door, a dazzling apparition met his eyes: a female with a rosy, Rubenesque complexion, striking blue eyes and auburn hair with ringlets reaching down as far as her shoulders.
Emma Lavinia Gifford, like Hardy, was aged 29. Born in Plymouth, she was the daughter of solicitor John Attersoll Gifford and his wife, also Emma (née Farman), and the youngest but one of a family of five. Brought up in a fine house not far from Plymouth’s seafront or ‘Hoe’, Emma was educated privately at a school run by ‘dear, refined single ladies of perfect manners’,1 and she was accustomed to mingling with ‘the élite of the town’.2 So how did she come to be living in this remote part of north Cornwall?
Prior to Emma’s birth in 1840, her wealthy paternal grandmother, Helen Gifford (née Davie), a widow since 1825, had come to live with her family. According to Emma, Helen ‘considered it best that he [Emma’s father, John] should give up his profession which he disliked, and live a life of quiet cultivated leisure’.3 However, John Gifford’s name continued to appear on the Law Institution’s list of registered solicitors up until the year 1851 (but not thereafter), and the census for that year gives his profession as ‘Attorney at Law’. When Helen died in 1860, John (along with Helen’s other offspring) inherited a portion of her estate. John and his family then relocated in June of that year to Bodmin in Cornwall, and John subsequently took his late mother’s advice, retired from legal practice and became a ‘Fundholder’ instead – one who lives off the income from his investments.4
Here in Cornwall, Emma’s elder sister, Helen, obtained a post first as a governess (in which capacity she was succeeded, for a brief period, by Emma), and then as companion to an elderly lady at Tintagel on the coast. There, Helen met her husband-to-be, the Revd Caddell Holder, MA Oxon, rector of St Juliot, the repair of whose church was the objective of Hardy’s visit.
The Revd Holder was born on the Caribbean island of Barbados, where his father was a judge, and was educated at Trinity College, Oxford. When he married Helen, on 10 September 1868 at Bodmin parish church, he was aged 67, and she only 31. (This was Holder’s second marriage; his first wife Ann having died three years previously.) When Holder took his new wife back to his home, Emma accompanied them. At the rectory of St Juliot, Emma would help her sister with ‘house affairs’ and also pay visits to the ‘parish folk’ (that is, her brother-in-law’s parishioners).5 Her spare time was spent riding her pony Fanny, painting in watercolour, sketching and gathering wild flowers. On Sundays she played the harmonium and ‘conducted the church music’.6
It so happened that when Hardy arrived on the scene, the Revd Holder was suffering from an attack of gout. His wife was attending her husband and it was therefore Emma who received the visitor.
According to a circular, issued from St Juliot rectory in March 1869, the church, which dated from Saxon times:
Has for many years been in a ruinous condition, and no service has been held in it for more than two years, the Parishioners being under the necessity of using the National School Room for the celebration of Divine Service, which in every respect is quite unfit for the purpose.
The tower threatens to fall and is in a highly dangerous condition; the Roof, Floor and a large portion of the Walls of the Nave are too dilapidated for any partial repairs, and render the interior unhealthy for the congregation … With the exception of the walls of the South Aisle and Porch, an entire rebuilding will be necessary, the estimated cost of which is about £900.
The Patron of the living, the Rev. R. [Richard] Rawle [vicar of Tamworth, Staffordshire] has promised to give the sum of £700 towards the Restoration, on condition that the further sum of £200 be raised within the present year.7
The arrival of architect Hardy was therefore a matter of great interest and excitement in the parish, for now, at last, long-awaited plans for the church could be put into operation.
The evening of Hardy’s arrival, said Emma, was ‘lovely … after a wild winter’.8 She also recalled that Hardy ‘had a beard’ and was wearing ‘a rather shabby great coat’. A blue paper protruded from his pocket which proved to be, not a plan of the church, but the manuscript of a poem he had written.9 Emma states that on his first visit to the church, ‘the architect … [Hardy] stayed a few days rather longer than first intended’.10
Two days after his arrival, Hardy, accompanied by Emma and her sister, visited Boscastle (2 miles down the valley from St Juliot), Tintagel (legendary birthplace of King Arthur) and the quarries of Penpethy, to seek slate for the roofing of the church. Next day, Hardy and Emma walked, unchaperoned, on the cliff tops. She loved the ‘beautiful sea-coast, [and] the wild Atlantic Ocean rolling in, with its magnificent waves and spray’, and declared that she and Hardy could scarcely have had a more romantic meeting.11
On the fourth day Hardy returned home. He later summed up just how deeply his own romantic instincts had been aroused by his meeting with Emma in a poem entitled When I Set Out For Lyonnesse (this being the poetical name for the county of Cornwall), and, in particular, in the poem’s final verse:
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
All marked with mute surmise
My radiance fair and fathomless,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes!
It seemed Hardy had found the woman of his dreams. From then on he returned to St Juliot every few months, taking the opportunity to visit other local beauty spots with Emma, including the beautiful Valency Valley. (The word ‘valency’ is believed to derive from the Cornish ‘melin-jy’, meaning ‘mill house’.)
To return to Hardy’s literary endeavours, George Meredith had demanded that his next novel contain more of a plot and, sure enough, he obliged. However, in Desperate Remedies, the fact that there are effectively two stories going on – first a romance and then a murder – makes not inconsiderable demands on the reader. The story is as follows:
On the death of their father (who is already a widower), Owen Graye and his younger sister Cytherea leave the Midlands for Budmouth (Weymouth). Here they find lodgings and Owen takes up the post of assistant to a local architect. On an excursion by paddle steamer to Lulworth Cove, Owen misses the boat back. This enables Cytherea to become better acquainted with her brother’s friend and colleague Edward Springrove (who is head draughtsman in Owen’s office), who has joined the steamer for the return journey. Edward and Cytherea fall in love, but a problem arises. Edward is, in fact, already engaged to be married to his cousin.
Cytherea obtains employment as lady’s maid to Miss Aldclyffe of Knapwater House, whose first name also happens to be Cytherea. By now, Edward Springrove, who lives at nearby Knapwater Park, has broken off his previous engagement and has become engaged to Cytherea. Miss Aldclyffe forms a deep, emotional attachment to Cytherea (reminiscent of Julia Martin and Hardy).
Miss Aldclyffe appoints Aeneas Manston to be her steward at Knapwater House, for reasons which only become apparent later. Although he is a married man, Manston is attracted to the young Cytherea. When he becomes enraged by the taunts of his drunken wife, he strikes her and she dies instantly. He leads everyone to believe that she has perished in a fire, but in fact he has hidden her body in the oven of a disused brew house. He is now free to marry Cytherea. Manston is a musician and when he plays some ‘saddening chords’ to Cytherea on the organ, she agrees to marry him instead of Springrove, even though she does not love him.12 In this way she avoids being a burden to her brother Owen, who is not in good health.
When suspicion is aroused that Mrs Manston is still alive, Manston, to avert speculation, persuades another woman to impersonate her. However, a poem of Manston’s is discovered in which he has described the colour of his wife’s eyes as ‘azure’, whereas his ‘new’ wife – his deceased wife’s impersonator – has eyes of ‘deepest black’.
As Manston is in the act of recovering the body of his real wife and burying it, he is observed. He flees, but not before attempting to persuade Cytherea to run away with him, in the midst of which endeavour he is apprehended by Edward Springrove. Manston is detained in the county jail, where he confesses to his crime before hanging himself.
The plot is further complicated by the fact that Cytherea turns out to be the daughter of a man whom Miss Aldclyffe once loved. It is also revealed that when Miss Aldclyffe was aged 17, she was ‘violated’ by her cousin, a military officer, and the child born as a result of this untoward event was Aeneas Manston.
On her deathbed, Miss Aldclyffe confesses to Cytherea that the reason she appointed Manston as her steward was to bring him close to Cytherea; it being her dream that Cytherea, the daughter of the man she loved, and Manston, her own natural child, be married. Finally, all ends happily for Cytherea when she marries Springrove, now a qualified architect.
Hardy contrived for his novel Desperate Remedies to end happily, at least as far as Cytherea and Springrove were concerned. And surely, having himself fallen in love with Emma Gifford, he hoped that his own love affair would come to a similarly agreeable conclusion.
In March 1870 Hardy sent the manuscript of his second novel, Desperate Remedies, to Macmillan, who declined to publish it (in the same way that he had previously declined to publish The Poor Man and the Lady). John Morley (now editor of the Fortnightly Review) was particularly vitriolic about Desperate Remedies, saying that the story was ‘ruined by the disgusting and absurd outrage which is the key to its mystery: the violation of a young lady at an evening party, and the subsequent birth of a child’. In his opinion, this was ‘too abominable to be tolerated as a central incident from which the action of the story is to move’.13
Notwithstanding this setback, the novel was accepted on 6 May 1870 by Tinsley Brothers, on condition that Hardy paid them the sum of £75 –a great deal of money for a struggling architect who possessed only £123 in the entire world. Another condition was that Hardy made some minor alterations and completed the final chapters (of which he had hitherto sent them only a précis). It is likely that these alterations included a toning down of the ‘violation’ scene. The final wording agreed for this scene was that Miss Aldclyffe, when ‘a young girl of seventeen, was cruelly betrayed by her cousin, a wild officer of six and twenty’.
Hardy’s anxious search for a publisher was finally over. What had motivated him to carry on with his writing in spite of having had so many rejections? Undoubtedly, his creative instincts were nurtured by his having read so much of other people’s work, and it was therefore only natural that now he should want to emulate these other writers by getting his own name into print. If they could leave their mark on the world of English literature, then why could not he?
On 16 May 1870 Hardy returned to London, where he assisted Blomfield and another architect, Raphael Brandon – an exponent of the English Gothic – and also spent time with Horace Moule who was in the capital at the time.14 In August he visited Cornwall and was reunited with Emma, with whom he enjoyed a visit to King Arthur’s Castle, Tintagel. The decrepit tower and north aisle of St Juliot church was now deliberately razed to the ground, prior to its rebuilding, and when the foundation stone of the new tower was laid, it was Emma who had the honour of laying it. The pews, the Saxon north door and the chancel screen were all discarded, but, fortunately, not before Hardy had made detailed drawings of them. Crickmay and Hardy did, however, succeed in preserving many of the windows, the altar, the granite font and the Elizabethan altar rails.
As the relationship between Hardy and Emma progressed from one of ‘acquaintance’ to one of ‘affection’,15 she found him ‘a perfectly new subject of study and delight, and he found a “mine” in me’.16
As a keepsake to ameliorate the pain of their long separations, Emma gave Hardy a lock of her hair. Subsequent visits by him would see the pair talking ‘much of plots, possible scenes, tales [presumably for stories], and poetry and of his [Hardy’s] own work’.17 Said Emma: ‘After a little time I copied a good deal of manuscript [of Hardy’s] which went to-and-fro by post, and I was very proud and happy doing this, which I did in the privacy of my room, where I read and wrote also the letters [to and from Hardy].’18
On 25 March 1871 Desperate Remedies was duly published, anonymously, in three volumes. The book received excellent reviews in the Athenaeum and in the Morning Post, but it was vilified by the Spectator magazine, which saw it as an ‘idle prying into the ways of wickedness’, and also objected to it being published anonymously. Moule advised Hardy to ignore such criticism and, in an effort to counter it, reviewed Desperate Remedies himself for the Saturday Review. Unfortunately, however, there was a six-month delay before Moule’s article was published.
Under the Greenwood Tree, written when Hardy was aged 31, was to be his second published novel. In it, he did what many aspiring writers do: he wrote about what he knew best – in this case, his childhood.
The alternative title to Under the Greenwood Tree was The Mellstock Quire: ‘Mellstock’ being the collective name for the hamlets of Higher and Lower Bockhampton, the village of Stinsford and their surroundings. The ‘Quire’ refers to the choir of Stinsford Church, both instrumental and vocal. As for the names of his characters, Hardy obtained them from a study of the tombstones in Stinsford churchyard. John Morley, who had read Hardy’s The Poor Man and the Lady, had commented in regard to that novel that ‘the opening pictures of Christmas Eve in the tranter’s house are really of good quality’. Drawing strength from this, Hardy decided to begin his new novel with the tranter’s Christmas party.
The themes of the novel are twofold: the love of Dick Dewy (an honest yeoman) for Fancy Day (a certified teacher), and the destruction of the quire, brought about by the advent of a new vicar, the Revd Maybold – who, of course, is a facsimile of the real-life Revd Arthur Shirley, vicar of Stinsford. Dick proposes to Fancy and she accepts his offer. Nonetheless, she has a momentary flirtation with Farmer Shiner; then accepts a second proposal of marriage from the new vicar. Finally, she confesses to Maybold that she has acted hastily, and she and Dick get married amidst celebratory dances – under the greenwood tree – to the music of the quire.
Alongside this romance runs the story of the quire, whose members number such colourful characters as the tranter, the shoemaker and the simpleton. Having fallen asleep during a church sermon, they awake and, believing themselves still to be at the local dance which they had attended the night before, spring into life and play not a hymn, but a jig. Episodes like this show the lighter, vibrant side of Hardy’s character, and reveal his keen sense of humour. Subsequently, however, and for reasons soon to become apparent, Hardy’s works would assume a more serious, sombre and introspective dimension.
The quire have played their music since time immemorial; their previous vicar having left them undisturbed, allowing them to participate in the choosing of the hymns and never troubling them with a visit ‘from year’s end to year’s end’. Now, they have to endure the Revd Maybold who never allows them ‘a bit o’ peace’. When Maybold announces that the musicians are to be replaced with an organ, they see it as a catastrophe; yet they resolve to fall gloriously ‘with a bit of a flourish at Christmas’, rather than be ‘choked off quiet at no time in particular’.
In view of the real-life trauma which the Revd Shirley had brought to the Stinsford choir, it must have given Hardy enormous pleasure and satisfaction to have Fancy Day turn down the proposal of marriage by the Revd Maybold in favour of Dick Dewy.
Hardy sent the manuscript to Macmillan, who would probably have published it but for a misunderstanding. When the manuscript was returned to him, Hardy was of a mind to give up writing altogether, but was persuaded by a letter from Emma to persevere with it as she felt sure that authorship was his true vocation. In this, she demonstrated an unselfish side to her nature; after all, a career in architecture would have provided greater security for herself and Hardy in the event of them one day marrying.
In the spring of 1872, Hardy returned again to London with the aim of furthering his architectural career. He found work with a Mr T. Roger Smith, Professor of Architecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects, and assisted in the design of schools for the London School Board.
Horace Moule, in a chance meeting with Hardy, also advised him to continue with his writing;one reason being that in the event of his eyesight deteriorating, at some time in the future, and thus halting his architectural career, then this would provide him with an alternative occupation.
By another coincidence Hardy encountered Tinsley, who asked him whether he had any other manuscripts for him to look at. Hardy accordingly sent him, in April 1872, the manuscript of Under the Greenwood Tree. This was duly published two months later in June. The book was reviewed favourably by both the Athenaeum and the Pall Mall Gazette. On the strength of this, Tinsley asked Hardy to write a story for his Tinsley’s Magazine, to be serialised over a period of twelve months. (In Victorian times, to be published in a popular magazine provided a lucrative source of income for an aspiring new writer.) To this end, Hardy took a break from work and commenced his next novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, which was inspired by his visit to Cornwall and his meeting with Emma, two and a half years previously.
Meanwhile, on Thursday 11 April 1872, the newly restored church of St Juliot was reopened, although neither Hardy nor Crickmay attended the ceremony. Morning and afternoon services were held. At the former, there was a much more numerous congregation than could have been expected, considering the busy season and the scattered population of this agricultural district. In the afternoon the beautiful building was filled with a devout audience.
It was reported that many clergymen from other parishes round about were also in attendance, including the Revd Henry M. A. Serjeant of St Clether – a village situated 7 miles from St Juliot – of whom more will be said shortly.19 The ‘Statement of Receipts … on the Restoration of St Juliot Church, 1871–2’20 makes for interesting reading:
| RECEIPTS | £ | s. | d. |
| Revd. C [Caddell] Holder | 55 | 19 | 6 |
| Mrs [Helen] Holder | 5 | ||
| Lady Molesworth | 25 | ||
| Capt. [Cecil] Holder [son of Caddell] | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Bishop of London | 10 | ||
| Miss [Emma] Gifford | 10 | ||
| Mrs [Emma] Gifford [wife of John A. Gifford] | 10 | ||
| T. Hardy, Esq. | 10 | ||
| Mr H. Jose | 10 | ||
| Mr J. Jose | 10 | ||
| W. [Walter] E. Gifford, Esq. [Emma’s brother] (London) | 5 | ||
| Miss Gifford [again Emma] by sale of sketches | 8 | 10 | |
| Collected at opening services | 11 | 2 | 1 |
| On next Sunday | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Proceeds of luncheon and tea | 14 | 15 | 6 |
Emma’s father was conspicuous by his absence. The editor of the Royal Cornwall Gazette, however, could not hide his displeasure at the ‘restoration’ and the fact that:
Many old architectural features in the original building … are now destroyed and swept away for ever, adding another unmistakable specimen of Vandalism to what has already taken place at Tintagel, Lesnewth, and Forrabury.21
In August 1872 Hardy made another visit to Cornwall, this time to Kirland House on the outskirts of Bodmin Town, where Emma’s parents, the Giffords, were now living. It is likely that the purpose of this visit was for Hardy to ask Emma’s father, John Attersoll Gifford, for permission to marry his daughter. Strictly speaking, this was not necessary as both parties were of age. Nevertheless, it was the convention of the times.
In the event the visit was not a happy one, and this is reflected in a poem which Hardy later wrote entitled I Rose and Went to Rou’tor Town (‘Rou’tor’ being his name for Bodmin). The poem purports to express the views of a female; a thin attempt at disguise by Hardy, for the sentiments expressed are undoubtedly his. It commences with a sense of cheerful anticipation:
I ROSE and went to Rou’tor Town
With gaiety and good heart,
And ardour for the start …
It continues:
When sojourn soon at Rou’tor Town
Wrote sorrows on my face …
And it ends in bitterness:
The evil wrought at Rou’tor Town
On him I’d loved so true
I cannot tell anew:
But nought can quench, but nought can drown
The evil wrought at Rou’tor Town
On him I’d loved so true.
Hardy was subsequently questioned about this poem by writer Vere H. Collins.22 What is ‘the evil wrought at Rou’tor Town’, asked Collins; to which Hardy replied: ‘Slander, or something of that sort.’ In other words, Emma’s father, who was violently opposed to any future attachment between Hardy and his daughter, was slanderously abusive to Hardy on the occasion in question.23 It is possible that Gifford was drunk, for as Emma states:
He married my mother after the death of her sister – a lovely golden haired girl of eighteen to whom he was engaged, shortly to be married … [immediately after whose death] he drank heavily, and in after life never a wedding, removal, or death occurred in the family but he broke out again.24
Gifford would subsequently refer to Hardy as ‘a low-born churl who has presumed to marry into my family’.25
Faced with this setback, how the cautionary words spoken to him by his mother must have echoed in Hardy’s mind, when she had warned him of the figure which ‘stands in our van (path) with arm uplifted, to knock us back from any pleasant prospect we indulge in’. Also, the effect on Hardy, with his sensitive nature, was to reinforce his pre-existing feelings of inferiority with regard to himself. So how was he to express his outrage and frustration about the way he had been treated by Emma’s father, and about the rigid class distinctions which pervaded Victorian society of which he was now a victim? Why, in the best way he knew how – through his writings.
Having extricated himself from this unpleasant interview with Gifford, Hardy subsequently relocated to St Benet’s Abbey, near Lanivet, the home of Captain Charles Eldon Serjeant26 and his wife Jane, who were friends of Emma’s. The captain was the first cousin of William Henry Serjeant, son of the curate of St Clether. Emma had formed a deep attachment to William, as will shortly be seen, but he had died seven months earlier in January 1872, at the young age of 23.
It is likely that Emma joined Hardy during his brief sojourn at St Benet’s Abbey in August 1872, and that it was then, notwithstanding the hostility of Emma’s father, that the couple became engaged. They also visited the Holders at St Juliot, where they received a more agreeable reception than they had at Kirland House.
Hardy went back to London, but quickly decided to return to the tranquillity of his family home at Bockhampton in order to give A Pair of Blue Eyes his full attention. An invitation from Professor Smith to revisit the capital was refused, despite the cordial relationship which existed between them.
Hardy’s visit to Cornwall in August 1872 prompted him to write another poem (which was subsequently published as part of his Moments of Vision collection):
Near Lanivet
THERE was a stunted handpost just on the crest,
Only a few feet high:
She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest,
At the crossways close thereby.
She leant back, being so weary, against its stem,
And laid her arms on its own,
Each open palm stretched out to each end of them,
Her sad face sideways thrown.
Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day
Made her look as one crucified
In my gaze at her from the midst of the dusty way,
And hurriedly ‘Don’t,’ I cried.
I do not think she heard. Loosing thence she said,
As she stepped forth ready to go,
‘I am rested now. – Something strange came into my head;
I wish I had not leant so!’
And wordless we moved onward down from the hill
In the west cloud’s murked obscure,
And looking back we could see the handpost still
In the solitude of the moor.
‘It struck her too,’ I thought, for as if afraid
She heavily breathed as we trailed;
Till she said, ‘I did not think how ‘twould look in the shade,
When I leant there like one nailed.’
I, lightly: ‘There’s nothing in it. For you, anyhow!’
– ‘O I know there is not,’ said she …
‘Yet I wonder … If no one is bodily crucified now,
In spirit one may be!’
And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see
In the running of Time’s far glass
Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be
Some day. – Alas, alas!
Almost half a century was to pass before Hardy confided to author, critic and writer of his biography Thomas Hardy, Harold Child, that the ‘the strange incident’ related by him in the poem ‘really happened’.27 He also admitted to his friend, florence Henniker, That the poem was ‘literally true’.28 And finally, he told his friend, the poet, author and critic, Edmund Gosse, that the scene described ‘occurred between us [himself and Emma] before our marriage’.29
It seems that the signpost (‘handpost’) which stood on the hill reminded Emma of Calvary, and the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. But why did she then choose, to Hardy’s horror, to mimic Christ and his posture on the cross? And why afterwards did she ask him, again to his horror, if it was possible for a person to be crucified in spirit, rather than in body? Given the time and context in which the poem was written – that is, shortly after Hardy’s visit to Kirland House, and his unfortunate interview with Emma’s father – its meaning is not difficult to deduce.
When Christ was crucified he was making atonement for the sins of the world. Emma, as a devout Christian, would therefore have regarded crucifixion as a punishment for sin, and it was because of her own feelings of guilt that she chose, on that gloomy evening spent with Hardy, to mimic Christ on the cross. Possible sources of this guilt are as follows. In promising herself to Hardy, Emma had gone against the express wishes of her father, who regarded the young architect as ‘a low-born churl’. But even more serious was the fact that she did not love Hardy: her thoughts were not with him, but with another, and for this reason she had no intention of ever having a sexual relationship with him. Extraordinary as this latter statement may seem, evidence of its veracity will be produced in due course.
This being the case, why did Emma consent to marry Hardy? According to a reliable source, it was because her sister Helen, wife of the Revd Caddell Holder, ‘was trying to marry her younger sister … to any man who would have her’. Also, Emma ‘was nearly thirty then &nd the sisters had violent quarrels’.30