One of the most intriguing poems in Hardy’s Satires of Circumstance collection is entitled The Face at the Casement, which begins:
If ever joy leave
An abiding sting of sorrow,
So befell it on the morrow
Of that May eve …
The travelled sun dropped
To the north-west, low and lower,
The pony’s trot grew slower,
Until we stopped.
‘This cosy house just by
I must call at for a minute,
A sick man lies within it
Who soon will die.
‘He wished – to marry me,
So I am bound, when I drive near him,
To inquire, if but to cheer him,
How he may be.’
A message was sent in,
And wordlessly we waited,
Till some one came and stated
The bulletin.
And that the sufferer said,
For her call no words could thank her;
As his angel he must rank her
Till life’s spark fled.
Slowly we drove away,
When I turned my head, although not
Called to: why I turned I know not
Even to this day:
And lo, there in my view
Pressed against an upper lattice
Was a white face, gazing at us
As we withdrew.
And well I did divine
It to be the man’s there dying,
Who but lately had been sighing
For her pledged mine.
At this, the author of the poem (Hardy) puts his arm around his ‘plighted love’ (Emma) in order to make their position clear to the person at the window. In effect, he is saying: ‘She is mine, and not yours.’ However, for this action he afterwards confesses, in the poem, that he feels ashamed.
Who was this man who had wished to marry Emma but had fallen ill? A clue is given in the penultimate verse of the poem:
Long long years has he lain
In thy garth, O Sad Saint Cleather …
By ‘garth’ Hardy means ‘churchyard’, and ‘Saint Cleather’ is a reference to Cornwall’s small village of St Clether (sic), which, as already mentioned, is situated only 7 miles from St Juliot.1 Also, the ‘May eve’ must refer to 1871 (which was the year after Hardy had first met Emma), when he paid another visit to her at St Juliot.
In order to identify the person to whom Hardy is referring in this poem, it is necessary to peruse the burial register of the parish of St Clether for a period of, say, four years, from May 18712 (the assumption being that a dying man is unlikely to have survived for longer than this period). In doing this, if all the males older or younger than Emma by a period of ten years are eliminated, then this leaves only one possible candidate, namely William Henry Serjeant.3
William, a draper by trade, was the elder son of the Revd Henry Matthias Atwood Serjeant, curate of St Clether from 1869–794 (where his uncle, the Revd James Serjeant, had been curate before him, from 1840–53). The Revd Henry’s wife was Betsy (née Clemens of St Keyne, Cornwall), whom he married in 1847. (St Clether’s rector (1837–80), the Revd Henry Morshead, lived elsewhere.)
Born in 1849, William was at least eight years Emma’s junior. An unmarried man, he died aged 23 at the vicarage, St Clether, on 20 January 1872, ‘after a long and painful illness’.5 He was buried in the churchyard six days later. Whereas his father, the Revd Henry, normally conducted St Clether’s burial services, on this occasion the service was conducted by a colleague, the Revd John King Lethbridge. William’s death certificate gives his occupation as ‘draper’ and the cause of his death as ‘phthisis pulmonalis – 18 months’.6 (‘Phthisis’ means ‘wasting disease’ – the most likely cause in this case being pulmonary tuberculosis.) The certificate also records that in attendance on William at his death was Hugh Pearse of Higher Bassils, aged 58, who had a 400-acre farm at North Petherwin, 5 miles to the north-east of St Clether. This suggests that when he died, William was visiting Pearse, either at his home or at his farm.7
How did Emma and William come to meet one another? The Revd Henry Serjeant of St Clether, and Emma’s brother-in-law, the Revd Cadell Holder of St Juliot, were both Anglican clergymen whose parishes lay within the diocese of Truro, separated by only a handful of miles. Undoubtedly, therefore, soon after the Serjeants arrived at St Clether in November 1868,8 the two men and their families, Emma included, would have become acquainted. It is likely that by the time Hardy first arrived on the scene in March 1870, Emma had known William for a year or even longer.9 (In fact, Emma may have known the Serjeant family from the time when she and her parents were living at Kirland House, Bodmin. This is because Emma’s friend, Captain Charles Eldon Serjeant of St Benet’s Abbey, Lanivet, near Bodmin, and the Revd Henry M. A. Serjeant were first cousins.)10
It may, therefore, be assumed that the Serjeants’ home – the seventeenth-century rectory at St Clether – was the place at which Emma asked Hardy to stop at sunset on that ‘May eve’; this being situated, as already mentioned, a mere 7 miles from St Juliot, and well within range for Emma’s pony and trap. It may also be assumed that it was from one of the casement windows of the rectory that the dying man’s face could be seen looking out.
So why did Emma not marry William Serjeant, a draper from a respectable family, of whom her father could scarcely have disapproved? Was it because of William’s serious chest complaint which (according to his death certificate) had commenced in July 1870, four months after Hardy’s first meeting with her at St Juliot? Or was there another reason altogether?
From the poem, it is clear that Hardy was convinced that Emma was in love with William Serjeant and he with her, but was this really the case? In 1921 French psychiatrist Gaëtan de Clérambault published a paper entitled ‘Les Psychoses Passionelles’, in which he described a condition which now bears his name. De Clérambault’s syndrome (or ‘erotomania’) is a type of delusion (which can co-exist with other delusions) in which a person believes that another person, and sometimes a number of other people, are in love with himself or herself. The disorder is almost entirely confined to single women, who believe that their ‘supposed lover’ is more in love with them than they are with him.11 Also, this ‘supposed lover’ is ‘usually inaccessible’, perhaps because he is a person of exalted position.
This description fits with that of Emma and William; he being out of reach by virtue of the disparity in their ages, and also, more latterly, by virtue of his terminal illness. However, William could hardly claim to be an ‘exalted’ person. His paternal grandfather, John Serjeant, had been a lieutenant in the Royal Marines with a large family to support both from his first and his second marriages.12 His father, the Revd Henry Serjeant, who as yet was only a curate,13 had commenced his studies at Queens’ College, Cambridge (to which he was admitted for the Michaelmas term, 1943), as a ‘sizar’ – a poor student who acted as a servant in return for free tuition;14 his mother Betsy (née Blake) was the daughter of a farmer from St Keyne, near Liskeard.15 But in order to gain entry to such a prestigious institution as Cambridge University, the Revd Henry must have had influential connections.
Whether Emma’s delusion was of the ‘de Clérambault’ type or not is open to question. But what seems likely is that her love affair with William Serjeant was the product of her deluded mind rather than a reality. Additionally, it will not go unnoticed that the description of the deluded woman which de Clérambault describes is reminiscent of Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure (in reality, Emma), who derives pleasure from the fact that her lover is more in love with her than she is with him.
Hardy’s poem The Telegram (also to be found in the Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries collection), also relates to a sick man who was evidently loved by Emma:
‘O he’s suffering – maybe dying – and I not there to aid,
And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go?
Only the nurse’s brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed,
As by stealth, to let me know.
‘He was the best and brightest! – candour shone upon his brow,
And I shall never meet again a soldier such as he,
And I loved him ere I knew it, and perhaps he’s sinking now,
Far, far removed from me!’
The yachts ride mute at anchor and the fulling moon is fair,
And the giddy folk are strutting up and down the smooth parade,
And in her wild distraction she seems not to be aware
That she lives no more a maid.
But has vowed and wived herself to one who blessed the ground she trod
To and from his scene of ministry, and thought her history known
In its last particular to him – aye, almost as to God,
And believed her quite his own.
So rapt her mind’s far off regard she droops as in a swoon,
And a movement of aversion mars her recent spousal grace,
And in silence we two sit here in our waning honeymoon
At this idle watering-place …
What now I see before me is a long lane overhung
With lovelessness, and stretching from the present to the grave.
And would I were away from this, with friends I knew when young,
Ere a woman held me slave.
One might assume that The Telegram relates to a real-life telegram, which apparently arrived when Hardy was on his ‘waning honeymoon’ with Emma at an ‘idle watering-place’ (Brighton, where he and Emma spent Sunday 20 September and Monday 21 September 1874, the couple having married on 17 September). One might also assume that Emma had left word with her former lover’s nurse, that if the sick man’s condition were to deteriorate further, then she wished to be kept informed, but ‘by stealth’ in order to conceal the matter from Hardy. And his condition did deteriorate, hence the arrival of the telegram. On learning that her former lover was now desperately ill, Emma is distraught, knowing that she cannot be ‘there to aid’ the man whom she loved and who is now dying.
It is surely too much of a coincidence to believe that Emma had such profoundly loving feelings for two dying men – the one referred to in The Face at the Casement and the other referred to in The Telegram. The conclusion must be that the two poems refer to one and the same person – William Henry Serjeant. And yet William died in January 1872, two years and eight months prior to Hardy’s honeymoon. So how can the discrepancy in chronology be explained?
The answer is that the time frame alluded to in The Telegram (in contrast with that alluded to in The Face at the Casement) should not be taken too literally. What seems certain is that sometime shortly prior to William’s death in January 1872, Emma received news (either by telegram or by some other means) that he was desperately ill, and was overcome with remorse. Hardy’s honeymoon was such a disaster that he altered the sequence of events to make it appear that it was then that Emma heard the news of William’s grave illness. In fact, it is possible that thoughts of Serjeant were in Emma’s mind during her honeymoon, and that she did forget, temporarily, that she was married and ‘no more a maid’. (Hardy may also have moved the telegram episode forward to coincide with his honeymoon in order to give the poem greater dramatic effect.)
Finally, how can the words ‘a soldier such as he’ from the poem be explained, when it is known for a fact that William was, by trade, a draper? The most likely explanation is that Hardy, in attempting to disguise the true identity of Serjeant, used a play on words: he exchanged the ‘j’ in his name for a ‘g’, and called him a soldier.
Hardy’s honeymoon should, particularly after all the long years of waiting, have been a blissfully happy time, for, as the poem suggests, he believed that he knew everything about his new wife and was under the impression that her heart belonged entirely to him. Instead, he was in for a rude awakening, for instead of responding to his loving gestures, her ‘spousal grace’ is marred by her ‘aversion’ to him. (The word aversion has resonances with Jude the Obscure and Sue Bridehead’s aversion to Phillotson.)
Perhaps the most chilling fact of all to be revealed in The Telegram is that Hardy, even at the very beginning of married life to Emma, had evidently resigned himself to the fact that his marriage would be a loveless one, and would continue to be so until the end of his days.
Surely it was no coincidence that in Hardy’s novel A Pair of Blue Eyes, first published in late 1872 and early 1873, in which Elfride Swancourt’s admirer, Stephen Smith, interrogates her about possible past lovers, the following passage occurs:
Smith: ‘And had you really never any sweetheart at all?’
Elfride: ‘None that was ever recognized by me as such.’
Smith: ‘But did nobody ever love you?’
Elfride: ‘Yes – a man did once; very much, he said.’
The person referred to by Elfride is Felix Jethway, whose mother was a widow but is now deceased.
Later in the novel, it is Henry Knight, her other suitor, who interrogates Elfride. ‘Have you ever had a lover? I am almost sure you have not; but, have you?’ he asks her. Eventually, she admits that she did once have a lover, to whom she was engaged to be married, ‘but not formally’ engaged. When Knight realises that Elfride has been less than frank with him, he declares: ‘What a poor mortal I am to play second fiddle in everything and be deluded by fibs!’
Surely Hardy, through the characters of Smith and Knight, is voicing his own insecurities in regard to Emma (‘Elfride’). He is aware that Emma is a rare beauty who was undoubtedly the talk of north Cornwall as she rode out on the moors on her pony, her beautiful auburn hair, in her words, ‘floating on the wind’.16 During his courting days, when he was away from her in London, he may have imagined her with other men. After all, he was aware of at least two of her previous amorous attachments: to Henry Jose, The farmer’s son-cum-churchwarden, and of course to William Serjeant of St Clether.
The following scenario may be imagined. It is September 1874 and Hardy is on his honeymoon, when he expects, quite reasonably, that he and Emma will enjoy sexual intercourse. In fact, smitten as he is with her beauty, and particularly after so long a courtship, this is something which he longs for. However, it is not to be. Emma previously believed herself to be in love with William Henry Serjeant, and he with her, and this may possibly have been the case. On the other hand, it may have been a delusion – of the previously discussed ‘erotomanic’ type – which persisted in her mind even after William’s death in January 1872. One can almost hear Emma’s voice as she says to Hardy, whom she has just married, ‘I loved William and he loved me. There will never be another in my life’; and when Hardy suggests that they make love, her reaction is ‘No, for this would be to commit adultery’. Hardy, dazed and dejected by her reaction, expresses himself in the way that he knows best: he composes a poem, The Telegram. And because this delusion in regard to William Serjeant remains fixed in her mind – as delusions do – this explains why, all through her married life, she refuses to make love to her husband, or indeed to show him any demonstrable affection. It also explains why the couple’s relationship was doomed, from the very beginning, to failure.