The technique of Thomas Hardy

•:

TECHNIQUE OF
THOMAS HARDY

By JOSEPH WARREN BEACH

Author of The Comic Spirit in George Meredith
and The Method of Henry James

The lyf so short, the
craft so long to lerne3

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

COPYRIGHT 1922 BY
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

All Rights Reserved

Published September 1922

O ^ i

V

Composed and Printed By

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago. Illinois, U.S.A.

PREFACE

Since the death of Meredith and Swinburne, Mr.
Hardy remains the last of the great Victorian masters.
His extraordinary charm, together with his significance
as an interpreter of life, has attracted many critics to
write extensively of him, and especially of his novels.
Poets of such distinction as Lionel Johnson and Mr.
Lascelles Abercrombie have written beautifully of him in
prose; and he has been made the subject of one exhaust-
ive study, especially in reference to his philosophy, by
Mr. F. C. Hedgcock, presented to the University of Paris
as a thesis for the degree of Docteur es-Lettres. Uni-
versity professors like Mr. H. C. Duffm, of Birmingham,
and Dr. Samuel Chew, of Bryn Mawr, have made
elaborate studies, now of the Wessex Novels, now of his
whole literary output. The study which I am offering
is more special than any of these. It is a study of Hardy's
novels almost exclusively in reference to their technique.

Studies in the technique of the novel are, it seems to
me, unduly rare. The literary history of the novel has
been largely taken up with subject-matter, style, social
significance, the differentiae of realism and romanticism.
Until the appearance a few months ago of Mr. Percy
Lubbuck's brilliant and subtle book on The Craft of
Fiction, the novel has been very little subjected to that
technical study which has been carried so far with the
epic, the sonnet, the short story, the drama. By tech-
nique I mean the structural art of the novel: the method
of assembling and ordering these elements of subject-

vi PREFACE

matter, social criticism, and the like. The novel ha:
so democratic a medium, so little regarded as an)
more than an evening's entertainment or the vehi
instruction and propaganda, that scant attentioi
been given, especially in Saxon countries, to st
artistic standards applying to it. And such standa
have been imported from the continent have refe
rather to style — le mot precis — or mere truth to n
These are certainly matters of the first importance
it would be hard to exaggerate the service rendered
by Mr. Howells' worship of Balzac or Mr. Moore's
ship of Flaubert. But there is a limit to what c
said upon these subjects, and the limit has long sina
reached. Only the genius can find a fresh word t
on the subject of realism, romance, or style. Forr
the other hand, is virgin soil; and there is no aspc
novel- writing that more invites to patient and lei<
study.

It is not by accident that the author of The Ci
Fiction is one who was a personal friend of Henry ^
and the editor of his letters. No writer of nov
English has given more attention than James to the
tion of technique, and probably none has had a str
influence on the technique of novelists now writin;
was this consideration which led me to make such
tailed study of him in an earlier volume. If James
a popular story-teller, it is not, I think, because
preoccupation with form, but in spite of it. The
lies in the relatively great popularity of Mr. Conrad
owes so very much to the technical example of J
The case of Mr. Conrad, by the way, shows whal
fusion reigns in the critical mind in reference t

PREFACE vii

technique of the novel. Mr. Conrad is often regarded as
a novelist who holds our fascinated attention in spite of
his violation of all the plain rules of story-telling. And
this because he does not always tell his story straightfor-
ward in chronological sequence, and because he so often
interposes the mind of some Captain Marlow between us
and the events of the story! It is evident how little
attention has been given to the art of telling a story when
critics blame a great writer for employing two of the com-
monest of the methods of the colloquial spinner of yarns |
for piquing the curiosity, maintaining suspense, and
creating the illusion of truth.

Far be it from me to suggest that there is some one
sacred method of writing a novel, and to join with those
who, at one time or another, have undertaken to put in an
academic straight- jacket the writer of plays, of epics, of
short-stories ! There are many excellent methods : I am
as well pleased with that of Dorothy Richardson or Waldo
Frank as with that of Edith Wharton; and I find the
diverse methods of H. G. Wells and John Galsworthy
as well adapted to their respective aims as the diverse
methods of Jane Austen and Walter Scott. But I think
it would be interesting to have these various methods
r classified, and in the case of the great novelists, to have
available a somewhat detailed description of their prac-
This is an undertaking especially suitable to the
iversity teacher and his more advanced pupils; it calls
all the taste and discretion at their command, as well
appealing to their special genius for scrupulous and
-stematic observation of fact. And such study would
well worth while in the present stage of creative fer-
ity and critical barrenness. For one thing it would

viii PREFACE

direct our attention to the neglected subject of method.
And it would put us in a better position to judge how far
this and that novelist has employed method of any kind;
and how far he may have suffered from his neglect or
gained by taking thought.

In the case of Hardy, the reader must often wonder
whether he was a deliberate structural artist, whether the
occasional greatness of his work was not rather the result
of a technique which came to him, as we say, by inspira-
tion, and whether indeed the unfailing charm of his work,
in whatever degree of greatness, is not something inde-
pendent of questions of technique. Technique is but
one of several factors determining the appeal of any
writer; and Hardy with his frequent obliviousness to art
is a greater novelist than James with his unceasing vigi-
lance. Moreover, questions of technique are so inti-
mately bound up with questions of philosophy and
subject-matter that they cannot be considered altogether
in isolation. But structural art is a more important
matter than it has been generally considered; the work
of Hardy, like that of Meredith, suffered decidedly from
the typical Victorian indifference to it. And the moral
of our present study will be derived in large part from
technical considerations; we shall be mainly concerned
with whatever principles of composition, consciously held
or followed instinctively, we can find in Hardy's novels,
great or less great.

J. W. B.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

July 15, 1922

CONTENTS

PAGE

ART AND CRAFT IN THE NOVELS OF HARDY: FOREWORD . 3

PART ONE: PROGRESS IN ART

I. INGENUITY: Desperate Remedies 23

II. IRONY: A Pair of Blue Eyes 36

.III. SETTING: Far from the Madding Crowd* .... 45

IV. DRAMA: The Return of the Native 8&_..

PART Two: MORE CRAFT THAN ART

V. RELAPSE: The Hand of Ethelberta 109

The Trumpet-Major 113

A Laodicean 117

Two on a Tower 121

The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid . 124

The Well-Beloved 127

VI. MOVIE: The Mayor of Casterbridge 134

VII. CHRONICLE: The Woodlanders 158

PART THREE: ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

VIII. PITY: Tess of the D'Urbervilles 179

IX. TRUTH: Jude the Obscure 218

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 247

INDEX 253

IX

ART AND CRAFT IN THE NOVELS OF
HARDY: FOREWORD

ART AND CRAFT IN THE NOVELS OF
HARDY: FOREWORD

The most remarkable thing about Mr. Hardy's
novels, for anyone who takes them in sequence, is their
extreme unevenness of quality. It is everywhere agreed
to rank the author of Tess of the D'Urbervilles as the
most serious English novelist of his time. No one doubts
that he has produced works of noble beauty, has made an
illuminating representation of life, has ranged his facts
in the light of a significant philosophy. And yet this
artist, this philosopher, this scientist in human nature,
is the author of works that by their crudeness positively
put his lovers to the blush.

It is not merely that he served a long apprenticeship,
that he was exceptionally late at arriving at the full-
ness of power. There is something regular about a slow
development in one's art, something legitimate and
pleasing to the mind of the critic, who doesn't like to
think of such things as coming too much by inspiration.
Quite a different thing is the backsliding of an artist
who has once found his salvation — the production of
greatly inferior work, of obviously less serious work,
after he has proved his capacity for the best. We are
content to recognize in Desperate Remedies the imitative-
ness, the offer of ingenuity for originality, proper to a first
novel. But after he had found his own rich vein in
Far from the Madding Crowd, to undertake that abortive
experiment in " comedy," The Hand of Ethelberta; after

4 ART AND CRAFT

he had produced the Sophoclean drama of The Native,
to indulge in the almost childish melodrama of A Laodi-
cean! As for The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid,
there is something brazen in coming to us, the con-
noisseurs, with such wares. Or is it possible that he was
not really coming to us, the connoisseurs, but had in
mind a quite different market, for which he was fabricat-
ing a quite different sort of wares ?

What really was the attitude of Thomas Hardy
toward his art? What ideals did he actually hold for
a novel? And how far was he willing to compromise
his ideals for the sake of popularity ?

What he thinks of his own work often appears, so
far as the exigencies of the trade allow, in the several
prefaces attached to the novels in the collected edition
or earlier. Of Desperate Remedies he speaks very can-
didly. It was "the first published by the author,"
and was written "at a time when he was feeling his way
to a method. The principles observed in its composition
are, no doubt, too exclusively those in which mystery,
entanglement, surprise, and moral obliquity are depended
on for exciting interest." A similar condescending, or
apologetic, tone may be heard in the prefatory notices
to many of the later novels, especially those classified
as "novels of ingenuity" and as "romances and fanta-
sies."1 I fancy that Mr. Hardy, if he felt free to express
an opinion, would be likely to pass more severe judgment
upon certain of his performances than any of his readers.

1 These are two of the headings under which the stories were classi-
fied in the collected "Wessex Novels" of Messrs. Macmillan. The
strongest of his novels, as well as two volumes of his tales, are included
under "novels of character and environment."

FOREWORD 5

It is notorious what a supercilious attitude he has taken,
in these later years of poetic production, toward his
stories in general. But if he could so far condescend
as to distinguish among his fictions, he would certainly
express himself more emphatically on the difference
between, say, the " somewhat frivolous narrative" of
Ethelberta and the " stories of more sober design"
between which it came as "an interlude." He knows!

Mr. Hardy seems always to have taken a serious
view of his obligations to the truth of human nature.
This appears both in the articles on the novel which he
contributed to magazines,1 and in certain prefatory
declarations in reference to his own, even his earlier,
works. Even in Desperate Remedies, with its tangled
melodramatic plot, "some of the scenes, and at least
one of the characters" were "deemed not unworthy of
a little longer preservation." Even in The Hand of
Ethelberta, while "a high degree of probability was not
attempted in the arrangement of the incidents," "the
characters themselves were meant to be consistent and
human."

But still, so far as the incidents were concerned, a
high degree of probability was not attempted in their
arrangement; and in general it is clear that Mr. Hardy
did not take so seriously truth to event as truth to
character. In his magazine articles he shows a consider-
able indulgence for improbabilities in the plot of a novel,
declaring that minute waisemblance is not essential

1 See especially his article on "The Profitable Reading of Fiction"
in the Forum for March, 1888.

6 ART AND CRAFT

to a true representation of life. Human nature is human
nature, but a plot is a plot.

It is in line with such a view that the author should
not think it necessary in every case to invent his own
plots. One might think this essential in order that the
sequence of events should be precisely what would
naturally follow from the characters and the circum-
stances in which they are placed. But this is not the
kind of scruple that troubles an author of Hardy's
force in the manipulation of materials. We know that,
in the case of at least one of his greatest novels, he did
not find his own plot — in Far from the Madding Crowd.
This fact came out when the novel was dramatized, and
it proved to have the same plot as Pinero's play, The
Squire. Tiresome litigation resulted; and it appeared
that the same woman had sold the plot separately to
each of the two authors.1

We may here at least suppose that, if the story was
not made to fit the characters, the characters were made
to fit the story, and that their acts and the conclusion
were duly considered in reference to the proper "inevi-
tableness of character and environment in working out
destiny."2 But there is the case of another more
high-handed and supercilious treatment of mere plot
in the still more serious work, The Return of the Native.
We have it from Hardy's own lips that, in this master-
piece, he was deliberately conforming to the taste of the
British public by appending to his tragic story a con-
clusion in which the minor characters remaining on the
stage are happily joined in matrimony. The story was

1 This statement is made in the Critic, XL VIII (1906), 293.
3 Mr. Hardy's own words in the Forum article referred to.

FOREWORD 7

originally intended to close with the drowning of Wildeve
and Eustacia at the end of the fifth book; and Mr.
Hardy directs readers with "an austere artistic code"
to "assume the more consistent conclusion to be the
true one."1 But "certain circumstances of serial
publication" — presumably the advice of the editor of
Belgravia — led him to add a supplementary book,
entitled Afiercourses, which, as Hardy mischievouslys
expresses it in the argument prefixed to this book in the
magazine version, "shortly relates the gradual righting
of affairs after the foregoing catastrophe." It was a con-
siderable sacrifice to the gods of the mart. To be sure,
there was nothing improbable about the marriage of
Thomasin and Venn; and the reddleman quite as well
deserved the lady by long suit and service as Gabriel Oak
deserved Bathsheba in an earlier story. But The Return
of the Native was a work of such beautiful harmonious
design, with the material so cunningly disposed in the five
original books, like acts, and the story brought so straight
and just to its inevitable tragic ending, that it was a
great pity to have the effect impaired by this half-
hearted concession of tepid happiness.

Hardy is certainly not given over in general to the
convention of the happy marriage as the conclusion of
a tale in which, for the entertainment of the reader,
the course of true love is made to run not smooth.
A review of his plots would show at once his predilection
for the period following marriage as provoking the most
varied and illuminating display of human nature. As

1 These quotations are taken from Professor Cunliffe's introduction
to The Return of the Native in the Modern Student's Library published
by Scribners.

8 ART AND CRAFT

late as 1880, however, and after the publication of nearly
half his novels, he found himself strenuously dictating
a narrative "to a predetermined cheerful ending." He
hopes that A Laodicean may find favor with "that large
and happy section of the reading public which has not
yet reached ripeness of years; those to whom marriage
is the pilgrim's Eternal City, and not a milestone on
the way."

It is probable that a large proportion of those who
have "reached ripeness of years" will join their suffrages
to those of their juniors in favor of stories that picture
marriage as "the pilgrim's Eternal City, and not a
milestone on the way." And no doubt Hardy was doing
well to keep in touch in this respect with the great
reading public, during at least the earlier half of his
career, while he was making a place for himself. That
is presumably the price which most young writers have
to pay for the privilege of writing later as they please.

3

And it is clear that Mr. Hardy never did get far
out of range of his public.1 He never — like Meredith-
ignored his public; he never — like Mr. George Moore
—wrote for a foreign public, as it were; he never — like
Henry James — abandoned in mid-career a public whom
he had once secured.

1Mr. Hardy's consideration for the sensibilities of the public is
shown throughout his career by his singular delicacy in the treatment
of all that pertains to sex. This is particularly evident in the emasculated
versions of incidents in The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Caster-
bridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, The Well-Beloved, and Jude the Obscure,
as first given to the public in serial form. In The Return of the Native,
some of the excisions and modifications incident to this process were
continued through many years of serial publication. The curious reader

RD

It is clear that he did not disdain the inherited tools
of his trade. I will not say that he did not write for
an ideal. But he did not set up an ideal without regard
for the views of the reading world. He did not live in
an ivory tower. The novel he conceived of as a piece
of work for the entertainment of readers. He produced
for consumption. He was bent on doing good work;
but he was likewise determined to make a success.

He was a regular craftsman — like Dickens, work-
ing for the success of his popular magazines; like
Shakespeare, actor and manager, working over popular
plays for the King's Company, having in mind the motley
audiences of the Rose and the Globe.

Here was a young man conscious of artistic abilities,
but not at first sure in what direction they lay. He was
soon satisfied they lay in the direction of letters rather
than of architecture. He felt sure he could write
novels; but he was not at first sure what kind of novels
to write. He had to try out various kinds, to determine
where his own vein lay. We must bear in mind that
the true art of Hardy is an original creation — and that
is something that cannot be hurried into existence.
There it lies in the depths of time, in the great mystery
of uncreated things. We recognize it now; it seems as

is referred to my article on "Bowdlerized Versions of Hardy," dealing
particularly with The Native, which appeared in the Publications of the
Modern Language A ssociation of A merica, XXXVI ( 1 9 2 1 ) , 63 2-45 . The
alterations in The Well-Beloved were noted by Dr. Mary Ellen Chase in
her thesis for the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Minnesota;
in her subsequent thesis for the Doctorate of Philosophy she made a
similar study of The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess, and Jude. These
studies will no doubt be published in substance within the next year or
two.

io ART AND CRAFT

natural and familiar as the forms which have been with
us since the beginning of the world. But before it came,
no one conceived of it, no one dreamed it — not the author
himself. The author himself had to find it. And when
he did find it, he had to recognize it; he had to have
the faith to declare, against the indifference of the
world: "Here is a great new thing I have found; here
I will rest." How should Hardy have known in advance
the priceless value of that "Wessex" of his childhood
recollections? How should he have been able to
distinguish in that "Wessex" what he actually felt and
knew from what he thought he felt and knew, having
absorbed it from literary tradition ? And when he had
actually separated the good new wheat from the moldy
grain of traditional art, how should he have found
strength of faith at once to hold to the good ?

His first novel was submitted to Chapman and Hall
for publication; and the author was advised by the
publisher's reader — one George Meredith — that, for a
first novel, it dealt too much in social criticism.1
Perhaps it was the swing of the pendulum which led to
the writing of Desperate Remedies, the first novel to see
the light. This appeared in 1871. It was the year
following the death of the author of Bleak House and
Our Mutual Friend; and if there were two novels of
the preceding decade which had as great a vogue as
those of Dickens, they were, I suppose, The Woman in
White and The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. Is it
any wonder that the aspirant for honors in the novel
should have put forth a book in which the principles of

1 This statement is made by Edmund Gosse in an article in the
International Review for September, 1901.

FOREWORD ii

composition were "too exclusively those in which
mystery, entanglement, surprise, and moral obliquity
are depended on for exciting interest" ?

The greatest puzzle comes in the years following
The Return of the Native (1878). The artist capable of
producing that strong and shapely work was surely
capable of judging it to be his great original contribution
to the English novel. And yet we find him, in the five
years that follow, turning out, one after the other,
and each worse than the other, The Trumpet-Major,
A Laodicean, Two on a Tower, and The Romantic Adven-
tures of a Milkmaid. In most of these novels there is a
promising subject, and we are led to expect a really
significant picture of human nature and the social order.
But the possibilities of the theme were generally not
worked out, the actual recourse of the novelist being
to complicated and melodramatic intrigue. With The
Romantic A dventures he reached his nadir. In the follow-
ing years he produced two really fine novels, The Mayor
of Casterbridge and The Woodlanders; but not before
1891, the date of Tess, not for twelve years after The
Native, did he offer any work approaching it in splendor.

Perhaps we should take into account the long illness
referred to by Mr. Hardy in the Preface to A Laodicean.
This illness may be sufficient to explain both the inferi-
ority of that novel and the continued low level of his
work in Two on a Tower and The Adventures of a Milk-
maid. But there are other clues equally promising.
In the composition of The Native virtue must have gone
out of the author. One cannot presumably go on
producing such work without intervals of rest. Was
it not natural, after the strenuous labor on this master-

12 ART AND CRAFT

piece, for Mr. Hardy to turn deliberately to tasks of less
exacting nature ?

The whole record, moreover, leads one to suppose
that Mr. Hardy made a more or less conscious distinction
between the demands of his art and those of his craft;
and that, in the intervals of his great original efforts,
he felt called upon to try out for himself the more
customary — not to say shopworn — methods of the trade.
The present-day reader, brought up on the greater
novels of Hardy, can make no such distinction: he
cannot detect good craftsmanship where he does not
rejoice in the recognition of fine art. However it may
have been in the past, this novelist is bound to find his
readers henceforth solely among those who love him for
his art; and such readers are sure to regret as a loss to
art whatever was written with an eye to the craft alone.

4

Plot was, for Hardy, the one thing needful. Perhaps
he thought that was what the public wanted, and
perhaps he was right. But that was not all. Plot was,
I believe, the one thing essential in his own ideal of a
novel. He seems to have read life in terms of action,
objective action; in terms of brute incident, things
happening. And he craved, moreover, complication of
incident, a web of action crossing and recrossing.

He seems to have been strongly under the influence
of the older English novelists. His language is conserv-
ative, precise, a little cumbrous, a little quaint, favoring
in idiom the eighteenth-century writers, or at the latest
Walter Scott.1 He seems to have been very little

1 It is also at times very beautiful, as I shall take more than one
occasion to point out.

FOREWORD 13

influenced by the continental fiction of his day.1 He
escaped almost wholly the great contemporary tendency
to subordinate incident to psychology. In the code of
his contemporaries, there is no greater artistic disgrace
than the unexcused emergence of the naked fact. Every
fact must give account of itself in terms of character
and sentiment. And it is against the code to make use
of a major incident where a minor incident would do.
But the mind of Hardy is very matter of fact. He is
deeply impressed with the objective conditions of happi-
ness. And he cleaves to the school of Fielding and
Scott; he employs the large bold stroke. He is not
afraid of incident. He has an Elizabethan gallantry in
confronting life in its whole range of action and passion.
And he is too often carried away by his audacity.
However interesting his theme, however true to life
his characters, he insists on embroiling them in action
so strange and tangled as to produce on the reader's
mind an impression of artificial contrivance. Even in
his latest novel of all, if we were not so much absorbed
in the psychology of Sue and the aspirations of Jude, we
should be inclined to question the plausibility of a plot
which takes on so remarkable a pattern as is indicated by
the following schedule of parallel actions and recurrences:

Jude marries Arabella;
Sue marries Phillotson.
Jude divorces Arabella;
Sue is divorced by Phillotson.
Sue remarries Phillotson;
Jude remarries Arabella.

Very little influenced, at least, in matters of technique; more so,
perhaps, in philosophy and subject-matter, though I do not feel confident
even of this.

i4 ART AND CRAFT

In Two on a Tower, we have a sense of unreality as we
contemplate the series of unlucky accidents which
prevent the happiness of the leading characters. That
Swithin's great astronomical discovery should have been
forestalled by about six weeks is quite on the cards for
an aspirant to fame in science. That Sir Blount's
death should have taken place really six weeks after
Lady Constantine's remarriage, so rendering it void,
begins to look like a malign arrangement of fate. That
she should have learned of coming motherhood just too
late to catch Swithin, somewhere out of reach in the
Southern hemisphere, looks like an arrangement of the
author's. And that she should die of joy at being kissed
by her returned lover some years later, when there is
no longer any bar to her felicity, is nothing short of
persecution.

Mr. Hardy loves in plot the fantastic, the surprising,
something to strike the imagination. He is fond of
ranging in that neutral ground where irony and poetry
join hands, where the circumstances of men's lives
combine in patterns bizarre and thought-provoking.
His plots are often original to the point of incredibility.
And yet he has no scorn for hackneyed motives1 — those

1 We have the secret marriage, for example, in Tjvo on a Tower, The
Romantic Adventures, and The Well-Beloved; the Squire of Low Degree
in A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Woodlanders, and the little novel, or long
tale, called The Waiting Supper; the villainous illegitimate son in
Desperate Remedies, Far from the Madding Crowd, and A Laodicean; the
woman's secret, fatal or otherwise, in Desperate Remedies, Under the
Greenwood Tree, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Hand of Ethelberta, Two on a
Tower, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles (see
section 5 of chapter viii) ; the return of the absent one in Far from the
Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and The Waiting Supper,
with the theme in Two on a Tower, Tess, and Jude the Obscure.

D 15

popular plot-formulas that have piqued the curiosity
and arrested the fancy of readers from time immemorial.
The secret marriage; the " squire of low degree,"
favored by the heroine but not by her parents; the
villainous illegitimate son; the woman's fatal secret;
the return of the absent lover, or relative, thought dead,
to spoil sport for the living — each of these makes its
appearance more than once, most of them three or four
times, in the novels of Hardy.

But Hardy is Shakespearean in his ability to give a
gloss to commonplace action; and he is Shakespearean
too in his faculty of combining time-honored motives in
such a way as to give the effect of novelty, and restore
them to their original power of provoking wonder.
No one need be surprised to find the illegitimate son
to be a villain, not since the son of Gloster practiced
villainy in King Lear. But the fashion in which young
Dare leads his father into wrongdoing in A Laodicean
is a bright new coin in the story-teller's mint.

Mistaken identity, misunderstandings growing out of
the intrigue of wicked men, the comedy of errors, melo-
drama, detective ingenuity in the unfolding of mysteries,
pursuit and escape in the fashion of the " movies "-
these are all of frequent occurrence in Hardy.1 But

I

1 Complications arising from a want of understanding of the identity
or true relationship or social status of a character are found in Desperate
Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, The Hand of Ethelberta, The Trumpet-
Major, A Laodicean, Two on a Tower, The Romantic Adventures, and
he Mayor of Casterbridge; complications growing out of deliberate
illainy or trickery are prominent in Desperate Remedies, The Trumpet-
Major, A Laodicean, and The Mayor of Casterbridge. The device of

16 ART AND CRAFT

one may observe a steadily declining use of them in
the course of his writing; they are decidedly subordinate
after the Milkmaid, and are almost wholly wanting in
the last three novels.

He does continue to make considerable use of accident
and coincidence and of strange fortuitous combinations
of event. His lavish use of accident is not unnatural
in oft of his philosophical bias. He seems always to
have been impressed with the ironic tendency of circum-
stances to thwart the Happiness and the good intentions
of men; and character and circumstance continue
throughout his novels to collaborate in the production
of tragedy. But more and more the emphasis is laid
upon character as the dominant partner; and circum-
stance, while it remains of great importance, takes on
the scientific and definable aspect of environment and
social convention. In The Mayor of Casterbridge,
Michael Henchard has m&ch to contend with in freakish
concatenations- of event. But he was throughout the
prime mover of his own fate, and he had fairly to
reckon with the results of his own violent, jealous, and
mendacious behavior. In Jude the Obscure the pattern
of the plot may seem surprising in its series of parallel
steps. But in point of fact, every step is a logical one,
the expression of the attitude of the characters at the
time to the complicated problem of matrimony —
natural, legal, and sacramental; and the whole elaborate

the unreliable messenger is found in The Return of the Native, A Laodicean,
and The Mayor of Casterbridge, with variants in other stories. There is
much of the comedy of errors in The Trumpet-Major. Mystery and
melodrama are too common to call for specification. The movie chase
is most strikingly exemplified in Desperate Remedies, The Hand of
Ethelberta, and The Trumpet-Major.

FOREWORD 17

evolution was implied in the interchange of position by
Jude and Sue. The interest is not in what happens so
much as why it happens; the interest is in the problem,
and, for once in Hardy, in the psychology. So that,
while the plot survives in full vigor, we may observe,
in this matter, what may be called an assimilation of
the plot.

Such an assimilation is to be noted likewise i his
use of hackneyed themes. An almost threadbare theme
is used in so late and great a work as Tess. But it is
not there introduced for its own sake, for surprise and
complication of plot. Plot is there simply the handmaid
of pity, and the human record is as simple and unforced
as a melody of Schumann.

Pity is one stage in the substitution by Hardy of a
profounder and more humane interest for the interest of
mere ingenuity in the manipulation of plot. The first
stage was that of irony, as exemplified in A Pair of Blue
Eyes. This story was evidently written for the sake
of its final scenes — the scene in which the rival lovers
of Elfride, quarreling over their claims to her love,
learn that they have been riding in the train that bears
her coffin; and the scene in the vault where they find
themselves in presence of a rival of more grounded claims
than either, her mourning husband. There is far more
than any interest of plot in the backward glance of the
author to the earlier occasion when they had met in the
vault, " before she had herself gone down into silence
like her ancestors, and shut her bright blue eyes
forever."

The second stage in Hardy's progress was marked
by the discovery of "Wessex," that old world of dream

1 8 ART AND CRAFT

from which the characters speak to us, in grave or
humorous tones, but ever with a mellow sweetness,
like the flutes and oboes of the Pastoral Symphony.
The first employment of this charm in a story of depth
and passion was in Far from the Madding Crowd, where
it seems that Hardy assembled all possible occupations
of the countryside to give truth and beauty to his
characters, and to reconcile us to a somewhat common-
place sequence of melodramatic incident. The third
stage was drama, of which the first and noblest example
was The Return of the Native. Here the Wessex setting
is specialized, and the incidents grouped and limited in
such a way as to bring into highest relief a close-wrought
and steady-moving drama of conflicting hopes and wills.
This is the culmination in his work of elaborate and
powerful structural art.

But a further step in art was yet to be taken, in the
very self-denial of a greater simplicity. There is an
apparent naivete in the pathos of Tess which may sig-
nalize an even greater triumph of design than the
more obvious contrivance of drama in The Native. It
is an even more perfect assimilation of plot. And
the exclusive concern for truth which is £n*e~principle
of composition in Jude makes even more surely, it
may be, for the eloquent simplicity of the most de-
liberate art.

It will be our pleasant task to follow through the
novels of Mr. Hardy this gradual disappearance of the
cruder traces of the workshop — this gradual and trium-
phant subordination of artifice to art. And while we
shall have frequent occasion to note in his work a concern
for what he may have thought the demands of his

FOREWORD 19

craft rather than for what we consider the demands of
art, we shall have the gratification to observe that in
his most powerful work, in the novels by which he is
actually known to the world, there is no such distinction
to be made. The moral is obvious: It was not till he
had mastered the art of novel-writing that he had really
learned his craft.

PART ONE: PROGRESS IN ART

I. INGENUITY

The first of Mr. Hardy's novels is a kind of detective

>ry. The last half of the book is devoted to the

mtion of mysteries in which our interest has been

oused in the first half. These mysteries hold us

3cause they involve a pair of lovers in whose hopes

and difficulties we are concerned. The villain of the

story has good reasons for preventing a discovery of

the facts, and the process of discovery is accompanied

by a fierce though mostly silent struggle of the opposing

parties. So that it is a detective story of the most

exciting kind. In all this the author follows a formula

well known to writers like Wilkie Collins, who made

brilliant use of it, for example, in The Woman in

White.

The resemblance does not stop with the general
formula. In both books there are three main mysteries,
closely connected with one another, all of which receive
their solution at the end. In both cases, one of the
mysteries has reference to the illegitimate parentage of
the villain; another has reference to the identity of a
mysterious woman; and a third to the passing off of
one woman for another. Not that Desperate Remedies
is a copy of The Woman in White. The particular
circumstances are altogether different, and no little
originality is shown by the author in their invention and
development. But the many points of similarity make
clear the type to which we must refer the first novel by
the author of Tess and Jude.

23

24 PROGRESS IN ART

i

The heroine of the story is Cytherea Graye, who has
been thrown upon her own resources by the death of her
father. The first mystery is in connection with a love
affair of her father many years before with a woman
named Cytherea, who for some reason had declined to
marry her lover. When he later married someone else,
it was after his early love that he named his daughter.
When Cytherea Graye grows up, she is engaged as the
companion of a Miss Aldclyffe, a middle-aged lady who
is likewise a namesake of the goddess of Cythera. And
the reader is given reason to surmise that she must
be the woman loved by the heroine's father. But the
mystery of her refusal to marry him is never cleared up
till the death-bed confession by Miss Aldclyffe of an illicit
affair with an earlier lover and the existence of a son.
This confession comes at the very end of the book; and
the mystery of Cytherea Aldclyffe and the heroine's father
is what we may call the enveloping mystery, in which the
others are wrapped up, and out of which they grow.

The other mysteries are in connection with a certain
Aeneas Manston, a clever and mysterious man who is
engaged by Miss Aldclyffe as steward of her estates.
At first he is thought to be a single man; but later he
is found to have a wife in London, and she is sent for to
live with her husband. By an accident Manston fails
to meet her train. She goes to the country hotel; the
hotel burns down during the night, and she is thought
to have been burned to death. Such is the verdict of
the coroner's jury. This is the second" great mystery.
Did Mansion's wife lose her life in the fire ? And if not,
what has become of her ?

INGENUITY 25

Meantime Cytherea Graye has fallen in love with a
nice young man named Edward. But great difficulties
are put in the way of their marrying, and great pressure is
brought to bear upon her to marry the widower Manston.
This she is at last persuaded to do. But on the evening
of her wedding it becomes known to Edward and to her
brother Owen that there is grave doubt as to the death
of the first Mrs. Manston and so as to the validity of
Cytherea's marriage. The newly married couple are
followed to Southampton, and Manston is persuaded
to give up his bride.

He now proceeds to advertise for his missing wife.

A woman replies, is identified by him as his wife, and

comes to live with him as such. But meantime the

suspicions of Edward and Owen have been aroused ; and

in order to determine the exact legal status of Cytherea

Graye, they follow certain clues as to the identity of the

present ostensible Mrs. Manston. This is, of course,

the third great mystery of the story, closely bound up

with the second. Is this really the first Mrs. Manston ?

The investigations lead to the arrest of Manston on

the charge of murder, and the mysteries concerning his

real wife and his ostensible wife are cleared up in a

written confession of his in prison. It turns out that,

on the night of the fire, he had met his wife and, quarrel-

" V her, had accidentally killed her. He had buried

le wall of a brewhouse. Then after the suspicion

community had been aroused, he had got a

who closely resembled her to impersonate his

ife.

now remains only to connect these central myster-
ch the enveloping mystery of Miss Aldclyffe and

26 PROGRESS IN ART

the father of Cytherea. The connection is found in
the person of Aeneas Manston. He turns out to be the
son of Miss Aldclyffe; it was her desire that her son
should marry the daughter of the man she loved, which
led to most of the developments in the main story.

Manston hangs himself in prison, and the following
day his mother dies. And it goes without saying that
Cytherea, as Manston's widow in law, inherits the
Aldclyffe property, and marries her faithful Edward,
who has been the means of saving her from the power
of the villain.

2

There is, in this novel, practically no interest in
character as such. The interest is in plot — and plot in
its barest and most primary form. The entanglement
is brought about by deliberate deception on the part of
the characters. The central tangle grows out of a ques-
tion of identity. The principal excitement is found ,in
the resolution of the mysteries.

The reader is chiefly moved by curiosity. The
height of interest comes in the chapters in which Edward
and Owen are on the trail of Manston, and in which
that very clever criminal is trying to elude them. The
favored lover wins his lady by detective work worthy of
Sherlock Holmes. He gives the reader a real thrill
when he discovers that Manston's advertising for his
wife was a " farce" — as shown by the fact that he
received a letter from the woman whom he was to
exhibit as his wife the day before the first advertisement for
his wife appeared in the papers. Much is made to hang
on a photograph of the real wife which Edward sends
up from London to Owen to prove the false wife false:

INGENUITY 27

this matter Manston shows his mettle. He has been
trailing Edward in London, and he traces the photograph
and the letter through the mail. He manages to fool
the postman to get possession of the letter; he detaches
the photograph from the card on which it is mounted,
pastes on a picture of his false wife, and returns the letter
to the postbox. Mr. Hardy is very circumstantial in
his account of this performance, and seems to take
great pleasure in the legal precision of the narrative.

But Manston had not reckoned with another dis-
covery of Edward's, a poem addressed by Manston to
his wife in which he refers to her blue eyes. This was
inclosed by Edward in a second letter to Owen, of whose
existence Manston is ignorant. So that when Owen goes
to church to determine whether the present Mrs.
Manston is the real one, he has two things to go upon
—the evidence of the photograph and the evidence of the
poem. The evidence of the photograph is not conclusive
as to the color of her eyes. During the service he finds
that she is " easily recognizable from the photograph";
but of the color of her eyes he can make out nothing.
To determine this matter with certainty Owen is obliged
to resort to a trick. He manages to meet her in the
church path. But —

He discovered, as she drew nearer, a difficulty which had not
struck him at first— that it is not an easy matter to particularize
the colour of a stranger's eyes in a merely casual encounter on a
path out of doors. That Mrs. Manston must be brought close to
him, and not only so, but to look closely at him, if his purpose
were to be accomplished.

He shaped a plan. It might by chance be effectual; if other-
wise, it would not reveal his intention to her. When Mrs. Manston
was within speaking distance, he went up to her and said —

28 PROGRESS IN ART

"Will you kindly tell me which turning will take me to
Casterbridge?"

"The second on the right," said Mrs. Manston.

Owen put on a blank look: he held his hand to his ear —
conveying to the lady the idea that he was deaf.

She came closer and said more distinctly —

"The second turning on the right."

Owen flushed a little. He fancied he had beheld the revela-
tion he was in search of. But had his eyes deceived him ?

Once more he used the ruse, still drawing nearer, and intimat-
ing by a glance that the trouble he gave her was very distressing
to him.

"How .very deaf!" she murmured. She exclaimed loudly —

"The second turning to the right."

She had advanced her face to within a foot of his own, and
in speaking mouthed very emphatically, fixing her eyes intently
upon his. And now his first suspicion was indubitably confirmed.
Her eyes were as black as midnight.

All this feigning was most distasteful to Graye. The riddle
having been solved, he unconsciously assumed his natural look
before she had withdrawn her face. She found him to be peering
at her as if he would read her very soul — expressing with his
eyes the notification of which, apart from emotion, the eyes are
more capable than any other — inquiry.

Her face changed its expression — then its colour. The natural
tint of the lighter portions sank to an ashy gray; the pink of her
cheeks grew purpler. It was the precise result which would
remain after blood had left the face of one whose skin was dark,
and artificially coated with pearl-powder and carmine.

She turned her head and moved away, murmuring a hasty
reply to Owen's farewell remark of "Good-day," and with a kind
of nervous twitch lifting her hand and smoothing her hair, which
was of a light-brown colour.

" She wears false hair," he thought, "or has changed its colour
artificially. Her true hair matched her eyes."1

1 Pp. 388-90. All references are to the uniform edition of Hardy's
novels, published by Harper in America, by Macmillan in England.
In the Macmillan de luxe edition the paging is not the same.

INGENUITY 29

It will be clear how much pleasure the author takes
in the material circumstances of plot and counterplot, in
the ingenious process of discovery.

Meantime the mystery of the substituted wife leads
back to the mystery of the real wife and what became
of her. And the climax comes on a black midnight,
when she follows Manston to the brewhouse, and watches
him exhume the body in order to bury it in a leaf-pit
in the park. It becomes exciting indeed when she
discovers that Manston is being watched by another
woman (who proves to be Miss Aldclyffe), and that
they are all being trailed by a fourth person (who
proves to be an officer of the law)! May we not
affirm that Mr. Hardy gave great promise, in his first
novel, of proficiency in the art of Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle ?

Next to curiosity, and bound up with this, is the
reader's feeling of suspense over the fortunes of hero
and heroine. This is felt, of course, throughout the
story; but it grows most intense at certain points
where the heroine is in great danger at the hands of the
villain. The first of these is the evening of her marriage
to Manston, when Edward and Owen learn of the
probable survival of the first wife and begin to suspect
that Manston is a villain. Their attempts to reach the
married couple in Southampton in time are met by
several untoward accidents—delayed trains, telegrams
not delivered, etc.; and when once they have reached
them, the difficulties made by Manston add to the sus-
lis point one is strongly reminded of scenes
mrsuit nowadays featured in the " movies,"
dy and all. The only thing wanting to com-

30 PROGRESS IN ART

plete the resemblance is an automobile racing the train
to Southampton.

Still more desperate is the suspense after the scene
of exhumation. Mans ton has for the moment escaped
the officers of the law; he is maddened by the realization
that the game is up, and that he has never taken
advantage of the legality of his marriage to Cytherea.
He has nothing now to lose; and, disguising himself
as a farm-laborer, he rushes off to the cottage where she
is staying alone with the horrible design of claiming his
conjugal rights. The brief scene that follows is one of
the most exciting ever conceived by an English novelist.
You see the girl hastily bolting the door of the lonely
house against the suspicious-looking rustic. You see
him peering in at the window. The girl recognizes him,
but refuses to let him in. He smashes the windowpane
and starts to open the casement. She slams the shutters
to in his face. He rushes to another window, enters the
pantry, and so advances to the front room. What
follows must be told in the melodramatic style of the
original.

In extremely trying moments of bodily or mental pain,
Cytherea either flushed hot or faded pale, according to the state
of her constitution at the moment. Now she burned like fire from
head to foot, and this preserved her consciousness.

Never before had the poor child's natural agility served her
in such good stead as now. A heavy oblong table stood in the
middle of the room. Round this table she flew, .keeping it between
herself and Manston, her large eyes wide open with terror, their
dilated pupils constantly fixed upon Manston's, to read by his
expression whether his next intention was to dart to the right or
the left.

Even he, at that heated moment, could not endure the
expression of unutterable agony which shone from that cxtraordi-

INGENUITY 31

gaze of hers. It had surely been given her by God as a means
defence. Mansion continued his pursuit with a lowered eye.

The panting and maddened desperado— blind to everything
but the capture of his wife — went with a rush under the table;
she went over it like a bird. He went heavily over it; she flew
under it, and was out at the other side.

"One on her youth and pliant limbs relies,
One on his sinews and his giant size."

But his superior strength was sure to tire her down in the long-
run. She felt her weakness increasing with the quickness of her
breath; she uttered a wild scream, which in its heartrending
intensity seemed to echo for miles.

At the same juncture her hair became unfastened, and rolled
down about her shoulders. The least accident at such critical
periods is sufficient to confuse the overwrought intelligence. She
lost sight of his intended direction for one instant, and he immedi-
ately out-manoeuvred her.

"At last! my Cytherea!" he cried, overturning the table,
springing over it, seizing one of the 'long brown tresses, pulling
her towards him, and clasping her round. She writhed downwards
between his arms and breast, and fell fainting on the floor. For
the first time his action was leisurely. He lifted her upon the sofa,
exclaiming, "Rest there for a while, my frightened little bird!"

And then there was an end of his triumph. He felt himself
clutched by the collar, and whizzed backwards with the force
of a battering-ram against the fireplace. Springrove, wild, red,
and breathless, had sprung in at the open window, and stood
once more between man and wife.1

Surely the reader has never encountered anything
more sensational outside of a Griffith film.

3

There is little in Desperate Remedies to suggest the
author whom we admire so intensely for qualities so
very different. Mr. Hardy points out, indeed, in the

1 Pp. 445-46.

31 PROGRESS IN ART

Preface of 1896, "that certain characteristics which
provoked most discussion in my latest storyjwere present
in this my first — published in 1871, when there was no
French name for them." He refers presumably to a
certain unromantic "naturalism" in the treatment of
the passion of love. The presence of this tendency
in the germ has been noted by Mr. Hedgcock in his
doctoral dissertation on Hardy. But the tincture of
naturalism is so slight that it is quite lost, for the
ordinary reader, in the great flood of primitive romance.

More frequent and arresting are the reminders of
the true Hardy in certain descriptions of natural phe-
nomena, almost uncanny in their scientific minuteness
in the notation of fact. Such is the account of the vary-
ing sounds caused by rain falling upon various kinds of
land and crop, as distinguished by people going by.1
We have some intimation of the evocative power of
nicely discriminated sounds which makes the charm of
so much of the master's work in The Woodlanders or
The Return of the Native. And the marvelous pains-
taking account of the burning of the couch grass which
set fire to the Tranters' Inn, occupying, as it does,
nearly the whole of four pages,2 is a somewhat elabo-
rate preliminary sketch for the more effective descrip-
tion of the burning hayricks in Far from the Madding
Crowd.

Still more suggestive of the creator of "Wessex"
is the occasional glimpse of rustic philosophy, as in the
dialogue between Farmer Baker and Farmer Springrove
as they watch the passing of Mansion's coffin. "Now
you'll hardly believe me, neighbor, but this little scene

'P- 375- a Pp. 201.

INGENUITY 33

•

in front of us makes me feel less anxious about pushing
on wi' that threshing and winnowing next week, that
I was speaking about. Why should we not stand still,
says I to myself, and fling a quiet eye upon the Whys
and Wherefores, before the end o' it all, and we go down
into the mouldering-place, and are forgotten?" Such
is the proper and somewhat indeterminate sentiment
of Farmer Baker. But Farmer Springrove, even- more
characteristic, in the very act of recommending resolute-
ness in meeting life, betrays that pessimism which
Mr. Hardy seems to share with his rustic compatriot.
" 'Tis a feeling that will come. But 'twont bear looking
into. There's a back'ard current in the world, and we
must do our utmost to advance in order just to bide
where we be."

But there is not enough o^philosophy, of description,
or of psychology, to give more than the faintest coloring
to the story. It is upon incident and circumstance
that the author lavishes his ingenuity.

It goes without saying that accident and coincidence
play a large part in the action. It is, for example, the
accident of Manston's meeting the wrong train that leads
to his wife's going to the Tranters' Inn, with the
consequent disagreement, the accidental murder, and
all the mystery that follows upon the fire and the
woman's disappearance. It is the accident of the
rector's being twice away from home, when visited by
the frightened possessor of the secret, which makes
possible the marriage of Cytherea to Manston, with all
that follows upon that event. And these are but two

34 PROGRESS IN ART

out of the many accidents which go to make up the
amazing chain of circumstance.

But this is characteristic enough of Hardy at almost
any period of his writing. Accident and coincidence
are more or less prominent means of provoking action
in all his novels. Perhaps, if we looked close, we should
find them to be among the indispensables of romance;
and conclude that they are only a little more in evidence
in Hardy than in George Eliot or whatever most respect-
able realist in our gallery. In any case we know that it
was partly an accident that led to the misunderstand-
ing between Mrs. Yeobright and her son, and so to all the
tragedy in The Return of the Native. We know that
The Mayor of Casterbridge is a tissue of coincidence
from beginning to end. So that we cannot lay too much
stress upon the prominence of this feature in the earliest
novel. The great difference lies in its having here
no rival or coadjutor in character or environment,
objective accident being in this case merely the natural
accompaniment of a story in which the interest lies
wholly in objective fact.

Much the same thing is true in regard to certain
minor peculiarities of technique. One particular variety
of accident much employed by Hardy for advancing his
story is the conversation — even sometimes the soliloquy
—overheard by some interested party. There are many
instances of this somewhat crude device in Desperate
Remedies* but probably not more, or more striking,

1 Overheard conversation will be found, for example, on pp. 175-78,
328-29, 420-22. Information on matters of fact is given the reader
in soliloquies on pp. 105, 116, 126; the state of mind of a character is
rendered in soliloquy on pp. 170, 171, 173.

INGENUITY 35

ances than in The Mayor of Casterbridge. Mr.
Hardy employs unblushingly in the novel machinery
largely abandoned today even by our playwrights,
who have so much more need of it. In these matters
Hardy is but exhibiting in his earliest work certain
mechanical tendencies which he continued to exhibit
pretty steadily throughout his career. They are not
the characteristics for which we prize him. But they
are peculiarly in place in a story which is a matter of
artifice in its main lines as well as in the minor parts of
its machinery.

II. IRONY

Desperate Remedies, we have seen, was notable for
plot, and not at all for character. Mr. Hardy's second
book, Under the Greenwood Tree, was aptly described
by the author as "a rural painting of the Dutch school."
It makes a great advance in the art of setting, in which
he was destined to become so fine a master. But it is
so largely wanting in the interest both of plot and of
character that we are inclined to look upon it hardly in
the light of a novel; and we pass on at once to the next
in the series, A Pair of Blue Eyes, which has little of
the interest of setting, but in which plot and character
make their appearance in that intimate alliance proper
to the art of fiction at its best.

The bond of union here, as so frequently in Hardy,
is irony. And whether it be the mere irony of circum-
stance— the mere pattern of perverse event, with its
thwart incidence of lines of destiny — or the deeper irony
of character in its interplay with circumstance, there
is here a philosophical appeal, an invitation to con-
templative regard, not within the scope of mere intrigue
and ingenuity of plot.

The story is, briefly, that of Elfride, the daughter of
a country vicar, who is first drawn to the young archi-
tect, Smith, who has come down to make plans for the
restoration of the church; and then, during his long
absence in India, falls in love with his intimate friend,

36

IRONY

Knight, the man of letters. Smith returns to find him-
self supplanted by his old friend Knight. In the earlier
period Elfride made a secret trip to London to be married
o Smith; but repented of her rashness and returned
unwed. When Knight and she become lovers, she makes
an effort to confess to him the earlier love and the com-
promising innocent escapade; but she cannot summon
courage. And so the facts come to him from another
source under more damaging aspect. And, being a man
of very strict views, and unable to read her motives
favorably, he leaves her. It is more than a year later
that, at an accidental meeting with Smith, he hears a
true version of the suspicious episode; and Smith in
turn has a revival of hope for himself. Each of the men
determines to go down to the country to plead his cause
with Elfride; and they find themselves on the same train.
The two friends put in the time of their journey wrang-
ling over their claims to the girl. They are unaware
that they are traveling with her coffin! After they do
learn of this circumstance, they go on wrangling over
the love of a girl now dead. They are unaware that,
since the breach with Knight, she has been married to
another man. When the rival lovers visit the vault
where she is laid, they find there the kneeling figure of

her husband, Lord Luxellian And behold, they

are no longer rivals .... having ceased to quarrel over
Elfride of the blue eyes!

All varieties of irony are much in evidence. It is clear
that the author regarded the pattern of his plot with the
same satisfaction as a designer regards the nicely
calculated crossing of bands of color. It is with bold
hand that he lays on the irony of circumstance when he

3 8 PROGRESS IN ART

" stages" the quarrel of rival lovers on the very train
that carries her coffin. And everything seems designed
to lead to that final arrangement in the irony of human
nature whereby these lovers, who believe they have
shared between them all the affections of young Elfride,
are shown retreating from the legitimate mourning of
her noble husband in the family vault.

They felt themselves to be intruders. Knight pressed
Stephen back, and they silently withdrew as they had entered.

" Come away," he said, in a broken voice. " We have no right
to be there. Another stands before us — nearer to her than we!"

And side by side they both retraced their steps down the grey
still valley to Castle Boterel.

So it is too in the earlier stages of the story that one
traces the hand of the weaver of ironies. It is with
sheer aesthetic gratification that one recognizes in some
act of Elfride's with Knight the repetition of an earlier
act with Smith. Such is the game of chess, and such is
the scene of kissing on the ocean-looking rocky seat.
In a more fantastic scene we have Elfride discussing
with Knight in the church her kissing with Smith upon
the tombstone which they see at the moment lit up by
the moon in the graveyard outside. And here the
effect is heightened by the circumstance that under the
tombstone lies an earlier lover still — a lover not encour-
aged by the girl, to be sure, but still another in the
lengthening series, and one who adds his early death to
the provocatives of mocking laughter.

Most dramatic and arresting is the chapter of
ironies accompanying the return of Smith to Endelstow.
Already the heart of Elfride has been won away by
Knight, at this time unaware of the antecedent claims

IRONY

>f his friend. But she is still feebly struggling to
Laintain her faithfulness; and on learning that upon a
:ertain afternoon Stephen will be coming up the coast
by steamer, she sets out dutifully to the great cliff to
watch for the boat "that brought her future husband
home." Not unnaturally Mr. Knight turns up to
accompany her on her walk. And then we have a
piquant situation indeed. Elf ride cannot keep steady
the telescope with which she is watching the little
steamer down below. She has to ask Knight to look
for her, and so to receive from her new lover an account
of her old one, while he from the boat is watching them
upon the cliff. Then follows the accident which deter-
mines for her what she has not had strength of mind to
determine for herself. Knight loses his foothold, and
is in danger of slipping down to the edge of the cliff;
and it is only by her resourcefulness and devotion that
his life is saved. The rescue is an affair of the highest
excitement; he has a very narrow escape. "Knight's
eyes met hers, and with supreme eloquence the glance
of each told a long-concealed tale of emotion in that
short half-moment. Moved by an impulse neither
could resist, they ran together and into each other's
arms." It is so that mischievous fate steps in to make
the new love secure at the very moment that the old
love is on the point of being recalled.

We may be sure that the author was fully conscious
of the ironic implications with which he has loaded his
story. Not content with one love scene with Knight
on the rocky seat where Elfride had agreed to be the
wife of Smith, he must needs provide a second, in which
the man of letters may be made to wonder "if any

4o PROGRESS IN ART

lovers in past years ever sat here with arms locked, as
we do now." It is on this occasion that Elf ride discovers
in the crevice of the rock the earring she had lost there
long before while love-making with Smith, and so
betrays herself to Knight. It is by the merest accident
that she does make this discovery. "Only for a few
minutes during the day did the sun light the alcove to
its innermost rifts and slits, but these were the minutes
now, and its rays did Elfride the good or evil turn of
revealing the lost ornament."

This is the irony of chance pure and simple, and a
somewhat mechanical contrivance for carrying on the
plot. We need not assume that it was provided for by
the author in his original plan > of the story. Quite
essential to the main design, however, is the arrangement
by which the second lover, who supplants the first, is
made his dearest friend and benefactor, and one who
has been so fervently praised to their lady by the first
as positively to make her jealous. The central irony
of the whole history, and the root of all the trouble, is
to be found in the characters of Elfride and Knight
and their being set against each other in the game of
love. It is her very innocence that leads Elfride to take
such an exaggerated view of her runaway escapade;
it is the very intensity of her devotion to Knight that
leads her to the fatal vain attempts at concealment.
And she has to deal with a man who prizes above all
things in a woman "a soul truthful and clear as heaven's
light, " with a man for whom her one greatest attraction
was her freedom from any experience of love. It is
such a man who must needs learn that the woman of
his choice is guilty both of experience and of deception.

IRONY 41

This man whose imagination had been fed up to preternatural
size by lonely study and silent observations of his kind ....

was now absolutely in pain That Knight should have been

thus constituted; that Elf ride's second lover should not have
been one of the great mass of bustling mankind, little given to
introspection, whose good-nature might have compensated for
any lack of appreciativeness, was the chance of things. That her
throbbing, self-confounding, indiscreet heart should have to
defend itself unaided against the keen scrutiny and logical power
which Knight, now that his suspicions were awakened, would
sooner or later be sure to exercise against her, was her misfortune.
A miserable incongruity was apparent in the circumstance of a strong
mind practising its unerring archery upon a heart which the owner
of that mind loved better than his own.

There is in this novel much of the crudity and
experimental uncertainty of early work. There are
many reminders of Desperate Remedies, many traces of
the early-Victorian manner. Such is the role of Stephen
Smith; the " squire of low degree," pretending to the
daughter of a gentleman more than usually exigent in
the matter of gentility. Smith is obliged to conceal
the fact that his father is the local stonemason; and from
this concealment follow certain mysteries and misunder-
standings neither appropriate to a novel of this character
nor of caliber big enough for the genre of Wilkie Collins.
In the case of the widow Jethway, again, the young
author resorts to a device not worthy of his subject.
She is the mother of the young man who — according
to her version — has been killed by the hard-heartedness
of Elfride, and whose tombstone plays so important a
part in her entanglements. She is accordingly the
" enemy" of Elfride, haunting her throughout the story.

42 PROGRESS IN ART

It is she who is witness of the compromising expedition ;
it is she who by her mysterious letters makes known to
Knight the earlier history of his fiancee; and her timely
and melodramatic taking-off (she is killed by the falling
of the church tower while sitting on her son's grave)
gives solemnity and convincing power to her revelations.
She is " a woman with red and scaly eyelids and glistening
eyes," who seems to be a creature of darkness and a
denizen of graveyards. She reminds Elfride of " Cole-
ridge's morbid poem, "The Three Graves,'" and she
talks the purest language of melodrama.

Even more clumsy and amateurish are those lighter
touches which are meant for comedy. The mystery of
the loud kiss overheard in the garden and the path worn
by footsteps along the hedge is feebly resolved by the
secret marriage of Elfride's father. Mr. Swancourt,
with his gout, his recurrent story which is "too bad"
for a clergyman to tell, and his insistence on providing
a distinguished descent for the man named Smith, is a
humor feebly in the manner of Thackeray, or Trollope;
while William Worm, the "dazed factotum," with his
constant complaint of "people frying fish" in his head,
is a humor feebly in the manner of Dickens.

There is in this story no little of the objective interest
of intrigue. But the main beauty lies in the character
of Elfride. She is the first expressive figure in Mr.
| Hardy's portrait-gallery of women, and one of the most
appealing. He does very little with his attempts to
describe her looks by comparisons with Raphael, Rubens,
and Correggio. He does better with the game of chess
in which she finds herself so at the mercy of Knight's
superior mind; still better with the earrings that make

IRONY 43

ich an appeal to her womanly love of ornament and
ich a test of her loyalty; and best of all with her
If-truths, and shifty changes of ground when she is
>rought to bay. Poor little woman — so inexpert, so
willing to put off the evil day, so determined at all costs
to keep her man's good opinion and his love! Her very
inconstancy, her creator would have us feel, was a trait
that went with a nature "the most exquisite of all in
its plasticity and ready sympathies." We are early
prepared for her marriage to Luxellian by her motherly
fondness for his orphan children; so that we agree with
Knight in putting a charitable construction upon her
act, especially as we are made to feel that she died of
a broken heart. "Can we call her ambitious?" says
Knight to his rival. "No. Circumstance has, as usual,
overpowered her purposes — fragile and delicate as she — •
liable to be overthrown in a moment by the coarse
elements of accident."

So the author sounds, in the third of his novels, what
is to be a leitmotif running through the series that follow.
We shall find it in the story of Bathsheba in Far from the
Madding Crowd, in that of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, in
that of Jude the Obscure. There is nothing that has
impressed him more than the fragility of human nature,
and its helpless exposure to "the coarse elements of
accident."

A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute,
No more.

Such is the motto prefixed to the story of Elfride. It is
with the elegiac tenderness of a poet that Hardy has

44 PROGRESS IN ART

conceived this heroine, distilling his sweet essence from
the bitter herbs of her unhappy lot.

And from the action as a whole, as from the title of
the book, there rises a somewhat more acrid perfume of
dramatic irony. It is just a pair of blue eyes that stirs
up such a coil; it is just a light bit of womanhood that
draws out of their orbits such weighty bodies as Smith
and Knight, that causes misunderstanding and separates
dear friends. This is no longer the contriver of plots,
preparing surprises, with whom we have to deal. This
is an artist, pondering thoughtfully the inscrutable
and shadowed beauty of men's lives.

III. SETTING

An architect, an editor, a Lord, and the literary
daughter of a vicar — Mr. Hardy was never to play his
best tunes on such instruments. Much more promising
were the characters chosen to carry the leading roles
in his next novel — a shepherd, a rich farmer, a sergeant,
and a woman manager of her own farm. And for the
thin-bodied minor figures of A Pair of Blue Eyes, we
have, in the richly furnished background of Far from the
Madding Crowd, no less engaging a company than that
of Joseph Poorgrass, Liddy Smallbury, and Warren
the maltster, not to speak of ill-starred Fanny Robin.

The story is closely bound up with the normal
incidents of country life. The leading man and woman
make acquaintance while he is tending his sheep and
she is doctoring her aunt's cows. The shepherd helps
the milkmaid to recover her hat blown away by the
wind, and she reciprocates by saving him from suffo-
cation in his unventilated shepherd's hut. Their first
extended conversation — upon the shepherd's proposal of
marriage — is introduced by his offer of a lamb for
a pet.

His proposal was not made without a certain
encouragement from the ingenuous milkmaid. And
while she cannot find it in her heart to accept, we are
prepared for the lifelong service of Gabriel Oak and for
the eventual capitulation of Bathsheba Everdene.

45

46 PROGRESS IN ART

It is true he swears he will never ask her again to be his
wife; but that, we feel, will prove no bar to their union.

Bathsheba very shortly leaves her aunt's place to
become mistress of a fine farm in the neighborhood of
Weatherbury. And a^reat ''pastoral tragedy" reduces
Gabriel Oak from an independent sheep farmer to a mere
shepherd open to hire. The loss of his sheep sends him
on the road to seek for employment; and he happens
to arrive in Weatherbury in time to save certain wheat-
ricks from burning. The owner is Bathsheba Everdene,
who now engages the resourceful Gabriel as her shepherd.

At this point a new character enters the story —
rich Farmer Boldwood, a grave, self-contained man,
who has never, it seems, yielded to the witchery of
woman. He is the sole man not to take notice of
Bathsheba when she goes to do business in person at
the Casterbridge corn market. He is easily set aflame,
however, by a valentine dispatched by Bathsheba in
thoughtless mood. It is her levity in the treatment of
Boldwood which leads to her first quarrel with Gabriel
Oak, who has more regard for her good name than for
his own happiness. While they are grinding the shears
at the sheep-shearing she asks her shepherd's advice,
and gets a scolding, with the result that he is discharged.
So indispensable a man as Gabriel, however, cannot
long remain under a cloud; and it is only twenty-four
hours later that he is summoned back in the most pressing
and almost affectionate manner. A great number of the
sheep have got " blasted, " and no one else can be trusted
to perform the operation necessary to save their lives.
Indeed Gabriel is indispensable not merely in his capacity
of shepherd, but in a general business way, since Bath-

. -.

NG

eba dischargee st bailiff and assum<

Iagement of '
5ut Gabriel is to play a very small part in the story
during most of the middle portion. The main roles
are carried by Boldwood and by Sergeant Troy, a gallant
and worthless "single man in barracks." We know
that he is the seducer of Fanny Robin, the country girl;
that he has agreed to marry her, but has welcomed
some excuse to put off indefinitely the meeting of this
obligation. Bathsheba knows only that he has a bad
reputation ; and she will not believe any wrong of a man
so dashing and with such a command of ingenious
flattery. The most decisive factor in his wooing is his
display of swordsmanship in the hollow amid the ferns,
when he surrounds her on all sides with the rapid,
bewildering flashes of his blade. Such an exciting
exercise of coolness and nerve on the part of both of
them could be followed by nothing less exciting than a
kiss. And that was an experience which " brought the
blood beating into her face, set her stinging as if aflame
; very hollows of her feet, and enlarged emotion
compass which quite swamped thought." The
utions of Gabriel and the reproaches of Boldwood,
eside himself with jealousy, do not prevent the
i of her passion for Troy. Indeed the fury of
ood actually starts her off to Bath in order to
icr lover of danger; and it is there that Troy so
up her jealousy of some woman "more beautiful
erself " that she marries him on the spot.
>y proves to be a thriftless farmer, and he wastes
leba's fortune on the race track. The contrast
character with Gabriel's is brought out vividly

48 PROGRESS IN ART

in one of the bucolic incidents. It is the time of the
harvest festival; and Troy, though warned of approach-
ing storm, has encouraged all the farm hands to get drunk
in the great barn, leaving unprotected the wheatricks
"with the rich produce of one-half the farm for that
year." And so it is Bathsheba and Gabriel who, alone
in the midst of a storm of thunder and lightning, perform
together the labor of covering the grain.

And now the story comes to a climax with the death
of Fanny in childbirth at the Casterbridge "Union,"
and the bringing of the bodies of mother and babe for
burial at Weatherbury. Owing to certain circumstances,
the coffin is left in Bathsheba's house overnight; and
there it is that Bathsheba, whose suspicions have been
aroused by various incidents since her marriage, opens
the coffin and makes herself certain of the odious facts.
Then while she is there alone, trying to overcome her
jealousy of this poor victim of her husband's, the
husband comes himself, to make sentimental amends to
the dead woman by brutal insults to the living. On
both sides it is the end of their love; and having first
set up a monument "in Beloved Memory of Fanny
Robin," Sergeant Troy now leaves the country, dis-
appearing under circumstances which suggest that he has
been drowned.

Meantime, since Bathsheba's marriage, Farmer
Boldwood has so completely lost interest in life as to
have utterly neglected his farm. But after the dis-
appearance of Troy he begins to pick up hope; and as
time passes, he receives some encouragement from
Bathsheba, who has come to think that she owes all
possible amends to a man she has wronged. It is

SETTING 49

Boldwood's modest plea to be allowed to serve for the
same period as Jacob served Rachel; and after more
than a year, at a Christmas Eve party at his house, she
is persuaded to give him her promise that, at the end of
six years more, she will marry him. It is only a few
minutes later that her husband appears at the party,
returning as if from the dead, and summons her to come
home with him. In her extreme astonishment she makes
no movement to obey; and when Troy reaches out to
draw her toward him, she shrinks away from his touch.
"This visible dread of him seemed to irritate Troy, and
he seized her arm and pulled it sharply. Whether his
grasp pinched her, or whether his mere touch was the
cause, was never known, but at the moment of his
seizure she writhed, and gave a quick, low scream.
The scream had been heard but a few seconds when it
was followed by a sudden deafening report that echoed
through the room and stupefied them all." Boldwood
had shot Troy.

The author disposes briefly of the rest of his story.
Boldwood gives himself up to justice. He pleads
guilty, and is. sentenced to death. But owing to certain
evidence of insanity, the government intervenes, and his
sentence is commuted to "confinement during her
Majesty's pleasure." Nothing is now left but to bring
about the union of Bathsheba with the first one of her
lovers, and the one marked from the first, by diameter
and cajoacity, as best suited to give her that reasonable
measure of happiness which Mr. Hardy accords to his
more favored heroines. The other men have served well
for excitement and "red herring." And it now remains
for the career of our heroine to return to the level of

5o PKOCJKKSS IN ART

peaie ;nul M'curity. But how is (his to he bronchi
about when the hero IIMS sworn lie will never a.^ain pay
suit to the heroine? It will e'en be necessary for the
heroine to pay suit to him. (iabriel has lon^
been made baililT of Rathsheba's farm, aa well MS bein.n
intrusted with the superintendenee of Uoldwood's.
But not having been given any reason to suppose that
he might win the hand of Hathsheba, an<l not liking the
appearance of "waiting around for poor Boldwood's
farm, with a thought of getting you some day," he has
made up his mind to seek his fortune in foreign j
and a year after Boldwood's Christmas party, he sends
Buthslieba formal notice that he will "not renew his
engagement with her for the following Lady-day."
It is this threat of desertion that fetches her. She
comes to his hut virtually in the role of suitor. "And
quite right, too," says Oak. "I've danced at your
skittish heels, my beautiful Bathsheba, for many a long
mile, and many a long day; and it is hard to begrudge
me this one visit."

One would like to know whether, in designing this
novel, the author started with a plot and added a
setting, or started with a setting and got himself a plot
to suit it. My impression is that he started with the
setting. He conceived the idea of a pastoral idyll, in
which he should bring together the greatest possible
number of country scenes and occupations such as,
taken together, would amount to a reconstruction of
his ideal "Wessex," or — more specifically — of that par-
ticular department of Wessex known as " Weatherbury."

SETTING 51

T. Haody As us in the Pref

>k that JL" ventured to adopt the word 'We-
from the pages of early English history, and give it a
fictitious significance as the existing name of the district
once included in that extinct kingdom. The series of
novels I projected being mainly of the kind called local,
they seemed to require a territorial definition of some
sort to lend unity to their scene."1 He discusses at some
length the peculiarities of "the village called Weather-
bun*/' which, owing to the disappearance of many
of the customs and architectural features following the
growth of migratory labor, '''would perhaps be hardly
discernable by the explorer, without help, in any existing
place nowad.

\Ye are made to feel that the book is primarily a
reconstruction of a ''realistic dream-country, " and that
the plot — which, as we know, was procured from a
purveyor of such wares — was introduced as a necessary
means of giving coherence to the dream. In ar
it is evidently a composition of pastoral elemerr
consciously designed. This appears, for one thing, in
the classical and biblical allusions, which seem to
occur more frequently in this book than elsewhere, as
if the author had been reading up his subject in the
prescribed poetic manuals. The renewed activity of
the vegetable world in early spring makes him think < :
the dryads ''waking for the season." The ballad sung

1 Much later, on publishing his stories as the Wessex Novels, Mr.
Hardy made many minute changes, especially in the greater use of local
dialect, by way of thickening the Wessex atmosphere, giving coherence
to the whole series, and, as it were, putting his stamp on each member
of it. Many instances are given by Miss Chase in her doctoral di-
lation referred to earlier.

As
hjh

52 PROGRESS IN ART

by Jacob Smallbury at the shearers'
inclusive and interminable as that with whh the worthy
toper, old Silenus, amused on a similar occasion the
swains Chromis and Mnasylus, and other jolly dogs of
his day." Gabriel calling his lost sheep makes the
valleys and hills resound "as when the sailors invoked
the lost Hylas on the Mysian shore"; and at the
grindstone, sharpening his shears, Gabriel "stood
somewhat as Eros is represented when in the act of
sharpening his arrows."

Some of these allusions seem a little forced, and
as if introduced consciously for decoration. More
natural and in keeping are the biblical allusions. These
are heard not merely from the pious mouth of Joseph
Poorgrass, for whom they make the chief trait in his
humorous characterization, but also from those of other
serious persons such as Farmer Boldwood. Very
effective is the author's comparison of Gabriel Oak to
Moses on the occasion when Bathsheba sent him off
and bade him never let her see his face any more.
"'Very well, Miss Everdene — so it shall be.' And he
took his shears and went away from her in placid dignity,
as Moses left the presence of Pharaoh."

The very names are chosen largely for their combina-
tion of biblical and rustic associations, from the arch-
angelic Gabriel Oak, and Bathsheba Everdene, recalling
the lady for whom King David sinned, down to Joseph
Poorgrass, Jacob Smallbury, Matthew Moon, and
Laban Tall. If there is a third range of association
to which appeal is made, besides the Bible and the
English land itself, it is the imaginative demesne of
As You Like It and A Midsummer- Night's Dream.

SETTING

53

But more convincing than literary allusion and the
association of names are the actual character and
behavior of the people of the story; and these are almost
exclusively of the true agricultural, or more specifically
pastoral stamp. The nearest approach to the modern
industrial order is Bathsheba paying off her men "pen
in hand, with a canvas moneybag beside her." And
the key to the whole composition is given in the scenes
.of Gabriel playing his flute in his shepherd's hut
as the Grecian shepherds sounded their oaten pipes,
and watching the stars and reckoning time from the top
of Norcombe Hill as certain other shepherds watched
by night in scriptural story. It is a question whether
Gabriel or Bathsheba should be regarded as the leading
character. As Bathsheba is undoubtedly the central
actor in the drama, so Oak is the central feature of the
pictorial composition, the poem, to which the drama
was attached. We are most interested in the emotional
history of Bathsheba, but Oak is the indispensable and
characteristic figure in those rural scenes which form so *^2f,
large a part of the design. We see him waking in his
hut to take up the new-born lamb revived by the warmth
of his fire, or standing sorrowful on the brow of the
hill beneath which lie the mangled carcasses of his flock.
We see him presiding at the sheep-washing by the pool
in the meadows, or at the sheep-shearing in the great
barn, or lancing the stricken beasts with his own sure
merciful hand to save their lives. And when it was not
the sheep, it was the grain which solicited his anxious
care. It was he who saved the wheatricks from fire
and from rain; it was the trained eye of the watcher in
the pastures that read the signs of the approaching

54 PROGRESS IN ART

storm. It was he who by long-proved competence in
affairs, and by tender and dogged faithfulness of heart,
amply earned at least the heart and hand of the wayward
Bathsheba.

3

All three of the serious main characters, all but the
soldier-villain himself, are conceived in the large grave
manner of Scripture pastorals. By their comely
dignity, by their respect for one another and for them-
selves, by their direct and deliberate manner of speech
and action, they remind us of characters in the Old
Testament — in the story of Joseph or of Ruth, of
King David or of Queen Esther. There is none of
the small change of the modern drawing-room. Their
language is worthy of the open air in which they
move and the wide horizons on which they rest
their eyes. They "deal boldly," like Wordsworth's
pastoral poet, "with substantial things." Thus it is
that Gabriel delivers, in precise and measured terms,
his judgment upon the behavior of Miss Everdene
toward Farmer Boldwood. Thus it is that Farmer
Boldwood puts away Bathsheba's offer of pity, and wants
to know what has become of her seeming promise of
love.

"Your dear love, Bathsheba, is such a vast thing beside your
pity, that the loss of your pity as well as your love is no great
addition to my sorrow, nor does the gain of your pity make it
sensibly less. Oh sweet — how dearly you spoke to me behind
the spear-bed at the washing-pool, and in the barn at the shearing,
and that dearest last time in the evening at your home! Where
are your pleasant words all gone — your earnest hope to be able
to love me ? Where is your firm conviction that you would get to
care for me very much ?"

SETTING 55

It is with the same high gravity that Bathsheba makes
her defense to Boldwood, as she had formerly made her
defense to Gabriel against similar reproaches.

She checked emotion, looked him quietly and clearly in the
face, and said in her low, firm voice, "Mr. Boldwood, I promised
you nothing. Would you have had me a woman of clay when you
paid me that furthest, highest compliment a man can pay a
woman — telling her he loves her? I was bound to show some - jf
feeling, if I would not be a graceless shrew. Yet each of those
pleasures was just for the day — the day just for the pleasure.
How was I to know that what is a pastime to all other men was
death to you ? Have reason, do, and think more kindly of me! "

M. IjLene Bazin remarks of one of his peasant charac-
ters, "She expressed herself well, with a certain studied
refinement which denoted the habit of reading." Some-
thing of that sort is true of all the characters of Hardy,
especially the main characters in the more serious novels.
But it is not the habit of reading that is responsible for
this adequacy and propriety of self-expression. It is a
certain simple elevation of mind, _a freedom from
ophistication, and a directness in dealing with solid
realities. It is the mutual respect of the speakers born
>f an instinctive regard for the human soul. This the
tuthor shares with his creatures. Whatever may be
dd of Hardy's irony, his pessimism, his want of religious
faith, there can be no question of the dignity with which /

invests the human soul itself. The manner of speech
>f Bathsheba and Gabriel and Boldwood is the manner
>f speech of Eustacia Vye and Wildeve and Clym and
>s. Yeobright; of Henchard and Farfrae and Lucetta;
>f Tess and Angel Clare; even of Jude and Sue. At
first it may strike the reader as somewhat awkward and
unnatural, somewhat formal and precise, like the

56 PROGRESS IN ART

expression of foreigners who speak with care a language
learned frorn books. The reader has been used — in
books and in daily experience — to a more trifling and
more trivial style, the common style of the tea table or
the railway train. He must accustom his ear again to
the broad simple accents of scriptural speech. He is
at first more ready to believe that people talk like the
witty fencers of The Egoist and The Awkward Age, or
in the broken sentences and slangy " patter" of the
characters of Messrs. Wells, Walpole & Co. But in
time one comes to love these squared and grounded
sentences, as one loves the large deliberate movements
of those who speak them; and one yields with delight
to the thought of people as strong and simple as those
in Genesis or the Iliad, "in the early ages of the world."
This style first appears in all its beauty in Far from
the Madding Crowd. There had not been earlier any
sufficient occasion to draw it out. The slight story of
Under the Greenwood Tree, a story of boy and girl love,
had not depth enough to call for speech of any force
or dignity. Neither had the somewhat labored and
childish exchanges of Smith and Elfride in A Pair of
Blue Eyes, nor the shallow literary encounters of Elfride
and Knight. But the characters in the later story are
given weight and consistency by the obvious importance
of the things with which they deal, and the whole
action impresses by virtue of the material stakes
involved.

r Bathsheba is the first of a series of independent
Shakespearean women capable of taking strong hold
upon life and meeting men upon something like an equal
footing. And it is the Weatherbury composition that

SETTING 57

promotes the development and display of this superb
character; such character first shows itself upon the use
of the Wessex setting in connection with a real story.
The discovery of Bathsheba in the role of a personage
capable of giving employment to the shepherd, her
discharge of the dishonest bailiff and her payment of
the laborers in person, her appearance in the corn
market to do business with men, and at the head of the
table at the harvest festival as patron of the feast — all
these are incidents in building up a personality of unusual
impressiveness. We are prepared for her display of
Roman heroism after the shooting of Troy, when she
took command of the situation with such matronly
coolness, instead of fainting and giving up the guidance
to others. She proved then, as Hardy, says, that "she
was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made."
It is true that, after all necessary steps were taken in
the case of the murdered husband, Bathsheba did give
way to fainting fits, and went to bed; just as after
laboring with Gabriel in the storm till the grain was
practically secured she had consented to give over,
being weary. It is ttfue that, with all her pride and
candor, her fairness and moral responsibility, she became
the victim of a woman's vanity, helpless against the
assaults of gallant flattery; and that, ^ithout the heart
of a coquette, she managed to play the role of one.
These are weaknesses which detract less from her charm
than they add to her lifelikeness. They are the debt
she paid to nature. They are what she has in common
with Elfride and with the heroine of Under the Greenwood
Tree. They are the source of all her trouble and the
mainspring of the plot; and they serve to set in higher

58 PROGRESS IN ART

relief her more heroic qualities. It is the strong and the
weak in her nature taken together that make her so very
real. And yet it is her strength that gives her her
special interest; and it is her position of Weatherbury
f farmer that accounts for the appearance of such a
character in English fiction.

It is not necessary to labor this point in connection
with Oak and Boldwood. Both of these have much of
that generous helpfulness of nature toward the loved
one which Hardy is so fond of representing in men of
country breeding — witness the self-effacing love of
Diggory Venn in The Return of the Native and of Giles
Winterborne in The Woodlanders. The most affecting
instance of the tenderness of Oak and Boldwood was
their chivalrous conspiracy to keep from Troy's wife a
knowledge of the story of Fanny Robin. Such gentle-
ness is particularly natural to the shepherd, with his
humane and motherly regard for silly beasts. When he
found his sheep all dead at the foot of the fatal cliff,
his first feeling "was one of pity for the untimely fate of
these gentle ewes and their unborn lambs"; it was only
in the second place that he remembered the sheep were
not insured, and that he had lost in one night his labor
of ten years. Is it any wonder that such a man should
have watched so lo.ng over his lady's interests as if they
were his own, that he should have cared more for her
happiness than for his own success with her ?

4

The feeling of the characters for one another, as well
as their personal quality, is developed by their rural
occupations so as to give especial reality to the story.

SETTING 59

Mr. Hardy remarks, when he has at last brought about
the engagement of Bathsheba and Gabriel:

Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises
at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by know-
ing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best
till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass
of hard prosaic reality. This goodfellowship— cawaradme —
usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately
seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and
women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures
merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its
development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the
only love which is strong as death — that love which many waters
cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion
usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.

Whether Mr. Hardy succeeded in convincing us of
the existence of a love between Bathsheba and Gabriel
worthy of such romantic phrasing is a matter of doubt.
It is always very hard — as Meredith found in Diana — to
satisfy the reader of romance with the wise second or
third love of a woman who has imprudently dispensed
her youthful passion. But however we may feel about
the love to which the good-fellowship was added, we
are made to believe fully in the good-fellowship, the
camaraderie, which has grown up through the similarity
of pursuits of Bathsheba and Gabriel. We are made to
realize it in ways much more convincing, because so
much more directly appealing to the senses, than in
the case of Diana and Redworth. To have saved the
shepherd's life was a good beginning. And this was well
followed up by her recognizing in the one who played
so manly a part at the burning of the straw stack the
same who had proposed marriage to her not long before,

60 PROGRESS IN ART

and being practically compelled, by the general opinion
of his merits, to offer him employment. The various
incidents of farm life give body and color to their relation,
which is not rendered less intimate and binding by the
little quarrels arising from his well-deserved reproofs.
The scene which more than any other brings them close
is that in which they work together to save the wheat-
ricks from the storm while the lightning flashes and her
drunken husband sleeps with his men in the barn.

Never was growing friendship displayed under more
picturesque aspects. It is a wonder the makers of
" movies" have not discovered the possibilities of these
pictures as they have those of Tess. All the while our
hero was showing himself the best man in ways equally
well approved, in the long run, by romance and real life.

And Bathsheba was playing a role not the less con-
vincing for being partly politic. When, after his
dismissal, she could not get him to help her with the
swollen sheep by oral command, she wrote him a polite
note, at the end of which she added, out of " strategy,"
the more tender appeal, "Do not desert me, Gabriel!"
So she played upon his sentiments. And when he had
finished his surgery:

When the love-led man had ceased from his labours, Bath-
sheba came and looked him in the face.

"Gabriel, will you stay on with me?" she said, smiling win-
ningly, and not troubling to bring her lips quite together again
at the end, because there was going to be another smile soon.

" I will," said Gabriel.

And she smiled on him again.1

It is true she needed him in a business way. But we
cannot suppose that this incident and her strategic
'P. 103.

SETTING 6 1

smiles left her entirely without a more personal regard
for the man who was her moral support as well as her
man of affairs. And after the death of Troy and the
incarceration of mad Boldwood, it was by no means
solely the threatened loss of her superintendent that
made her so desolate at the thought of losing Gabriel.
But he could not have played better cards if he had
done it deliberately than to go about his own business
at Weatherbury and make his plans for emigration.
The rest followed naturally; and if it was not la grande
passion which led her to the altar, it was at least the
affectionate regard and the feeling of absolute security
with which a woman who has proved the perils and
betrayals of love looks to the man of tried strength and
fidelity.

To one who has read the book there is a smack of
irony in the title. But the emotional strife which makes
up this drama is not the " ignoble strife" which the poet
had in mind; and it may well be that, in choosing his
title, the author had no thought of an ironic bearing.
He intended to compose an idyll of pastoral and agri-
cultural life as he had composed a sylvan idyll in The
Greenwood Tree; and he was moved solely by the
sentiment proper to the lovely peaceful life remote from
the insane huddle of the market. But meanwhile, in
A Pair of Blue Eyes he had achieved the construction
of an exciting plot of deeply human interest; and he
doubtless felt the need of introducing in his pastoral
setting a much more gripping action than he had done
in the sylvan one. He had probably been impressed
with the possibilities of the country for moving drama
mentioned later in The Woodlanders. And so he

62 PROGRESS IN ART

proceeded to secure his plot in the way we have seen,
and to adjust it to the circumstances and personal
types of Weatherbury life.

It may be that some of the later scenes are of a
violence for which we are not prepared; and certainly
there is an artificiality in the contrivance of some of
Jthe situations which displays the ingenuity rather than
the humane art of the craftsman.1 But if the plot is
not at every point made consistent with the original
design of the piece, it owes to this original design its
general plausibility, its vraisemblance, its local color and
life. The setting, we may suppose, came before the
plot in the author's plan; and it is the setting which
"made" the plot. So that we have the emergence of a
really convincing and characteristic story simultaneously
with the emergence of what we call Wessex. What we
call Wessex is an indispensable element in the formula
for a first-rate novel by Hardy.2

5

What we call Wessex is a composite of many things,
a harmony of many traits, physical and moral, human
and non-human. It is, in the first place, a physical
background of landscapes and interiors, with enveloping
conditions of climate and atmosphere. It is next an
economic order, a social order, with its well-marked

1 Such is the amazing scene of trickery in the thirty-fourth chapter,
when Boldwood, not knowing of the marriage, is led on by the mis-
chievous cunning of Troy, first to pay him a large sum of money to
marry Fanny, and then another large sum to marry Bathsheba, only to
have thrust in his face at the end the newspaper account of the wedding
in Bath.

2 We shall note later the one remarkable exception of Jude the
Obscure.

SETTING 63

types and classes of men, an order practically extinct
since the time that Mr. Hardy began to write of it,
since the railways came to interrupt the continuity of
tradition and break the molds. And then it is the
manners and customs that ha>ve crystallized about this
order, suiting themselves to these ways of maintaining
life, the modes under which men and women have
expressed the joy of life and found consolation for its
sorrows, their style of etiquette and philosophy and
humor. And finally there is the sharpness of vision by
which the author has penetrated its meanings, the art
with which he has composed its divers aspects, and the
love with which he has brooded over all, the deep
poetic sentiment by virtue of which he can hardly speak
of the more signal beauties of his subject without falling
into musical cadence.

Quite different in feeling are the descriptions of
nature in A Pair of Blue Eyes and Far from the Madding
Crowd. Mr. Hardy, in the Preface of 1895, characterizes
the scene of the earlier story as "a region of dream and
mystery," to which the various features of the seaside
nd "an atmosphere like the twilight of a night vision."
ut in the book he did not succeed overwell in creating
such an atmosphere. And if he had done so, it would
still not satisfy the demands of our imagination nour-
ished on the more substantial reality of his settings in
later books, where the characters are so part and parcel
of the landscape and product of the soil. Egdon
Heath, in The Native, is truly enough "a region of dream
and mystery," with an "atmosphere like the twilight
of a night vision." And Clym, the "native," gathering
furze, the reddleman camped by night in the sandpit

£

64 PROGRESS IN ART

under the hill, and the " anxious wanderers" in the rainy
midnight of November, belong to this scene in a way
quite different from that in which Elf ride and the
parson belong to the vicarage of Endelstow. In A Pair
of Blue Eyes we have landscapes, and charming ones;
we have sufficient indications of direction and the lay
of the land. But we have not that sense of the funda-
mental topography, the underlying anatomy of the
landscape, which is so prominent in The Native, The
Woodlanders, and Tess; and which is first impressed on
the reader in Far from the Madding Crowd.

The city-dweller knows the country by glimpses on
summer afternoons when the weather is fine. It is in
winter and by night, in storm and wind, that the country
yields up its intimacies; then alone it reveals itself to
those who actually live in its bosom, to those who must
meet the elements in person, and cannot take shelter
in the securities of the walled town. One cannot account
for the beauty and the convincing air of nature that
invests the action of Hardy's stories until one realizes
how almost exclusively it takes place out of doors, and
how largely by night, under black or starry skies, and
with the utmost freedom of ventilation. If he would
give us an impression of the life of the shepherd, he
begins with the bleak hillside where his hut is perched,
and the wind beating about the corners and playing its
various tunes upon the trees, the grass, and the fallen
leaves.

The thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched
by the wind in breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing
natures — one rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them
piercingly, another brushing them like a soft broom. The

SETTING 65

instinctive act of human kind was to stand and listen, and learn
how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or
chaunted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral
choir, how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the
note, lowering it to the tenderest sob, and how the hurrying gust
then plunged into the south, to be heard no more.

It is with senses refreshed and gratified that we
accompany Gabriel Oak in his night journey to Weather-
bury, reckoning the hour no more by the sun or by the
hands of a clock, but by the angle of Charles's Wain
to the Pole star, judging the distance of the receding
wagon not by sight but by hearing, as the " crunching
jangle of the waggon dies upon the ear, " and informing
ourselves through the soles of our feet that it is plowed
land we have leaped upon, the other side of the gate.
We are making across the field with Gabriel toward the
great fire, which appears about half a mile away; and
as we get nearer, we see his weary face "painted over
with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his
smock-frock and gaiters covered with a dancing shadow
pattern of thorn-twigs — the light reaching him through
a leafless intervening hedge — and the metallic curve of
his sheep-crook silver-bright in the same abounding
rays."

Perhaps the most living scene of drama in the book is
that where Gabriel and Bathsheba thatch the wheat-
ricks amid the incessant flashes of the storm. The
fearful crash and the sulphurous smell in the air when a
tree is struck by lightning serve to impress us with the
courage of Bathsheba, and make natural the emotional
state in which she confides to Gabriel the circumstances
of her marriage. And since we are dealing here with a

66 PROGRESS IN ART

man professionally weatherwise, we are privileged to
read with him the complicated signs of coming storm as
notified by toads and slugs and by his sheep. " Appar-
ently there was to be a thunder-storm, and afterwards
a cold continuous rain. The creeping things seemed to
know all about the later rain, but little of the inter-
polated thunder-storm; whilst the sheep knew all about
the thunder-storm and nothing of the later rain."

Such precision in the noting of natural phenomena at
times and seasons strange to the dweller in towns might
perhaps be cultivated deliberately by a painter of rural
life determined to give to his human^ narrative as fresh
and true an air as the notebooks of Richard JefTeries or
Mr. Hudson. But only the lift of the heart, only the
rhythmical pulsation of deep emotion, could give to his
phrases that poetic cast — worthy of Mr. Hudson
himself — which one feels in so many passages of descrip-
tion.

It was now early spring — the time of going to grass with the
sheep, when they have the first feed of the meadows, before these

are laid up for mowing The vegetable world begins to

move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence
of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything
seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost

Only the instinct to prolong the sensation of beauty
could lead him into cadences so delicately turned. The
phrases go in pairs as in the prose of Sir Thomas Browne
or other relishers of words that balance and reinforce
one another.

It is again with sentiment like that of the doctor of
Norwich that the Dorchester story-teller describes " the
panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects."

SETTING 67

The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy
the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill
at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a
sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are
horizontal and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time,
long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.
After such a nocturnal reconnoitre among these astral clusters,
aloft from the customary haunts of thought and vision, some men
may feel raised to a capability for eternity at once.

So stood Gabriel Oak, and told the time of night by
certain starry indications. And then, because he was
a man conscious of a charm in the life he led,

He stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument,
and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superla-
tively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed with the
speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete
abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man.
Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys were all as if they
were not, and there seemed to be on the shaded hemisphere of
the globe no sentient being 'save himself; he could fancy them all
gone round to the sunny side.

Such passages occupy very little space in Far from

the 'Madding Crowd, and they are seldom detachable.

Readers who feel the impulse to skip them in order to

get on with the story might almost as well not give*

their time to the reading of Hardy. For they make a

difference out of all proportion to their length and

prominence. They are largely what give color and

i fragrancy and the freshness of earth to novels which more

II than any others in English suggest the beauties of paint-

ing or of poetry. And they count for much in the sense

«of reality which one has so strong in the greater novels

, of Hardy. One never feels here that vagueness and

thinness — that impalpability — which attaches to the

68 PROGRESS IN ART

place and action in so many excellent works of fiction.
We know by the evidence of all our senses that we are
dealing here with " substantial things."

But this is only the physical background of the story.
There is another background of equal importance, to
which much greater attention is paid by the author—
the social background, made up of the numerous minor
characters from the Wessex peasantry. These humble
characters are almost invariably treated in a light and
playful manner, and they constitute the " comic relief"
in the generally somber stories. It is mainly on these
rustic humors that the author relies to make palpable
the old order of things, which counts for so much in
making his stories lifelike as well as picturesque. It is
they that furnish the rich subsoil of custom and belief
in which the main action is so securely rooted. Like
the deep bed of rotting leaves in an ancient forest,
they give forth an acrid woodsy perfume that stirs
more than anything else the sense of the successive
generations of life. Over them broods the author's
humor, that composite of tenderness, amusement, and
reverence which plays about the moss-grown, tenacious
institutions doomed in the end to yield to a new order.
Mr. Hardy had already made one charming study
of such types in The Greenwood Tree. This is largely
taken up with the quaint west-gallery fiddlers of the
Mellstock choir, their round of Christmas carols, and the
vain attempt to prevent their supersession by a more
up-to-date organist or harmonium-player. These ancient
amateurs are well satisfied of their own competence,

SETTING 69

and they cannot find words strong enough to express
their abhorrence of the intrusive new instruments.
They know what is seemly in the service of the Lord;
and they are deeply shocked when, for the first time in
the history of the church, the singing from the girls'
side takes on a fulness and independence as great as that
of the choir itself. Heretofore athe girls, like the rest
of the congregation, had always been humble and
respectful followers of the gallery, singing at sixes and
sevens if without gallery leaders, never interfering with
the ordinances of these practiced artists — having no
will, union, power, or proclivity except it was given
them from the established choir enthroned above them."
As one of the gallery puts it, " 'Tis the gallery have got
to sing, all the world knows." But now they have
received clear notice of their obsoleteness.

It is natural that the converse of such people should
be largely of a reminiscential sort, like that of Justice
Shallow, and full of anecdotes retailed with full Shakes-
pearean gusto. Slight experiences of a humorous or
surprising nature are treasured with all the fondness of
men whose lives are not rich in excitement or variety;
and friends never tire of hearing how Tranter Dewy was
taken in in the purchase of a cider cask, or how the shoe-
maker once identified a drowned man by the mere sight
of the family foot.

The social obscurity of these people does not prevent
them from showing a decided proficiency in the art of
conversation, which means even more to them than to
people with greater resources for amusement. The
author often calls attention to the instinct with which
they determine how far to carry a given topic, as where

70 PROGRESS IN ART

the shoemaker, who had been showing his last, " seemed
to perceive that the sum-total of interest the object had
excited was greater than he had anticipated, and
warranted the last's being taken up again and exhibited."
And what'is lacking in the actual substance of the words
spoken is amply made up in the range and subtlety of
tone, gesture, facial expression, all noted by the author
with loving care. The taking in of Tranter Dewy by a
sharp salesman is occasion for a great variety of vocal
expression.

"Ah, who can believe sellers!" said old Michael Mail in a
carefully-cautious voice, by way of tiding-over this critical point of
affairs.

"No one at all," said Joseph Bowman, in the tone of a man
fully agreeing with everybody.

"Ay," said Mail, in the tone of a man who did not agree with
everybody as a rule, though he did now; "I know'd a auctioneering
fellow once "x

and so on to an anecdote.

All the resources of manner are drawn upon by these
simple 'people in the interest of decency, politeness, and
mutual consideration. They have learned very well
how to subordinate the mere appetites of the body to
the more elegant demands of social intercourse. While
Mr. Penny was explaining the interesting points of a
certain last, "his left hand wandered towards the
cider-cup, as if the hand had no connection with the
person speaking." He felt that one need not call atten-
tion crudely to the act of refreshing the inner man.
When Mrs. Dewy at the Christmas party mentioned
the subject of supper, "that portion of the company

' P. 14.

SETTING 71

who loved eating and drinking put on a look to signify
that till that moment they had quite forgotten that it
was customary to expect suppers on these occasions;
going even further than this politeness of feature, and
starting irrelevant subjects, the exceeding flatness and
forced tone of which rather betrayed their object."
Delicate subjects are carefully avoided by these peace-
able and sensitive natures, and there is always someone
ready with a remark like Michael Mail, in "a carefully
cautious voice, by way of tiding-over" any "critical
point of affairs." When Mrs. Dewy mentions the
awkward circumstance that "Reuben always was such
a hot man," Mr. Penny knows how to imply "the
correct species of sympathy that such an affliction
required, by trying to smile and to look grieved at the
same time." Mr. Dewy is the mildest and most full
of resources for social conciliation of anyone in Mellstock
parish. When he, as leader of the delegation to the vicar,
wishes to broach the ticklish subject of the church music,
"what I have been thinking," he says, and implies
"by this use of the past tense that he was hardly so
discourteous as to be positively thinking it then."

Nothing speaks more eloquently of the delicacy and
good-nature of these simple folk than their attitude
toward Thomas Leaf, the parish fool. Leaf made
frequent candid acknowledgment of the fact that he
"never had no, head"; and "they all assented to this^
not with any sense of humiliating Leaf by disparaging
him after an open confession, but because it was an
accepted thing that Leaf didn't in the least mind having
no head, that deficiency of his being an unimpassioned
matter of parish history." And since his family was

72 PROGRESS IN ART

in general the most melancholy in their experience,
and since Leaf sang a very high treble and they didn't
know "what they should do without en for upper G, "
they consented, on the tranter's motion, to let him come
along with them to the famous interview with Parson
Maybold. On that occasion he was treated by everyone
with the same tender consideration, and the same
combination of pity and of satisfaction taken in his
peculiar defect. Quite similar was the treatment of
other fools in later novels — of the bashful Joseph
Poorgrass in The Madding Crowd, and the half-witted
Christian Cantle in The Native. By virtue of its
humaneness, the community spirit managed to turn a
social liability into a social asset.

It is on the whole a very attractive picture of Wessex
humanity that Mr. Hardy gives us in these rustic
sketches: meekly submissive to what they take for the
decrees of fate, backward and without initiative, naive,
and of limited vision; but mild and innocent, abounding
in social refinements, and full of the milk of human
kindness. It is a picture bearing the stamp of truth,
and done with great delicacy and sympathetic feeling,
in a manner suggesting that of Addison, of Goldsmith,
or of Shakespeare.

The rustic humors were practically the whole subject
of this " rural painting of the Dutch school," hero and
heroine being so much less substantial figures than
those of the " background" itself. The background
figures themselves were not deeply conceived; and there
was no such opportunity as in The Madding Crowd to

SETTING 73

use them for deepening the harmonies of a richer orches-
tration.

In The Madding Crowd there is a serious main plot,
in connection with which the rustic humors find their
significant employment. They make a true chorus to
the doings of the great ones, applying to an action
outside their own scope and capacity the general social
philosophy in relation to which it must be viewed.
They make up the audience before whom Bathsheba
Everdene plays her part. They are also actually made
use of in carrying forward the story. It is in conversa-
tions among them that many circumstances of the action
transpire. In one case they are made the unconscious
instruments in provoking the central catastrophe. For
it was Joseph Poorgrass' love of comfort and the cup
that delayed the arrival of Fanny's coffin so that it was de-
termined to leave it for the night in Bathsheba's sitting-
room. He is thus as great an instrument of tragedy as
Christian Cantle in The Return of the Native, whose
indulgence in the folly of the dice box results in such
fatal bitterness and misunderstanding.

Hardy had up to this time produced no humorous
passage so rich in ironic overtones as this scene in the
Buck's Head Inn, where Joseph, intrusted with the
transference of Fanny's body fro*m the Casterbridge
poorhouse to Weatherbury church, takes comfort in a
mug of ale with his pals, while the flower-laden coffin
waits in the rain. It was but solemn conviviality in
which ' they indulged, displaying their wisdom chiefly
on the subject of religion. But the judgment of Gabriel
is none the less severe, when he finds his messenger
drunk in the company of drunkards, because he "does

74 PROGRESS IN ART

his wicked deeds in such confoundedly holy ways."
However, the topers are by now too well armed against
all ills to be much troubled by Gabriel's reproaches.
Mark Clark expresses his convivial philosophy in a song
celebrating the advantage of today over tomorrow as a
time for feasting. And Jan Coggan, more profound,
more cynical, and more to the point, makes their
measured defense, speaking, toper-like, "with the
precision of a machine."

"Nobody can hurt a dead woman. All that could be done for
her is done — she's beyond us: and why should a man put himself
in a tearing hurry for lifeless clay that can neither feel nor see,
and don't know what you do with her at all ? If she'd been alive,
I would have been the first to help her. If she now wanted
victuals and drink, I'd pay for it, money down. But she's dead

and no speed of ours will bring her back to life Drink,

shepherd, and be friends, for tomorrow we may be like her."

But we are not left with a drunkard's view of the
matter. Gabriel and Bathsheba are tender enough in
their concern for even the lifeless body of Fanny; and
the parson at least knows how to take his cue. " Perhaps
Mrs. Troy is right in feeling that we cannot treat a dead
fellow-creature too thoughtfully. We must remember
that though she may have erred grievously in leaving
her home, she is still* our sister; and it is to be believed
that God's uncovenanted mercies are extended towards
her, and that she is a member of the flock of Christ."
"The parson's words spread out into the heavy air
with a sad yet unperturbed cadence." It is just such
a cadence that the rustics have generally a perfect
command of. Especially the topers of the Buck's Head
have the whole range of sanctimonious expression, .a

SETTING 75

know how to use a pious tone in reference to their own
frailties. Even their capacity for liquor "is a talent
the Lord has mercifully bestowed upon us, and we
ought not to neglect it."

Hardy, like a true humorist, knows how to give us,
by infinite fine touches, a sense of the droll puppet-like
speech and movement of the humble upon earth, copies
as they are of the great ones, but sufficiently reduced
in stature so that we, the great ones, may laugh at them
without too vivid a consciousness of kinship. They
are, however, but copies of their masters, with the
same aspirations and pretensions, caught in the same
machinery of circumstance, enveloped by the same
atmosphere of dim brightness in the midst of a wide
obscurity. It is a characteristic feature in the Wessex
composition that the denizens of these secluded valleys
should discuss with simple wonder the ways of "strange
cities" — how, in Bath, for a present example, the people
"never need to light their fires except as a luxury, for
the water springs up out of the earth ready boiled for
use." It is pleasantly characteristic of more than
Wessex humanity, the way Joseph Poorgrass comes
to the defense of his simple-minded friend for some
rather incoherent statement with his own naive philo-
sophical reflections: "Let en alone. The boy's maning
that the sky and the earth in the kingdom of Bath is
not altogether different from ours here. 'Tis for our
good to gain knowledge of strange cities, and as such the
boy's words should be suffered, so to speak it."

Not the least happy trait of human nature, in its
littleness and imperfection, is the disposition to take a
complacent view of one's circumstances, even when they

76 PROGRESS IN ART

reflect no particular credit upon one, and especially to
make the most of one's defects. The blushful timidity
of Joseph Poorgrass arouses so much interest in the
countrymen gathered at Warren's malthouse that it
comes to fill him "with a mild complacency." Later we
find him actually regarding his extreme modesty in the
presence of women as a sort of superior gift to which he
was born, and an occasion for hiding his light — rather
ostentatiously — under a bushel. It may be that the
point is a bit labored for effect. Certainly more delicious
in its humorous truthfulness is the maltster's childish
pride in his extreme old age — that being the most
remarkable fact about him. It is his son Jacob —
himself a man of the considerable age of sixty-five, who,
to put his father in good humor, suggests that he should
favor the newly arrived shepherd with "the pedigree of
his life." This the maltster proceeds to do, after
clearing his throat and elongating his gaze, "in the slow
speech justifiable when the importance of a subject is
so generally felt that any mannerism must be tolerated."
After he has given the items of his career — how long he
lived in each of the places where he has labored — another
old gentleman "given to mental arithmetic" calculates
the number of years as one hundred and seventeen.

"Well, then, that's my age," said the maltster, emphatically.

"Oh, no, father!" said Jacob. "Your turnip-hoeing were in
the summer and your malting in the winter of the same years, and
ye don't ought to count both halves, father."

" Chok' it all! I lived through the summer, didn't I ? That's
my question. I suppose ye'll say next I be no age at all to speak
of?"

"Sure we shan't," said Gabriel, soothingly.

"Ye be a very old aged person, malter," attested Jan Coggan,
also soothingly. "We all know that, and ye must have a wonder-

SETTING 77

ful talented constitution to be able to live so long, mustn't he,
neighbours?"

"True, true, ye must, malter, wonderful," said the meeting
unanimously.

The maltster, being now pacified, was even generous enough
to voluntarily disparage in a slight degree the virtue of having
lived a great many years, by mentioning that the cup they were
drinking out of was three years older than he.1

The same polite consideration that is shown toward
Joseph and the maltster appears in the attitude of all the
rustics toward one another. It implies the self-respect
and the respect for one's fellow-mortal exhibited by the
more heroic characters. It implies a regard for the
human soul itself irrespective of social position, mate-
rial possessions, intellectual attainments, and such-like
irrelevant circumstances which, if we are to believe
our Wordsworth and our Hardy, characterize English
humanity

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.

The very farm hands approach one another with a high
and simple dignity worthy of patriarchs and shepherd-
kings "in the early ages of the world."

8

This spiritual culture and philosophy have their
roots, we realize, in an old and well-established tradition.
These humble folk are deeply conscious of a historical
background. The frequenters of Warren's malthouse
are well acquainted with the antecedents of their
patroness of Weatherbury Farm, and can give you
anecdotes from her father's domestic life. When
Gabriel Oak drops in for a chat, the aged maltster can
swear that he recognized by his looks the grandson of

« Pp. 72-73-

78 PROGRESS IN ART

"Gabriel Oak over at Norcombe"; and when the new
shepherd shows himself politely disregardful of a little
"clean dirt" in meat and drink, it is seen that "he's his
grandfer's own grandson — his grandfer were just such a
nice unparticular man!"

By such means the entire picture is given that
mellow consistency which we prize so highly in certain
of the old masters — not that caused by the fading and
toning down of colors, but that which comes of a senti-
ment for objects harmonized themselves by the compos-
ing brush of time. The architectural backgrounds are
always such as to make us feel the age and ripeness of
this society. The author dwells with tender awe upon
the long use and the nobility of design of the great
shearing-barn, resembling a church in its ground plan,
"wealthy in material," with its "dusky, filmed, chest-
nut roof, braced and tied in by huge collars, curves,
and diagonals." It was four centuries old. "Standing
before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present
usage, the mind dwelt upon its past history, with a
satisfied sense of functional continuity throughout — a
feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the
permanence of the idea which had heaped it up."

Hardy has studied well the less sublime among
the Dutch masters, and his own pictures have often a
suggestion of the manner of Terburg or Gterard Douw.
But still more one is reminded, by interiors and night
scenes out of doors, in The Native and The Madding
Crowd, of the deep and eloquent chiaroscuro of Rem-
brandt. Hardy loves to note the effects of a small
point of bright light, with its rays soon dissipated
in the surrounding gloom. He loves to show the gigantic

SETTING 79

shadows of human figures about a fire, or the "wheeling
rays" from a passing lantern cast on the ceiling of a
room. The old men were sitting about in the dark
corners of the malthouse. The room "was lighted only
by the ruddy glow from the kiln mouth, which shone
over the floor with the streaming horizontality of the
setting sun, and threw upward the shadows of all
facial irregularities in those assembled round." Out of
the prevailing darkness would come the slow, deliberate
accents of the speakers, as half-guessed incidents of
ancient history emerge from the soundless obscurity of
lost ages. The topers of the Buck's Head were sinking
into the double dimness of the misty day and the evening
twilight, symbolic of human weakness and ignorance.
As the comfort of the strong drink stole over them,
their consciousness of mortal sorrows and obligations
itself grew dim. "The longer Joseph Poorgrass remained,
the less his spirit was troubled by the duties which
devolved upon him this afternoon. The minutes glided
by uncounted, until the evening shades began perceptibly
to deepen, and the eyes of the three were but sparkling
points on the surface of darkness."

Such scenes and the sentiment associated with them
give to the whole composition a depth of imaginative
appeal which would not derive from the main action
taken by itself. It is the depth of poetic feeling, the
depth we recognize as that of life itself. All is in perfect
keeping. And so by the magic of harmonic enrichment,
the story of Far from the Madding Crowd takes on a
degree of truth and beauty which for the first time
we are willing to acknowledge as entirely worthy of the
genius of Thomas Hardy.

IV. DRAMA

In Far from the Madding Crowd, it was the setting
which we had to thank for the comparative shapeliness
of the work. In The Return of the Native, we have an
actual principle of form, organic and compelling. It is
what we may call the dramatic idea. This is the first
of the novels of Hardy to exhibit in striking fashion that
tendency to dramatic structure which is so generally
prominent in the novels of today, and which has been
coming into fashion since about the time of its concep-
tion.

i

"~* The Return of the Native is a tragedy of irreconcilable
ideals. For most readers the main, character will be
Eustacia Vye, a woman of rich and stormy passions,
pent up in a lonely place, and longing for the larger and
livelier movement of the great world. The great world
is symbolized to her by the animated watering-place
only a few hours' drive from her home on Egdon Heath ;
and then, as her horizon broadens, by the elegance and
luxury of Paris. But while she longs for Paris, type of
elegance and luxury, the native of Egdon Heath is return-
ing from that center of the world, tired of its vanity and
frivolous worldliness, to plain living and high thinking
in the desert. And so the destinies have spun the web
which is to entangle the strong hearts of Clym Yeobright
and Eustacia Vye.

Already Eustacia has experienced the passion of love,
yielding herself to the wooing of Mr. Wildeve, the

80

DRAMA 8 1

gentlemanly innkeeper, whom she. has met in the lonely
places of the heath beneath Rainbarrow. Wildeve, on
his part, has gone so far with another woman as to
jeopardize her good name. This is Thomasin Yeobright,
a cousin of Clym's, whom Wildeve promised to marry,
but left in the lurch. Wildeve and Eustacia are ruth-
less players of the game of love, drawn together and
repelled according to the pagan laws of jealousy, vanity,
and pique. But swiftly she recognizes the better man on
his appearance; and swiftly the latter yields to the
immortal fascination. It is the plan of Clym to give up
the world, and trade, and wealth, to settle upon the
lonely heath, his home, and to make himself a teacher
of the natives — leading them in the simple ways of the
spirit. This is quite contrary to Eustacia's notion of a
liberal life; but she believes that in the long run she
can win him over to her views. Accordingly she pro-
vokes Wildeve to carry out his promise of marriage to
Thomasin, and she herself marries the man from Paris.
But it is the man's will that prevails. They go to
live in a cottage on the heath while Clym is preparing
himself for his mission. And then, when his eyes give
out from overstudy, and he goes forth to work alone as
furze-cutter, clad all in leather and scarcely human to
:he eye, she has to watch him turning back to the
>easant's estate and not unhappy in this occasion to
lemonstrate his Tolstoian philosophy. Meantime Wild-
ive has been made independent of the narrow life by
receiving a legacy; and it is he who comes to represent
for her the world of freedom and expansiveness.

The tragedy is brought to its climax by misunder-
standing with Clym's mother. Mrs. Yeobright had

82 PROGRESS IN ART

always been opposed to the marriage with Eustacia,
whom she regards as a " bad woman "; and it is long after
their wedding before she can make up her mind to visit
them. And by an evil chance — involving the presence
of Wildeve with Eustacia — she is turned away from their
closed door to plod disconsolate across the heath, and—
again by an evil chance — to meet her death. And so
arise misunderstanding, suspicion, and black words
between Clym and Eustacia, and they go to live apart,
each in his own home. They are both in despair; and
through a combination of chance and voluntary action,
Eustacia sets out on a dark and rainy night to join
Wildeve and go with him to a brighter world. But in
the end she cannot bring herself to such* an act of
perfidy — Wildeve is not " great enough for her desire."
And seeing no way out, she leaps into the black pool of
the millrace. She is followed by Wildeve and Clym;
and when the three bodies are dragged out at last, it is
only Clym in whom the breath of life remains. He is
left, a bruised and crippled soul, to preach the gospel
of the simple life. Eustacia, for whom his gospel was
but empty words, stifled and starved on Egdon Heath,
could find no outlet in life^for her abounding and rebel-
lious energy.

I take no account of the after-lives of Thomasin and
her faithful lover Diggory Venn, since these seem not
to have been included in the author's original plan of
the tragic story. Thomasin and Diggory are, like Mrs.
Yeobright and Wildeve himself, but counters in the
great game in which the players are Qym^ajKiEustacia.
Their_game__it is which gives to this novel its structural
_Jikeness_to a play. /

DRAMA 83

What distinguishes a play from a novel is its brevity
and its confinement to dialogue as means of telling the
story. Owing to these restrictions the writer of plays
is forced to certain economies which the novelist does
not have to consider. Many entertaining features,
many means of developing his subject, he is obliged
to eliminate for the sake of concentration, in order to
get his effect in the short space of time allowed and in
the form of dialogue. And this very concentration,
this very elimination of features not directly subservient
to his effect, result in a certain simplicity of form which
is hailed by the critical taste as one of the chief beauties
of the drama.

English playwrights have not always acknowledged
the limitations of the genre. The drama of Shakespeare
is largely a superb and impudent denial of this dramatic
idea. But, with less power and weaker imagination,
we have returned in modern times to a stricter observance
of the dramatic laws.* The theory of Dryden is much
more in harmony than the practice of Shakespeare with
the conception of the play which prevailed equally in
te times of Euripides, of Racine, of Ibsen and Dumas,
Schnitzler and Galsworthy.

/The essence of drama as conceived in our own times
the presentation of a single situation in which a set
characters find themselves related to one another by
lliance or opposition according to their attitude toward
rnie issue, some point in dispute. The alignment
langes from act to act as one phase or another of the
me comes to the fore, as one point or another is
letermined. There are infinite shifts in the balance of

84 PROGRESS IN ART

power, as intrigue and diplomacy detach certain parties
from their neutrality or cause a belligerent to change
sides. But the major parties to the controversy gen-
erally hold the stage without interruption; and the
changing action continues throughout to be a tug of
war between the major parties. J3rjinia_js--ajm£±ler of
pensions, and the strength of each act is in proportion
to the intensity of pull between the antagonists.

The dramatic principle requires accordingly close
continuity of action, in order that momentum may not
be lost. The pull must be continuous throughout the
act; so that, in this interest, act and scene (in the
English sense of the word) are identical.

And no act stands alone. The strength of one act
depends upon the degree of interest held over from that
which goes before. The brevity of the play allows of
little in the way of new incident, new persons, new
issues, which would require a certain amount of exposi-
tion and so relax the tension. Each act takes up the
situation at a stage directly following that of the one
before, with the balance of power arrived at in the climax
of the earlier act, in order to move forward to a new
climax and a new balance of power.

One situation, one issue throughout the piece. It is
conceivable that a play so built might have no general
theme, no social thesis or idea. It might conceivably
present an adventure, the pursuit of crown or lady, in
which the issue waited upon the outcome of many
diplomatic moves, upon the crossing of intellectual
swords in the seclusion of cabinet or publicity of
cabaret. It might be of the stuff of Dumas pere, of
Anthony Hope, handled with the technique of Ibsen

DRAMA. 85

or Dumas fits. But in point of fact, the drama of a
single issue proves to be the drama of a single theme,
the piece a these. It is The Master Builder, Le Demi-
monde, Der Einsame Weg, Justice, The Playboy of the
Western World. It is the theme which defines the
situation, which determines the roster of characters,
which eliminates unnecessary incident, which binds
together act to act, and maintains suspense at a white
heat.

And so it comes about that the drama, strictly defined,
is a highly subjective product. \/ What happens is/""
subordinate to what is felt. This is evident from
Aeschylus to Racine, from Dryden and Marivaux to
Ibsen and Maeterlinck. It is not merely conventional
" decency" which relegates bloodshed to behind-the-
scenes or to the narrative of servant or messenger.
It is the sense of the comparative irrelevancy of objective
incident/preoccupation with that moral struggle which
makes the drama. \Vha.t hqppens is reduced tq_a-
minimum; ancLattention is concentrated upon the sub-
jective accompaniment of action and incident. What-
ever happens or is done releases accordingly an
enormously greater volume of psychological energy than
what happens or is done in an adventure story — in
Anthony Hope or Dumas pere.

And the pattern of the plot becomes so simple that
lovers of intrigue and spectacle cry out against its
monotony. But the lovers of drama cherish it for its
neatness and finish. They find a charm in features
which were adopted for their utility. The unities,
which were invented as means toward dramatic concentra-
tion, become an end in themselves; like courage or fidelity,

86 PROGRESS IN ART

virtues cherished by the race for their survival value—
for their mere utility — which have become as lovely as
roses and lilies in our eyes, to be cultivated for them-
selves by all who love beauty.

3

To a large degree, the cultivation of form in the novel
is the cultivation, consciously or not, of the dramatic
idea. In the time of Fielding and Smollett, when the
novel was the foster-child of rambling chronicles,
Don Quixote and Gil Bias; in the time of Thackeray
and Dickens, their followers, when there was no drama
in England — the novel was purely a narrative of adven-
tures, or a parade of droll and picturesque characters.
The very antipodes of the dramatic idea may be found
in The Adventures of Roderick Random or in The Personal
History of David Copperfield.

In David Copperfield, nearly a third of the book is
through before one runs upon any hint of a plot.
Nowhere can one distinguish a theme of any kind — even
an issue — even a situation in which one becomes con-
scious of dramatic tensions. David and Agnes drift
along in a slow-moving current, in a barque in which
the only ones who pull at an oar are Mr. Micawber and
Uriah Keep. The only excitement of the book is aroused
over the fate of Little Em'ly— I will not say her story,
for her story is never told. We are never given her
version of her love affair— never made to feel what she
suffered, how she was tempted, how she was brought
to her fateful act, or on what terms she lived with the
man who is supposed to have exerted the fatal fascina-
tion. In her story, in the story of Dr. Strong and his

DRAMA 87

young wife, in the story of Miss Trotwood and her
good-for-nothing husband, and in the story of David
and Dora, there were the materials of drama, of
"problem," of social thesis. It seems as if the Victo-
rian author, unhappily married himself, were vaguely
anticipating the sort of study in marital infelicity
which was going to be made so abundantly in a later
generation. But he never raises, in the case of any of
these, a real dramatic issue; he confines himself to the
droll and pathetic aspects of speech and incident. He
takes every possible occasion to divert our attention
from the main characters to minor and intrusive figures,
from the main action — if such can be discovered — to
the infinite petty happenings that lead from nowhere
to nowhere, unless it be from the cradle to the grave.
It is a moving picture without plot and without subject.
It is true the pictures are very fine. But there is
nothing in common between the moving picture and the
drama.

Before. Dickens -there had been many English novels,
and there were many in his time, in which a limited
ibject and a neatly defined plot make for the shapeli-

iess and concentration of a well-made plav^ It is often
in Walter Scott, and invariably so in Jane Austen,
close-joined conflict over a well-defined issue some-
les gives to a novel of Trollope's, like Bar Chester

Bowers, a dramatic effectiveness seldom reached by
lickens. The evidence of careful design is everywhere

>resent in the work of George Eliot, appearing, for one
thing, in her most frequent division of the story into
books. It is clear that she has thought out with
philosophical precision all the bearings of her theme,

88 PROGRESS IN ART

and chosen her characters with reference to it. In a
book like Adam Bede, the number of the characters
and the period covered are carefully limited; and the
action proceeds in a straight line and with accelerating
force from start to finish.

But, apart from this work of Hardy, the first impor-
tant novel of the Victorian period in which the author
was strongly and consciously under the control of the
dramatic idea was perhaps The Egoist, published in
1879, the year following The Return of the Native. It
was in 1877 that Meredith delivered his famous lecture
on comedy; and while he was using the word in a broad
sense to cover various forms employed by the comic
spirit, it was the comic play — it was Menander, Moliere,
and the English comedy of manners — which mainly
held his attention. And it was obviously under the
influence of the comic stage that he designed and wrote
the history of the engagement of Sir Willoughby
Patterne. His idea was to give a comic exhibition of
egoism as it was brought into play in this crucial love
affair. The place and time and extent of the action
were all reduced to the smallest possible compass in
order that the section of human nature observed might
be brought under a glass of the highest magnifying
power. The scene is practically limited to Patterne
Hall, during the few weeks of a summer visit of the
Middletons; and the action has to do altogether with
the efforts of Clara to get released from her engagement
and Sir Willoughby 's desperate efforts to keep his social
prestige unimpaired. There is no presentation of the
early life of Sir Willoughby, of his antecedent love
affairs, or even of his courtship. Within the limits of

DRAMA 89

the story nothing happens of greater objective magnitude
than Clara's abortive flight to the railway station, hef"
horseback ride with De Craye, and Crossjay's eaves-
dropping at Sir Willoughby's proposal to Laetitia Dale.
The substance of the story is made up of diplomatic
pourparlers, dinner-party fencing, and the long-drawn,
carefully masked struggle of Sir Willoughby not to
become the object of public ridicule and commiseration :
a struggle — this being very "high" comedy — which
results in the equivocal triumph of his engagement to
Laetitia. For the reader who finds himself really
concerned in the feelings of the characters, as repre-
sentative mortals, a great and steadily growing suspense
attaches to this action, in spite of the small provision
of objective incident, or perhaps rather because of this
small provision. The reader's interest is like an electric
current running to heat in a slender thread of metal,
and grows more and more intense, even to the point of
incandescence, for the very reason that there is so little
in the way of objective incident upon which it may
discharge itself.

Since the time of Meredith this fashion of story-
telling has taken enormously. The most notable
instances of stories built upon this plan are the novels
of James, especially those following The Spoils of Poynton,
such as The Awkward Age and The Ambassadors, in which
the relation is very clear between the formal neatness
and the predominance of a single theme. More recently
the style is very much in evidence, if not positively in
the ascendant, as one may see by a review of the work
of Mr. George Moore and Mr. Galsworthy, of Mrs.
Wharton and Mr. Walpole, of Mr. Hergesheimer and

9o PROGRESS IN ART

Miss Sinclair. Consider simply the titles of Mr. Gals-
worthy: Fraternity, The Country House, The Man of
Property, The Patrician; or of Mrs. Wharton: The House
of Mirth, The Age of Innocence.

4

In his early novels we might say that Mr. Hardy
was treating a subject, but not a theme. In Far from
the Madding Crowd, for instance, he took up the subject
of Wessex country life; and his characters and plot
were so chosen as to introduce the typical incidents
in the business of shepherd and farmer. It is these
incidents that stand out most prominently, and make
the most vivid appeal to the reader's imagination.
And then, as the borrowed plot asserts itself, it is the
melodramatic incidents necessary to its development
that make the main impression — Troy's outburst over
the coffin of Fanny and the shooting of Troy at Bold-
wood's Christmas party. We are interested indeed in
the fortunes and happiness of Bathsheba; but there is
no clear dramatic issue, nothing around which can gather
our interest in her mental experience. The best the
author can do is to make her actions seem plausible;
and sometimes we have a feeling that the incidents
are rather forced to fit the arbitrary pattern of the plot.

But with The Return of the Native, Hardy has taken
up a theme which involves a clear-cut issue in the minds
of the leading characters, and especially in the mind of
Eustacia, which is the main stage of the drama. It is
her stifled longing for spiritual expansion which leads
her to play with the love of Wildeve, which causes her
later to throw him over for the greater promise of

DRAMA 91

Clym, which leads her back again to Wildeve, and at
last — with the loss of all hope — to suicide. In every
case it requires but the smallest outlay of incident to
provoke the most lively play of feeling; and the play
of feeling — the opposition.^ desires— is embodied here,
in true dramatic fashion, in talk rather than in acts.
It takes nothing more than the rei.urn of Thomasin
from town unwed to set going the whole series of dia-
logues which make up the substance of the .first book.
dialogues in which Wildeve and Mrs. Yeobright, Venn
and Eustacia, Eustacia and Wildeve do nothing more
than fence with one another, each maneuvering for posi-
tion in a breathless game of well-matched antagonists,
are scenes in the true dramatic sense, not in the
popular sense that calls for violence and surprising action..

In the t^Lkd-hook the main thing that happens is a
quarrel between Clym and his mother over Eustacia.
The wedding itself is not presented, having no dramatic
value. The dramatic value of the book is indicated in
its caption, "The Fascination," the drama lying in the
resistless attraction to one another of two persons so
far apart in mind.

In the frnjjth hoojc we have the major incident of
Mrs. Yeobright's death on the day when she was turned
away from Eustacia's door. But th^r ig none of the
hnst.lp of action about this narrative; and, especially
at the end, it is the feeling, the pathos, the spiritual
significance, of the events that is rendered. There
is one scene, of special irnpressivejiess. -- It consists in
the talk between Mrs. Yeobright, as she plods wearily
homeward across the heath on a stifling August day,
and little Johnny Nunsuch trotting beside her and

92 PROGRESS IN

plying her with the cruel, naive questions of a child.
This is all done in the weird, intense manner of sym-
bolistic drama — something of Ibsen or Maeterlinck —
in which the characters are children and old women,
gifted with preternatural vision. Objective facts are
but as objects seen in some magic crystal, whereof the
meaning is mystic, and deeper than material reality.
Jn her state of supreme spiritual prostration, the old
woman goes forward with introverted eyes, replying
candidly, and with a kind of gratefulness for his sim-
plicity which enables her to unbosom her sorrow, to the
simple, searching questions of the little boy.

Mrs. Yeobright spoke to him as one in a mesmeric sleep.

" 'Tis a long way home, my child, and we shall not get there till'

evening."

"I shall," said her small companion. "I am going to play

marnels afore supper, and we go to supper at six o'clock, because

father comes home. Does your father come home at six too ?•"
"No: he never comes; nor my son either, nor anybody."
"What have made you so down ? Have you seen a ooser ?"
"I have seen what's worse — a woman's face looking at me

through a window-pane."1

As Mrs. Yeobright goes on talking to herself, raging
against the cruelty of Eustacia and Clym, Johnny re-
marks :

"You must be a very curious woman to talk like that."

"O no, not at all," she said, returning to the boy's prattle.

" Most people who grow up and have children talk as I do. When

you grow up your mother will talk as I do."

"I hope she won't; because 'tis very bad to talk nonsense."
"Yes, child; it is nonsense, I suppose. Are you not nearly

spent with the heat?"

'P. 355-

DRAMA 93

"Yes, but not so much as you be."

"How do you know?"

"Your face is white and wet, and your head is hanging-do wn-
like."

"Ah, I am exhausted from inside."

"Why do you, every time you take a step, go like this ? " The
child in speaking gave to his motion the jerk and limp of an invalid.

"Because I have a burden which is more than I can bear."1

And then when she has seated herself to rest,

"How funny you draw your breath" — says Johnny — "like
a lamb when you drive him till he's nearly done for. Do you
always draw your breath like that ?"

"Not always." Her voice was so low as to be scarcely
above a whisper.

"You will go to sleep there, I suppose, won't you ? You have
shut your eyes already."

"No, I shall not sleep much till — another day, and then I
hope to have a long, long one — very long."2

There are few places in which Hardy — few places
in which any English novelist — has made himself so
completely free from the commonplace bustle of the
theater, and has made us hear so pure and unstrained
the voices of the inner drama.

Never before in Hardy had the machinery of action
been so masked and subordinated. Never again per-
haps was it to occupy a place of so little prominence
in his work. It is only once or twice in Meredith, and
more generally in the later novels of James, that we find
so great a volume of emotional energy released by events
of so little objective importance. Only in them is found
a greater economy of incident; and many more readers

1 Pp. 355-56. a P. 356.

94 PROGRESS IN ART

will testify to the dramatic intensity of The • Native
than to that of The Egoist or The Golden Bowl.

^The whole course of the story was conceived by the
author in terms suggestive of physics and dynamics.
Each step in the plot represents the balance and reaction
of forces expressible almost in algebraic formulas.
Many readers have been impressed with the strong
scientific coloring of Hardy's mind: with his tendency
to view both external nature and the human heart
with the sharpness and hard precision of a naturalist,
and to record the phenomena observed with some of the
abstractness of the summarizing philosopher.

Nowhere was this latter tendency exhibited in more
striking fashion than in the brief arguments or abstracts
prefixed to the several books in the original magazine
version of The Native. The first book, we read, " depicts
the scenes which result from an antagonism between the

hopes of four persons By reason of this strife

of wishes, a happy consummation to all concerned is
impossible, as matters stand; but an easing of the
situation is begun by the inevitable decadence of a too
capricious love, and rumours of a new arrival." In the
second book, the stranger's arrival, "by giving a new
bias to emotions in one quarter, precipitates affairs in
another with unexpected rapidity." In the next book,
Clym's passion for Eustacia "hampers his plans, and
causes a sharp divergence of opinion, committing him to an
irretrievable step." In the fourth book we read how
"the old affection between mother and son reasserts
itself"; how "a critical juncture ensues, truly the
turning point in the lives of all concerned — Eustacia has
the move, and she makes it; but not till the sun has set

DRAMA 95

does she suspect the consequences involved in her choice
of courses" In the argument of the fifth book are
briefly listed "the natural effects of the foregoing mis-
adventures."

In these abstract statements of the action is suggested
.situation is ma^p "p n^ a succession of tensions,
gradually tightening and relaxing, and how steady and
continuous is the pull, throughout each book taken by
itself, and through the history as a whole. */£h& story
as a whole is a continuous record of Eustacia's vain
attempt to escape the limitations of Egdon through the
means of love; and this is the key to all her tug-of-war
with Wildeve and with Clym. ^n__the firs.t b£iok the
particular pull is between Eustacia on the one hand and
Thomasin and her friends on the other, with Wildeve
for the bone of contention, ylt becomes more and more
intense to the point of Eustacia's triumph, and then lets
up with her growing sense of Wildeve's mediocrity.
The second book shows us Eustacia drawn to Clym,
and Wildeve consequently repelled in the direction of
Thomasin .^.The thinj. book is wholly taken up with the
fascination of Clym and the resulting disagreement
and bjrgai-wiib. his mother. .The fourth book records
the growth of misunderstanding between man and wife
on the one side, between son and mother on the other,
with the resultant tragedy. JThe ££th book carries the
strain between Clym and Eustacia to the breaking-
point, and shows us Eustacia driven by Clym and drawn
by Wildeve to her death.

How far we have left behind the old crude contrivance
for working up excitement and suspense, that arrange-
ment of mechanical traps for embroiling the action, that

96 PROGRESS IN ART

timing of fuses for explosion at regular intervals, which is
the business of our ordinary purveyor of farce and melo-
drama, a business in which Mr. Hardy was himself
so often engaged! How largely he has, dispensed in
The Native witL-Such artificial jiidsjo interest ! Instead
of a set of mysteries to be solved, we are confronted at
the start with "an antagonism between the hopes of
four persons." InsteaqL.of being a series of accidents
and misunderstandings setting the characters at odds
and creating suspense as to how it will all come out,
the story moves forward to " sharp divergences of
opinion," and worjis itself out in "irretrievable steps"
and "moves" and "consequences." So it is we are
invited to observe the simple play of opposing wills,
in a situation naturally arising, with naked psychological
forces pitted against each other as directly and fairly,
with as ingenious a balance of power, as in a game of
chess.

6

The philosophical arguments to the several parts
were not retained when the story was published in book
form ; but in their place the author has supplied the more
artistic and not less pregnant headings or titles, which
so aptly describe the subject-matter of the several
"books." The division of a novel into parts is always
a significant indication of an author's interest in the
logical massing of his material, in the larger architectonics
of his work. It is very little used by novelists like
Dickens; very much used by novelists like George
Eliot, Victor Hugo, Henry James, and — in our own
time — Mr. Walpole. It generally implies a bias for the
"dramatic," in so far as it involves the grouping of the

DRAMA 97

subject-matter around certain characters or great mo-
ments in the action, as that of a play is grouped in the
several acts. In The Native this is especially notable.
The first book is entitled "The Three Women," which
characterizes the single situation involving on the one
hand Eustacia and on the other Thomasin and Mrs.
Yeobright. The second book is " The Arrival, " signaliz-
ing the new dramatic alignment caused by the first
appearance of the hero. "The Fascination" vividly
describes the following situation between Eustacia and
Clym as viewed by Mrs. Yeobright. "The Closed
Door" is the terse dramatic label for the combination
of events which issued in the death of Mrs. Yeobright.
And "The Discovery" is the slightly less effective
word for the climax between Clym and Eustacia, leading
to the tragic denouement.

-These five books are like the five acts of a classic
play. And in each book the scenes are largely grouped
around certain points in time so as to suggest the classic
continuity within the several acts. In the first book,
for example, all the scenes take place on 'the jifth and
sixth of November and closely follow upon the Guy.
£awi.es celebration. In the second book the scenes lead
up to and center about the Christmas mumming where
first the hero and heroine "stand face to face." The

I fourth book centers about, and half the scenes take place
upon, the thirty-first of August, the day of the "closed
door" and Mrs. Yeobright's death.
The whole action of the story is confined to a year
and a day, a very short period for an English novel;
and thus observes with considerable strictness what we
may call the novelistic unity of time. This was not

98 PROGRESS IN ART

so much a matter of course with Hardy and his con-
temporaries as it is with present-day writers like
Mr. Swinnerton (September, Nocturne), Mrs. Wharton
(Summer), Miss Sidgwick (Hatchways), Mr. Marshall
(Exton Manor), Mr. Hergesheimer (Jam Head, Cytherea).
It is to be accomplished only through the choice
of a plot which does admit of being compressed
within narrow limits of time. And it furthermore
requires that this plot shall be taken at its climax, and
that no attempt shall be made to present the antecedent
action save by retrospect, in the way of dialogue or
brief summary made naturally in the course of the
action presented. This is the method of Sophocles, of
Racine, or Ibsen; and if it has come to be a favorite
method with novelists like Henry James and Edith
Wharton, it is probably the drama chiefly which has
shown them the way to such a grace of form.1 The
Return of the Native, first published in 1878, one year
before The Egoist and more than twenty years before
The Awkward Age and The Ambassadors, was really,
among English novels of its time, a pioneer in this
technique.

7

As for the novelistic unity of place, The Return of
the Native is in this matter an even more perfect example
of the influence of the drama working in the interest of
form. Every scene in the book takes place within the
horizon of one standing upon Rainbarrow, within the
compass of the heath, which is like a great stage gloomily
hung for tragedy. In A Pair of Blue Eyes, in A Laodi-

1 There is also to be taken into account the influence of the short
story.

DRAMA 99

cean, in Tess, the range of the action is much wider,
comprising all that falls within the more extended
experience of the heroines, who have occasion to make
journeys, to strike roots in soils diverse, and to undergo
a considerable variety of conditions underneath the sky.
Only in The Woodlanders is there anything like
the unity of tone and atmosphere that prevails in The
Native; and in The Woodlanders there is nothing like the
intensity and poetic concentration of effect. Every
scene of The Native is overshadowed with the gloom, the
loneliness, the savage permanence of the heath, which
has so obstinate a way of assimilating men to its likeness
instead of yielding to their will and working. It is clear
that Mr. Hardy had very distinctly imagined, and
went about very deliberately to evoke, the atmosphere
with which he wished to envelop his tragedy. He has
not written three pages before he bids us reflect whether
this gloomy heath is not more in keeping with modern
taste in landscape than " smiling champaigns of flowers
and fruits."

Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct,
to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the

sort of beauty called charming and fair The new vale of

Tempe may be a gaunt waste in Thule: human souls may find
themselves in closer and closer harmony with external things
wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young.
The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the
chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of
nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more
thinking of mankind.

And if this author prefers an uncultivated waste
for his typical reflection of modern thought, it is mainly
in night and storm that he chooses to present it. The

TOO PROGRESS IN ART

story opens, sadly adagio, at cloudy twilight in
November, with the darkness of the heath drawing down
night upon it before its time; and practically all the
scenes that follow in.the first book are in the blackness
of night out of doors in the desert, starless, moonless,
and with only the flicker of seasonal bonfires to add
luridness and mystery to the figures of those who dance
about the fire on Rainbarrow or talk in tense and muffled
tones inside the bank and ditch of Captain Vye's
at Mistover Knap. The brightest coloring which Hardy
admits into this composition of blacks and browns is
the green of fern fronds on a June day, proper to love-
making. The story closes on another-night in November,
with "rain, darkness, and anxious wanderers " feeling
their way across the featureless waste by the help of
footsoles long used to paths that cannot be seen by the
eye, and drawn together about the rain-flooded pool
where men and women struggle for life in the dark.
No reader of Hardy need be reminded of the massive

) power and beauty of these scenes in which the darker
pigments so predominate; nor of the shining splendor
with which the points of brightness from candle or
bonfire make their intense and brief assertion of light in
a world of gloom. Only the etching needle of Rembrandt
could do justice to the scene where Wildeve and Christian
throw dice for gold pieces by the feeble light of a lantern

7 amid the vast encompassment of the night-shrouded
heath. First Christian and Wildeve playing by the light
of the lantern; and then, when Christian has lost all,

land the candle has been put out by the blind fluttering
of a moth, Wildeve and Venn throwing dice upon a flat
stone by the feebler light of glowworms ranged in a

\

DRAMA 101

£ circle. And as ever with this poet of landscapes that
' are the stage of human action, there is the quiet insistence
of poetic symbolism, in which the physical circumstances
have their suggested counterpart in the disposition of
men's hearts. "Both men became so absorbed in the
game that they took no heed of anything but the pygmy
object immediately beneath their eyes; the flat stone,
the open lantern, the dice, and the few illuminated
fern-leaves which lay under the light, were the whole
world to them."

What we are concerned with here is the unity of
tone — the steadiness with which the heath makes us
feel its dark and overshadowing presence, so that men
and women are but slight figures in a giant landscape,
the insect-fauna of its somber flora. Mr. Hardy was
bold enough to begin this grave history with an entire
chapter devoted to a description of the heath at twilight;
and his choice of a title for the second chapter but
serves to signalize the littleness and frailty of man upon
the great stage of inhospitable nature: "Humanity
appears upon the scene, hand in hand with trouble."
It is very quietly and without word or gesture that
humanity makes its appearance, like a slow-moving
shadow. "Along the road walked an old man. He
was white-headed as a mountain, bowed in the shoulders,

and faded in general aspect Before him stretched

..laborious road, dry, empty, and white."
ffect is obtained at this point by means too
analysis. It may be that the gravely cadenced
;elf plays a mysterious part in rightly affecting
lation. More often the effect can be traced
figures of speech of definite connotation.

102 PROGRESS IN ART

The sights and sounds of man's activity the author is
forever comparing to those of extra-human nature,
assimilating them to the concert of natural sights and
sounds. In one place he has been describing the strange
whispering emitted by the myriad, mummied heath
bells of the past summer played upon by plaintive
November winds. It was like the voice of a single
person, of a spirit, speaking through each in turn. And

then

.... Suddenly, on the barrow, there mingled with all this
wild rhetoric of night a sound which modulated so naturally with
the rest that its beginning and ending were hardly to be distin-
guished. The bluffs, and the bushes, and the heather-bells had
broken silence; at last, so did the woman; and her articulation
was but as another phrase of the same discourse as theirs.

The movements of human beings are sometimes described
as seen upon the horizon by someone watching, and
in terms that suggest the motions and forms of the lower
organic, or even of the inorganic, world. Diggory
Venn, for example, has been eavesdropping at a meeting
of Eustacia and Wildeve, and at a certain pointf he loses
sight of them. " Their black figures sank and disap-
peared from against the sky. They were as two horns
which the sluggish heath had put forth from its crown
like a molluscs/and had now again drawn in." By
various means the people of the story are made to seem,
like the heath-croppers or wild ponies dimly discerned
* in the dusk, but as creatures of the heath.

8

It is Eustacia and Clym who by their strength of
mind and will rise most above the lower orders of nature
and most vigorously resist the leveling -and absorbing

DRAMA 103

forces of the heath. But that is the very source of the **
tragedy. Where souls content to submit to the stress t
of circumstance are like briars humbly bowing to the
winds of fate, these great ones, obstinate in their strength
of will, are broken like the oak tree of the fable. And -
it is more carefully for them than for any minor figures ^ <
that the stage is set and hung by the dramatist. It is,
we feel, for Eustacia that, in the first book, the author
proceeds with such deliberation to make his massive
evocation of night upon the heath. She is the "figure
against the sky" that attracts the anxious speculative
gaze of the reddleman. She is the "Queen of Night"
—the witch, as the superstitious thought her — who
dominates the lives of Thomasin and Wildeve. It is
her lonely life, for one thing, that has given her that
dignity and freedom from vulgarity that add beauty to
the force of her emotions. And however much she
may long for a gaiety and a largeness of opportunity not
afforded by the life of seclusion, there is an artistic
congruity between her environment and her dark and
unconventional passions, her savage independence of
mind. It will be the eternal irony of this poetic figure
that no reader will ever be able to dissociate her from the
lonely and gloomy setting from which she made her
desperate vain attempt to escape.

As for Gym, it is another aspect of the heath
with which he will be forever associated in the reader's
imagination. He will be seen, in his leather garb,
cutting furze in the hot afternoons of midsummer in
the insect-haunted hollows of the heath. He will be
seen as he was seen by his mother, a figure "of a russet
hue, not more distinguishable from the scene around

io4 PROGRESS IN ART

him than the green caterpillar from the leaf it feeds on."
He had been pointed out to her, on her journey across
the heath, as one who could show her the way to the place
where she was going.

The silent being .... seemed to be of no more account in
life than an insect. He appeared as a mere parasite of the heath,
fretting its surface in his daily labour as a moth frets a gar-
ment, entirely engrossed with its products, having no knowledge
of anything in the world but fern, furze, heath, lichens, and
moss

And then

.... Suddenly she was attracted to his individuality by
observing peculiarities in his walk. It was a gait she had seen
somewhere before; and the gait revealed the man to her, as the
gait of Ahimaaz in the distant plain made him known to the
watchman of the king. "His walk is exactly as my husband's
used to be," she said; and then the thought burst upon her that
the furze-cutter was her son.

This obscure way of life was not unpleasant to the
man so lacking in wordly ambition. It was not inappro-
priate to the philosophy which he had come back to the
wilderness to preach. The very monotony of his labor
" soothed him, and was in itself a pleasure." And so
it happened that his wife could find him, on a summer
afternoon, singing at his work, a social failure and not
ill-content.

If his mother was shocked at the humble occupation
of the son for whom she had hoped great things, how
much sorer was the disappointment and distress of the
wife, who in this humiliation could read the death
sentence of all her aspirations for herself! The garb
and occupation were bad enough in themselves, symbol-
izing the return to the narrow way of life she hated.

DRAMA 105

was the cheerful mood of Clym that was hardest
bear, proving his willing surrender to the captivity

f the heath. It was inevitable that hard words should
spoken, that bitterness and pride should come

etween them, that she should turn again, however
reluctantly, to the thought of Wildeve. When the
death of Mrs. Yeobright had brought upon her the
jealous suspicion of Clym, it was natural that, in her
pride, she should have withheld the words that might
have cleared up the misunderstanding. And from that
point to her suicide she was carried as on a resistless
current flowing from her disillusionment.

Jt la thua that E%don takes its place as the dominating
force of the tragedy, as well as its appropriate and
impressive setting. So that the unity of place, in
itself an artis'tic value, is but the counterpart of a unity
of action rooted and bedded in a precious oneness of
theme. Instead of being, as in Far from the Madding
Crowd, brought together arbitrarily to make put the
prescribed materials of a novel, plot* and setting here
are one, growing equally and simultaneously out of the
dramatic idea expressed in the title. For the first — and
almost for the last — time in the work of Hardy, the
discriminating reader is delighted with the complete
absence of^ne^hanical contrivance. Contrivance there
is as never before in his work, the loving contrivance of
an artist bent on making everything right in an orderly
composition; the long-range contrivance of an architect
concerned to have every part in place in an edifice that
shall stand well based and well proportioned, with
meaning in every line.

PART TWO: MORE CRAFT THAN ART

V. RELAPSE

The power and beauty of The Return of the Native
stand out in most striking relief when it is viewed in
connection with the long series of inferior works which
followed, works on the whole so commonplace in concep-
tion and so flabby in execution that they drive us to
some hypothesis of the demands of the market, exhausted
imagination, or impaired physical vigor. Even when
Mr. Hardy had recovered himself sufficiently to lay
out the vigorous canvasses of The Mayor of Casterbridge
and The Woodlanders, he was still far from recovering
the technical power exhibited in The Native, or even,
it may be judged by some, in earlier novels. Then
follows the clear and serene mastery of Tess, to be
followed again by the relative weakness of The Well-
Beloved before the final triumph of Jude.

It might almost seem as if, after each display of
knowledge and sureness of hand, the author had dropped
back again into the groping experimental stage; and
you are led to wonder at times whether he had ever
consciously learned the technical refinements of his
art, whether perhaps the formal perfection of The
Native or of Tess might not be a mere happy accident.
One would be practically constrained to this conclusion
were it not for the progress in art manifested throughout
the series of novels as a whole — The Madding Croiyd
so much finer than anything earlier, The Native so much
finer than that, with Tess and Jude going so far beyond
even The Native in perfection of art.

109

i io MORE CRAFT THAN ART

This is the most convenient place to take up in a
group the six novels in which, at one time or another,
he falls farthest below the standard set by himself,
reserving for separate consideration The Woodlanders
and The Mayor of Casterbridge, novels of a much higher
quality, but examples of certain backward tendencies
in novelistic art.

After the grave and beautiful work of Far from the
Madding Crowd, Mr. Hardy diverted himself with an
essay in comedy of rather dubious effectiveness, The
Hand of Ethelberta. This story relates the campaign
of Ethelberta Petherwin to dispose of her hand most
advantageously. She is the daughter of a butler, but
has been lifted into a higher social sphere by marriage
with a gentleman, now deceased. The clever widow
wishes to marry wealth in order to raise the fortunes of
her numerous brothers and sisters. She turns her back
on love in the person of a gentleman of good family but
poor fortune, a musician. She goes to London and
undertakes to scale society by means of her literary
talent. She takes with her some of the family. A
brother and a sister serve her in the capacities of butler
and tire- woman; others are sturdy workmen, who
help to decorate her house. With none of them can the
would-be lady have any but secret communication.
She has great social success, and is sought by various
suitors — a distinguished painter, a rich clubman, a
Lord of broad lands. She finally marries the Lord.
He is an old Silenus; but she tames him, masters him,
and has her will. Her nice younger sister Pico tee is

RELAPSE in

married to the musician-lover of Ethelberta.
Picotee has been in love with him all along; but it is
only after losing Ethelberta that he realizes the merits
of Picotee.

It is likely that Mr. Hardy was aiming at something
the tone of Evan Harrington or Sandra Belloni. But
he has none of the comic afflatus of Meredith. He
cannot command the burlesque vein in which the
earlier novelist related the means by which the three
" Daughters of the Shears" had raised themselves in
the social sphere. There is no one to correspond to
the Countess de Saldar or to the Pole sisters — no one so
funny. Ethelberta is not funny at all, in spite of her
comic role of social climber. She is merely the object
of an irony that misses fire. It misses fire because,
somehow, the author makes us take her seriously,
though without arousing deep interest in her. Even
when she goes secretly to inspect the estate of one of her
suitors and is caught by him in the act, we are made to
feel her chagrin rather than the ludicrous vulgarity of
her performance. There is only the most perfunctory
suggestion of her being subjected to an ordeal and being
found wanting. We cannot feel for her the admiring
sympathy we feel for Evan Harrington in his tardy
triumph over snobbery, nor the amused scorn we feel
for Wilfrid Pole when he succumbs to the seduction of a
weak sentimentalism.

The humor is laid on in superficial patches. There is
here and there a touch of satirical smartness that has a
forced and hollow ring. It takes nearly a page to des-
cribe the boredom of people in a drawing-room compelled
to listen to a song.

ii2 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

The sweetness of her singing was such that even the most
unsympathetic honoured her by looking as if they would be
willing to listen to every note the song contained if it were not
quite so much trouble to do so. Some were so interested that,
instead of continuing their conversation, they remained in silent
consideration of how they would continue it when she had finished;
while the particularly civil people arranged their countenances
into every attentive form that the mind could devise.

And so he goes on ringing facetious changes upon this
boresome theme. In dialogue the society people are
somewhat heavily reminiscent of Congreve; the low
comedy people echo weakly the fun of Charles Dickens
or Dick Steele. Little fourteen-year-old Joey, the rus-
tic butler of Ethelberta, explains the ways of the
city to his sister Picotee, timid and fresh from the
country. The main evidence of his social forwardness
is his use of tobacco. When Picotee begs him not to
smoke he answers gravely, "What can I do? Society
hev its rules, and if a person • wishes to keep himself
up, he must do as the world do. We be all Fashion's
slave — as much a slave as the meanest in the land!"

Much the most interesting part of the story is that
toward the end where we are in doubt as to whether
Ethelberta will be allowed to become the bride of the
dreadful old rake. There is one long passage in which
the musician-lover, her brother Dan, her father the
butler, and a brother of Lord Mountclere are all making
desperate efforts to get to Knollsea in time to prevent
the marriage. It has an excitement like that of Around
the World in Eighty Days. And then, after the wedding,
having discovered something of the character of her
husband, when Ethelberta plots with her faithful lover
to escape by night and is baffled by the slyness of her

RELAPSE

rd, we have the excitement, danger, suspense, and
hysical action which have won popularity for many
a story and many a play. When we say that this is
e most interesting thing in the book, we have ade-
quately measured the failure of this attempt at comedy.

The Trumpet-Major is another essay in comedy.
But it cannot be called a failure, nor even strictly
speaking an attempt. The author is no longer under-
taking the satirical delineation of smart life, but is deal-
ing with much more familiar and congenial matter —
matter of Wessex indeed. And the historical subject
gives scope to that devoted antiquarianism of the
hermit of Dorchester which he has indulged in many of
the short stories, as well as in the reconstructions of
The Greenwood Tree and The Madding Crowd, and, in
so scholarly a fashion, in The Dynasts.

The story is built around the excitement in a Dorset-
shire coast village arising from the anticipated invasion
by Napoleon in the early years of the nineteenth century,
the same alarm that led the pacific Wordsworth to join
a company of volunteers and gave occasion for several
of his most ringing patriotic sonnets. It was the time
when Majesty visited his favorite watering-place, when
there was great drilling of the militia, and troops were
encamped on the downs above the village. The heroine
is a nice girl, Anne Garland by name, living with her
widowed mother in the house of the local miller. The
leading men are her three suitors, one a cowardly officer
of the yeomanry, the other two brave men and brothers,
John and Robert Loveday, the one a soldier and the

1 14 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

other a sailor. John is the better man of the two,
faithful, thoughtful, and generous. But it is the light-
headed and incontinent Bob who has originally won the
heart of the heroine, and who in the end, after various
misunderstandings, is awarded the prize of her hand.

Readers of Hardy will not be surprised at such an
outcome; and it is in the character of Anne and her
dealings with the two brothers that he shows himself
most like the Thomas Hardy of the great novels. This
is all done, however, with a purposeful lightness of touch
which bids us pass it over lightly. More care was appar-
ently given to the historical details as they were to
be gleaned from contemporary newspapers and chroni-
cles and from the stories of old men in Mr. Hardy's
youth. He takes great pains with the outfit and
drilling of the yeomanry, the equipment of the soldiers,
the equipage of the King; and it is evident that he
introduces with great relish the incident of Nelson's
death at Trafalgar — it was as officer upon the flagship
"Victory," under Captain Hardy, that Bob Loveday
won his spurs.

The plot is duly thickened with misunderstandings,
and leads duly to moments of exciting action. More
than once the heroine is in great danger from the atten-
tions of her bullying lover of the yeomanry, and has to
flee from him on foot or on horseback, and with her
wits pitted against his in tricks and dodges. One time,
by means of a displaced plank, she lands him splashing
in the water like any victim of slapstick comedy. More
exciting still are the circumstances of Bob Loveday 's
escape from the press-gang. This adventure involves
much leaping out of window, sliding down ropes, and the

RELAPSE 115

>ut the most remarkable of Bob's feats is having
himself raised from story to story of the mill by the chain
for hoisting flour-sacks, and then letting go just soon
enough not to be dashed against a beam at the top.
His pursuers are ever close behind, and arrive at each
story just in time to see his "legs and shoebuckles
vanishing through the trap-door in the joists overhead."
The reader of a certain age will remember having
witnessed scenes like this in a type of melodrama now
gone out of fashion, not to mention the dime novels of
remote boyhood.

Two of the characters furnish a large amount of the
comedy of "humors." Uncle Benjy, the miser, the sly
fox, who is so in fear of his nephew Festus, and always
treats him with such a show of affection and admiration;
and the nephew Festus, the miles gloriosus, who is so
bent upon winning the girl and on getting away with
his uncle's money-box — these are traditional characters
of English comedy in novel or play, with nothing to
distinguish them from their kind from Ben Jonson
down. Festus Derriman is an arrant coward, who is
frightened almost to death when he hears that Napoleon
has landed, but who, when he gets advance information
that this is a false alarm, plays the part of a gallant
leader for those who still believe the enemy is near.
There is considerable broad comedy in the tricks played
upon one another by him and his uncle; there are several
long dialogues displaying his cowardice in mere anticipa-
tion of being called into action against the foe; and other
amusing scenes in which his bluff is called. There are
good lines for a Joe Jefferson, or one of the old comedians,
as in a comedy of Sheridan or Goldsmith. And it is

n6 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

all sheer " literature, " a passable exercise in a quite ob-
solete manner.

Much more of Hardy's world are the widow Garland
and the miller Loveday. These amiable characters are
drawn with mild and faithful humor; and it is a fine
touch of country thrift when their nuptials are hastened
to take advantage of the good things prepared for the
wedding of Bob that failed to come off. In general the
tone of the narrative is very pleasing, and especially
in the playful and loving treatment of the old buildings
and the old furniture, so impregnated with genial
human history, and so genially eloquent of the "filings
and effacements" of time. No one could have related
with a mellower and more sympathetic humor the great
housecleaning of the widow Garland ; no one could have
described with finer antiquarian gusto the ancient hall
of Uncle Benjy. No one could have made us more
in love with crack-walled, round-shouldered Overcombe
Mill. And it is purely in gratitude that one marks as
in the manner of Addison the droll history of Miller
Loveday's family.

It was also ascertained that Mr. Loveday's great-grandparents
had been eight in number, and his great-great-grandparents
sixteen, every one of whom reached to years of discretion: at
every stage backwards his sires and gammers thus doubled till
they became a vast body of Gothic ladies and gentlemen of the
rank known as ceorls or villeins, full of importance to the country
at large, and ramifying throughout the unwritten history of
England. His immediate father had greatly improved the value
of their residence by building a new chimney, and setting up an
additional pair of millstones.

The history as a whole is enveloped in a kind of
mist of tender humor like the subtle mist of superfine

•

RELAPSE

our which penetrated all chambers of the miller's house.
And through it all there runs a pervasive tone of gentle
elegy suggestive of Irving or of Goldsmith. That is

Iso true Hardy; and the reader of The Dynasts will
recognize a milder essence of the melancholy of that
tragic panorama in the author's reflection on the dis-
appearance of the troops encamped upon the downs.

They still spread the grassy surface to the sun as on that
beautiful morning, not, historically speaking, so very long ago;
but the King and his fifteen thousand armed men, the horses, the
bands of music, the princesses, the cream-coloured teams — the
gorgeous centre-piece, in short, to which the downs were the mere
mount or margin — how entirely have they all passed and gone ! —
lying scattered about the world as military and other dust, some
at Talavera, Albuera, Salamanca, Vittoria, Toulouse, and Water-
loo; some in home churchyards; and a few small handfuls in
royal vaults.

It is a light and pleasing confection, ingeniously
compounded of many diverse materials — a graceful
diversion and unbending of genius — -not altogether
unworthy of the hand that could do so much more
serious work.

3

After Desperate Remedies, Mr. Hardy never again
wrote a story of ingenuity pure and simple. This
element does make its appearance, and rather far down
the list of his novels, but always in combination. It
appears in the role of dubious assistant to themes of
some dignity and point, some real value for art. It
is a crutch, a bit of machinery for making a go of stories
which might be expected to interest the reader in quite
a different way, but which seem unable to stand up,
or to make progress, without such artificial helps.

ii8 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

Such a story is A Laodicean, which comes after
The Return of the Native, but which, by this resort to
machinery, makes confession of its weaker birth. The
theme is one of no little promise. The Laodicean is a
young woman of wealth and charm, one Paula Power,
who finds herself in possession of a picturesque old
castle enriched with family portraits of the Norman
De Stancys. She is herself the daughter of a great
railroad king who had been a civil engineer and donor
of the local Baptist church, an edifice of characteristic
ugliness; and she is thus the hereditary representative
of everything most opposed to the mellow traditions of
her domicile. She is in religion a Laodicean, unable to
make up her mind either to be immersed in the proper
Baptist fashion or to repudiate her father's faith.
Socially and imaginatively she aspires to become every-
thing that her castle stands for, and is thus strongly
tempted to accept the hand of Captain De Stancy, the
heir to the baronetcy. But her heart declares for plain
George Somerset, the gifted architect who has been en-
gaged to make the castle habitable. It is in this affair
of her marriage that she chiefly earns her title of Lao-
dicean— neither hot nor cold. It is long before the heart
asserts its paramount claim.

It is a pretty theme, offering ample scope for the
delineation of manners or the display of character — a
theme for Thackeray, say, or Henry James. But it
has not enough of "Wessex" for Mr. Hardy, and it has
too much of smart life. Almost from the beginning he
must have felt unequal to its challenge. It had already
begun its race in the magazine; Mr. Hardy, as he tells
us, was not well; the story must be continued, it must

RELAPSE 119

be strung out to its five hundred pages. The obvious
thing to do was to introduce a villain (or several villains) ,
a mystery (or several mysteries), and to set going
complications and misunderstandings which should take
time for clearing up and duly put off the hour of the
happy ending.

Hence the introduction of young Dare, the mysterious
wise boy, the illegitimate son of Captain De Stancy,
who has the family name tattooed on his breast, and who
threatens with his revolver the confederate who discovers
that dread secret. It is Dare who steals Somerset's
plans for the castle in order to secure his defeat in the
contest with a local architect. It is he who manages to
inflame his father with love for the heiress. It is he who
falsifies photographs and sends "fake" telegrams in
order to persuade Paula of the unworthiness of his
father's rival. It is he who in the end sets fire to the
family portraits and causes the burning down of the
castle.

And not content with one villain, the author must
needs provide another in the person of Paula's uncle
Abner — not to mention the half-hearted villain, the
architect Havill. Abner Power was no less than a
notorious Red and maker of bombs, wanted by the
police in most countries of Europe. It is a typical
scene of melodrama when the two arch-villains cross
swords (or literally pistols) across the vestry table of a
church after attending a funeral. Power would like to
get Dare out of the country, so as to save trouble for
Paula and De Stancy. And he tries to persuade him by
threats of exposing his criminal practices. Young Dare
retorts by relating, in the form of a dream, the history of

120 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

Power, showing how completely, as we say nowadays,
he has "got the goods on him." And having come to
a deadlock in this form of argument, the adversaries
resort to one more urgent and exciting.

Dare raised his eyes as he concluded his narration. As has
been remarked, he was sitting at one end of the vestry-table,
Power at the other, the green cloth stretching between them./
On the edge of the table adjoining Mr. Power a shining nozzle of
metal was quietly resting, like a dog's nose. It was directed
point-blank at the young man.

Dare started. "Ah — a revolver ? " he said.

Mr. Power nodded placidly, his hand still grasping the pistol
behind the edge of the table. "As a traveller I always carry one
of 'em," he returned; "and for the last five minutes I have been
considering whether your numerous brains are worth blowing out
or no. The vault yonder has suggested itself as convenient and
snug for one of the same family; but the mental problem that
stays my hand is, how am I to despatch and bury you there with-
out the workmen seeing ?"

"'Tis a strange problem, certainly," replied Dare, "and one
on which I fear I could not give disinterested advice. Moreover,
while you, as a traveller, always carry a weapeon of defence, as a
traveller so do I. And for the last three-quarters of an hour I
have been thinking concerning you, an intensified form of what
you have been thinking of me, but without any concern as to
your interment. See here for a proof of it." And a second
steel nose rested on the edge of the table opposite to the first,
steadied by Dare's right hand.

They remained for some time motionless, the tick of the
tower clock distinctly audible.

Mr. Power spoke first.

"Well, 'twould be a pity to make a mess here under such
dubious circumstances. Mr. Dare, I perceive that a mean vaga-
bond can be as sharp as a political regenerator. I cry quits, if
you care to do the same ? "

Dare assented, and the pistols were put away.1

1 P. 428.

RELAPSE 121

This is a good sample of the cool and masterful,
the high ironic manner, a la Dumas, in which our villains
deliver themselves. It is true that not often in A
Laodicean do we have a scene of such intense excite-
ment. But there is throughout a quite sufficient
provision of mystery and melodrama. There is a first-
class concatenation of incidents, with well-sustained
suspense. The average magazine reader must have
been well satisfied; and few so much as realized the
submergence, the total eclipse, of the excellent subject.

Quite similar is the case of Two on a Tower, the novel
that followed A Laodicean. Here, too, Mr. Hardy has
a very promising theme, and one much more congenial
to his talent. He undertakes to record " the emotional
history" of Swithin St. Cleeve, a very young man with
a passion for astronomy, and Lady Constantine, older
than he and with affections disponibles — her unsympa-
thetic husband having been long absent in African
exploration. On the top of a lonely fir-girt hill upon
her Wessex property rises a memorial tower, suitable
for the observation of the heavens; and Swithin St.
Cleeve receives permission of Lady Constantine to use
it for that purpose. There he sets up an " equatorial"
glass provided by her munificence; there she visits her
protege and is initiated into the mysteries — the ghastly
immensities — of the stellar universe. There is much of
poetry and much of irony in their nocturnal converse.
Lady Constantine is indeed more taken up with her own
personal affairs than with those "impersonal monsters,"
the "voids and waste places of the sky"; and yet she

122 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

cannot help being impressed and made to feel insignificant
by Swithin's graphic exposition of the size of the universe.

It is Swithin's ambition to become the Copernicus
to the systems beyond the solar system. And while
she is falling in love with the Adonis, he is preparing to
publish his great discovery in regard to the fixed stars.
When he learns that he has been anticipated (by a paltry
six weeks) by an American scientist, he falls into despair,
lies in the damp, takes fever, is on the point of death,
and is passionately kissed by Lady Constantine. He
recovers, not, however, because of the lady's kiss, but
because he has heard of a new comet, and that gives him
a new interest in life. In the meantime Lady Constan-
tine learns of the death of her husband, and is free to
indulge her love for S within. There follows a sufficiently
amusing scene between the lovelorn but modest lady
and the naive astronomer, conscious of nothing but the
state of the heavens.

So there we have the subject of the book. "This
slightly-built romance," says Mr. Hardy, "was the out-
come of a wish to set the emotional history of two
infinitestimal lives against the stupendous background
of the stellar universe, and to impart to readers the
sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the
smaller might be the greater to them as men." He has
succeeded in setting this history against that background,
and perhaps to some degree has imparted to readers
the desired sentiment. He has, moreover, set the stage
for an amusing little comedy of the Scientist and the
Loving Woman unequally yoked together by what
Clough calls "juxtaposition." And then he largely
abandons the comedy and the stellar background, and

RELAPSE 123

even the emotional history, in order to relate the surpris-
ing series of events by which the passion of Lady
Constantine is baffled.

A secret marriage leads to various subterfuges and
embarrassments when Lady Constantine is visited by
her brother and the Bishop of Melchester. It is still
worse when she learns that the death of her first hus-
band had occurred actually six weeks after her mar-
riage to Swithin, which will accordingly have to be
repeated in order to be legal. And then she learns of a
bequest made to Swithin for his scientific studies on
condition that he remain single to the age of twenty-five.
She determines to give him up, and he goes off to the
southern hemisphere on a scientific mission of several
years duration. After he has gone, poor Lady Constan-
tine once more finds herself in trouble. It turns out
that she is with child by Swithin, now no longer her
husband. She makes a frantic effort to get into com-
munication with him. And failing that, she is reduced
to marrying the Bishop in order to legitimize her child.

The record of these events occupies nearly two
hundred pages, or more than half the book. The last
two chapters bring the history to its conclusion. After
several years in Africa, learning of the death of the
Bishop, the astronomer returns — being now of the pre-
scribed age of twenty-five — to offer his hand to the
lady. He finds her upon the tower, together with their
golden-haired child. She has grown old and worn ; but he
will not fail in his sentimental duty, and he insists that he
has come back to marry her. Thereupon Lady Constan-
tine is moved too deeply by the consummation of all her
hopes; and happiness kills her. Swithin, we realize, will

i24 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

marry Tabitha Lark, a blooming young thing who had
earlier been introduced for this very purpose.

The conclusion is characteristic of Hardy in its
irony. The general conception is worthy of the master;
and there is a considerable flavor of him in the early
chapters. But he fails to give us any "emotional
history." He has not more than space to make us
understand the marvelous concatenation of events.
The psychology is of the most conventional, the simplest,
and the crudest. Human emotions are secondary, and
are manipulated in the most cavalier fashion so as to
make plausible the predetermined acts and combinations
of circumstance. The role of Swithin is to be that of
a passionate scientist and indifferent lover, yielding
reluctantly to the advances of a loving lady. And yet,
in order to bring about the marriage called for by the
plot — and, I suppose, to preserve the modesty of the
lady — he is made to change roles with her, and to
propose their union himself. This is weakly motivated
by Swithin's inability to carry on his work while uncer-
tain of the success of his love. If we had first been
convinced of the existence of his love, we should be
more impressed with this example of the prime impor-
tance for the scientist of being able to do his work.
Two on a Tower is the last striking instance in Hardy's
novels of the undue dependence upon intrigue, with the
consequent obscuration of theme.

5

If the case is not similar in The Romantic Adven-
tures of a Milkmaid, it is simply because that little story
cannot be said to have a theme of any sort. It is, if

RELAPSE 125

the truth must be told, the most arrant pot-boiler that
was ever turned out by tired and harassed writer of
novels.1 It is not without its prettiness, especially in
the early chapters, and should be prized for its location
of the story in the fat valley of the Swenn, early study
for Tess's Valley of the Great Dairies. But never was
more simple and obvious the intention of carrying a
plot through seventeen chapters with the greatest possible
amount of change and surprise.

Margery Tucker, daughter of the dairyman, starts
across the fields in the early morning, with a basket of
fresh butter for her granny. Accidentally encountering
in a summer house the mysterious foreign baron who has
taken the great Place for the season, she saves him from
suicide. This favor he repays by gratifying her wish to
go to a yeomanry ball. She dresses for the ball in a
hollow tree in the middle of the wood, and they roll off
to the house of a nobleman in a neighboring county to
dance the polka, then the rage, under the names of
Mr. and Mrs. Brown. It is only on their return to the
hollow tree that the baron learns from Margery of her
engagement to Jim Hay ward, master lime-burner; and
by that time the sentiments, or imaginations, of milk-
maid and baron have been somewhat touched.

How the baron backs the suit of the lime-burner;
how he upsets everything by unwittingly preventing
Margery from being present at her own wedding; how
he summons her to his supposed death-bed and marries
her to Jim, but on condition that she need not live with

1 We ought in fairness to bear in mind that Mr. Hardy makes no
claims for this work, which is covered by the apologetic, or deprecatory,
tone of his prefatory note to A Changed Man and Other Tales.

126 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

her husband till she is ready; how by trickery Jim
finally persuades his bride to come to his home — chiefly
with a scarlet uniform and a pretended flirtation — such
are the main incidents which bring the story up to
the culminating scene of melodrama. The mysterious
baron, essentially good and generous at heart, is not
without his liability to temptation. And when he
finds himself in a coach " blazing with lions and uni-
corns, " together with a sweet country maid who is being
taken, not very enthusiastic, to the home of her husband,
what should he do but drive her to the coast and propose
to carry her off on his yacht ?

Then on a sudden Margery seemed to see all; she became
white as a fleece, and an agonized look came into her eyes. With
clasped hands she bent to the Baron. "Oh, sir!" she gasped,
"I once saved your life; save me now, for pity's sake."1

There is a sample of the style at this exciting point
in the story. The concluding paragraphs of the story
are also good enough to quote. The life of Jim and
Margery was a happy one; but the baron, it was
rumored, at last effectually took his own life.

When she heard of his possible death Margery sat in her
nursing chair gravely, thinking for nearly ten minutes, to the
total neglect of her infant in the cradle. Jim, on the other side
of the fireplace, said "You are sorry enough for him, Margery.
I am sure of that."

"Yes, yes," she murmured. "I am sorry."

"Suppose he were to suddenly appear and say in a voice
of command, 'Margery, come with me!'"

1 1 quote from p. 88 of the edition of the book in the Seaside Library
published by George Munro in New York. This text is based on that
of the original story in the London Graphic. It has been somewhat
modified by Mr. Hardy for republication in 1913, as one may see by
consulting p. 404 of A Changed Man and Other Tales.

RELAPSE 127

lieve I should have no power to disobey," she returned
with a mischievous look. "He was like a magician to me. I
think he was one. He could move me as a loadstone moves a
speck of steel. Yet no," she added, hearing the baby cry, "he
would not move me now."

"Well," said Jim, with no great concern (for "/a jalousie
retrospective," as George Sand terms it, had nearly died out of
him), "however he might move ye, my love, he'll never come.
He swore it to me; and he was a man of his word."1

Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella — the baron
playing the double role of wolf and fairy godmother — •
and, for the rest, whatever was most to the liking of
"The Duchess" and those other lady novelists who
maintained throughout the nineteenth century the
sentimental and Gothic traditions of the eighteenth!

While in A Laodicean and Two on a Tower the
theme was overwhelmed by the forced complications of
plot, the still more amazing pattern of circumstance
which makes the plot of The Well-Beloved is, down to
the least detail, the means of sharply defining, and we
might say demonstrating, the theme. It is an interesting
and characteristic theme, worked out with mathematical
precision; and the book is worthy of a place on a shelf
with the other novels of Hardy. But coming between
Tess and Jude, it is wanting in strength and color.
The first version, published in a magazine in 1892, is
distinctly cruder than the revision of 1897, and strongly
suggests the slapdash performance of a busy journeyman
who has his bread to make from day to day, and is

1 P. 90 in the Seaside Library volume; p. 406 in A Changed Man
and Other Tale?,, somewhat revised.

128 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

saving his strength for some more cherished labor.
In style and structure the book of 1897 shows a decided
effort to raise the whole into a higher class.1 But the
care in revision cannot alter the fundamental fact that
the thing is rather a poetic fantasy than a novel, a
somewhat insubstantial, decidedly unconvincing inven-
tion, with a strong flavor of the literary. The theme
is the stuff of poesy; and the plot which is invented to
give it embodiment involves such surprising recurrence
of similar situations as to tax the credulity of the most
confirmed readers of Hardy.

It is a study in the artistic temperament as it is sup-
posed to exhibit itself in love. The leading character,
Jocelyn Pierston, is a sculptor, and the descendant of
quarriers long settled in the peninsula known as the Isle of
Slingers. And his descent from the "curious and almost
distinctive people" of that isolated bit of Wessex, cher-
ishing as they do "strange beliefs and singular customs,"
is another explanation of the fantastic dealings he has
with the goddess Aphrodite, whose temple, according to
tradition, "once stood at the top of the Roman road lead-
ing up into the isle." This young sculptor is one of those
Shelleyan, platonic seekers of the ideal beauty, for whom
it slips from form to form in the most freakish and un-
controllable fashion. Already at the age of twenty he
has found the Well-Beloved embodied for him in no less
than a dozen different women.

However it may have been with the ladies involved,
the experience was not an unpleasant one to the artist
himself; but it was destined to lead to complications,

1 The differences are set forth in detail by Miss Chase in her Master's
thesis before referred to.

RELAPSE 129

and in the end to bring an ironic nemesis upon the
involuntarily fickle man. The man of twenty, on
returning to his native isle, finds himself in the, for him,
unwonted situation of proposing marriage and becoming
engaged to a nice girl of the ancient stock. It is doubtful
whether the flitting ideal did ever take up its abode
in the person of Avice Caro; but he is drawn to her by
ties of intimate spiritual kinship, the growth of their
common heredity. It is not long, however, before the
true Well-Beloved casts her troublesome shadow over
the sensible plans and engagements of Jocelyn Pierston.
He falls in love with another daughter of the Isle,
named Marcia, helps her in difficulty, takes her to
London, and is going to be married to her. But before
the marriage license can be obtained, the woman has
changed her mind; and she passes out of the story for
the space of forty years. Avice Caro marries a cousin
of the same family name.

Such are the contents of Part First, entitled "A
Young Man of Twenty."

Part Second is entitled "A Young Man of Forty,"
and shows us the first instalment of "Time's Revenges"
upon the fickle artist-lover. The Well-Beloved has in
the meantime had many incarnations; and she finally
takes up her abode in a well-connected and accomplished
society woman, who would make an ideal mate for the
now distinguished sculptor. But he is not destined to
such a tame and wordly-wise conclusion of his amorous
career. Learning of the death of Avice Caro, he goes
back to the Isle for her funeral. He meets there her
daughter Avice, the very image of her mother. And
this time there is no doubt that the phantom Aphrodite

130 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

has descended upon the daughter of the woman whom
he had wronged so many years before. They seem to
his imagination one and the same person. His reason
argues that it is not so, and that Avice the Second has
not the soul nor the refinement of her mother. His
reason points him away to the woman of fashion; but
his tyrannical imagination insists on his paying court
to the little laundress. It is a " gigantic satire upon
the mutations of his nymph during the past twenty
years."

And then, by a further stroke of irony, it appears
that this bit of a rustic girl is now, as he had been,
haunted by a phantom Well-Beloved, as flitting as his
own, and as much beyond the control of her will. She
has already loved no less than fifteen different men.
The ironic moral was hardly in need of statement.
"This seeking of the Well-Beloved was, then, of the
nature of a knife which could cut two ways. To be the
seeker was one thing; to be one of the corpses from which
the ideal inhabitant had departed was another; and
this was what he had become now, in the mockery of new
Days."

But to complete the reversal of the situation, and
squeeze out the last drop of irony, one further circum-
stance is called for. Avice being much troubled by the
complications arising from her unstable imagination,
Pierston takes her to London, hoping to save her from
her troubles by making her his wife. But when at last
he makes this purpose clear to the girl, she has to inform
him that she is already married. Her husband is one
of the island stock bearing his own surname, from
whom she is at present separated because of her love

RELAPSE 131

for another man. Jocelyn Piers ton has fully paid the
penalty — whether to the first Avice for his instability,
or to "the love-queen of the isle" for his reversion
"from the ephemeral to the stable mood." The best
he can do is to restore Avice to her husband and set
them up in business on the Isle.

Such a plot would surely be remarkable enough in
itself, and a sufficient illustration of the theme. But
not content with this pretty reversal of parts, Mr.
Hardy must needs give us a Part Third, with the hero
appearing again as "A Young Man Turned Sixty,"
and a most miraculous reduplication of the events of
Part Second. After another long interval, Pierston
returns again to the Isle, and this time falls in love with
Avice the Third, granddaughter of the first Avice
Caro. She agrees to marry him to please her dying
mother; but the night before the wedding she elopes
with a former lover. This lover, by a final stroke of
the playful malice of fate, is the son of Marcia, the
beloved of forty years past. She has since been married
and widowed, and has seen far countries. And then —
to finish off the pattern with the last formal completeness
—the artist and follower of flitting love marries the aged
woman, loses altogether his sense of beauty, his artistic
imagination, and settles down in his native isle as a
useful and ordinary citizen.

It is all good fun. It is an idea quaintly conceived,
and carried through without too much gravity. There
is in the treatment of Pierston's obsession a note
of levity, of light irony, rather well sustained. The
obsession itself is not treated with any of the religious
spirit of " Epipsychidion " or of the Italian poets of the

MORE CRAFT THAN ART

dolce sill nuow; and we are not expected to take in
tragic mood the punishment meted out to the fickle
lover.

There is a strain of poetry running through, but this
is not of a sentimental order. It is found in the fanciful
playing with the myth of an amorous divinity long
established in the Isle. There are frequent references to
the ancient goddess, " Aphrodite, Ashtaroth, Freyja, or
whoever the love-queen of his isle might have been."
The motif of the penalty recurs in various and not
altogether reconcilable forms. And the artist's subjec-
tion to the Well-Beloved is itself represented as a kind
of punishment. " Sometimes at night he dreamed that
she was the ' wile- weaving Daughter of high Zeus' in
person, bent on tormenting him for his sins against her
beauty in his art." This mythical interpretation is
indeed pushed too far. Mr. Hardy is not a Hawthorne;
and he proves a little awkward in his attempt to suggest
a supernatural mystery lurking in the background of
his modern story.

There is considerable charm in the setting and
atmosphere, the quaint stone houses, the quarries, the
moan of the sea, the warmth of the rock in the sun —
''that was the island's personal temperature when in
its afternoon sleep." In social custom and material
feature this is a special variety of Hardy's Wessex.
But the local feeling is not so strong as in the greater
novels. There is nothing like the dairying of Tess,
the furze-cutting of Clym, the sheep-tending of Gabriel
Oak, to give substantiality to the country and a deep
local tincture to the characters. The characters are
all phantoms, mere figures in the algebra of the theme.

RELAPSE 133

It can hardly be otherwise with a plot so elaborately
disposed of in so little space (for the book is a short one) ;
a plot so marvelous and rigid in pattern, with so sharp
an insistence upon so fantastic a theme. It has not
the color and fulness of life. It pretends indeed to be
no more than "a sketch of a temperament." It is good
fun — one of the playful recreations of genius.

VI. MOVIE

The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Woodlanders are
both works clearly impressed with the seal of genius,
the one a work of exceptional power, and the other a
work of exceptional charm. But they are both books
in which it is hard to distinguish more than the most
rudimentary acquaintance with that art in the narrative
of events which was at the disposal of any well-read
novelist in the years 1886 and 1887. There is only
one alternative to this conclusion: that the author may
in both cases have deliberately chosen, as proper to his
subject or congenial to his readers, a technique of slap-
dash facility and looseness. In each case the subject
is one giving scope to a dramatic treatment similar to
that of The Native; but in each case the actual treatment
reminds one of the Elizabethan chronicle-play before
Marlowe and Shakespeare transformed it into tragedy.
The Mayor of Casterbridge departs even farther than
The Woodlanders from the method of sober and shapely
drama, reminding one often of the moving picture,
which has flourished so remarkably during the generation
following its appearance.

i

The Mayor of Casterbridge is a story dealing in
incidents of more than usual strangeness and improba-
bility, both in themselves and in their combination.
It covers a long course of years, and introduces so many
important events, so many amazing turns and com-
plications, that four hundred pages are scarce enough

134

MOVIE 135

to get them told in a manner fully intelligible to the
reader. A brief abstract can hardly fail to prove
bewildering to anyone unacquainted with the book.

The story opens with no less an event than the sale of
a wife. It is at a country fair that Michael Henchard,
hay-trusser of imagination and of moody disposition,
having come to realize how greatly he is burdened with
wife and child, and being somewhat disguised in drink,
turns jest into earnest, puts up his wife to auction, and
knocks her down at five guineas to a seafaring man ot
chivalrous instincts. When, in soberer condition, he
undertakes to recover his lost wife, his searching proves
vain. He takes an oath not to touch liquor again
within the space of twenty years; and he starts life
afresh and unencumbered at the age of twenty.

Such are the contents of the first two chapters.

The story now takes a leap of eighteen years, and
shows us Michael Henchard in great prosperity. He
has become a prominent grain merchant of Casterbridge
and mayor of the city. And by a strange coincidence,
on the very night of the mayor's dinner, three strangers
arrive in Casterbridge to witness his triumph. One is a
young Scotchman named Farfrae, who is on his way to
America to seek his fortune. He proves of service to
Henchard in a business difficulty, and greatly takes the
mayor's fancy by his pleasing peisonality; and he is
persuaded by Henchard to stay in Casterbridge and
become his partner.

The other new arrivals are no less than Henchard's
wife Susan and her grownup daughter Elizabeth- Jane.
It seems that the sailor has disappeared, and is thought
to be drowned; and Susan has come back to seek out

136 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

her lawful husband and secure, if possible, a father for
her girl. Mayor Henchard, in spite of an awkward
love-affair of his in the Island of Jersey, recognizes his
obligation to his wife, and takes measures to give her her
dues. He sets up the widow Newson in respectability in
the town; and they play out together a prearranged
comedy of getting acquainted and then getting married.

It is natural for young Farfrae to fall in love with his
partner's daughter. But Michael Henchard is not a
man whose acts are controlled by reason or good policy.
He has grown jealous of the popularity of his partner;
he finally dismisses him; and he forbids Elizabeth- Jane
to have anything to do with a man who has now become
a business rival and, in Henchard's view, "an enemy of
his house." This is the situation at the time that Mrs.
Henchard, for the convenience of the story, sickens and
dies.

And now comes to the fore a complication which is
destined greatly to affect the course of the history.
Elizabeth- Jane is not really the daughter of Henchard.
His daughter had long since died, and Elizabeth was
the daughter of Newson. But Susan, to propitiate the
jealous Henchard, has all along allowed him to believe
that Elizabeth is his own flesh and blood. Meantime
Elizabeth has been kept by them both in ignorance of
the real facts about the original marriage and separation
of Henchard and Susan, and of course supposes herself
to be (as she is) the daughter of Newson. Wheels
within wheels! But after the death of his wife, the
lonely man, hoping to win the love of the girl, reveals
to her, what he supposes to be the fact, that he is her
father. And then, by one of those ironies of circum-

MOVIE 137

stance which he is ever provoking by his own perverse-
ness, he comes immediately after upon a note from his
dead wife confessing that Elizabeth is the daughter of
Newson. It is his turn for concealing the facts of her
birth; and he does not let the girl know of his mistake.
The result is another irony. Elizabeth, who was at
first greatly hurt by the thought that Newson was not
her father, becomes reconciled to that fact, and turns
her affections to Henchard, only to find that he appar-
ently hates her. He really does hate her now for not
being his daughter; and in this mood he gives Farfrae
full permission to court her.

And next, having done his duty by his wife, Henchard
is confronted by his obligations to his mistress. Every-
thing repeats itself in the pattern of this plot. And no
sooner is one past disposed of than another turns up to
plague him. Lucetta, his Jersey love, having come into
some money, has moved to Casterbridge and set up an
establishment; her reputation has been damaged and
she hopes to have it mended by Henchard. And thence
grows another irony. For no sooner has Henchard
determined to marry Lucetta, who is still attractive
and now a person of means, than she has ceased to
desire him, having fallen in love with Farfrae, his rival
in business. And Farfrae, having received permission
to love Elizabeth- Jane, loves instead Lucetta, who —
though he knows it not — is so deeply engaged with the
other man. The jealousy of Henchard is aroused;
and he who had opposed the loves of Farfrae and
Elizabeth, now opposes those of Farfrae and Lucetta.
He uses his knowledge of Lucetta's past to compel her
to promise marriage to himself.

138 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

T,ien at last comes his nemesis upon the man who
has sold his wife and made an enemy of his friend. He
has reached the summit of good fame; he has been
mayor, and is still magistrate. But while he is sitting
in dignity to pronounce judgment upon malefactors,
a wretched old woman is brought before the court for
some low offense. And who should she be, of all persons
in the world, but a witness of Henchard's crime of many
years before, the very woman who had sold him the
drink that had made him reckless in wrongdoing?
And what should she do, in her envious hatred of
worldly respectabilities, but denounce the judge for his
own crimes? Henchard impetuously acknowledges in
open court the truth of her charges, and that he is no
better than the prisoner at the bar. He is disgraced
in the eyes of all men.

And now disgraces and disappointments crowd upon
him. On the next day he learns of the secret marriage
of Lucetta to his enemy. Farfrae has beaten him
likewise in the business game, and he becomes a bank-
rupt. It is now twenty years since the sale of his wife;
the date of his oath has expired, and he takes to drink.
He is degraded to a common laborer, and must work for
his former rival, whom he had once set up in business,
and who now occupies Henchard's fine house and has
been appointed mayor. He reaches the lowest depth of
humiliation on the occasion of the King's visit to
Casterbridge. He has determined to assert his dignity
at this time by joining with the honorable Council in
greeting Royalty. But in this purpose he is prevented
by Mayor Farfrae, and hauled away by the collar in
the presence of the whole town. And he hears himself

MOVIE 139

described, by the woman to whom he had formerly
condescended, as a mere workman employed by her
husband.

It is at this period that Henchard is sorely tempted
to get even with his enemies by violence and treachery.
At one time he is on the point of killing Farfrae by throw-
ing him out of an upstairs door in the barn; but he
repents him before it is too late. At another time he
is tempted to betray Lucetta by reading to her husband
her old letters to himself. He does go so far as to read
the letters to Farfrae; but his heart fails him at the last
moment, and he does not reveal the identity of the
writer. By mischance, however, he is the cause of
disgrace to Lucetta. He undertakes to send back to her
the incriminating letters. But the messenger he has
chosen is a man with a deep grudge against both him
and Lucetta; he reads the letters aloud in a public house.
The result is that the scum of the town perform for the
mayor's wife the scandalous ceremony of the "skimmity-
ride." Following an ancient custom, they parade
through the streets the grotesque effigies of Lucetta
and Henchard, thus publishing their shame. And the
disgraced woman dies soon after as a result of her
agitation.

We now 'enter upon the last stage of the career of
Michael Henchard. Elizabeth- Jane has come to be the
comfort of her supposed father. And with her help and
by the generosity of Farfrae, Henchard sets up again in a
small way as a seed merchant. But now falls upon him
another bizarre stroke of destiny; and once again he
provokes the worst results by his unscupulous attempt
to seize happiness for himself. With the disposal of

i4o MORE CRAFT THAN ART

Susan and Lucetta, he has still to reckon with the
sailor man, the father of Elizabeth. Newson turns out
to have been alive all the time, and finally makes his
appearance in Casterbridge. Henchard gets rid of him
for the moment by telling him that Elizabeth is dead.
And for a brief tune he settles down to be the gentle
father of an affectionate daughter. But Newson comes
back again with a knowledge of Henchard 's lie.

And that is not all; for now the ever triumphant
rival, in business and love, who had taken his Lucetta
from him, is about to take his Elizabeth- Jane. Upon
the reappearance of Newson, Henchard has left Caster-
bridge; he returns for the wedding of Elizabeth and
Farfrae. But the girl's heart has been hardened by the
discovery of his duplicity. Against her arraignment he
makes no appeal. He leaves her quickly with a promise
never to trouble her more.

And he dies soon after of a broken heart.

It is with such hardihood that the author grapples
with the crude stuff of men's lives, appalled by no cir-
cumstances or concatenation of circumstances, however
violent and surprising. The reader's breath is almost
taken away by the succession of surprising turns of the
kind so much prized in a certain kind of romance,
and now become the staple of the movies. Everything
is so disposed that the story shall never lag, that never
shall there be a failure of good things for the lover of
movement and novelty. That a man should offer his
wife at auction and find a buyer in the first chapter;

MOVIE 141

that his Jong-lost wife should return at the moment of
his worldly triumph; that she should be so conveniently
disposed of at so early a stage in order to make way for
the other woman and all the complications that follow
in her train; and she in turn for the sailor man, so
long held in reserve by ironic fate; that the old woman
who witnessed the sale of the wife should turn up so
opportunely at the moment when she is required to
complete the degradation of Henchard: these are but
the most obvious and striking arrangements for pro-
viding plot in the highest degree of excitement and
complication. Some are unusual enough in truth or
fiction, and some of ancient hackneyed use in story—
the mysteries and dubieties of birth, and the return of
embarrassing relatives long put out of mind or thought
to be dead. The combination is at any rate intriguing
and bizarre.

Innumerable are the minor coincidences that con-
tribute to the embroilment: that Jopp, for example,
the man discharged by Henchard and refused the favor
of her grace by Lucetta, should by chance have lived in
Jersey in the earlier days and known of their love
affair, and that he, the haunter of low taverns, should
be the man to whose hands were intrusted the incriminat-
ing letters. There are many of those coincidences in
which several persons whose fates cross come together
strangely in the same place at the same time. Such is
the chance by which Susan and Elizabeth are at the
Three Mariners Inn on the very evening that Henchard
and Farfrae meet there for their momentous interview;
the dramatic chance by which Henchard, Elizabeth,
and Farfrae meet at Lucetta's home, Farfrae being

i42 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

unaware of the acquaintance of Lucetta and Henchard;
the melodramatic chance by which Henchard finds
Lucetta and Elizabeth in the field with the mad bull,
so as to save their lives on the very day on which he is
to learn of Lucetta's secret marriage. And then there
are those chances which throw a light so ironic upon
human nature and its ineffectual commerce with fate:
such as the return of Newson to deprive Henchard of
the affections of Elizabeth just at the moment when the
two have come to love each other.

And in addition to the ordinary patterns of coinci-
dence and irony, there are many special devices sacred
to the makers of plots since the beginning of time.
Such is the mechanical means by which Farfrae and
Elizabeth were brought together by Susan, the duplicate
anonymous notes in which each one is requested to
repair at the same moment to the same place, a method
of bringing lovers together reminiscent of Beatrice and
Benedick in Much Ado. Twice the author resorts to
the old dodge of having one character tell his own
story to another without giving names, thus adding a
further spice of intrigue to the already much compli-
cated plot.

And as for the overheard conversation, Mr. Hardy
seems to have leaned more heavily on this feeble prop
in Casterbridge than in any novel since Desperate Reme-
dies. Elizabeth-Jane and her mother overhear the
business talk of Henchard and Farfrae at the tavern;
Lucetta overhears Henchard's reading of her letters
to Farfrae; and Henchard seems always to be so placed
behind wall or haystack as to hear news that maddens
him and drives him on to fateful action.

MOVIE 143

3

All that is an old story with Hardy, though it is an
element less in evidence in his more artistic performances.
But the specialty of The Mayor of Casterbridge, and what
makes its close affinity to the movie, is the large provision
of scenes of violent and surprising action making their
appeal directly to the sense of sight.

One of the chief and characteristic merits of a
moving picture is that it shall tell its story with the least
possible help from printed legend. Most perfectly
adaptable to such purposes are three exciting scenes in
which Henchard is the main actor: that in which he
saves the two women from the onset of the bull; that in
which he is prevented from greeting the King; and that
in which he struggles with Farfrae by the open door of
the barn and just fails to throw him down to destruction.
No legend at all is required to elucidate the meaning
of this kind of picture. It is not a matter of dialogue
and debate; it is a simple affair of physical action
proper to the life of the "wild west." The skimmity-
ride, again, and the scene in which Henchard and
Elizabeth discover the telltale effigies in the river, are
suitable to that kind of pageantry which sets forth its
meaning in visible symbols. Only slightly more in
need of explanatory legend are the scenes connected
with the sale of the wife — the auction itself in the first
chapter, and the denunciation of Henchard for the act
in open court — both so well adapted to the tastes of
the movie audience by the agreeable shock they give
the nerves. There are many other "dramatic" scenes
requiring some complement of dialogue, but hardly
more than the author actually supplies: the scene at the

i44 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

mayor's dinner where Henchard is challenged by a voice
of discontent in regard to the "grown wheat" and makes
his witty defiant reply; that in which he compels
Lucetta to promise marriage; and the touching scene
of his farewell to Elizabeth- Jane.

Mr. Hardy, as we have long since learned, takes
firm hold upon the visible and tangible world, and we
are at every point well supplied with objects to catch
the eye and physical action suited to hold the attention.
The device of the overheard conversation is a favorite
one in the movies, it gives such scope for that study
of facial expression which is so important a feature of
movie art. Consider, for example, the picture that
Henchard makes as he listens to the love-making of
Farfrae and Lucetta, or later to that of Farfrae and
Elizabeth. Or consider the opportunity given an
" emotional actress" by the part of Lucetta listening
to the talk of the servants across the street as they
describe the skimmity-pageant.

It has been for Lucetta a day of triumph, the day of
the King's visit, and she is waiting in the firelight for
the return of her husband. Then her attention is
suddenly called to the talk of the maids; and gradually
as they describe the figures representing herself and
Henchard, she comes to realize the horrible significance
of this ceremony. We can imagine how her face passes
by degrees from an expression of pleased reminiscence
and tender pensiveness to one of dread and consternation.
And then the action: "Lucetta started to her feet;
and almost at the instant the door of the room was
quickly and softly opened. Elizabeth- Jane advanced
into the firelight." Elizabeth, hoping to spare Lucetta,

MOVIE 145

makes an attempt to close the shutters; but she is
forcibly prevented by Lucetta, who is determined, in
her agony, to hear and see the worst. They struggle
together ....

Elizabeth- Jane was frantic now. "Oh, can't something be
done to stop it?" she cried. "Is there nobody to do it — not one?"

She relinquished Lucetta's hands, and ran to the door.
Lucetta herself, saying recklessly, "I will see it!" turned to the
window, threw up the sash, and went out upon the balcony.
Elizabeth immediately followed her, and put her arm around her
to pull her in. Lucetta's eyes were straight upon the spectacle
of the uncanny revel, now advancing rapidly. The numerous
lights around the two effigies threw them up into lurid distinct-
ness; it was impossible to mistake the pair for other than the
intended victims.

"Come in, come in," implored Elizabeth; "and let me shut
the window!"

"She's me — she's me — even to the parasol — my green
parasol!" cried Lucetta, with a wild laugh as she stepped in.
She stood motionless for one second — then fell heavily to the
floor.1

One imagines perfectly how this would be managed
in the moving picture — the alternate showing of the
scene in the street and the scene in the house: the
grotesque figures representing the exposed man and
woman, and the actual face of the woman; the struggle
with Elizabeth; the bursting out on the balcony; again
the effigies as she sees them and her white face of anguish;
the puppet with the green parasol and the crowd of
onlookers; the stepping back from the balcony and her
fall to the floor. Here is no stately and deliberate stage
with high antagonists pitted against each other in a war
of measured words that are winged thoughts. Here is

337-38.

146 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

the vivid art of startling pictures full of movement,
constantly shifting, and never failing in excitement and
variety.

4

It goes without saying that the drama proper is
most inadequately put before us. The story is told in
outline, just enough so that the reader may keep abreast
of the action, may take in what is meant; never linger-
ingly, so that he may get the relish, the intimate signifi-
cance, the sense of being on the inside.

The difference will be startlingly apparent to a reader
familiar with Trollope or George Eliot, Dostoyevsky
or Meredith or Stevenson. Anyone who remembers
Mrs. Proudie's reception in Barchester Towers, with
the dramatic arrival of the Signora Vicineroni, knows
what is meant by the full development of a comic
situation. Anyone who has read the account of Hetty's
journey in Adam Bede knows how the heart may be
wrung by following at length the mental experiences
of a human being in misery and despair. Anyone who
has read of the visit of the Brothers Karamazov to the
holy man, or the rapid succession of dialogues on the
lawn following the discovery of Sir Willoughby's secret
by Crossjay Patterne, knows how one place and one
moment may burgeon out into clusters of scenes each
more intriguing than the last. It all comes back to what
Henry James calls " economy" in the use of material.

Of such economy Mr. Hardy had shown more than
a notion in A Pair of Blue Eyes and The Native, as he
was destined to show it again in Tess and Jude. But in
The Mayor of Casterbridge he wastes his substance in
the most riotous fashion. To take one example: the

MOVIE 147

feeling of Henchard and Elizabeth toward one another
after the death of Henchard's wife and Elizabeth's
mother is a subject teeming with possibilities for such
imaginations as James's or George Eliot's. It is indeed
a subject of the greatest delicacy, and one calling for the
most patient and thoughtful elucidation in order to
have any value for story, for psychology, or for art.
Above all the emotional experience of Elizabeth on the
night following Henchard's announcement that he is
her father, and his sudden change of heart upon learning
that he is not her father — these are occurrences that need
more than the dry statement of fact, the mere assertion
by the author in the briefest of terms. Henchard's
revulsion of feeling, in particular, would have required,
one would suppose, more than a night to bring it about;
and it certainly required more than his wife's letter and
the glimpse of Elizabeth's features by candle-light to
make us appreciate it as a psychological fact. But
Hardy is concerned with nothing further, on the side
of art, than the irony involved in the double and contrary
change of heart; and he leaves the reader almost as
puzzled as Elizabeth- Jane.

It is true that we have here some half-dozen pictures
admirably adapted to the screen.

And something of the sort may be said for the book
as a whole. There is matter here for half a dozen
novels; but what is given is hardly more than the
scenario of a movie.

5

Well then! many a reader will exclaim, so this is
no more than a crude counterpart in print of the crude
and vulgar art of the cinematograph! And can this be

148 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

one of the valued works of a writer of genius, whom we
prize among our thinkers and poets? There can be
little question that The Mayor of Casterbridge is among
the half-dozen most powerful novels of Thomas Hardy,
only a little below The Madding Crowd and somewhat
above A Pair of Blue Eyes in the serious appeal of its
art. And this is almost wholly due to the character of
Michael Henchard — the profound interest we take in
him, and the entire faith we have in his existence. The
first thing we realize when we begin to reflect upon any
serious work of Hardy's is the unqualified honesty of
his treatment of human nature. However romantic he
may be in his plots, however ready to admit the sensa-
tional and improbable in combinations of incident, he
maintains throughout his realism, his fidelity, in reference
to the characters. The surest thing about Michael
Henchard is that he is true to life. What happens to
him may be incredible; he never loses, through whatever
maze of action and intrigue, the simple integrity of his
nature.

Mr. Hardy has never learned, it seems, the polite
art of flavoring character to suit the public taste. He
has not the recipe for a hero, or the still simpler recipe
for a villain. He has none of those easy tricks for enlist-
ing our sympathy for characters who are later to crave
indulgence. The first moral item furnished in regard
to Henchard is the evidence in his gait of "a dogged
and cynical indifference." We see him trudging along
with his wife in complete silence, accepting phlegmati-
cally her suggestion as to a place for refreshment at the
fair, developing a bitter loquacity under the influence
of drink, and sullenly putting through the business of

s

I

MOVIE 149

auctioning off his wife and child. And yet we are
satisfied that we have here no exceptional brute, let
alone a despicable villain. We are not asked to look
upon this man as a Daniel Quilp or a Bill Sikes. The
author does not get excited, does not by word or gesture
call upon us to take sides against him; but by a kind of
sober evenness and candor of tone suggests that here is
something sad and not unnatural, which has its explana-
tion in familiar experience. We can even feel the weight
of what the young hay-trusser has to urge about his early
imprudent marriage, and how it has prevented him from
getting on in life. It is not Henchard but an impartial
philosopher in the company who puts forth the suggestion
that "men who have got wives, and don't want 'em,
should get rid of 'em as these gipsy fellows do their old
horses." And public opinion is not made to interpose
a protest from any of the rustic company who witness
the transaction.

And as Hardy does not raise an outcry over the
selling of the wife, so he does not expatiate on the good-
ness of heart of Henchard in his long search for the lost
woman. It was a matter of course that he should have
more than spent in trying to find her the five guineas he
had received from her buyer; that he should have
bllowed patiently until the trace grew faint at the edge
the ocean. It was what any man would have done
who had any feeling, any sense of obligation. It was
what any decent man would have done. And Michael
Henchard was decidedly a decent sort of man. The
.uthor does not tell us that in so many words, but he
creates an atmosphere of truth, of fairness, in which we
form an opinion not colored by romantic predilections.

150 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

It is not often that an English author is so frank about
his hero. And the absolute frankness of the author has
much the same effect upon a thoughtful reader as
frankness on the part of the character himself. It
prepossesses the reader in favor of the character. And,
for that matter, Henchard is frank enough, and severe
enough, in judging of his own behavior. This was
realized by Elizabeth when, after her wedding, she
discovered the bird cage with the dead goldfinch, his
neglected tribute of affection. The caged bird, she
realized, "had been brought by Henchard as a wedding
gift and token of repentance. He had not expressed
to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done in
the past; but it was a part of his nature to extenuate
nothing, and live on as one of his own worst accusers."
Altogether characteristic, again, was his acknowledg-
ment in open court of the charge of the furmity woman.
It had been pointed out by the other magistrate that
her revelation had no bearing on the case before them,
and the clerk had declared it to be a concocted story.
It might easily have been denied by Henchard. But
instead, in excess of self-abasement, he made his impetu-
ous confession, and even agreed with the obscene
creature that it did prove him no better than she and
having no right to sit in judgment upon her. And he
was capable of much harder and less theatrical a method
of self-punishment. His remarriage with Susan was
dictated by conscientious and almost morbidly sacrificial
motives.

But it is by his warmth of nature that he takes hold
upon our feelings. He is of the race of Tom Jones and
not of Blifil. He can be cruel and violent, but never

n
ir

i

I
I

MOVIE 151

with deliberation. He may plot revenge and meanness;
but when it comes to the scratch, he is constrained to
fairness and generosity. He treats himself to the grim
pleasure of reading to Farfrae the letters of the false
Lucetta, and hearing her condemnation from the
mouth of her husband and his rival; he has anticipated
the delight of reading out her name with grand effect
as the catastrophe of this drama. "But sitting here
in cold blood he could not do it. Such a wrecking of
hearts appalled even him. His quality was such that
he could have annihilated them both in the heat of action;
but to accomplish the deed by oral poison was beyond the
nerve of his enmity."

And so with his sparing of Farfrae's life in the barn.
Only think how he must have suffered in his vanity from
the successes of Farfrae, whose very kindnesses were
dagger-stabs to the sensitive self-respect of the fallen
man! And now he has him at his mercy, the enemy
of his house, who has taken away his woman, whom
he has to obey as his master, and who has shamed him
in the sight of all the town! Farfrae bids him take his
ife. "YeVe wished to long enough!"

Henchard looked down upon him in silence, and their eyes
met. "O Farfrae!— that's not true!" he said bitterly. "God
is my witness that no man ever loved another as I did thee at

ne time And now — though I came here to kill 'ee, I

cannot hurt thee! Go and give me in charge — do what you
will — I care nothing for what comes of me!"

There is the simple accent of Bible truth. It is true
that Henchard had loved Farfrae with all the heat of a
passionate nature. He had carried Farfrae off his feet
in the beginning by the naive charm of his sudden

1 52 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

affection. He had taken possession of him — not so much
because he needed him in business as because he craved
him in his lonely heart. He had taken possession of
him, as friend took possession of friend in the early
ages of the world, in places beyond the reign of caution
or convention; he had taken him to his bosom, and

loaded him with favors, and set him in high place

Only at last to grow jealous and unreasonable, to thrust
him away in his perversity, and force him into the posi-
tion of a foe!

For Michael Henchard was not a man governed by
good policy. It would have been the best policy to
secure Farfrae for his son-in-law. "But such a scheme
for buying over a rival had nothing to recommend it
to the mayor's headstrong faculties. With all domestic
finesse of that kind he was hopelessly at variance.
Loving a man or hating him, his diplomacy was as

wrong-headed as a buffalo's " It is this indeed

which makes him so picturesque a figure, so good a hero
of romance after all. He has not the colorless monotony
of the business man who follows sure ways to success,
who has conformed to every rule of conventional
wisdom, and made himself as featureless as a potato field,
as tame as an extinct volcano. Michael Henchard is
the volcano in action. His is the impetuous, undis-
ciplined, self-revealing nature of a child. And he
fascinates us like the childish, picturesque people of
Gorky and Dostoyevsky.

Like the characters of the Russian novel, Henchard
gives the impression of being unreasonable and incon-
sistent. We come to expect of him freakish action,
and to take it as a matter of course. But a careful

MOVIE 153

examination of his conduct will show it is not at bottom
inconsistent. His acts are wrong-headed enough, show-
ing an incorrect analysis of the situation, inaccurate
reading, or wilful ignoring, of their natural effects.
But they all have their root in what is perhaps the most
constant and powerful of all human passions — the^
passion of vanity. It is with him the frank vanity
of a child — the craving for dignity and consideration
which, in maturity, finds so many indirect expressions
and disguises. There is little nobility in it, and little
baseness. We all, when we are honest, recognize it in
ourselves as perhaps the governing motive of action.
And Hardy makes us honest. So that we are bound to
have for his protagonist an indulgence like that we
accord ourselves.

And then he is so blundering and childish in his
struggle for consideration! He is his own worst enemy,
the well-meaning author of his own failure. His failure
is so complete and pathetic, and his acknowledgment
of it couched in terms so simple and absolute! When
they came upon his body in the lonely hut on Egdon
Heath, Elizabeth and Farfrae found with it a penciled
will, to the following effect:

togi

That Elizabeth- Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made
to grieve on account of me.

& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground.

& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.

& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.

& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.

& that no flours be planted on my grave.

& that no man remember me.

To this I put my name.

MICHAEL HENCHARD*

1 P. 404.

154 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

How pitifully he makes renunciation of all the
posthumous dignities and satisfactions of mortality!
None can harden his heart against him now. However
he may have repelled us by his perversities in earlier
stages of his career, he has at last won by his sufferings
and his humanity a sympathy as whole-hearted as that
we accord to King Lear, another violent and unreason-
able figure of Wessex story.

And if Michael Henchard is a convincing and
appealing figure, he is one well cast for his part in a story
that is so like a moving-picture film. He is, after all,
beneath his civil garb and chain of office, the original
caveman, ever readier with blows than words. He is,
amid the conventions and refinements of polite inter-
course, a bull in a china shop; and his gentlest movement
is accompanied by the crash of breaking crockery.
He is more given to feeling than to thought; he does not
arrive at decisions by the deliberate and tortuous route
of reflection, reaching his position by due and gradual
stages of approach.

In a world of talk, he is almost inarticulate. And we
cannot expect to find, in any exchange of sentiments in
which he takes a part, that slow arrival at the point at
issue, that feeling of the way, that jockeying for position,
that long ghostly fencing-match of allusion, before the
opposed parties come to a grapple, which gives its
breathless interest to so many a dialogue of Paul Bourget
or Henry James. There is seldom any swaying back
and forth of the opposed interests, any sustainment of
the struggle by the arrival of reinforcements to one side

MOVIE 155

or the other. The battle is soon joined and quickly
over, and the field cleared for a new engagement.
Michael Henchard is not the man to indulge in pre-
liminary flourishes or diplomatic pourparlers. If he is
not ready to do business, he has nothing to say; he stays
at home. When he goes forth, it is because he is ready
to do business.

It might be imagined that when he saw Lucetta
again after so long a time, however well he may have
made up his mind to propose the marriage that she has
come to Casterbridge to bring about, he might have made
his approaches to the subject with some decency of
ceremony; he might have allowed their long-interrupted
friendship a chance to re-establish itself. Any other
author would have shown us his characters reaching
out to one another with groping gestures. In Henry
James, in Mrs. Wharton or Mr. Moore, there would
have been some pretense, on one side or other, of
tenderness, of lingering affection, before the matter
was brought to a strictly business basis. But this is
not the way of Michael Henchard. On his first visit
to Lucetta — on the first occasion when he can speak to
her alone — he marches straight up to his lady, brushes
aside her " nonsense" about his politeness in calling,
and delivers his precise and compact statement of
intention.

"I've called to say that I am ready, as soon as custom will
permit, to give you my name, in return for your devotion, and
what you lost by it, in thinking too little of yourself and too much
of me; to say that you can fix the day or month, with my full
consent, whenever in your opinion it would be seemly: you know
more of these things than I."

156 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

So there you have it, all in a breath. There is not
much left to be said. And we read on the very next
page that, as the result of a still more direct question
of Henchard's, "Lucetta had the move." As we know,
she did not at that time want to make the move, since
her interest in Farfrae had come to make her indifferent
to Henchard. There are endless possibilities of dramatic
fencing in that circumstance; but within another page
our impatient author has got rid of his impatient hero,
and has left his heroine to make a final picture for his
storied screen.

He had hardly gone down the staircase when she dropped upon
the sofa, and jumped up again in a fit of desperation. "I will
love him," she cried passionately [meaning Farfrae] ; "as for him —
he's hot-tempered and stern, and it would be madness to bind
myself to him knowing that. I won't be a slave to the past —
I'll love where I choose!"

On his next visit Henchard meets Farfrae at
Lucetta's and cannot talk to her alone. And there is
no further interview recorded until one night many
months later. It is after Henchard has witnessed the
love-making of Farfrae and Lucetta in the harvest
field; and she finds the jealous man awaiting her in her
house. She complains of the impropriety of this late
visit; and there is mutual recrimination to the extent
of a little more than a page, bringing them to the subject
of her reluctance to marry Henchard. He makes at
last a reference to Farfrae, "The man you are thinking
of is no better than I." And suddenly we arrive at the
stage of the cinema.

"If you were as good as he is you would leave me!" she
cried passionately.

=

I

MOVIE 157

This unluckily aroused Henchard. "You cannot in honor
refuse me," he said. [And then, as if there were nothing more
to be said on that subject, and without further introduction:]
"And unless you give me your promise this very night to be my
wife, before a witness, I'll reveal our intimacy — in common fair-
ness to other men!"1

All in a nutshell — reduced to the dimensions of a movie
legend. Nothing more is said. " Without another word
she rang the bell, and directed that Elizabeth-Jane
should be fetched from her room." In the presence
of Elizabeth- Jane the distracted woman agrees to marry
Henchard and straightway falls into a faint. There
is some bewilderment and protest on the part of
Elizabeth; but in less than a minute her father is gone,
and Lucetta has begged her to "let it all be."

So that is what Mr. Hardy does with the one situation
in his novel that offers an opportunity for "scenical"
development. That is all the use he makes ois the
delicate and dramatic relationship between his leading
man and his leading woman. It is a waste of material
at which other novelists would stand aghast — a want
of refinement in method which must have been the
amazement of certain of his contemporaries.

And yet who shall say it is not in its way effective
t ? Who shall say that Michael Henchard is not made
to live as few figures live in history or fiction? Have
we not seen him in action, in a hundred characteristic
poses ? So vivid is the presentation by this method of
ictured moments, so complete and moving the illusion
of life, that we well nigh forget the rude contrivances
and violent shifts by which a plot was patched together.

P. 236.

VII. CHRONICLE

It is our somewhat invidious task in this part of our
study to measure the comparative failure of a great
artist in some of his work by the standard of achievement
set by himself in his best. We are particularly engaged
in this and the preceding chapter in tracing the lapse in
The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Woodlanders from the
dramatic ideal as embodied in The Return of the Native.
In The Mayor of Casterbridge we -dwelt upon certain
features suggestive of the moving picture. The Wood-
landers, though wanting a Michael Henchard, is very
similar to its predecessor in narrative technique; and
we shall be occupied in this chapter with the illustration,
from the later book, of other points in which both books
fall short of the dramatic ideal — points which suggest
indeed a kind of play which had its vogue in England
before the evolution of a better form.

The theme of The Woodlanders has many points of
likeness to that of The Return of the Native. The story
concerns a young woman born to the rude and simple
life of the remote woodland country, and attached to
this life by all that is deepest in her emotional nature,
but, through education and the ambition of her well-
to-do father, turned aside from woodland ways and
woodland associations, and aiming at a life of higher
worldly standards. Such is Grace Melbury, daughter
of the timber merchant, just returning, as the story

158

CHRONICLE 159

opens, from her fashionable school to her father's home
in Little Hintock. And the opposed ideals of the
worldly and the woodland life are embodied in her two
suitors, Edgar^Fitzpiers, the local physician, philoso-
pher, gentleman, and libertine, and Giles Winterborne,
modest planter of trees and presser and seller of cider
from the apple orchards. Giles is himself the object of a
hopeless passion on the part of Marty South, a poor
girl of the neighborhood who often helps him in his
planting.

At first her father favors Grace's union with Giles;
but when he sees the great transformation wrought in her
by her schooling, he begins to regret the spending of so
much money upon her only that she may sink back again
to their own social level. And when, by the death of an
old man, upon whose life depended Giles's title to certain
land, the woodlander becomes a man without property,
Melbury uses all his influence with his daughter in favor
of her more promising suitor. In the meantime Grace
herself has been somewhat offended in her cultivated
tastes by the awkwardness and social inexperience of
her rustic lover. And she is brought gradually and
reluctantly to a marriage with Fitzpiers.

She soon comes to realize that she cannot live up to
his standards of social aloofness, that she entertains a
fondness for rustic persons and manners which her
gentleman husband disdains. And Fitzpiers, falling in
love with a lady of ardent temperament who occupies
the manor house of Hintock, takes advantage of his
profession of doctor to carry on a love affair suitable
to the standards of smart society. In the end he goes
abroad to live with his Mrs. Charmond; and the

160 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

remorseful timber merchant busies himself to get a
divorce for his abused daughter so that she may marry
her honest and devoted woodland lover. Before this
can be accomplished — and indeed it wa$*not, we know,
possible of accomplishment — Mrs. Charmond has been
murdered by another jealous lover, and Fitzpiers comes
home to his wife.

But by this time her disgust for him and her love
for Giles have gathered strength; and upon the return
of her husband, she takes flight into the forest, to Giles
in his little hut. There the chivalrous man turns out
of his home to give her shelter, though he is suffering
himself with fever; and as a result of lying in a leaky
lean-to, he becomes mortally sick. When Grace finally
realizes his condition, she takes him into the cottage
and summons the doctor. The doctor is her husband,
and the situation is a strange one. It is made the
stranger by her proud perverse declaration to Fitzpiers
that she has been, in the full sense of the word, the
lover of Giles.

After the death of Giles, it is but a matter of time
and favoring circumstance till husband and wife make
their explanations, and come together again for life
with chastened passions and a will to conformity.

But the last word is for Giles; and it is spoken by
Marty South, the other pure and unmixed type of the
poetry of the woods and of the humble life. For many
months, ever since the death of Giles, she and Grace
had come once a week by night to lay flowers on his
grave. But now Grace has failed her in their tryst,
and she alone is faithful to the man they had both
loved. So there in the moonlight she stoops above the

CHRONICLE 161

grave, a slight girlish figure, and talks in whispers to
the dead man:

"Now, my own, own love, you are mine, and on'y mine; for
she has forgot 'ee at last, although for her you died. But I —
whenever I get up I'll think of 'ee. Whenever I plant the young
larches I'll think that none can plant as you planted; and when-
ever I split a gad, and whenever I turn the cider-wring, I'll say
none could do it like you. If ever I forget your name, let me
forget home and Heaven! — But no, no, my love, I never can
forget 'ee; for you was a good man, and did good things."

This is poetry. And everything that is finest in
the book is poetry. It lies in the special charm of this
district, rendered with such affectionate penetration, a
district which must be more like what Mr. Hardy
knew as a child than any other kind of country of which
he has given account in his variegated Wessex. Even
more than Egdon Heath or the Greenwood Tree, this
is a region " outside the gates of the world"; and the
dweller in towns who makes his way hither must leave
the forsaken coach road where the trees "make the
way- side hedges ragged with their drip and shade," to
follow an even more secluded lane into the heart of the
woodland. We have not here the pastures and grain
fields of The Madding Crowd and Tess. Here we have
the vegetable world not so much dominated by, as
dominating, man. It is a place where men nestle like
birds under the heavy thatch of horizontal branches,
where the sun is not seen complete till mid-day, and the
rain drips long from the fringe of boughs upon the
garden plots, where men in motion are seen with "leaf-
shadows running their quick succession over their forms."
The most open country here is that of the orchards,

1 62 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

ancient apple trees, dappling the ground with shadow.
But we are more likely to find ourselves among the
mossed and fungused ashes and elms of the sunless
forest, or "amid beeches under which nothing grew,"
their leaves "rustling in the breeze with a sound almost
metallic, like the sheet-iron foliage of the fabled Jarnvid
wood."

Here is the reign of trees, who are like sacred beings;
and Winterborne is their priest or tutelary god. In the
time of his absence,

He rose upon Grace's memory as the fruit-god and the wood-god
in alternation, sometimes leafy, and smeared with green lichen,
as she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the plantation;
sometimes cider-stained, and with apple pips in the hair of his
arms, as she had met him on his return from cider making ....
with his vats and presses beside him.

Giles and Marty, from their long labors together, had
possessed themselves of all the finer mysteries of the
woods,

those remoter signs and symbols which, seen in few, were of
runic obscurity, but all together made an alphabet. From the
light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, when brushing through
them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the species of the
tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the wind's
murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its
sort afar off.

There was even a mystic sympathy between the trees
and Winterborne by virtue of which he could make
them grow better than other men.

And it was by a wonderful stroke of the poetical imagi-
nation that the author made the destiny of his woodland
minister depend upon the life of a tree. In the beginning
of the story Winterborne is the owner of several houses

CHRONICLE 163

with their orchards and gardens. But, by a strange
inequitable arrangement, which has been elsewhere
employed by Mr. Hardy in the ironic entanglement of
men's fates, his ownership or lease is made to hang
upon the life of another woodlander, the father of
Marty South. And the sick brain of old Mr. South is
possessed of a superstitious notion, not confined to
Wessex or the nineteenth century, that his life is somehow
bound up with that of another being, in this case, a
great elm tree growing before his dwelling. It is his
notion that in his youth he had in some way made an
enemy of the ancient tree, and that now it threatens his
life every time the wind blows. So rooted is his obses-
sion that to the doctor it seems that the tree is actually
frightening the old man to death; and he orders it
felled to save his patient's life. It is Winterborne who
cuts it down. But instead of saving his life, the dis-
appearance of the tree actually paralyzes the sick man
with amazement, and he dies on the same day as the
sun goes down, like some fabled hero whose life continues
only with the flaming of a torch or the flourishing of a
flower.1 And with the death of the old man, the young
man loses possession of all his houses and lands, and so
of his prospective bride — his fate, too, being determined
by the dumb decree of the woodland creature whose life
he had himself cut short.

3

It will be seen how beautifully the theme has been
developed and bodied forth on the side of poetry. But
the author was bent himself on its employment for the

1 Perhaps Hardy, who was a reader of Shelley, remembered the
death of the poet in Alastor, exactly as the sun went down.

164 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

purposes of drama. It is at the very start that he
reminds us of the dramatic possibilities of his woodland
scene: "one of those sequestered spots outside the gates
of the world .... where, from time to time, no less
than in other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity
truly Sophoclean are enacted in the real, by virtue of
the concentrated passions and closely knit interdepend-
ence of the lives therein."

If this is taken for the author's account of the action
that is to follow, the reader will be sorely disappointed,
so far does the drama of Grace Melbury fall short of
Sophoclean unity and grandeur. One reason for this
at once occurs to the reader. It is the want of those
concentrated passions that give their grandeur to
Sophoclean tragedy, as they do to the tragedy of Eustacia
» Vye, of Jude the Obscure. Edgar Fitzpiers and Felice
Charmond are persons of weak character and voluptu-
ous imagination, who suffer themselves and cause pain
to others. And the woman pays indeed the penalty of
coquetry and volatility. But in neither case are we
given the impression of a large and deep nature capable
of the stirring of a grand passion. The woman is an
idle sentimentalist; the man a fanciful Platonist, a
sensualist, and a snob.

Much more serious and deeper rooted are the
sentiments of Grace and Giles; but they are truly senti-
ments rather than passions, and however lovely they
may be in their delicate woodland fragrance, they are
not of force to break through barriers with the imperious
rush of passion. Grace is too easily persuaded to marry
the man she does not love to give us at that stage of the
story even the impression of strong character. After

CHRONICLE 165

the death of her lover, she is too easily persuaded to go
back to her husband to give us the impression of deep
feeling. Her flight to the woods on the return of
Fitzpiers was not an assertion of passion for Giles;
this was "the Daphnean instinct, exceptionally strong
in her as a girl .... not lessened by .... her
regard for another man." She did not seek out Giles as
a lover, but as a trusted friend; he would help her to
make her way to a schoolmate in a distant town. And
it was the accident of the storm which compelled her
to occupy the lone cottage, and led to her presence at
the death of Giles.

It was an exciting moment when she took flight, and
another when she had to summon her husband to the
bedside of the man she loved. But exciting moments
do not together make up drama. There was one more
truly dramatic occasion earlier, when Giles, knowing
already that she could not be legally separated from
Fitzpiers, that she could not be his own, yet broke
through all the restraints of his primitive chastity, and
allowed himself that momentary embrace which Grace
believed to be innocent. But several dramatic occasions
in the course of a story are far from making up drama
of Sophoclean unity and grandeur. Passions must be
not merely "concentrated" upon a single object; they
must be shown in concentration, in continuous action,
to give rise to drama.

4

This is the great failure of The Woodlanders, as it
was of Casterbridge, a failure in technique, the want of
concentration, of continuous dramatic action. It is
shown on the surface of both novels by the want of that

1 66 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

division into parts which gave The Native an exterior
resemblance to drama, and signalized the thoughtful
massing of the subject-matter. And with no separation
of parts, there can be no use of dramatic headings for
the main divisions — no " Fascination," no "Closed
Door." The author does not even take advantage of
the division into chapters to attach significant titles
to them. There is little promise of dramatic form;
and the performance is not greater than the promise.
The unities of place and time are less regarded than in
'The Native, especially the latter. The action of The
Woodlanders covers three whole years, and is about
evenly distributed over the whole of that time.

And instead of being developed in a small number of
scenes in which there can be an acceleration and growing
weight of interest, the action is dispersed through a
great number of separate occasions, each one very
briefly treated and dismissed. The ingenuity of the
author is taxed to the utmost to provide phrases to
denote transition from one place to another, from one
point of time to another. "Meanwhile, in the wood
they had come from"; "it chanced a few minutes
before this time"; "at the same hour, and almost at
the same minute, there was a conversation about
Winterborne in progress in the village street"; "later
in the evening"; "the next morning at breakfast";
"often during the previous night"— so they follow one
another in quick succession, often within the chapter,
as the author goes forward or backward, to add some
new item or take up some dropped thread of the story.
Often the transition is made, and often within the
chapter, with no phrase of warning, and the new picture

CHRONICLE 167

takes the place of the old with disconcerting suddenness.
The author is forever telling us, too, of the change of
seasons which carry the story along with them: " Spring
weather came on suddenly"; "The leaves over Hintock
grew denser in their substance"; "It was the beginning
of June, and the cuckoo . . . ."; " The leaves overhead

were now in their latter green Summer was

ending."

These indications, again, occur as often as not
within the chapter, thus signalizing the progress from
one stage of the story to another without even the formal
starting of a new division in the narrative. It is some-
times very hard to see upon what principle the division
of chapters is made. A large number of consecutive
scenes are grouped together, with little regard to the
period of time included, scenes in which the place and
the actors are constantly changing, and which are cut
off, it might almost seem, simply after a certain average
of pages has been covered.

No hint is given that the author has ever taken into
account any principle in regard to the point of view from
which the story is to be told. In a general way, as in
all fiction, we see and know and are concerned about
what the main actor sees and knows and is concerned
about. But numberless are the exceptions to this
rule. Often we cannot be sure for more than a few
sentences as to who is the main actor; and even within
these limits we may have something presented from the
point of view of a different person, or from that of the
community as a whole. And then we are constantly
passing, it may be within the sentence, from what a
person thinks and sees on a particular occasion to a

J

1 68 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

general statement in regard to his character, or human
nature in general, or to some truth or circumstance
known only to the omniscient manipulator of puppets.
The reader is given no chance to follow for any length
of time with growing interest the mental or emotional
experience of a given character, his particular adventure.
The center of interest is constantly shifting, and the
picture is correspondingly blurred and indistinct.

Dialogue is constantly in use at all points in the story.
But the passages of dialogue are very short, and con-
i stantly interspersed with description and with the
narrative of action and event. Just as the reader is
getting a relish for the words of men's mouths, they
fall silent, and he is whisked away to be witness of the
deeds of their hands, or to view the landscape in which
they appear. Very seldom is a dialogue given entire;
and very often the author, as if in haste to get on with
his story, gives us the gist of the talk in his own words.
The same baffling method is applied to action, whether
upon a particular occasion or over a period of time — it
is given in arid summary. There are so many things
to be told, so many little happenings to be recorded,
so many little explosions into speech. There are so
many threads of interest to be woven into the pattern.
The goal is so far off, and we must not linger by the way.

5

J^et us take as a specimen the fifteenth chapter,
which relate? what follows upoH the death of old Mf7
South. We are first presented with Mr. Melbury and
his perturbation over the probable loss of property by
Winterborne. "When Melbury heard what had hap-

o

shi
au

£

CHRONICLE 169

pened he seemed much moved, and walked thoughtfully

about the premises He was quite angry with

circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting on Giles a
second trouble when the needful one inflicted by himself
was all that the proper order of events demanded."
He exclaims over the situation to his daughter; but he
gives her to understand all the same that Giles cannot
thought of as a son-in-law. Then we have a sudden

hift to the point of view of Grace as observed by the
author, who knows the secrets of her heart. "At that

ery moment the impracticability to which poor Winter-
rne's suit had been reduced was touching Grace's
heart to a warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had
felt for years concerning him."

And then at once, after less than a page, we turn
to a new scene altogether. Giles, "meanwhile, was
sitting down alone in the old familiar house which had
ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal
survey of affairs." He examines the legal documents

earing upon his ownership and realizes that, whatever
fairness may be his right to the property, his legal

aim depends upon the mere caprice of a woman whom

e has offended. Three short paragraphs, and then a
new scene. "While he was sitting and thinking a step
came to the door, and Melbury appeared, looking very
sorry for his position." Melbury urges him to write
to Mrs. Charmond and throw himself upon her gener-
osity. "'I would rather not,' murmured Giles. 'But
you must,' said Melbury. In short he argued so
cogently that Giles allowed himself to be persuaded,"
says the chronicler, summarizing the debate; and then,
summarizing the action that followed, "the letter to

1 7o MORE CRAFT THAN ART

Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to Hintock
House." The following paragraph shows us Melbury
going home content with his good act, and Giles left
alone in suspense; as well as bringing in what villagers
thought about the matter.

The next three pages give us a glimpse of Marty
South on the nights preceding the burial of her father,
and dispose of the burial of South and the arrival of Mrs.
Charmond's letter, together with the views of Winter-
borne, Melbury, Grace, and the countrymen upon the
subject.

The rest of the chapter is a huddled record in three
pages more of circumstances which, by mere chance,
determine the fates of Grace and Giles. In the evening
Giles discovers on the front of his house a scribbled
rime to the following effect:

"0 Giles, you've lost your dwelling-place,
And therefore Giles, you'll lose your Grace."

Thereupon he writes a note to Melbury, giving up his
claim to his daughter, takes it to the timber dealer's
house, and thrusts it under the door (all this in three
paragraphs) . Melbury gets up in the morning and reads
the note (one paragraph). In the early morning,
Grace passes by Giles's house, sees the inscription, rubs
out the word "lose," and substitutes the word "keep."
She believes she is seen by Giles, and that he can draw
the inference that she is still his (one paragraph). A
paragraph is devoted to Grace's feelings. At breakfast
her father shows her the letter from Giles, and she thinks
her fate is sealed. Then follows nearly a page of
dialogue between Giles and Marty South — it was she

:

CHRONICLE 171

10 had inscribed the rhyme — the upshot being that the
change in the verse leaves it without sense, and that
probably it was some idle boy that made it. The
results for the two young people are very briefly summed
up in a final paragraph — how Giles " re tired into the
background of human life and action thereabout," and
how "Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write,
made no further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that
she had thus timidly launched was stranded and lost."

It will be realized what an ineffectual patchwork is
here offered to a reader eager for the excitement of a
well-told story, for the intellectual stimulus of a thought-
ful study, or the aesthetic gratification of a dramatic
scene adequately presented. There are three main
persons in whose interest the events might have been
recorded, and the reader's concern thoroughly aroused by
following throughout the chapter the feelings of any
one of them. But instead, the interest is divided about
equally among the three, Giles, Grace, and Melbury;
nd the reader's sympathy is dissipated still farther by
his having his attention drawn to the feelings and
affairs of Fitzpiers and Marty South, not to speak of the
villagers en masse. There are three main events to any
one of which the whole of a chapter might well have
been devoted in order to develop its latent possibilities
of suspense, of dramatic strain, of the display of charac-
ter. One is the long-waited arrival of the letter which
determined for Giles whether he was rich or poor; the
second is the scene between him and Melbury in which
the latter announces his attitude toward the former's

1 72 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

suit; the third is the alteration of the scribbled verse
and the circumstances by which it fails to carry its
message to Giles. As a matter of fact, in each case there
is a languid and feeble attempt to do justice to the
particular event, soon dropped as if from weariness,
want of resource, or a fatal compulsion to hurry on.
"Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of
the ride, and looked up its long straight slope through

the wet grays of winter dawn On the twelfth

day the man of missives, while yet in the extreme
distance, held up his hand, and Winterborne saw a
letter in it." Such is the tribute paid by the author
to the convention of suspense aroused by successive
disappointments.

It is in similar ineffectual fashion that, in a later
chapter, he tries to make us feel the fatal passing of the
days that lead to the unhappy marriage of Grace.
"The interim closed up its perspective surely and

silently Day after day waxed and waned

The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished

yet The day loomed so big and nigh that her

prophetic ear She awoke: the morning had

come. Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers."
These are the rustiest springs of ancient melodrama, the
sorriest apology for a story not told!

As for the strong potential scene between Melbury
and Giles, only the opening remarks are given, and the
author shies at the critical point like a horse shying at a
fence too high for him. The alteration of the verse by
Grace and the writing and delivery of the letter from
Giles were presumably accompanied by lively feelings
on her side and on his; but the nearest we come to an

CHRONICLE 173

adequate presentation of anything concerned with this
matter is the bit of dialogue between Giles and Marty,
as the briefly recorded result of which, "Winterborne
said no more, and dismissed the matter from his
mind."

There is evidently no attempt to distinguish between
major and minor incident, between significant and non-
significant point of view, no attempt to select for presen-
tation those scenes which are capable of being presented
with effectiveness, that point of view which shall do most
for enlightening the reader or working on his sympathies.
Everything is of equal importance; every event is
brought on the scene to be dismissed before its effect is
produced. There seems to be no notion of that scenic
art, that art of representation, which was the constant
preoccupation of Stevenson and Henry James, and which
has been sedulously cultivated by their successors, by
Mr. Conrad, and Mr. Walpole and Mrs. Wharton.
The facts are given, to be sure; and so given as to
suggest that it is the sole concern of the author to inform
us of the facts — to get them in the record, like entries
in some ancient chronicle. But more often than not,
they are facts for the understanding merely, and by
no means pictures for the imagination. We know them
to be facts; but we do not realize them, are not con-
vinced by them, have not taken them into our hearts.

7

We are frequently reminded throughout this book of
Mr. Hardy's extreme fondness for facts. A fact is
always gold to him ; and it makes little difference whether
it is rough in the ore, and mingled with worthless matter,

i74 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

or whether it has been separated and stamped with the
king's stamp. Without the aid of ponderable facts he
seems to be helpless and without resource; there is
something touching about the way he leans upon them,
his naive faith that in them salvation is to be found.

Such, in The Woodlanders, are the circumstances
leading to the death of Felice Charmond. That she
should die is in itself not necessary to the reunion of
Grace and Fitzpiers; still less the complicated machin-
ery by which her death is brought about. Altogether
disproportionate in the story is the attention given to
Marty South's sale of her hair to Mrs. Charmond;
and in the end it serves no purpose but to motivate the
separation of Felice and Fitzpiers, which might so much
better have been motivated — without machinery — by
the natural decay of a selfish and sentimental love.
Charmingly naive and characteristic is the impulse of
Marty to serve Grace by revealing to Fitzpiers that his
mistress' hair is not her own. But crude enough is the
obtrusion upon the strictly sentimental problem of
Fitzpiers and Grace of this hard, unassimilated bit of
information about the lovers' quarrel which grew out
of Marty's letter. Still cruder and more in the line of
melodrama is the intrusion of that mysterious gentleman
whose jealous passion was the death of Mrs. Charmond.
And one is perhaps the more amazed upon considering
the deliberate forethought with which a cunning fabri-
cator of plots has made his " plant" in the early stages
of the story. There, in the midst of pertinent matter,
we stumble upon a chapter introducing "a short stout
man in evening-dress, carrying on one arm a light
overcoat and also his hat." He had walked over from

CHRONICLE 175

e hotel at Sherton and was seeking the lady of Hintock
House. When he arrived at her home past midnight
and found she was not there, he swore bitterly, it was
observed, and " sighed three times before he swore."
Winterborne, who had directed him upon his way, had
asked him who he was, and he had replied in that
compact, business-like style so often found in the speech
of characters whom Hardy wants to dispose of briefly:
"I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian
by birth. I left my native country on the failure of
the Southern cause, and have never returned to it
since." This pitiful lay figure never puts his nose into
the story again except to account, in such huddled and
belated fashion, for the altogether unnecessary demise
of Felice Charmond. How different from that other
Europeanized American and South Carolinian by birth
who makes so effective an entrance and so indispensable
a figure in the pattern of The Arrow of Gold, and who de-
scribes himself so proudly and succinctly as "Americain,
catholique, ei gentilhomme" !

Another unnecessary character is Suke Damson,
vulgar mistress of Fitzpiers before his marriage,
e author doubtless felt he needed her to interpose a
difficulty between Grace and her suitor. What he
wants to make us feel is the qualified reluctance with
which she turns from her rustic lover to the cultivated
man of the world whom her father has chosen; what
he offers is a poor bit of suspense over a question of
facts, which does delay the marriage for the space of
one chapter. It is about equally unsatisfactory as
development of theme and as story-telling pure and
simple.

The

176 MORE CRAFT THAN ART

The critical reader never ceases to wonder at the
disparity between such a triumph of art as The Native
and such bungled narrative as The Woodlanders. He
recognizes indeed in the latter the characteristic pre-
occupation of this author with matter of fact. But he
cannot understand how, when he had once invented or
stumbled upon the method of significant drama, he
could so relapse to the no-method of rambling chronicle.

PART THREE: ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

VIII. PITY

And now, from amid the tangle of themes bizarre
and the bewildering complexity of orchestration, rises,
unannounced, a voice so simple and pure that the
hearer sits up in wonder and delight. The mind, re-
lieved of the strain of a music overlabored, goes out
eagerly to greet this theme so clear, so full, so deli-
cately curved, and so masterfully simple in its move-
ment. We had supposed that, in The Return of the
Native, our author had come as near as one could
ever hope to the abandonment of all factitious con-
trivance for complication of plot; that there he had
grouped his characters so cunningly, in a series of figures
circling about a single dramatic situation, as to satisfy
our utmost craving for significant unity of design.
And we were not wrong in our supposition. But now
we learn that such a dramatic pattern may in itself, by
contrast, have somewhat the effect of artifice. The
very ingenuity with which the dramatic balance is
created and maintained, the very artistry shown in
the grouping of the half-dozen players and the steady
conduct of their story to its destined catastrophe, is a
sort of contrivance. It is structural art of the highest
power, an art concealing art; and as such it excites our
admiration and our wonder. It is the perfection of its
kind, and a great achievement in novelistic technique.
It is only when we turn to the greater work succeeding
that we are reminded of the possibility of a further
refinement in the art of story-telling, of still another

179

i8o ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

kind of art, making an even stronger appeal, in which
the author can do without even this legitimate measure

of contrivance.

i

The story viJTess. is one of extreme simplicity.
A beautiful country girl, Tess Durbeyfield, or D'Urber-
ville, becomes the victim of a young gentleman, her
employer, Alec D'Urberville, to whom she resorts in the
hope of helping her poverty-stricken family. She
returns to her home, and becomes a mother; but her
child does not live, and she eventually takes heart to
begin life anew. She obtains employment as milker in
a great dairy, and there she meets another young
gentleman of fine character, Angel Clare, who is learning
the business of a farmer. They fall in love; and in
spite of her conviction that she is unworthy to marry,
she is persuaded to engage herself to him. She makes
a great effort to inform him of her past experience, but
finally yields to the temptation to let it go until their
marriage night. She is then encouraged to tell her
secret by his volunteering a similar confession. But in
spite of his generally liberal views, he cannot overcome
his prejudice against a " ruined woman"; he leaves his
wife, and goes to South America. Tess leads a life of
great hardship; meets her old lover; -and finally, in
order to save her family from starvation, and persuaded
that Angel will never return, consents to become Alec's
mistress. Angel does come back, and finds her living
with Alec. In her tragic distress she kills her seducer.
She and Angel go into hiding for a time in the New
Forest, but are soon taken by the police; and Tess is
duly made to pay the penalty of her murder.

Simplicity unique in the novels of Hardy!

In the finer stories of the middle period, if the plots
ire graphically represented by a figure showing the
relation of the half-dozen major characters, it will be
seen how closely they are all bound together by attrac-
tions and rivalries, each one linked to every other one
at least indirectly in the tangle and balance of interests
resulting. Thus:

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Wildeve — Eustacia— Clym

/*

» $\

Thorr asin-^ -Mrs. Yeobright

/

Vehr/

THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

Susan — Hen^hard — Lucetta
/

Elizibeth— -/- Farfrae

/

Newsoh

THE WOODLANDERS

Gr^ce— Fitzpiers— Mrs. Charmond

* *

Gifes— Melbury ,*-'*

1 82 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

When we undertake to figure Tess in this way,1
we find that there are but three characters to be charted,
and that it is impossible to put together even these three
in a single chart without giving a misleading impression
of their relations. There was never any true rivalry be-
tween Alec D'Urberville and Angel Clare, since, with the
exception of one evening, which claims two chapters of
the last book, the two men were never brought together
in the history of Tess. The first book is exclusively
the record of Tess's snaring by Alec; the third, fourth,
and fifth books are taken up with the loves of Tess and
Angel, with Alec entirely out of it; the sixth book
relates the second pursuit by Alec, with Angel in South
America. The last book belongs again to Tess and
Angel, to their final love song under the shadow of death.
So that a true representation of the plot can only be made
in a series of charts, in which the successive stages of the
story are shown as involving the relation in each case
of but two persons.

1. (Book I) Tess Alec

2. (III-V) Tess Angel

3. (VI) Tess Alec

4. (VII) Tess Angel

How simple a plot-pattern this is may be indicated
by making a similar chart for the successive moments
(or books) in the story of The Native. In no case are
there fewer than three major characters grouped in the
situation of the moment. Almost every book finds a
new character in the central position, between others

1 Diagrams of this character were used by Professor H. C. Duffin, in
his Thomas Hardy: a Study of the Wessex Novels, with the object of show-
ing the prominence of love-affairs in Hardy's plots.

PITY 183

who exert a pull in opposite directions. It is a closely
woven pattern of many diverse threads — an elaborate
study in counterpoint. In the later book, Tess is in
every case one of two characters only whose relations
are the theme of the moment. It is a pattern as open
as that of the simplest folk-tune.

I. Thomasin — Wildeve^gystacia
Veiltf '^Mrs. Yeobright

II. Wildeve— Eustacia-— Clym
Thitnasin

III. Eustacia— Clym— Mrs. Yeobright

IV. Wildeve— Eustacia— Clym

Mrs. Yeobright

V. Wildeve — Eustacia — Clym

The same openness of pattern appears in the setting
and the chronology. In Tess, the setting ^yrppa^i^^
with the action, the place and season changing with the
fortunes of the heroine. And it is not without pre-
meditation that the growing passion of Tess and Angel
is set in the summer foisoning of the rich dairy country,
that the woman is made to "pay" in the wintry bitter-
ness of a hard and cruel district, that it is among the
ancient and awesome monuments of Stonehenge that

'AND CRAFT AT ONE

the law steps in to put an end to their brief clouded
romance. All this is not without premeditation, not

Without a great refinement of art. But this is the usual
course of a story — a ballad or a tale — flowing like a
stream through changing country, with the natural
vicissitudes of landscape. And it actually puts less

'strain upon the reader's attention than a design, like
that of The Native, in which all threads of plot are made
to cross in one place, beneath one sky and within the
limits of one fixed horizon. It gives less the impression
of design, or contrivance.

And the same thing is true of the greater extension
in tune allowed to the story of Tess. The events leading
to her seduction are made to cover one summer; and it
is not until two years later, after a time of retirement
with her disgrace, that Tess goes forth again to battle
with life and to hope. All summer is given to the growth
of her love for Angel, and it is not till New Year's that
they are married. There follows the bitter winter of
their separation, and then their brief reunion in the
spring; so that the-arrest-and execution -of~Tess takes
place fully three years after she first started out from
Marlott to seek her fortune in the world. This is not
an arrangement suitable to a drama, in which the lines
of many lives, long converging, are to be shown at the
point where at last they cross and tangle. But it does
seem more like life: life that holds its issues in abeyance;
life so full of seeming conclusions and new starts; life
that, when it once conceives a grudge against one of its
creatures, loves so to play at cat and mouse with him—
to let him go and then catch him again, leaving time for
recovery between one seizure and the next.

PITY 185

It is not drama now that Hardy wants, but pathos.
It is not the conflict of wills among antagonists chosen
for their strength. It is the struggle of weakness and ,<
innocence in the clutch of circumstance. And this 1
accounts for the transcendent appeal of the story of
Tess. No matter how much we may admire the
cunning workmanship of the earlier novel, no matter how
breathlessly we may have followed the march of destiny
in the story of Eustacia Vye, embracing in our concern
the desperate nostalgia of Eustacia, the jealous mother-
liness of Mrs. Yeobright, the unworldly aspirations of
Clym — we cannot feel for any of these the simplejoye
and grief that Tess inspires; no fates of theirs can mafex,
us so cry^uTa^HsTtrie cruelty of life. It may be an
irony hard for the artist to stomach. Not all his
originality of conception, not all the devices of structural
art, not all the resources of his wisdom and science
avail him so well with the mass of his readers as the
direct appeal of one heart to another.

I do not wish to imply that Tess is in any way inferior
in art to The Native. But it is an art supremely free
from self-consciousness, and making the reader uncom-
monly at ease. And quite irrespective of the degree of
art displayed, the fact remains — let it be palatable or
unpalatable to artist or critic — that the greatest element
of appeal in Tess is the pathos inherent in its story, and
after that the heat of feeling with which the author
traces the sufferings of his heroine. And it is this
pathos, and this heat of feeling — voicing itself in accents
of great beauty — that make the superiority of Tess,
I will not say merely to The Native, but to any other
English novel of its period.

1 86 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

Not but what the story of Tess has its elements of
drama, its long passages of tension about a joined issue.
There is one series of chapters devoted to a steady
progressive action, leading to a dramatic climax, the
continuous development of a single situation, absolutely
without interruption, longer than anything of the sort
in any novel of Hardy's. This includes the third and
fourth books and the early chapters of the fifth, and
covers the whole history of Angel and Tess from her
arrival at Talbothays to their separation after the
bitter honeymoon.

The third book is wholly devoted to the leisurely
record of their growing love. It is here that Mr. Hardy
has taken time for once to do full justice to his story,
to give a complete representation of a process instead
of indicating it in cramped and huddled shorthand.
The result is that we are given the completest sense of
the reality of these lovers and their passion, we are
charmed with the fresh and flower-like beauty of its
unfolding, and we are touched with awe by its steady
progress " under the force of irresistible law." There is
no more hurry than in the accompanying progress of
the seasons from May to midsummer, and from mid-
summer to the dog days; and no more likelihood of
retardation or reversal of the process.

It is with little flourish that Angel is first introduced
in the cow-barton, commenting (scholar-like) on the
medieval character of the dairyman's anecdote, and
occasionally " uttering a private ejaculation" (gentle-
man-like) over the hardness of the milking. The next
impression Tess receives of his character is through his

PITY 187

ranging the cows so as to give her the easier ones. And
then comes the soundless June evening, and their plight
exchange of sentiments on the fearsomeness of "life in
general," when each wonders that the other "should
look upon it as a mishap to be alive" — he "a man of
clerical family and good education, and above physi-
cal want," and she "but a milkmaid." "They were
mutually puzzled at what each revealed, and awaited
new knowledge of each other's character and moods.
.... Every day, every hour, brought to him one more
little stroke of her nature, and to her one more of his."
They could not help meeting; and somewhat weird
and out of the ordinary were the conditions under which
they met, making_for a kind of breathless suspension
on the edge of passion, and for a strangely ideal represen-
tationot one another.)

They met daily in that strange and solemn interval of time,
the twilight of the morning, in the violet or pink dawn; for it was
necessary to rise early, so very early here

Being so often — perhaps not always by chance — the first two
persons to get up at the dairy-house, they seemed to themselves
the first persons up of all the world The spectral, half-
compounded, aqueous light which pervaded the open mead im-
pressed them with a feeling of isolation, as if they were Adam and
Eve. At this dim, inceptive stage of the day, Tess seemed to
Clare to exhibit a dignified largeness, both of disposition and
physique, and almost regnant power

The mixed, singular, luminous gloom in which they walked
» along together to the spot where the cows lay often made him
think of the Resurrection hour. He little thought that the
Magdalen might be at his side. Whilst all the landscape was in
neutral shade, his companion's face, which was the focus of his
eyes, rising above ^ie mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of
phosphorescence upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she were

1 88 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

merely a soul at large. In reality her face, without appearing to
do so, had caught the cold gleam of day from the northeast;
his own face, though he did not think of it, wore the same aspect
to her.

It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him most
deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence
of woman — a whole sex condensed into one typical form. He
called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names, half-
teasingly, which she did not like because she did not understand
them.

"Call me Tess," she would say, askance; and he did.

Then it would grow lighter, and her features would become
simply feminine; they had changed from those of a divinity
who could confer bliss to those of a being who craved it.1

Thus far there has been no dramatic tension, since V
no issue has arisen. But a very critical issue is poten-
tially present in Tess's determination, taken on her
second setting out in the world, that she would never
allow a man to marry her and her past. And the issue
is brought to the fore by two slight incidents : the humor-
ous anecdote of Dairyman Crick about the girl seduced by
Jack Dollop, which revives the sense of her unworthiness,
and the overheard talk of the three milkmaids all in
love with Angel. From this time on, life is for Tess a V
continual battle. She determines not to be a rival to
the other girls. Clare, on his side, is determined not
to take any unfair advantage of his position, to act with
due deliberation and regard for the woman of his love.
And then comes the heat and stagnancy of August to V
bring to fruition both vegetable and human loves.
There comes the afternoon when they were milking

in the meads for coolness, and Clare, from under his

*
'Pp. 145-47-

PITY 189

cow, watching the tranced beauty of her profile, felt a
stimulus "like an annunciation from the sky."

Resolutions, reticences, prudences, fears, fell back like a
defeated battalion. He jumped up from his seat, and, leaving
his pail to be kicked over if the milcher had such a mind, went
quickly towards the desire of his eyes, and, kneeling down beside

her, clasped her in his arms Tess was taken completely

by surprise, and she yielded to his embrace with unreflecting
inevitableness. Having seen that it was really her lover who had
advanced, and no one else, her lips parted, and she sank upon him
in her momentary joy, with something very like an ecstatic cry.

But this is only the beginning of the struggle for
Tess. Angel is too conscientious, even now, to take
advantage of her momentary yielding, and he does not
kiss her. It is not until his return from a visit to his
parents that he asks her to be his wife. She can find no
better reason for refusing than the probable disapproval
of his father and mother, though she hints at "experi-
ences" which she ought to let him know. Angel makes
light of her "experiences"; but he does want an answer,
a reason. More than once she puts off 'her explanation ;
and when at last it cannot be put off again, she falls
back on the very lame reason of her D'Urberville
descent. She is really come, she tells him, of an old
family, "all gone to nothing, " and she has been told that
he "hated old families." "At the last moment her
courage had failed her, she feared his blame for not
telling him sooner; and her instinct of self-preservation
was stronger than her candor."

The struggle proceeds from this moment of failing
courage through its harrowing stages of intensification.
Having at last acknowledged her love for Angel, Tess

190 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

now desperately appeals to her mother for advice;
and her mother advises, nay conjures and commands
her not to let anyone know her secret, reminding her of
a promise to that effect made by Tess on her leaving
home. And thus "steadied by a command from the
only person in the world who had any shadow of right
to control her action, Tess grew calm." She contents
her conscience with putting off the date of the wedding.
But that will not serve for long; and at last,

The word had been given; the number of the day written
down. Her naturally bright intelligence had begun to admit the
fatalistic convictions common to field-folk and those who associate
more extensively with natural phenomena than their fellow-
creatures; and she accordingly drifted into that passive responsive-
ness to all things her lover suggested, characteristic of the frame
of mind.

But she was not wholly pacified in spirit. She wrote
again vainly to her mother. When her wedding gown
arrived, she remembered the ballad of the guilty Queen,
and she thought: " Suppose this robe should betray her
condition by its changing color, as her robe had betrayed
Queen Guenever."

Then comes the visit to a neighboring town where
Tess is recognized by a man from Trantridge, the scene
of her affair with Alec. The man, upon receiving a
blow from Angel, hastens to declare that he is mistaken,
and Angel thinks nothing more of the matter. But Tess
is once more aroused to the need of action, and she
makes her attempt to reach him with her written
confession. It is not till the wedding morning that she
discovers the missing note where it has lain unobserved
under the edge of the carpet; and then she makes one

PITY 191

more effort, in their brief moment on the landing, to
tell him of her " faults and blunders." But her courage
so naturally melts away under his urgency! — let them not
spoil the day with confession of faults, but leave them
till they are settled in their house.

And so the day passes swiftly with its activities and
ill omens, the knot is tied fast, and they find themselves
in the evening alone before the fire. Her way is made
easier by Angel's confession, and at last she summons
strength to tell her story straight.

But we are still to be held in suspense through the
terrible days and nights while Angel is making up his
mind. We have hopes that he will be moved by the
humility and the manifest loveliness of her character;
that her suggestion of a divorce, though made in igno-
rance of the law, will convince him of her nobility; that
his sleep-walking tenderness is a sign of relenting.
And we are not released from our suspense until we read:
"When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he
turned to go his own way, and did not know that he
loved her still."

So ends that part of the story which recounts th(
growing loves of Tess and Angel, their marriage andj
separation. It is the heart of the story, and what;
gives dramatic force to the whole narrative, having
made us for good and all hot champions of Tess and
sorely sensitive to the pathos of all her sufferings.
Technically it bears considerable resemblance to the
second and third books of The Native, which recount the
love-making and marriage of Eustacia and Clym. But

J

I

192 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

there are several important points of difference. The
dramatic tension is not one created by conflicting wills V
or hopes of persons opposed to one another; it is for the
most part a struggle within the breast of the heroine,
in which the antagonists are Passion and Conscience.
While, therefore, the reader is held in suspense, and
receives a strong impression of the strain upon the will
and the heart of Tess^he watches here no marshaling
of interest against interest, of character against character, V
such as peoples the stage in The Native. We are not
so much taken up with the play of forces as with the
moral suffering of a woman in the grip of a dilemma, *
who cannot enjoy the supreme happiness within her
reach because of an honorable scruple in regard to her
past.

Moreover, this long passage of strain does not grow
directly, like that of The Native, out of a dramatic
situation already developed, nor lead directly into the
dramatic climax of the story. It is the second of three v
major episodes in the life of the heroine: the story
takes a new start with her rally from the first experience,
and again with the beginning of the " payment" which
leads to the ''fulfilment." This is another feature of v
the non-dramatic, the loose-patterned or epic style of
narration,1 appropriate to a tale of suffering.

4

And, strong as may be the hold upon the reader of
this central episode, the strongest scenes are yet to come.
He has still before him those parts of the story where

1 This distinction between the epic and dramatic types in Hardy's
novels has been made by Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie in his Thomas
Hardy: a Critical Study.

PITY 193

he can scarcely read for tears, and where he cannot
possibly read aloud for very shame of his choking voice.
_For the main appeal is not to our dramatic sense, but to
our hearts. It is really so throughout the book. It is
with our hearts that we respond to the picture of the
helpless Durbeyfield children, those " half -dozen little
captives under hatches compelled to sail" with their
parents in the crazy Durbeyfield ship. It is our hearts
that contract at the killing of their horse Prince, their
breadwinner, when Tess and Abraham were driving
him to market with the beehives. More pathetic than i
dramatic are indeed the scenes in which we behold Tess
awaiting the decision of Angel, after her confession.
For while we are made to feel that her case is a good one,
that there were "many effective chords which she could

I have stirred by an appeal," we can but witness her
weakness and prostration of spirit in a situation she is
so helpless to control.
From this point on the pathos deepens steadily to t
the end. The hardships of the winter labor in the Y
turnip field, the persecutions of her brutal employer,
the depressing comments of Angel's brothers, so unluckily
overheard by Tess, and that most unlucky encounter
with Alec, the convert — these follow one another so
rapidly, and yet witlj. such convincing simplicity and
sobriety in the manner of their setting forth, that we I
grow positively tremulous with emotion, ready to yield j
our tears to any direct appeal. And such direct appeal >
is made by the two despairing letters of Tess to Angel.
One knows not which is the more moving of the two.
First comes the long letter in which she says, "I must
cry to you in my trouble — I have no one else," a letter

1 94 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

of self-justification, full of intense longing, fear, and
pain. "The daylight has nothing to show me, since

you be not here " And then, some time later,

as she sees herself being forced back relentlessly into the
power of Alec, she writes in haste those lines of passionate
reproach: " O, why have you treated me so monstrously,
Angel! I do not deserve it. I have thought it all over
carefully, and I can never, never forgive you! ....
I will try to forget you. It is all injustice I have received
at your hands!" Here the reader's feeling of pity is
mingled with exultation over the utterance for once of
the bitter truth by the long-suffering woman.

But more typical, and more pathetic, is her usual ^
spirit of tender submissiveness and hopefulness. There
is the picture of her singing in the fields, perfecting the
ballads that Angel had seemed to like best in their
milking days. Like Clym at his furze-cutting, she would
sing of "the break o' the day," only in rude English
instead of elaborate and elegant French.

Arise, arise, arise!

And pick your love a posy,

All of the sweetest flowers

That in the garden grow.

The turtle doves and small birds

In every bough abuilding,

So early in the spring-time,

At the break o' the day!

It would have melted the heart of a stone to hear her singing
these ditties, whenever she worked apart from the rest of the
girls in this cold, hard time; the tears running down her cheeks
all the while at the thought that perhaps he would not, after all,
come to hear her, and the simple, silly words of the songs resound-
ing in painful mockery of the aching heart of the singer.1

1 P. 393-

PITY I95

lV We have nextf|Pn— the sceJ£ dreary exodus of the
Durbeyfields from t£ecor$lbme on the death of the
father, their pilgrimage to Kingsbere, and the ironic
encampment of the homeless, poverty-stricken family
under the wall of the church within which lay the vaults
of the knightly D 'Urbervilles. Within the church Tess
has her encounter with the ubiquitous Alec, with his
sinister offers of assistance; and upon his departure,
she bends down over the entrance to the vaults with

'her cry, "Why am I on the wrong side of this door?"

The next we see of Tess is in the lodgings at Sand-
bourne, where Angel found her living with Alec, and the
two " stood fixed, their baffled hearts looking out of their
eyes with a joylessness pitiful to see. Both seemed to
implore something to shelter them from reality." It
was very little that either could find to say on facts so
irreversible; and before we know it, the scene is over.
It is to Alec that she addresses her most passionate

, words of reproach and hatred and self-justification.
This is the climax of the book; it is meant to prepare
us for the murder of Alec, and the raving words are
suited to the tongue of the most tragic of emotional
actresses. But it is not drama in the strict sense which
jre holds us in thrall. It is the pathos of inexorable ;
ite; it is the tears in things.

". . . . And then my dear, dear husband came home to
.... and I did not know it! .... And you had used your
cruel persuasion upon me .... and you would not stop using it
— no — you did not stop! My little sisters and brothers and
my mother's needs — they were the things you moved me by
.... and you said my husband would never come back — never;
and you taunted me, and said what a simpleton I was to expect

him And at last I believed you and gave way! ....

And then he came back!"

196 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

It is to Alec that T of intense. J ner words, ana fc
is against him as an indiviu-nthjpat she rouses her fury
to the point of action. But for our part, we hardly
take him into account. We are not concerned with
the assignment of responsibility, the estimate of merits
in the case. We have not place in our hearts for any
other sentiment than compassion. Or if we are moved
to rage, it is against that impersonal order which makes
possible such a pitiful frustration of happiness.

There follows the brief respite of the time of hiding,
and then the awd|ome arrival of Angel and Tess at the
monstrous temple of Stonehenge. She lies down upon
one of the great stones, which Angel believes to be an
altar. They discuss the religious character of the place,
and so she is reminded of the question of immortality.
Realizing that her days on earth are numbered, she wants
to know if Angel thinks they will meet again after they
are dead. It is the old pitiful question of mortals
striving against the conditions of their mortality, a
question that recurs with such increase of pathos since
the low tide of Christian faith, in our present days of
dubiety. But never can it have been put under more
affecting conditions than here by this murderess about
to be apprehended, this poor girl addressing her lover
from whom she had been so cruelly separated, resting
now a moment in the presence of these mysterious
monuments whose timeless permanence so dwarfs, but
cannot suppress, the hopes and aspirations of human
creatures. Even at such a moment, Angel cannot
bring himself to give her comfort; but she falls asleep
on the rock, tired out with their long flight. And then
we have the most touchingly beautiful scene, perhaps,

PITY 197

in all English fiction — the scene of her arrest at day-
break, and the last recorded words of these ill-starred
lovers.

Like a greater than himself, to the critical question at the
critical time he did not answer; and they were again silent.
In a minute or two her breathing became more regular, her clasp
of his hand relaxed, and she fell asleep. The band of silver pale-
ness along the east horizon made even the distant parts of the
Great Plain appear dark and near; and the whole enormous
landscape bore that impress of reserve, taciturnity, and hesitation
which is usual just before day. The eastward pillars and their
architraves stood up blackly against thi light, and the great
flame-shaped Sun-stone beyond them; and the stone of sacrifice
midway. Presently the night wind died out, and the quivering
little pools in the cup-like hollows of the stones lay still. At the
same time something seemed to move on the verge of the dip
eastward — a mere dot. It was the head of a man approaching
them from the hollow beyond the Sun-stone. Clare wished they
had gone onward, but in the circumstances decided to remain
quiet. The figure came straight towards the circle of pillars in
which they were.

He heard something behind him, the brush of feet. Turning,
he saw over the prostrate column another figure; then, before
he was aware, another was at hand on the right, under a trilithon,
and another on the left. The dawn shone full on the front of
the man westward, and Clare could discern from this that he was
tall, and walked as if trained. They all closed in with evident
purpose. Her story then was true! Springing to his feet, he
looked around for a weapon, means of escape, anything. By
this time the nearest man was upon him.

"It is no use, sir," he said. "There are sixteen of us on the
Plain, and the whole country is reared."

"Let her finish her sleep! " he implored in a whisper of the men
as they gathered round.

When they saw where she lay, which they had not done till
then, they showed no objection, and stood watching her, as still
as the pillars around. He went to the stone, and bent over her,

198 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

holding one poor little hand; her breathing now was quick and
small, like that of a lesser creature than a woman. All waited in
the growing light, their faces and hands as if they were silvered,
the remainder of their figures dark, the stones glistening a green-
gray, the Plain still a mass of shade. Soon the light was strong,
a ray shone upon her unconscious form, peering under her eyelids
and waking her.

"What is it, Angel?" she said, starting up. "Have they
come for me?"

"Yes, dearest," he said, "They have come."

"It is as it should be," she murmured. "Angel, I am almost
glad — yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was
too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you
to despise me!"

She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the
men having moved.

"I am ready," she said quietly.1

This is not the pathos of a professional compeller
of tears. It is the inadvertent yielding of one who looks
upon weeping as an unmanly weakness, and whose
effort has always been to state the painful truth in the dry-
style of matter of fact. It is remarkable that never
once in the dozen novels which preceded Tess had Hardy
ever offered so direct an invitation to tears, as here we
meet so many times. Only once perhaps in all that
earlier record of human experience does even a sensitive
reader feel constrained to tears — by the last words on
the subject of Clym Yeobright and his itinerant preach-
ing. His preaching was variously received. "But
everywhere he was kindly received, for the story of his
life had become generally known." It is only then,
and through those simple words, that we are made to

1 Pp. 453-ss-

PITY 199

feel in its full poignancy the sadness of this " story of
his life." Equally simple, in general, is the pathos of
Tess, as simple as her quiet words to the officers, "I am
ready." It is the accumulated feeling of a lifetime that
overflows in this culminating work of art.

A glance at the dates may here be enlightening.
Heretofore his production of novels had been extremely
rapid. From Desperate Remedies in 1871 to The Wood-
landers in 1887, Mr. Hardy had turned out a novel
almost every year, with never more than a two-year
interval... He must have been deeply immersed in the
business of inventing plots and creating characters, too
busy with creation, it might be thought, to have time for
mature reflection. Especially from the time of The
Native he had been pouring out novel- after novel in
almost feverish haste. But with the completion of
The Woodlanders he rested from this labor for the
extraordinary space of five years. One volume of tales
was collected and published in the interval, and another
was put forth in the same year with Tess. But we cannot
suppose that these would demand the same long strain
of thought as the construction of a novel. It is like
a period of retirement. The philosopher, the student of
life, has industriously collected his materials, like a
Wallace or a Darwin in his voyage to the South Seas;
and now he goes into his retreat to muse over what he
has found and to extract its secret essence. As he allows
things to fall into due perspective, many details are
lost to view, many complications cease to obtrude them-
selves; the lines of life become more simple, and every-
thing begins to present itself in the light of one great
dominant feeling. The general beauty and pitifulness

200 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

of life gather about the form and history of a certain
poor girl, and all his thought and feeling on the subject
of human destiny join in one flood of compassion for one
typical human being.

It is the old theme of a woman's secret to be told
or to be suppressed, the sort of theme which had by this
time perhaps become shopworn in the great mart of
paper-covered novels. And Mr. Hardy was moving,
consciously or unconsciously, in that current of sentiment
which makes the popularity of women novelists whose
names do not often appear in the bluebooks of literature,
but who make the fortunes of the publishers of Sea-
side (or Bertha Clay) Libraries — the "Duchesses" and
Charlotte M. Braemes, who were names to conjure
with long before Mr. Hardy became the subject of
literary study ! The pure woman, the innocent country
girl, cheated or forced into a false position; the secret to
be told or to be kept silent, and in any case sure to be
the source of trouble and misery ; a world which will not
give fair trial or a second chance to a woman with a
past — are not these the very stock in trade of the
paper-covered novel, which still finds its passionate
readers in so many kitchens and hall bedrooms? The
Wife's Secret, Beyond Pardon, A Woman's Error, One
False Step, The Shadow of a Sin: such are a few of the
suggestive titles out of hundreds credited to the sole
pen of one Charlotte M. Braeme, author of Dora Thome,
and for sale at twenty-five cents each in the eighties
and nineties.

It is true that these stories seldom come out tragically,
like that of Tess. It is true that the heroine is seldom
permitted to be even technically in the wrong, like her.

PITY 201

But it is significant that, in the magazine version of
Tess, addressed to the family circle, Mr. Hardy allowed
his heroine to pass for absolutely impeccable. In place
of the seduction of Tess by Alec, the magazine reader
was informed of a "fake" marriage by which the inno-
cent girl was entrapped. And even in the book she
appears sufficiently in the light of a victim to make
sure appeal to the Saxon chivalrous instinct. And
with due allowance for the insipidity called for in a
paper-covered novel, one recognizes in these machine-
made tales the primary elements of Hardy's great
work of art.

There is no absolute divorce between " literature"
proper and the literature of the dime novel. Themes
which receive their crudely sentimental and melo-
dramatic treatment in the one are sure to appear above
the surface, somewhat refined, it may be, but recogniz-
able. Meredith, when he put forth Rhoda Fleming,
showed in his chapter headings a consciousness that he
was writing somewhat in the manner of East Lynne
or suchlike melodrama. And Tess of the D' Urbervilles
came at a time when, in serious literature, especially
in plays, a great deal of attention was being paid to the
subject of the declassee — the woman who would come
back, the woman who lives under "the shadow of a
sin," the woman who has to pay for "one false step."
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray will suffice to suggest the
currency of a theme which is treated by such other
notable hands as Oscar Wilde and Henry Arthur Jones.
So that Hardy's subject was timely from the point of
view of the "high brow" as well as popular in the
original sense of the word. And that one of his novels

202 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

which is most satisfying to the critic for the beauty and
seriousness of its art is at the same time the one to make,
from the time of its first appearance, an appeal to the
widest circle of readers^

All along, the theme of a woman's secret had appealed
to the imagination of Hardy, and he had more or less
nibbled at it in several novels. In his very first book there
is in the background the case of Cytherea Aldclyffe,
who met too late the man she should have married,
but who, fearing the results of a confession, "withdrew
from him by an effort and pined." His second novel
rings down the curtain on his heroine thinking of "a
secret she would never tell," of her brief infidelity in
thought toward her lover when she came under the spell
of the gentlemanly clergyman and his brilliant offers.
In The Hand of Ethelberta and The Mayor of Casterbridge,
it is quite a different sort of secret which is suppressed :
in the one case, Ethelberta's humble status, in the other,
the fact that Elizabeth- Jane is not really the daughter
of Henchard. It is in A Pair of Blue Eyes that we find
the nearest anticipation of Tess. For there we have the
heroine similarly declaring to the leading man that she
has a confession to make, similarly putting it off, and
then at the last moment losing heart and confessing to
something else of quite insignificant importance. But
this is, after all, no very close approximation to the
theme of Tess. It is the real seriousness of the thing
to be confessed, the fact that Tess does finally make her
confession instead of leaving the truth to be discovered
through the revelations of some Mrs. Jethway, and the
very heavy "payment" exacted, which give the latter
its specific character.

PITY 203

It may seem strange that the author who had worked
so deliberately the traditional themes and devices of the
popular story-teller, one who was so clearly bent on
producing something that would satisfy the public,
should have been so long in taking up for serious treat-
ment a subject the like of which had proved effective
in sentimental novels without number. It was probably
to a large degree his consideration for Victorian prudery
that led him so long to fight shy of the subject of Tess.
But it was also, no doubt, that grave seriousness with
which, after all, he had always approached at least the
subject-matter of his art. He was willing to adopt
many of the conventions and the standard procedure
of his trade; but he would not consent to falsify human
nature if he could help it, and he would not lower
himself to make a deliberate bid for tears. One is
inclined to believe that, in taking up at last this hack-
neyed theme of the fatal secret and the " soiled dove,"
Mr. Hardy was by no means fully conscious how straight
he was aiming at the bull's-eye of popularity. He was
perhaps unaware of the wide currency of his theme;
perhaps it was an infection which he took, like any
simple reader, because it was in the air. He no doubt
thought he was telling the story of Tess not because it
was popular but because it was true. He had himself
first succumbed to the pity of it, and that is why his
readers so inevitably succumbed. It is, in the last
analysis, because he shared to such a degree the popular
psychology that he was able to score so great a popular
success.

It is certainly not because of any deliberate working
of the pathetic possibilities of the subject. One does not

204 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

see how, short of suppression, he could have disposed
more simply of the scene of Tess's execution, of the
meeting of Tess and Angel at Sandbourne, or the picture
of Tess singing her ballads in the wintry field. The
story does not seem to be constructed so as to lead to
these scenes and bring them into prominence. They
rather fall as it were casually, by the way ; and we pass
on quickly to what follows. It is this very economy
of statement, carrying with it a sense of matter of fact,
that makes the passages so convincing to the intelligent
reader.

There is even a kind of detachment, an almost
scientific manner of statement, that might interfere
with the effect of any pathos less seriously grounded,
as in the way of referring to Tess and explaining her
appearance during the christening of her baby. "The
emotional girl" he calls her, almost as if to forbid us to
take the incident sentimentally. He looks upon her
more objectively than would suit the purposes of the
professionally pathetic writer, showing her to us as she
is seen by her brothers and sisters. "The children
gazed up at her with more and more reverence, and no
longer had a will for questioning. She did not look
like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering,
and awful — a divine personage with whom they had
nothing in common."

In this scene the pathos is somewhat qualified, it
may be, by the satirical bias with which the author
regards the rite of infant baptism and the beliefs in
regard to it which so tortured the girl-mother. This
fear of the child's damnation is, of course, what gives its
peculiar force to the act, as the doubt of immortality

PITY 205

is what gives its poignancy to Tess's question at the
end of the story. But in the earlier case, at least,
there is a note of philosophic scorn in the terms in which
the author refers to "poor Sorrow's campaign against
sin, the world, and the devil" and to the "kind of
heaven" which would be lost to him by an irregularity
in his baptism, which detracts from the simplicity of
feeling ordinarily going with pathos.

There is indeed a philosophic coloring to the whole
narrative which denotes a degree of reflection generally
fatal to pathos. These are the only terms on which
this author will condescend to the moving of tears.
Not content to relate the loss of Prince and the grief
of the Durbeyfields, Hardy is impelled to give to the
incident a wider significance by the reference to blighted
stars. In their nocturnal drive, Tess has been giving
little Abraham what information she commands on the
subject of the stars. "They sometimes seem to be likev
apples on our stubbard tree. Most of them splendid
and sound — a few blighted." And to his question as
to what kind we live on, she replies, "A blighted one."
That was before the terrible accident. Afterward, in
their despair, Abraham recalls his astronomy, and asks,
"Tis because we be on a blighted star, not a sound one,
isn't it, Tess?"

In the same spirit as inspired this beautiful poetic
invention, Mr. Hardy is prone, less happily, to heap his
scorn upon the great poets of his century for their ready
faith in providence: upon the early morning optimism
of Browning's Pippa; upon Wordsworth's assumption of
"Nature's holy plan," and his pious sentiment about
our arrival "trailing clouds of glory," in which lines,

206 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

"to Tess, as to some few millions of others, there was
ghastly satire."

One knows not whether to wish away or to welcome
these skirmishing shots of a late-Victorian novelist
disgusted with the easy optimism of early-Victorian and
Georgian poets. At least they serve to guarantee the
seriousness of the work, and to signalize it as of a late-
Victorian order of pathos. The sufferings of Tess, at any
rate, are impregnated with a moral significance which
does not attach to those of Little Nell or Paul Dombey
or Little Em'ly. The first two are helpless children who
suffer and die, and that is pathos pure and simple.
There is nothing more to be said. In the case of Little
Em'ly there might have been more to be said, but the
contemporaries of Dickens did not want to hear it said;
and so she remained just "Little Em'ly," with no more
significance than Little Nell. In Tess Durbeyfield we
have a pathos of high moral significance ; there is neces-
sarily in her case a greater weight and volume of feeling.
For she is a grownup woman, a responsible moral be-
ing, with intense desires, high aspirations, liable to
temptation, and fearfully liable to suffering.

Moving as is the history of Tess in its mere incidents,
it is made doubly moving by the beauty and strength
of her personality. Hardy's characters are in general
remarkable for their vitality; they are picked specimens
of the fruit of human kind, whom we recognize as fit
to represent us. But Tess is, of them all, the most
full of life. With her somewhat exceptional physical
endowment, she was more than usually susceptible to

her

tim
A-

\
i

PITY 207

those sensations in which the beauty of sound and color
and smell conies to us as the voice of our spirit. While
Angel played his harp in the summer evening,

Tess was conscious of neither time nor space. The exaltation
which she had described as being producible at will by gazing at a
star, came now without any determination of hers; she undulated
upon the thin notes as upon billows, and their harmonies passed
like breezes through her, bringing tears into her eyes. The
floating pollen seemed to be his notes made visible, and the
dampness of the garden, the weeping of the garden's sensibility.
Though near nightfall, the rank-smelling weed-flowers glowed
as if they would not close for intentness, and the waves of color
mixed with the waves of sound.

The same capacity for sensation adds intensity to all
her joys and griefs, her fears and shames and hopes.
Hardy's women are — as with most novelists of his
his most convincing and attractive characters.
And Tess is the crown of all his women. Eustacia was
a wonderful creation, a poetic invention, of strange

ixotic beauty, fit to be the wicked queen of tragedy.
There is nothing of the exotic or nocturnal about our
milkmaid, walking out at daybreak with her companions,

r working in the harvest fields at noonday with the men
and women of Mario tt. She has the force of passion
of Eustacia without her unscrupulous and somewhat
perverse idealism. Among the earlier characters, she
more of Bathsheba than of Elf ride, being a creature
of the fields and barns instead of the drawing-room and
the study. She is even more deeply tinctured than
Bathsheba with the ocherous contact of the earth.
She has a dignity of bearing like Bathsheba's; but being
no independent farmer but the merest proletarian, she
has more than the helplessness of her sex, and is the

208 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

marked victim of an economic order that spares its
Bathshebas.

She is beautiful, and real, too. For her beauty is
not too perfect, and not too fully inventoried. Her
eyes and mouth are the only features about which
her painter is specific — her "large innocent eyes," her
" large tender eyes," of indeterminate color, and her
" mobile peony mouth." There is one peculiarity of
her mouth upon which he dwells more than once — the
way her lower lip had "of thrusting the middle of her
top one upward, when they closed together after a
word." It was this that was so maddening to Angel
on the afternoon when he watched her at the milking
till drawn to her as by an irresistible charm. Her lips
were beautiful but not perfect; "and it was the touch
of the imperfect upon the intended perfect that gave the
sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity."
It is that which convinces us that the author was here
drawing from the life. The same conviction is forced
upon us by the charming colloquialism of her speech,
bits of ancientry that slipped through the web of her
National School training; and above all by the "stopt-
diapason note which her voice acquired when her heart
was in her speech, and which will never be forgotten
by those who knew her." There is something in the
phrasing here that makes one sure the author is speaking
of an actual woman, whose voice he has heard and
cannot forget.

She has every quality to make us admire her: her
modesty, her sensitiveness to the disgrace of her father's
drunken ways, her motherly concern for her brothers
and sisters, the simple earnestness and patience with

PITY 209

which she performs the hard tasks imposed upon her,
and the scrupulous conscience that brings her so much
pain. Above all we find beautiful the wholeness of her
devotion to the man she loves, in its combination of
qualities traditionally distinguished as proper to woman
and to man. " Clare knew that she loved him — every
curve of her form showed that — but he did not know at
that time the full depth of her devotion, its single-
mindedness, its meekness ; what long-suffering it guaran-
teed— what honesty, what endurance, what good faith."

7

This is a good woman for whom our tears are asked.
"A pure woman" he calls her in his title; an adjective
he defends in the Preface to one of the later editions.
Heretofore Mr. Hardy has been content in his novels
to make a " tacit assumption" of the conventional
standards of morality. But here, in the interest of
truth or of his story, he is impelled to interpose over
and over again his own passionate defense of his heroine's
character. He represents Tess, in the time of her
disgrace, as encompassed with

a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which she was terrified without
reason. It was they that were out of harmony with the actual
world, not she. Walking among the sleeping birds in the hedges,
watching the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, or standing
under a pheasant-laden bough, she looked upon herself as a
figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts of Innocence. But all the
lile she was making a distinction where there was no difference.
Feeling herself in antagonism, she was quite in accord. She had
been made to break an accep ted social law, but no law known to the
environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.

It is a very frank appeal to the law of nature from the
law of society. As expressed in the more rustic language

210 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

of Mrs. Durbeyfield, "Well, we must make the best of
it, I suppose. 'Tis nater, after all, and what do please
God."

But if the author is so bold in his appeal to nature,
he nevertheless takes pains to clear his heroine of too
much responsibility for her experience. It may be
merely a social law which she had broken; but he wants
us to understand that it was only through her extreme
ignorance that she "had been made" to break it. It
is with great feeling that Tess reproaches her mother
for not telling her "there was danger in men-folk."
Her fellow-workers in the fields, watching her nurse
her baby, reckon that "a little more than persuading

had to do wi' the coming o't There were they

that heard a sobbing one night last year in the Chase;
and it mid ha' gone hard wi' a certain party if folks had
come along." The circumstances of her betrayal were
evidently thought out with great care so as to make her
seem almost, if not quite, helpless.

It is here if anywhere in the book that we hear the
creak of the machinery. Whatever he might think
himself of the relative validity of the laws of nature and
those of society, the author had still to reckon with his
public of Saxon readers; and he must at all cost save
his heroine from the slightest imputation of — well —
sensuality. The trick, if such it be, was on the whole
very neatly turned. It is far from the crude violence
of movie and melodrama, in which the heroine is betrayed
by mere force or deceit, agreeable to the Saxon persua-
sion— at least for purposes of romance— that no decent
woman ever can be seduced by any other means.. It
is equally removed from the somewhat low-creeping

PITY

realism of George Moore; and Tess may take her place
in a higher category of character and pathos than
Esther Waters.1 The upshot of the whole matter for
Mr. Hardy seems to be that the reproach for such an
act is in proportion to the degree of responsibility, and
that degrees of responsibility are infinite in number.

As for Tess, her responsibility is represented as
practically nil. She was "an almost typical woman,
but for a slight incautiousness of character inherited from
her race." A slight incautiousness of character, and that
inherited, can hardly amount to the tragic fault in a
protagonist regarded as essential to justify the ruling
powers. It would not suit the purposes of Sophocles,
of Shakespeare, of Hawthorne, or George Eliot. This
is not tragedy in the traditional sense ; and the modernity
of the author is shown in his bold impiety. "' Justice'
was done," he says on recording the execution of Tess,
"and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean
phrase) had ended his sport with Tess." Mr. Hardy,
in his Preface, defends his exclamation against the
gods with a quotation of Gloster's words in Lear,

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport.

He does not quote the words of Gloster's son,

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us.

More in Gloster's vein, again, is Marian's reply to
Tess's suggestion that her unhappy life is fair payment

1 A recent re-reading of Esther Waters and other novels of Mr. Moore
leads me to doubt the justice of this statement. The greatness of
Hardy does not require the dispraise of a great contemporary.

212 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

for her own wrong-doing. "Wives are unhappy some-
times; from no fault of their husbands — from their
own," says Tess. " You've no faults, deary; that I am
sure of," is Marian's reply. "So it must be something
outside ye both." It is not immorality of which Hardy
should be accused, as he is accused, for example, by
Professor Duffin. His offense is a more modern one—
the great modern crime of impiety.

We are here concerned only with his artistic offense—
that against realism — the venial offense, when all is said,
of taking for his heroine an exceptionally fine woman, a
woman with no other fault than a slight incautiousness
of character.

8

Far deeper crimes than this we can forgive to an
artist who knows how to envelop his story in such a
dense and shining atmosphere of poetry. We have
never had a novelist who made so beautiful a use of that
time-vision which is one of the richest resources of the
poet This is not the faculty of reviving in romantic
tale the glittering figures and events of a time long past.
It is the more elevated and poetic faculty of setting the
plainest figures of today in a perspective of ages, in a
shadowy synthesis that, while it dwarfs the present
scene, yet lends it a grandeur, too, a dignity and a noble
pathos borrowed from those of time itself.

And even deeper magic is sometimes taken on by this
time-vision from the mystery that lies in shadows, the
thick and palpable object being contemplated not in
itself but in the spectral copy of itself drawn by the sun
upon some face of wood or stone. It is adding the
mystery of substance to the mystery of time. It is

PITY 213

thus that Hardy shows us the patient row of milkers
in the barton sketched on the wall by the lowering
summer sun.

There and thus it threw shadows of these obscure and un-
studied figures every evening with as much care over each contour
as if it had been the profile of a Court beauty on a palace wall;
copied them as diligently as it had copied Olympian shapes on
marble facades long ago, or the outlines of Alexander, Caesar,
and the Pharaohs.

A special element of wonder is added to the daylight
wonder of Stonehenge by the way it is approached by
Tess and Angel, in the darkness of their furtive midnight
journey, and ignorant of their whereabouts. Unable
to make out anything by sight, they are guided only by
the booming sound of the wind playing upon the gigantic
edifice, as it plays upon the Egyptian stones of Memnon,
and by the sense of touch which informs them of the
shapes of pillar and altar stone. It is with a great
shiver of awe that they and the reader come at last to
the conclusion that "this pavilion of the night" is
Stonehenge, the ancient temple, " older than the centu-
ries; older than the D'Urbervilles."

If anything was needed to give a sense of greater
depths of time lying behind them, it was the realization
that this edifice was probably dedicated to the worship
of the sun. For in this reference back to primitive
ritual and myth, one measures time not by years and
centuries but by the vast cycles of man's religious
sense. • Many times in the story of Tess we have this
appeal to our ultra-historic imagination: the "old-time
heliolatries" being suggested to the author by a hazy
sunrise in August, when "the sun, on account of the

2i4 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding
the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression";
the May-day dance of the women of Marlott being
traced to the ancient rites of the local Ceres.

As usual, Hardy is very precise in his notation of
those geological diversities that antedate Stonehenge
and Cybele, and yet give their present expression to
the landscape. There is even more occasion than usual
for such science in this book, since the changing fortunes
of Tess take her into such various parts of the country,
and her sympathetic creator is anxious to make us feel
the difference, for example, between the rich alluvial
character of the Valley of the Great Dairies, where she
spent the days of her happiness and the flinty rudeness
of the upland where her life was bitter. In her slow
journeys on foot or by wagon, the earthy substructure
of the scene is always present to her sense, ''perceptible
to the tread and to the smell."

Neither she nor her peers are ever seen as other
than a part of the landscape. The milkers at the dairy
are not merely shadows on the wall of the barton. The
barton itself is lost in the meadow in which the buildings
are set. "Thus they all worked on, encompassed by
the vast flat mead which extended to either slope of the
valley — a level landscape compounded of old landscapes
long forgotten."

The sense of encompassment by nature is made even
stronger by the author's insistence on the remoteness
of his scene from the intrusions of civilization. Espe-
cially tender is his treatment of the sleepy Vale of Black-
moor and the limited view of the peasant girl for whom
this shut-in nook of country is the world. This was

PITY 215

^ale in which she had been born, and in which her
me nad unfolded. The Vale of Blackmoor was to her
the world, and its inhabitants the races thereof. From
the gates and stiles of Marlott she had looked down its
length in the wondering days of infancy, and what had
been mystery to her then was not less than mystery
to her now "

It is by such means that the figures of the story are
all invested with a tender light as of the end of day,
with contours softened and every rudeness refined, as
in the paintings of Millet or the sculptures of Meunier.
It is thus that they sink into the beauty of their setting,
at least for us who behold the picture, and half the
soreness of life is taken away by the very pathos of
their insignificance.

9

It is in Tess of the D'UrberviUes that Hardy's pathos
culminates — the general envelopment of human nature
with his yearning tenderness. It is not merely Tess
and her misfortunes that move him. He takes every
opportunity of extending his compassionate regard to
any creature within his view. He loves to dwell upon
the minor solacements which mortals find for anxiety
and pain. He dilates more than once upon the comfort
of strong drink, which, while it only serves in the long
run to deepen trouble, yet for the moment creates an
illusion of well-being. Thus he describes the sensations
of Mrs. Durbeyfield when she would go to hunt up her
shiftless husband at Rolliver's, and "sit there for an
hour or two by his side, and dismiss all thought and care

of the children during the interval A sort of

halo, an Occidental glow, came over life then. Troubles

2i 6 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

and other realities took on themselves a metaphysical
impalpability, sinking to mere cerebral phenomena for
quiet contemplation." Still more touching, if possible,
with its discreet note of irony, is the account of the
sensations of the young men and women of Trantridge
coming home by moonlight from their revels in the
neighboring town. It is just after he has recounted the
vulgar quarrel with Tess that Hardy indulges in this
description of the idealizing effects of liquor.

And then these children of the open air, whom even excess of
alcohol could scarce injure permanently, betook themselves to
the field path; and as they went there moved onward with them,
around the shadow of each one's head, a circle of opalized light,
formed by the moon's rays upon the glittering sheet of dew. Each
pedestrian could see no halo but his or her own, which never
deserted the head-shadow, whatever its vulgar unsteadiness might
be; but adhered to it, and persistently beautified it; till the
erratic motions seemed an inherent part of the irradiation, and
the fumes of their breathing a component of the night's mist;
and the spirit of the scene, and of the moonlight, and of Nature,
seemed harmoniously to mingle with the spirit of wine.

But Hardy loves also to dwell on the more healthy
solace of nature to sore spirits. He loves to think of
Tess, in the time when she hid her shame, watching
from under her few square yards of thatch, "winds, and
snows, and rains, and gorgeous sunsets, and successive
moons at their full." He loves to think of her as taking
her solitary walk at the exact moment of evening
"when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced
that the constraint of day and the suspense of night
neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty,"
when "the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to
its least possible dimensions." And he must have taken

PITY

217

a sad joy in her moment of satisfaction when she lay
before daybreak upon the stone altar of Stonehenge.
. . . . "I like very much to be here," she murmured.
"It is so solemn and lonely — after my great happiness —
with nothing but the sky above my face. It seems as

if there were no folk in the world but we )two "

And so it is that the poet throws about his pitiful
creatures the purple mantle of his compassion. And
we can almost forget the pain of the story in its loveliness.
The rage and indignation pass; the tenderness remains.
And if we say, how pitiful! it is to say, in the next
breath, how beautiful!

IX. TRUTH

In Tess of the D'Urbermlles it is the simple pathos of
the story that makes the main appeal, and almost
completely takes the place of complication and surprise
as guiding principle and source of interest. In Jude
the Obscure the guiding principle and source of interest
are found in pitiless and searching truth. Not but what
Mr. Hardy had generally been a truth-teller, particularly
in regard to human nature, and not least in Tess. And
not but what Jude is a sufficiently sad story from
beginning to end. But there is here an intensity and
single-mindedness in following the truth which are
unique in the work of Hardy, and which leave us little
energy for any less scientific emotion. No beauty in
the picture, no heroism in character or action is allowed
for a moment to divert us from the pursuit of this grim
quarry.

i

Jude the Obscure is the history of a young man who
grows up in a little village from which at night he can
see in the distance the lights of Christminster (Oxford) .
Under the influence of an admired teacher, he early
conceives the idea of going to the university town and
living the splendid dream-life of a scholar; and he
painfully teaches himself the learned languages while
pursuing the trade of a stone-cutter.

But Jude is weak and without knowledge of life;
and he falls victim to the wiles of a vulgar woman,
whom he marries under the persuasion that he must

218

TRUTH

save her from disgrace. This is practically the ruin of
his hopes. It is only after they have quarreled and
Arabella has left the country that he manages to make
his way to Christminster, hoping that he may still get
admission to the university and realize his dream. But
the officers of the university give him no encouragement.

At Christminster Jude meets his cousin, Sue Bride-
head, as well as his old master Phillotson. These two
he brings together, and Sue becomes an assistant teacher
with Phillotson. Jude, meantime, has fallen in love
with her; but, as a married man, he cannot make
advances, and he grows despondent when he finds that
Phillotson is making love to her. He gets drunk,
disgraces himself in a tavern, and returns to Mary green,
an acknowledged failure. He gives up his dream of
being a scholar, and determines to be a mere curate,
a humble man of religion.

The first of his aspirations has failed, largely because
of Arabella; the second is destined to failure through
the other woman. Jude now goes to live at Melchester
(Salisbury), where Sue is a pupil at a Teachers' Training
School. He works at his trade, and studies faithfully
his Greek New Testament. Sue is engaged to marry
Phillotson, planning to be his helper in teaching after
she has completed her course. Jude has never had the
courage to tell her of his being married; and the two
cousins see much of one another, and live on terms of
sentimental intimacy, leading eventually, through an
accident, to her being compromised and dismissed from
the Training School. It is only then that Jude tells
Sue of Arabella; and soon after she marries Phillotson.
But their union turns out badly; and the generous

220 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

husband releases the wife who cannot endure his
embraces, finally setting her free by getting a divorce.
Meantime she has gone to live with Jude, and this is the
cause of his giving up his dream of being a Christian
priest: such a profession is inconsistent with his unholy
love.

There are still left for Jude the ordinary joys of life,
with the love of Sue. But even these he is destined to
miss. And the rest of the story is one of gradual degra-
dation and discouragement, leading to a miserable death.

Sue Bridehead is a strange creature. She is devoted
to Jude, happy to live with him ; but she will be neither
his wife nor his mistress. It is only the return of
Arabella from Australia and the fear of losing Jude
that makes her yield to his passion, and then (when
he has divorced Arabella) make an effort to marry him.
I say effort; for, with the best of intentions, these
lovers cannot bring themselves to enter what seems to
them the sordid estate of legal matrimony. And they
have to pay the penalty of social ostracism, which
drives them to a miserable itinerant life.

But Jude has never quite given up his dream of the
scholarly life; and they drift back at last to Christ-
minster, where is played out the last act of Jude's
tragedy. They have now three children, the oldest
being the son of Jude and Arabella, born in Australia.
He is a precocious child, who looks upon life with all
the pessimism of disillusioned maturity. He realizes
that he and his brothers are a cause of trouble to their
parents; and when he learns from Sue that there is to
be another baby, he takes matters into his own hands
and puts an end to the lives of himself and brothers.

TRUTH

221

>ue is thereupon smitten with remorse, and imagines
this to be a stroke of heaven upon them for their sins.
All the time that Jude has known her she has been a
thorough rationalist, an unbeliever, and one who regards
marriage as a human, an unnecessary, and degrading
arrangement. She has even brought about the con-
version of Jude to these advanced views. But now she
suffers a complete revulsion to the religious and even
High Church sentiment of earlier days. Marriage she
comes to regard as a holy and sacramental bond which
cannot be dissolved : she is still, in the eyes of God, the
wife of Phillotson. And back to him she goes, at first
to be his companion only, but at last, with great loathing,
to make the supreme sacrifice of wifely duty.

Jude, being sick and in despair, falls once again into
the clutches of Arabella. Once again he is tricked into
marrying her, this time with the help of strong drink.
But his health is gone, and he has not long to live. He
dies alone while Arabella is enjoying herself on a univer-
sity holiday; the sounds of an organ concert at one of
the colleges and the cheering from the Remembrance
games drifting in at his window as he whispers the
terrible words of Scripture, "Let the day perish wherein
I was born, and the night in which it was said, 'There
is a man child conceived.' .... Wherefore is light
given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter
in soul ?" And while he lies dead at home, Arabella is
being embraced by a quack doctor, a man as vulgar as
herself.

That is the end of Jude, who dreamed of being a
priest and scholar, one of the company of Paley and
Butler, of Keble and Pusey and Newman.

222 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

The bare recital of the main facts of the story in
outline will give the reader some notion of the realism
of this work ; but only the text itself will make him feel
the deliberate and uncompromising spirit in which the
author followed out his purpose. Not merely has he
declined to avail himself of the poetry of the Wessex
background which goes so far to mitigate the sadness of
earlier stories; he insists on forcing upon us the dreary
prose of town and country seen in their least preposses-
sing light. He wanted to present in vivid contrast the
beauty of Jude's aspirations and the ugliness of the actual
circumstances of his life. And this ugliness he felt bound
to present not merely on its moral side but in the physical
detail which makes a kind of symbolic counterpart.

The woman who first ensnares the would-be sage is a
coarse and undistinguished daughter of a pig breeder;
and she first attracts his attention, while engaged with
other girls in washing chitterlings in a brook, by throwing
at him for obscene token a "lump of offal" from her
butcher's meat. The whole setting of her home, the
scene of her wooing, is sordid in the extreme, type of
the purely animal love which is destined so ironically
to shackle Jude in the pursuits of the mind. And when
Jude comes to tell the story later to the woman he loves,
the companion of his spirit, the author has chosen for
setting a filthy market-place, where " they walked up and
down over a floor littered with rotten cabbage leaves,
and amid all the usual squalors 'of decayed vegetable
matter and unsalable refuse."

Nowhere in the work of Mr. Hardy — nowhere before
perhaps in English fiction — had the subject of sex been

^RUTH)

223

treated in a manner so little colored by romantic conven-
tion. It was essential to his theme to set forth the
affair of Arabella altogether free from the glamor of
sentiment. There was here to be none of the deference
to the reader's sensibilities shown in Tess. The woman
in the case was "a complete and substantial female
human — no more, no less." She set out deliberately to
catch a man by sexual incitements, and to cheat him
into marrying her by false representations. Nor was
it on his side what we call "love" that thus caught
and lamed him. It was something that

seemed to care little for his reason and his will, nothing for his
so-called elevated intentions, and moved him along, as a violent
school-master a school-boy he has seized by the collar, in a direc-
tion which tended towards the embrace of a woman for whom he
had no respect, and whose life had nothing in common with his
own except locality.

What many readers will find most offensive of all is
the absence of even that Puritan moral sentiment which
may indeed consent to record such facts, but solely for
the purpose of condemnation. The author does not
even allow himself the shudder of disgust. The affair
is not indeed related in a tone of comedy, like certain
of the adventures of Tom Jones. But the manner is
equally remote from that of Richardson. Jude is no
different from other men, except as his aspirations are
higher and his sensibilities more fine than the ordinary,
so that the results of his weakness are to injure him more
in his feelings and his career. He is not treated as a
vicious person, but as the subject of a material force
which, working physiologically, is a drag upon his spirit.
If any wrong is imputed, it is to the social requirement of

224 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

marriage in a case having so little to do with permanent
moral relations.

There seemed to him, vaguely and dimly, something wrong
in a social ritual which made necessary a cancelling of well-formed
schemes involving years of thought and labor, of foregoing a
man's one opportunity of showing himself superior to the lower
animals, and of contributing his units to the general progress of
his generation, because of a momentary surprise by a new and
transitory instinct which had nothing in it of the nature of vice,
and could be only at the most called weakness.

And this might be pardoned or even approved by
certain earnest readers who cannot pardon the later
relapses of Jude. Those who are willing to acknowledge
that the instinct in question may be transitory, and even
have nothing in it of the nature of vice, may yet be most
strenuous in the denial of any possibility that such a
man as Jude — so fine, so high-minded — could be caught
again, as he was by Arabella, and at times when his
sentiment was all, however hopelessly, engaged by Sue.

And then — for there are as many ways of offending
in the treatment of sex as there are varieties of tempera-
ment— another class of readers may be willing to accept
the whole story of Arabella, as at least natural, who will
repudiate all that relates to Sue as tainted with morbidity
and going beyond all decent bounds of frankness.
Morbid and unnatural they will find the epicene nature
of this woman, whom Jude calls "a distinct type," a
creature "intended by Nature to be left intact." Inde-
cently frank and revolting they will find the author's
mention (however delicately phrased) of her relation
to her husband, her loathing of his contact, and her
final sacrifice to what she conceives her religious duty.

TRUTH

J

225

Nor is the " disagreeable " character of the book
confined to the physical realism and the moral realism \
in the treatment of sex. If that is of a nature to arouse
disgust in many readers, the general outlook on
human destiny is of a character more discouraging,
more withering to faith and hope. The death of little
Father Time and his brothers is in a grimmer vein, grim
and austere to the point of tragedy. And the more so
as it is deliberately made to typify the spirit of the time,
the rooted maladie du siede. "The doctor says there
are such boys springing up amongst us," says Jude — •
"boys of a sort unknown in the last generation — the
outcome of new views of life. They seem to see all
its terrors before they have staying power to resist
them. He says it is the beginning of the coming uni-|
versal wish not to live."

This is not a new note in Hardy. He has long been
occupied with what he takes to be the special cast of
modern thought. And years before, in The Native,
in his account both of Egdon Heath and of Clym
Yeobright, he referred to the more sober taste in art
which is coming in with the gloomier outlook upon life.

In Clym Yeobright's face could be seen the typical counte-
nance of the future. Should there be a classic period to art
hereafter, its Pheidias may produce .such faces. The view of life
as a thing to be put up with, replacing that zest for existence
which was so intense in early civilizations, must ultimately enter
so thoroughly into the constitution of the advanced races thatj
its facial expression will be accepted as a new artistic departure.

But it remained for his last novel to give such fearful (
embodiment to this idea as to make the naturalism of
the earlier books appear as white compared with black. '

226 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

3

This militant naturalism is one symptom of the
preoccupation with a philosophy of life which has already
become absorbing in Tess, but which does not take full
possession until the time of Jude. In the earlier books
Mr. Hardy has been accustomed to make frequent
comment upon the general conditions of life and the ways
of destiny. But his first consideration has always been
for the story itself, the interesting happenings, the
dramatic conflicts, the moving fortunes of his characters.
Even in Tess the author's reflections rather serve to
heighten the pathos than to enlighten us on the general
problem involved. It is first in Jude that the problem
takes rank with the story itself as a subject of interest
and excitement, so that at every step we are first
and most intensely concerned with the truth. It is
here for the first time that Mr. Hardy's philosophy
becomes a prime consideration in the study of his
technique.

The story of Jude is that of a man struggling to
realize fine ideals, but struggling vainly against a
current too strong for him. In the special fineness of
his ideals he is no doubt exceptional; in his weakness,
in the oversensitive nature that makes him an easy
victim of circumstances, he is not perhaps the average,
but he is a type of the modern mind as elsewhere pictured
by Mr. Hardy in Clym Yeobright and Angel Clare, and
which, in little Father Time, produced the grim catastro-
phe. And his whole career is but the last and most
depressing instance of the lifelong persuasion of Mr.
Hardy that the dice of the gods are loaded and man
is bound to lose.

TRUTH

Many and various are the terms in which this idea
has been expressed. In A Pair of Blue Eyes, it appears
as "a fancy some people hold, when in a bitter mood,
.... that inexorable circumstance only tries to prevent
what intelligence attempts." In The Mayor of Caster-
bridge, the author speaks in his own character of "the
ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing
human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum."
In Tess, again in his own words, he speaks of the two
opposing forces, "the inherent will to enjoy, and the
circumstantial will against enjoyment." And finally in
"Jude, he puts into the mouth of Sue a sweeping statement
as to the activity of a hostile power in the lives of her
and Jude. " There is something external to us which
says, 'You shan't!' First it said, 'You shan't learn!'
Then it said, 'You shan't labor!' Now it says, 'You
shan't love!'"

It seems clear that Mr. Hardy feels more strongly
than most English novelists the strength of the forces
against which men have to make their way, and the
many chances of failure. The world is for him no
"Woods of Westermain, " in which it takes but courage
and love and intelligence to secure the backing of all
the forces of nature. The world is a battleground of
forces indifferent or even hostile to men, hard at any
rate to understand and to get upon one's side. And
life is indeed a struggle for existence.

There has been much talk about the fatalism of Hardy,
but not so much definition of terms. Fatalism is the
mental attitude of one who feels that what happens to us,

K

228 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

or what we do, is necessitated by the nature of things
or by the decree of some mysterious power over which
we have no control. It is an attitude of mind natural
to men who have been defeated in their struggle with the
world in spite of the best they can do, and who, in their
despair of being able to affect the course of things,
exclaim with Clym Yeobright, "Well, what must be
will be," or with Jude, " Nothing can be done. Things
are as they are, and will be brought to their destined
issue/' Jude was quoting from a chorus of the Agamem-
non. He was tired of the conflict and ready to give in,
not with the religious exaltation of the true fatalist, but
with the same surrender to necessity. The peculiar
note of fatalism is that it takes no account of the causes
which produce a given result. Jude was not by nature
a fatalist, though he may have been a determinist.

The determinist may be equally impressed with the
helplessness of man in the grip of strange forces, physi-
cal and psychical. But he is distinguished from the
fatalist by his concern with the causes that are the links
in the chain of necessity. Determinism is the scientific
counterpart of fatalism, and throws more light on
destiny by virtue of its diligence in the searching out
of natural law. Mr. Hardy is rather a determinist
than a fatalist. When he speaks most directly and
unmistakably for himself, it is to insist on the universal
working of the laws of cause and effect. " That she had
chosen for her afternoon walk the road along which
she had returned to Casterbridge three hours earlier
in a carriage was curious — if anything should be called
curious in a concatenation of phenomena wherein each is
known to have its accounting cause"

TRUTH

229

The point in which determinism and fatalism agree
is the helplessness of the individual will against the will
in things. Only the determinist conceives the will in
things as the sum of the natural forces with which we
have to cope, whereas the fatalist tends to a more
religious interpretation of that will as truly and literally
a will, an arbitrary power, a personal force like our
own. Sometimes Mr. Hardy allows his characters the
bitter comfort of that personal interpretation. "Hench-
ard, like all his kind, was superstitious, and he could
not help thinking that the concatenation of events this >
evening had produced was the scheme of some sinister (
intelligence bent on punishing him. Yet they had developed \
naturally" It was so that Eustacia Vye, wishing to
escape the responsibility for the shutting out of Mrs.
Yeobright, imagines a spiritual power upon whom to
put it. " Instead of blaming herself for the issue she
laid the fault upon the shoulders of some indistinct, co-
lossal Prince of the World, who had framed her situation
and ruled her lot."

What gives rise to such notions is the ironic dis-
crepancy between what we seek and what we secure,
between what we do and what follows from it. We have
control of so very few of the factors that go to determine
our fortunes that we can hardly help imagining behind
the scene a capricious and malignant contriver of con-
tretemps. It is generally to his characters that Mr.
Hardy ascribes such interpretations. Thus in A Pair of
Blue Eyes, he tells us that, to the West Country folk,

Nature seems to have moods in other than a poetical sense;
predilections for certain deeds at certain times, without any
apparent law to govern or season to account for them. She is

230 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

read as a person with a curious temper; as one who does not
scatter kindnesses and cruelties alternately, but heartless severities
and overwhelming generosities in lawless caprice.

And sometimes the author lets himself fall into a
manner of speaking not strictly scientific. It is true
that the order of nature is one that does not regard the
wishes of men; that what we are after and what nature
is after make two distinct systems, which often enough
interfere and collide to our distress and bewilderment.
And it is hard for the most sober of writers to find terms
of prose for expressing what is a general and legitimate
philosophical notion — that of the sum of forces with
which we have to reckon. Mr. Hardy is not the most
sober of writers, but a poet of vivid imagination, a
satirist intensely conscious of the incongruities in the
nature of things. Is it not natural that he should speak,
in reflective mood, of " Nature's treacherous attempt to
put an end to" Knight upon the cliff ? of " the waggery
of fate which started Clive as a writing clerk" and
"banished the wild and ascetic heath lad [Clym] to a
trade whose sole concern was with the especial symbols
of self-indulgence and vainglory " ? of " an unsympathetic
First Cause" which allowed Tess but one chance in
life ? — and that he should speak with tears of indignation
in his voice of "the President of the Immortals" and
"his sport with Tess"? He is but using the handy per-
sonifications by which we all attempt to characterize as a
whole the principle lying behind the action of natural
law. He does not mean to say that Nature is a lady with
evil designs upon Mr. Knight, or to predicate the exist-
ence of a deity bent on torturing Tess. He is neither a
fatalist nor one urging belief in the governance of God.

TRUTH

231

It is true that Mr. Hardy does give us a more than
usual sense of the mysterious and inscrutable character
of destiny. And this is partly from his use of poetic
imagery drawn from religion. "The ways of the
maker are dark." According to one of the most pene-
trating of his critics, "C'est ce pouvoir de suggerer lei
mystere metaphysique, si nous pouvons parler ainsi, 1
derriere les actes les plus ordinaires, qui donne aux \
ceuvres de M. Hardy leur cachet particulier et distingue
leur auteur des autres romanciers de son epoque."1
But, more and more as he goes on, Mr. Hardy makes
it clear that it is not really a metaphysical mystery that
lies behind his tragic stories, ^but the wholly natural |
mystery of maladjustments in the very nature of things.
It might all be summed up in that highly imaginative —
but in no way "metaphysical" — account in Tess of
" the universal harshness" out of which grow the particu-
lar harshnesses of men with women and women with
men. These harshnesses, he says, "are tenderness
itself when compared with the universal harshness out
of which they grow; the harshness of the position
towards the temperament, of the means towards the
aims, of to-day towards yesterday, of hereafter towards
to-day."

One must not overlook the accent of irony in his use
of terms for the divinity. He takes frequent occasion to \
insinuate his scorn of the unthinking optimism of an *
easy faith. It is this perhaps which leads to his cham-
pioning of Eustacia against the Supreme Power which
had placed "a being of such exquisite finish .... in
circumstances calculated to make of her charms a curse

1 F. A. Hedgcock, Thomas Hardy, Penseur et Artiste (Paris), p. 172.

232 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

rather than a blessing." And this ironic reaction to
the prevailing religious optimism is perhaps responsible
for his one covert suggestion of a First Cause "of lower
moral quality than [our] own." He may have been
reading the posthumous essay of J. S. Mill in which are
presented the possible alternatives (granting the exist-
ence of God) of a deity benevolent but not all-powerful
and a deity all-powerful but not benevolent. But this
must not be taken as more than the momentary fling
of a spirit made somewhat sour by the sweetness of
Victorian sentiment.

But there does remain one practice of Mr. Hardy
which is liable to give rise to the impression of his being
a fatalist. Mr. Hedgcock in particular is impressed
with the fatalistic cast given to so many of his novels
by the large use in them of accident and coincidence,
forcing the hands of the characters, taken together
with the use of personifications like those mentioned
above. But the two things are not necessarily con-
nected. It is not in the novels in which he has contrived
most ingeniously a fatal chain of causes that he has
the most to say of the First Cause or the Supreme Power.
The forced sequences of surprising event in Two on a
Tower, the bizarre recurrences of identical situations in
The Well-Beloved, are almost wholly unaccompanied by
any reflection upon the guiding principle of the universe;
while it is in Tess, almost entirely free from the intrusion
of accident, that the author dilates upon the activity of
"an unsympathetic First Cause," upon "cruel Nature's
law" and "the circumstantial will against enjoyment,"

TRUTH

and takes his final fling at the sport of "the President
of the Immortals."

Again, it is in some of the stories in which the largest
part is played by accident and coincidence that Mr.
Hardy makes the most unqualified assertions of the
reign of natural law. It is in Casterbridge, with its
apparently fatal chain of occurrences, that he insists
most on the law of cause and effect in the concatenation
of events. In Two on a Tower and The Well-Beloved
the few philosophical references to be found are to the
processes of nature.

The excessive use of accident and coincidence by
Mr. Hardy seems to have been from motives of art
rather than philosophy. It is not so much to illustrate
a theory of life as for the sake of an interesting plot that
he tangles up his characters in such a web of circum-
stance. This is obvious enough in a book like A Laodi-
cean, where the outcome is happy, and where the
complications and difficulties serve, as in any romance,
as hurdles for the hero and heroine to clear in their
race for happiness.

And as the aim is artistic rather than philosophical,
so does the objection lie rather on grounds of art than
on grounds of truth.

Everyone knows, as a matter of daily experience,
that we have not complete control of our fortunes, that
the general order of events is constantly interfering with
our particular set of aims. An accident is simply a
happening in the general order which comes to favor
us or to upset our calculations. It intrudes upon our
order with the shock and disaster of the housewife's
broom sweeping away a spider's web. It is, as Hardy

234 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

expresses it, in reference to a misfortune of the Durbey-
fields, a thing which comes upon us " irrespective of
will, or law, or desert, or folly; a chance external impinge-
ment to be borne with ; not a lesson." There can be no
objection on grounds of truth to the recording of such
accidents.

But on the other hand, they can have little value
for literary art. For they have no moral significance;
they throw no light upon human nature or the social
order. And they are accordingly just so much waste
material, just so much of a weight for the author to
carry. If such an accident is a major event, it has to
be set forth at some length; it has to be accounted for.
And that takes a portion of the author's precious time,
of the reader's precious store of energy. If there are
many such events, and much complication of the action,
the story becomes unwieldy; the author has not space
to turn round in, as Henry James would express it.
The true subjects of his study must be neglected for
tiresome and unilluminating explanations. The miracle
of The Mayor of Casterbridge is that, with such a stagger-
ing burden of overhead expenses in the way of mere
plot, the author can still pay dividends on the income
from character.

6

There is a great difference between positive interfer-
ence from the external order in the shape of unfortunate
accident, and a mere failure to favor the hopes of men.
It is chiefly in the latter form that the hostility or
indifference of nature shows itself in the later novels.
Thus in Jude, when the boy was so painfully devoting
himself to the learning of Latin and Greek, the author

TRUTH 235

larks that somebody might have come along to help
him in his difficulties. "But nobody did come, because
nobody does." This is, of course, the very opposite of
coincidence; it is a denial of all the marvels of romance,
always on the lookout for angel or knight-errant to
save one from the dungeon of ennui and incompetence.

Of the same character is that want of design in the
adjustment of the man to the hour, etc., of which Mr.
Hardy expatiates so at length apropos of the affair of
Tess and Alec.

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things
the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coin-
cides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!"
to a poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing;
or reply "Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-
seek has become an irksome, outworn game In the present

case, as in millions, the two halves of an approximately perfect
whole did not confront each other at the perfect moment; part
and counterpart wandered independently about the earth in the
stupidest manner for a while, till the late time came

Here is no accident, no coincidence, no fatal chain of
events, no case of skilful and ingenious contrivance on
the part of destiny. Here is simply a total want of any
contrivance for the benefit of the human beings con-
cerned. It is but a negative hostility, or indifference, of
the external order, which is here displayed; and there
is no objection to be entered in the interest either of
truth or of art.

But when it comes to positive motivation, it is gener-
ally better art to ignore altogether the operations and
dispositions of an extra-human order, which are so hard

236 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

to trace and chart, and confine one's self to familiar
human nature. Only so can one avoid the arbitrary
and freakish, and leave one's self free to study the
significant and humanly interesting. If we must have
a villain, or antagonist, outside the role of the characters,
let it be that odious abstraction, Society, or Convention.
It is largely so in both Tess and Jude; and that is why
these novels have so very modern a tone among the
works of a somewhat old-fashioned writer. If Nature
is sometimes referred to in these books as a cruel step-
mother, she more often appears as an enlightened
champion against the obscurantism of Social Convention.
In Tess it is to the convention of the "fallen woman"
that Mr. Hardy opposes the now familiar figure of the
really "pure" woman become the victim of a natural
instinct, and then the more pitiful victim of the "fallen
woman" superstition.

In Jude the great antagonist is the institution of
marriage, especially in its sacramental High Church
aspect. Marriage appears as a mischief-maker in the
cases of both Jude and Sue; and in Jude's case it was
both in relation to Arabella and to Sue. It was a
disastrous mistake for him to marry Arabella in deference
to the social convention of legalizing their union, of
making her "an honest woman." His life was, ruined
by the fundamental error of basing "a permanent
contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary
connection with affinities that alone render a life-long
comradeship tolerable." He was permanently crippled
in his career as a scholar. And what was left of hope
and idealism was nullified by the illegality and impiety
of his later passion for Sue.

TRUTH 237

Strange that his first aspiration — towards academical pro-
ficiency— had been checked by a woman, and that his second
aspiration — towards apostleship — had also been checked by a
woman. "Is it," he said, "that the women are to blame; or is
it the artificial system of things, under which the normal sex-impulses
are turned into devilish domestic gins and springes to noose and
hold back those who want to progress?"

As for Sue, her misery in the wedded state is equally
attributed to a contravention of nature. "It is none
of the natural tragedies of love," she says, rather
sententiously, "that's love's usual tragedy in civilized
life, but a tragedy artificially manufactured for people
who in a natural state would find relief in parting."
Throughout the book there is much irony in the treat-
ment of the marriage vow, on the part both of the charac-
ters and of the author.

And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two
swore that at every other time of their lives they would assuredly
elieve, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and
desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable
as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at
all surprised at what they swore.

ere is a frequent suggestion in the talk of Jude and
Sue of the "advanced" modern views of marriage.
But in the end Sue underwent a change of heart; and
it was the sacerdotal view of marriage as an indissoluble
bond which led her back to Phillotson and brought about
the final sordid ending.

. . 8

Whatever is done in deference to convention or
upon religious conviction is done in accordance with
human nature itself. And such motivation is well

238 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

within the circle of familiar psychology, completely
shut off from the world of accident external to our
wills. Much of the action in Jude again is to be referred
not to conventional or religious motives taken by
themselves, but to the interaction between them and
instincts simply human and natural.

Quite the most interesting parts of the story, and
those which meet best that ideal of scenic representation
which reigns in Tess and The Native, are the long series
of scenes between Jude and Sue in the third and fourth
books, and again in the last book, in which the ticklish
uncertainty of their relation is exhibited in long-drawn-
out dialogues of great intensity of feeling. Even before
Jude has told Sue of his being married, these scenes
have begun. Jude is in love with Sue, but conscious
of being fettered by his marriage to Arabella. Sue is
half in love with Jude. She loves to be loved, and
is unusually sensitive to indifference or disapproval.
But she does not want to go too far. She does not
wantv a love affair. And besides, she is engaged to
Phillotson, not to speak of the cousinship with Jude,
and the long tradition of marital unhappiness in their
family. And so their commerce is one continuous
succession of advances and retreats on one part or the
other, of little quarrels and ardent reconciliations.
Sue takes everything in so personal a way! She is so
easily hurt, and must be comforted! She so hates to be
thought conventional, and so longs for tenderness and
intimacy! Jude is hurt on his side by her callous
rationalism in the treatment of his religious beliefs;
and then she must hasten to make up for her want of
considerateness. She is always parting from him in

TRUTH 239

coldness, and then writing him the warmest of notes.
They are both so easily made jealous ! There is so much
excitement in their handclasp; so much emotion in her
contralto throat-note under stress of feeling; and then:
"She looked up trustfully, and her voice seemed trying
to nestle in his breast."

The climax of these scenes of cat-and-mouse playing
with love comes in the fourth book, after her marriage
to Phillotson, when Jude and Sue meet at Marygreen
or the funeral of their Aunt Drusilla. It is impossible,
short of quoting the long dialogue, to give a notion
of the tense dramatic play of feeling between them, as
Sue suggests the hypothetical problem of a woman
ith a physical aversion to her husband, and then
rrives at a confession of her own unhappiness with the
hoolmaster — how Jude guesses she is unhappy and she
enies it; how Jude's religious doctrines are at variance
ith his instinct in the matter; how for each concession
to the tenderness between them they have to put forward
the justification of cousinship, or that of innocent
consolation, which provokes a corresponding reaction
of jealousy; and so on and on through rising degrees
of agony. Even after they have said goodnight, the
cry of a wounded animal brings them together again.
Jude is wakened by the squeak of a rabbit, and goes
ut to give it release from its pain. And so he comes
o talk with Sue, who is also troubled by the rabbit,
nd whom he finds looking out of the open casement,
here is no reference between them to what must have
een for both the symbolic character of the trapped
beast. But there is more talk of her unhappiness and
s doctrines; there is kissing of hands; and finally,

24o ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

"in a moment of impulse she bent over the sill, and
laid her face upon his hair, weeping." It was not,
however, until the following day that Jude and Sue
yielded at last to the passion they had so long held away
from them. Upon her departure from Marygreen an
incident occurred.

They had stood parting in the silent highway, and their
tense and passionate moods had led to bewildered inquiries of
each other on how far their intimacy ought to go; till they had
almost quarrelled, and she had said tearfully that it was hardly
proper of him as a parson in embryo to think of such a thing as
kissing her even in farewell, as he now wished to do. Then she
had conceded that the fact of the kiss would be nothing; all
would depend upon the spirit of it. If given in the spirit of a
cousin and a friend, she saw no objection; if in the spirit of a
lover, she could not permit it. "Will you swear that it will not
be in that spirit ? " she had said.

No; he would not. And then they had turned from each
other in estrangement, and gone their several ways, till at a dis-
tance of twenty or thirty yards both had looked round simul-
taneously. That look behind was fatal to the reserve hitherto
more or less maintained. They had quickly run back, and met,
and embracing most unpremeditatedly, kissed each other. When
they parted for good it was with flushed cheeks on her side, and a
beating heart on his.1

It is a pity that Mr. Hardy should have seen fit to
give thus in summary — in the tame pluperfect — what
might have been, in full presentation in dialogue form,
the most moving scene in all his work. But we ought
not to complain, considering that we have, in the scenes
that go before, and in those that follow, almost the
greatest treasure of dramatic dialogue which he or any
other English novelist has bestowed upon us.

1 Pp- 256-57.

TRUTH

24:

The scenes that follow, on the train and in the hotel
,t Aldbrickham, bring into prominence an element in
te character of Sue which cannot be blamed upon
invention, since Nature is made solely responsible for
it. She was "intended by Nature to be left intact" ; and
however much she may crave to be loved, it is only with
extreme reluctance that she can give herself even to
Jude, whom she loves. It is only remotely that this
affects the problem of the book; but it does contribute
to the artistic interest by prolonging the scenes of tension
between her and Jude.

It is her reluctance to go through the ceremony of
marriage, after she has been divorced from Phillotson,
that brings upon her and Jude the condemnation of the
rorld; and so we come again to the opinion of the
rorld — to the " conventions " and " moral hobgoblins"
-as the provoking cause of the action. It is this which
:auses the death of the children, and all that follows.
ie great drama of the final book lies in the renewed
strain between Jude and Sue owing to her conversion
back to the religious point of view. And now recurs,
on the altar steps of St. Silas and at her chamber door,
the harrowing alternation of sternness and tenderness in
her treatment of Jude that makes the drama of this
relentless history.

9

Seldom had Mr. Hardy drawn his effects so straight
from human nature. It is true that he is keenly con-
scious here, as in Tess and in The Native, of this and that
"flaw in the terrestrial scheme." But these flaws, in
so far as they affect the action of the story, are found in
character itself, or in the social arrangements which

242

ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

are the collective expression of the will of men. Jude
and Sue are both frankly represented as humanly
weak, as more than ordinarily sensitive to pain, and ill
adapted to an order that calls for a certain callousness
as a condition of survival. They and the children are
living in a world which does not want them. Sue is
perhaps to be regarded as a positively morbid type.
But such perversity of character is a very different thing
from that perversity in things themselves which breeds
capricious and unaccountable accident and weaves a
web of fatal events " irrespective of will, or law, or desert,
or folly." And for the most part, the action is the
clear and inevitable outcome of the social order of which
the characters are a part, now as rebels and now as more
or less loyal subjects. So that everything that happens
is characteristic and full of meaning.

It is true that we have a fairly liberal allowance of
major happenings to be disposed of: marriage, divorce,
remarriage, and death. But there is an almost complete
absence of those minor complications so much in evidence
in Two on a Tower and The Mayor of Casterbridge, even
in so fine a work as The Native. There are no intrusions I
from without; everything comes about naturally from I
the stated conditions of the problem. And none of the
author's precious time must be wasted upon the setting
of traps and the unraveling of mysteries. The pattern
is large and bold, but simple and unforced; and each
development in the plot is followed through in leisurely
fashion and with satisfying amplitude of detail.

Many readers will put Jude above Tess as a work
of art. It is clearly not so beautiful. For one thing,
the author has denied himself the glamor and richness

TRUTH

f the Wessex background, a want but ill supplied by the
insubstantial rainbow vision of Christminster. And then
the characters themselves are not of the same radiant
d heroic mold as Tess and Angel Clare. They are the

tunted growth of modern life, with all its maladjust-

ent, discontent, and restless, craving intellectuality.

hey are poor creatures of an urban industrial order.

eside the ordinary characters of English fiction, and in
the light of Victorian poetry, they carry a strong sugges-
tion of the pathological. The first instinct of a reader
coming to these two novels from his Tennyson and
Browning, his Thackeray and Meredith, is greatly to pre-

Kfer the melodious pathos and undimmed idealism of Tess.
But later impressions do better justice to Jude. We
nd ourselves more and more gripped by the plain
iruthfulness of the record. Upon reflection, we like
the complete freedom from melodramatic features like
e seduction of Tess and the murder of Alec. In the
ersons of Jude and Sue we recognize the human nature
f our unheroic experience. We follow the course of
their lives with a breathless suspense not so much over
hat shall happen to them as what the truth shall prove
be. This is the note of the time that was coming in.
e reader fresh from Ibsen and Flaubert and Tolstoi
y even prefer the drab and biting realism of Jude to
he shimmering poetry of Tess. He will probably find
it to be a more characteristic expression of the time.

10

It stands in any case as one of the three great achieve-
ments of the art of Thomas Hardy. Mr. Hardy as a
novelist was liable to a kind of diabolic possession by

244 ART AND CRAFT AT ONE

the demon of plot.1 He was forever being ridden and
led astray by the very British notion that a story, to be
interesting, must be complicated and full of exciting
events. In several cases he found release from this
obsession by yielding himself to the control of some
brighter spirit, some power that made for simplicity
and naturalness as well as for a more profoundly human
appeal. In each case the result more than justified his
tardy boldness in abandoning the antiquated machinery
of his trade. The Return of the Native, Tess of the
D'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure prove to be the most
interesting as well as the best made of his novels. Art
and craft were in their fashioning identical. It is not
always perhaps that the relative appeal of a novelist's
works is so directly in proportion to their relative excel-
lence in technique.

1 1 have recently received comfort and support in this view of the
matter by an opinion expressed by Mr. Edward Garnett in his Friday
Nights. Mr. Garnett is particularly impressed in the case of The Mayor
of Casterbridge with the damage done to Hardy's art by overcomplication
of plot. .J^ *." ». > "T tt A. «',•*%*«

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

e fullest and most satisfactory bibliography of
'homas Hardy is that by A. P. Webb, published by
rank Rollings, London, 1916, and in the same year by
the Torch Press, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This book con-
s a full description, up to the year of publication,
f "First Editions," of "Nugae and Privately Printed
Books," and of "The Wessex Novels" ; together with lists
of Mr. Hardy's "Contributions to Books," his " Contribu-
tions to Periodicals and Newspapers," lists of "Critical
Notices, Essays, and Appreciations [of Hardy's work] in
Books, and in Periodicals," a list of plays based on his
books, and an appendix describing certain autographed
ems of Hardy. In the same year appeared Henry
anielson's The First Editions of the Writings of Thomas
ardy and Their Values: a Bibliographical Handbook
'or Collectors, Booksellers, Librarians and Others, published
Allen and Unwin. And still in this same year of
1916 there appeared, as appendix to Harold Child's
'homas Hardy ("Writers of the Day Series," London:
isbet; Boston: Holt), "A Short Bibliography of Thomas
ardy's Principal Works," by Arundell Esdaile, together
ith a brief American bibliography.

Mr. Esdaile briefly describes the collected editions,
hese include: (i) The Wessex Novels, a series begun
y Osgood, Mcllvaine and Co. in 1895, and continued
ccessively by Harpers and Macmillan, with the volumes
poems uniform, a series which "may be considered as
till in progress"; (2) new and cheaper Uniform Edition,

247

248 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

1902, etc., "the familiar 35. 6d. edition in blue-grey
covers, with the map of Wessex, " Macmillan (in America,
Harpers); (3) Pocket Edition, 1906, etc., "a re-issue
on small India paper, of the Uniform Edition" (Mac-
millan, Harpers); (4) Wessex Edition, The Works of
Thomas Hardy, 1912, etc., with a general Preface, " con-
taining the author's revisions," including several vol-
umes of verse, and the Wessex Novels rearranged as:
"I. Novels of Character and Environment," "II. Ro-
mances and Fantasies," "III. Novels of Ingenuity,"
"IV. Mixed Novels." As for the "author's revisions,"
by the way, the reader should be warned that many
such were introduced in several of the earlier editions.
References in my text are to number (2) above, with
which, I believe, the paging of (3) is identical.

The only important volumes by Thomas Hardy, not
reprints of earlier work, published since 1916 are Moments
of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses, Macmillan, 1917,
and Late Lyrics and Earlier, with Many Other Verses,
Macmillan, 1922. His Collected Poems were published
in one volume by Macmillan in 1919, Selected Poems
("Golden Treasury Series," Macmillan) appeared in
1916. The epic-drama of The Dynasts (originally 1903,
1906, 1908) was published in a single volume by Mac-
millan in 1920. Certain special American editions of
novels may be mentioned as follows: The Return of the
Native, edited with introduction by Professor J. W.
Cunliffe, Scribner, 1917; The Mayor of Casterbridge,
with introduction by Joyce Kilmer, Modern Library of
the World's Best Books, Boni and Liveright, 1917;
Far from the Madding Crowd, with introduction by
Professor William T. Brewster, Harpers, 1918.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 249

The most important studies of Hardy are the follow-
ing: The Art of Thomas Hardy, by Lionel Johnson, Lane,
1894; Essai de Critique: Thomas Hardy, Penseur et
Artiste, by F. C. Hedgcock, Paris, 1911; and Thomas
Hardy, a Critical Study, by Lascelles Abercrombie,
Martin Seeker, 1912. Since 1916, the following volumes
have appeared: Thomas Hardy: a Study of the Wessex
Novels, by H. C. Duffin, Longmans, first edition, 1916,
second edition, with an appendix on the poems and The
Dynasts, 1921; Thomas Hardy: Poet and Novelist, by
Samuel C. Chew, "Bryn Mawr Notes and Monographs, "
Longmans, 1921; Thomas Hardy: the Artist, the Man
and the Disciple of Destiny, by A. Stanton Whitfield,
Grant Richards, 1921. Other volumes since 1916 devoted
in part to Hardy are : George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, by
L. W. Berle, Kennerley, 1917; Moderns, (pp. 103-59), by
John Freeman, Crowell, 1917; English Literature during
the Last Half Century, by J. W. CunlifTe, Macmillan, 1919.

I will add for the convenience of students a list of
the novels with dates of first publication both in book and

teriodical form.
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE NOVELS

1871. Desperate Remedies. Tinsley 3 vols.

1872. Under the Greenwood Tree. Tinsley 3 vols.
1872-73. A Pair of Blue Eyes. Tinsley' s Magazine, September,

1872, to July, 1873.
—1873. Tinsley 3 vols.

1874. Far from the Madding Crowd. Cornhill M agazine, Jan-
uary to December.
— 1874. Smith, Elder 2 vols.

1875-76. The Hand of Ethelberta. Cornhill Magazine, July,
1875, to May, 1876.
—1876. Smith, Elder 2 vols.

250

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

1878. The Return of the Native. Belgravia, January to De-
cember.
—1878. Smith, Elder 3 vols.

1 880. The Trumpet-Major. Good Words, January to December.
—1880. Smith, Elder 3 vols.

1 880-81. A Laodicean. Harper's Magazine, European Edition,
December, 1880, to December, 1881.
— 1881. Sampson, Low, Marston and Co. 3 vols.

1882. Two on a Tower. Atlantic Monthly, January to De-
cember.

— 1882. Sampson, Low, Marston and Co. 3 vols.

1883. The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid. Graphic, Sum-
mer Number; Harper's Weekly, June 23 to August 4.
— 1884. George Munro, i vol., paper wrapper. The
curious bibliographical history of this little novel is set
forth in my note in the Nation (New York) XCIV,
(1912), 82-83.

1886. The Mayor of Casterbridge. Graphic, January 2 to

May 15.

—1886. Smith, Elder 2 vols.
1886-87. The Woodlanders. Macmillan' s Magazine, May, 1886,

to April, 1887.

— 1887. Macmillan 3 vols.

1891. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Graphic, July 4 to Decem-
ber 26.

— 1891. Osgood, Mcllvaine 3 vols.

1892. The Well-Beloved. Under the title of "The Pursuit of
the Well-Beloved," in Illustrated London News, Octo-
ber i to December 17.

— 1897. Macmillan.

1894-95. Jude the Obscure. Under the title of "The Simple-
tons," in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, European
Edition, December, 1894. Continued under the title
of "Hearts Insurgent" in the same magazine January
to November, 1895.
—1896. Osgood, Mcllvaine.

INDEX

INDEX

Abercrombie, Lascelles, Thomas
Hardy, a Critical Study, v,
192 n., 249

Addison, 72, 116

Aeschylus, 85

Austen, Jane, vii, 87

Balzac, vi

Bazin, Rene, 55

Beach, Joseph Warren: The

I Method of Henry James, vi;

article on " Bowdlerized Versions
of Hardy," gn.; note on first
edition of Romantic Adventures
of a Milkmaid, 250
Berle, L. W., George Eliot and

Thomas Hardy, 249
Bourget, Paul, 154

IBraeme, Charlotte M.: Dora
Thome, 200; Beyond Pardon,
200; One False Step, 200; The
Shadow of a Sin, 200; The Wife's
Secret, 200; A Woman's Error,
200
Browne, Sir Thomas, 66
Browning, Pippa Passes, 205

Cervantes, Don Quixote, 86

Chase, Mary Ellen: Doctor's
thesis on versions of The Mayor
of Casterbridge, Tess of the
D'Urbervilles, and Jude the
Obscure, 9 n., 51 n.; Master's
thesis on The Well-Beloved,
9 n., 128 n.

ew, Samuel C., Thomas Hardy:
Poet and Novelist, v, 249

:hild, Harold, Thomas Hardy, 247

^lay, Bertha M., 200

:oleridge, "The Three Graves,"

:

Collins, Wilkie, 41; The Moon-
stone, 10; The Woman in White,
10, 23

Congreve, 112

Conrad, Joseph, vi, 173; The
Arrow of Gold, 175

Cunliffe, J. W., introduction to
edition of The Return of the
Native, 7 n., 248, 249

Danielson, Henry, The First Edi-
tions of the Writings of Thomas
Hardy, 247

Dickens, 9, 42, 96, 112; Bleak
House, 10; David Copperfield,
86-87, 2°6; Dombey and Son,
206; The Old Curiosity Shop,
149, 206; Oliver Twist, 149;
Our Mutual Friend, 10

Dostoyevsky, 152; The Brothers
Karamazov, 146

Dryden, 83, 85

"The Duchess," 128, 200

Duffin, H. C., Thomas Hardy: a
Study of the Wessex Novels, v,
182 n., 212, 249

Dumas, fils, 83; Le Demimonde, 85
Dumas, pere, 84, 85, 121

Eliot, George, 34, 96, 147, 211:
Adam Bede, 88, 146

Esdaile, Arundell, "A Short Bib-
liography of Thomas Hardy's
Principal Works," 247-48

Euripides, 83

Fielding, 13, 86; Tom Jones, 150,

223

Flaubert, vi, 243
Frank, Waldo, vii
Freeman, John, Moderns, 249

253

254

INDEX

Galsworthy, John, vii, 83, 89;
The Country House, 90; Fra-
ternity, 90; Justice, 85; The
Man of Property, 90; The Pa-
trician, 90

Garnett, Edward, Friday Nights,
244 n.

Goldsmith, 72, 115, 117

Gorky, 152

Gosse, Edmund, 10 n.

Gray, 77

Griffith, D. W., 31

Hardy, Thomas: Changed Man
and Other Tales, A, i25n.,
i26n., i27n.; Collected Poems,
248; Desperate Remedies, chap,
i; 1,3,4, 5, 10, 14 n., 15 n., 36,
41, 117, 142, 199, 202; Dynasts,
The, 113, 117, 248; Far from
the Madding Crowd, chap, iii;

3, 6, 7, 14 n., 18, 32, 43, 80, 90,
105, 109, no, 113, 148, 161;
edition with introduction by
Professor Brewster, 248; Hand
of Ethelberta, The, chap, v,
sec. i; 3, 5, 14 n., 15 n., 202;
Jude the Obscure, rhg.p. jy; ft nii
gn., 13, 14 n.. 16-17^ i8T 23.
43, 55, 02 n.. IOQ T27, 146, 164;
Laodicean, A, chap, v, ytii. j/

4, 8, n, 15, 15 n., 98, 233;
Late Lyrics and Earlier, 248;
Mayor of Casterbridge, The,
chap, vi; 8n., 9 n., n, 14 n.,
15 n., 16, 34, 35, 55, 109, no,
158, 165, 181, 202, 227, 228,
229, 233, 234, 242, 244 n.; with
introduction by Joyce Kilmer,
248; Moments of Vision and
Miscellaneous Verses, 248; Pair
of Blue Eyes, A, chap, ii; 14 n.,
15 n., 17, 45, 56, 61, 63, 64, 98,
146, 148, 202, 227, 229-30;
"Profitable Reading of Fiction,
The," 5 n., 6n.; Return of the
Native, The, chap, iv; 4, 6, 7,
8n., 9n., n, 15 n., 18, 32, 34,
55, 58, 63, 64, 72, 73, 109, 118,
146, 158, 161, 164, 176, 179, 181,

182, 184, 185, 191, 192, 194, i
199, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 238,
241, 242, 244; edition with
introduction by Professor Cun-
liffe, 248; Romantic Adventures
of a Milkmaid, The, chap, v,
sec. 5; 4, n, 14 n., 15 n., 16;
Selected Poems, 248; Tess of the
D'Urbervilles, chap, viii; 3, 8 n.,
9 n., n, 14 n., 17, 18, 23, 43, 55,
60, 64, 98, 109, 125, 127, 146, 161,
218, 223, 226, 227, 230, 234, 235,
236, 238, ^Ai^_2A2^ 243, 244;
Trumpet- Major, The, chap, v,
sec. 2, n, 15 n.; Two on a
Tower, chap, v, sec. 4; n, 14,
14 n., 15 n., 127, 233, 242;
Under the Greenwood Tree, chap,
iii, sec. 6; 14 n., 36, 56, 57, 61,
113,161,202; Waiting Supper,
The, 14 n.; Well-Beloved, The,
chap, v, sec. 6; 8 n., 9 n., 14 n.,
109, 233; Woodlanders, The,
chap, vii; 11,14^,58,61,64,
98, 109, no, 134, 181, 199

Hawthorne, 132, 211

Hedgcock, F. C.:Essai de Critique:

Thomas Hardy, Penseur et

Artiste, v, 32, 231, 249
Hergesheimer, Joseph, 89
Hope, Anthony, 85
Ho wells, William Dean, vi
Hudson, W. H., 66
Hugo, 96

Ibsen, 83, 92, 243; The Master

Builder, 85
Irving, 117

James, Henry, vi, viii, 8, 96, 118,
146, 154, 155, 173; The Ambas-
sadors, 89, 98; The Awkward
Age, 56, 89, 98; The Golden
Bowl, 94; The Spoils of Poyn-
ton, 89

Jefferies, Richard, 66

Johnson, Lionel, The Art of Thomas
Hardy, v, 249

INDEX

2S5

jones, Henry Arthur, The Second

Mrs, Tanqueray, 201
Jonson, Ben, 115

Lesage, Gil Bias, 86
Lubbock, Percy, The Craft of
Fiction, v, vi

Maeterlinck, 85, 93

Marivaux, 85

Marshall, Archibald, Exton Manor,
98-

Meredith, George, v, viii, 8, 93;
On Comedy and the Uses of the
Comic Spirit, 88; Diana of the
Crossways, 59; The Egoist, 56,
88-89, 93, 94, 98, 146; Evan
Harrington, in; Rhoda Flem
ing, 201; Sandra Belloni
"The Woods of Weste
227

1, J. S., 232

[oore, George, vi, 8, 89
Esther Waters, 211, 211 n.

Dream, 52; Much Ado about

Nothing, 142
Shelley, "Alastor," 163 n.; "Epi-

psychidion," 131
Sheridan, 115

Sidgwick, Ethel, Hatchways, 98
Sinclair, May, 90
Smollett, Roderick Random, 86
Sophocles, 211
Steele, 112
Stevenson, 146, 173
Swinburne, v
Swinnerton, Frank: Nocturne, 98;

September, 98
Synge, J. M., The Playboy of the

Western World, 85

ni, j«r~ -Thacke»y» 4^i^
rrnja," Tolstoi, ^43^ W

"rqdlop^f 42; Bar Chester Towers,
87, 146

155;

Pinero, Arthur Wing, The Squire, 6

Racine, 83, 85
Richardson, Dorothy, vii
Richardson, Samuel, 223

Schnitzler, 83; Der Einsame Weg,

85

Scott, vii, 12, 87
Shakespeare, 9, 72; As You Like

It, 52; King Lear, 15, 211;

The Merry Wives of Windsor,

69; A Midsummer-Nighfs

Verne, Jules, Around the World in
Eighty Days, 112

Walpole, Hugh, 56, 89, 96, 98, 173

Webb, A. P., Bibliography of the
Works of Thomas Hardy, 247

Wharton, Edith, vii, 155, 173;
The Age of Innocence, 90; The
House of Mirth, 90; Summer, 98

Whitfield, A. Stanton, Thomas
Hardy: the Artist, the Man, and
the Disciple of Destiny, 249

Wilde, Oscar, 201

Wood, Mrs. Henry, East Lynne,

201 N

Wordsworth, 77, 205 \

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