OBITUARY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 79, 13 January 1928, Page 2

OBITUARY

MR THOMAS HARDY. GREAT NOVELIST AND POET. (Per Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, January 11. Mr Tho-mas Hardly, the novelist,! died at his home in Dorchester. He was in good, health almost to the last, and was able to read and take an interest in the day’s news. He caught a chill in the recent severe weather. The burial will take place in the family vault in the village of Stinsford, lirar Dorchester, immortalised as JMellstock in the novel “Under the Greenwood Tree.” Mr Hardy’s last poem appeared in “The Times” on Christmas Eve. LAST OF GREAT VICTORIANS. STARTED LIFE AS ARCHITECT.

Mr Hardy was born in Dorsetshire in Ji:ne, 1840. He was educated at local schools, and afterwards, privately, and in 1856, was articled to Mr John Hicks, an ecclesiastical architect pf Dorchester. He began writing verses and essays in 1859, but later he was compelled to apply _ himself more strictly to his profession of architecture. He went to London in 1862 1 . and in 1863 won the medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects for an essay, and in the same year won the Architectural Association’s prize for design. His hrst short story was published in 1865, in “Chambers’s Journal,” and for the next two or three years he wavered between taking finally to architecture or literature as* a profession. Finally, in 1871, his first novel. “Desperate Remedies,” was published, and in 1872 “Under the Greenwood Tree.” After that he published many novels and volumes of 'stories and Verse, among which, in chronological order, were:—“A Pair of Blue Eyes,” “Far From The Madding Crowd,” “The Hand of Ethelberta,” “The Return of the Native,” _ “The Trumpet-Major,” “A Laodicean,” “Two on a Tower,” “The Mayor of Casterbridge,” “The Woodlanders,” “Wessex Tales,” “A Group of Noble Dames,” “Tess of the D’Urfbervilles, “Life’s Little Ironies,” “Jude the Obscure,” “The Well-Beloved,(” “The Dynasts” “Wessex Poems,” and “Time’s Laughing-Stocks and Other Verses.” * Mr Hardy was awarded the Order or Merit in 1914. He married in 1874 Miss Emily Lavinia Gilford, who died in 1912, and in 1914 Miss Florence Dugdale. The following appreciation of Thomas Hardy was written by R. T. Hopkins for “The Scotsman” in June, 1926: — The wide world makes note of Thomas Hardy’s 86th birthday this year, and take up his “Tess of the D’UrbervilleG” to read once again. But if you should make a journey to Max Gate, his house near Dorchester, expecting to confront some Sophoclean giant in the guise of the man known as the last of the Great Victorians, you will be disappointed. If you are fortunate enough to get a glimpse of Mr Hardy, you will see a little grey man with a serious countenance suggesting a latent weariness and melancholy hidden under a crust of reserve. His figure is spare. Sometimes there is a whimsical gleam in his smile, hut it quickly passes. Something in his ■look reminds oue of the timid wild animals which lurk in English woods, but though his tales deal most entirely with country life and nature there is no trace upon him of the vigorous open-air ways of the man he has portrayed. Mr Hardy is painfully modest, painfully nervous. “I am nothing,” he exclaimed to the Prince of Wales when lie visited the novelist. “Oh! you will find out I am nothing! I have no genius, no facility: anyone could have written the same kinds of hooks if they sacrificed everything to it as I do!” He cannot bear to come into close contact with many people, and when Oxford conferred on him his honorary degree he could not face the subsequent luncheon, and retired into the meadows to eat a packet of sandwiches alone.

For making money Hardy cares nothing. All his manuscripts, for which he refused £IO,OOO, he gave to the British Museum and Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

Memories of Distant Days. Mr Hardy has vivid memories dating from his earliest days. He is one of those who remember impressions very well. “I have seen with my own eyes things that many people believe to have been extinct for centuries. . . I have seen men in the stocks. I remember one perfectly, when I was very young. I can see him now, sitting in the scorching sunshine with the flies crawling over him.'* The .house in which Thomas Hardy lives is of ranch more than common interest for various reasons. It would be illustrious for no other reason than that he is its occupant, but ‘‘Max Gate’’ isi on the site of a Roman burial ground, a fact of which nobody was aware until its foundations and the roads leading to it were dug out. Then were discovered skeletons or fragmuirs of Romans of rank, including a lady, the last-mentioned wearing a (ibula which Mr Hardy preserves as one of his treasures. But also the bouse is on what was formerly Crown land, belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall, and bought as a freehold by Mr Hardy because an interest was taken !n the matter by the King, then the Prince ot Wales. Finally, the house is of Mr Hardy’s own design. Before he became widely known as a novelist he was already an architect of growing distinction, and ho built for himself the sort of dwelling that he felt he would love to live in.

An Exclusive Den. “Max Gate” is a square, substantial, modern building, with no hint of the romance and mystery of the old houses described in his novels. ’There is a small white hall, lit by an oil lamp, in spite of the fact that a gas main runs bv the front of the house, and on each side is a large reception room. Upstairs is the author’s own den —a place to which no visitor has yet penetrated. The name of Hardv is very frequently encountered 1 about _ Dorchester, and the novelist’s family is commonlv said to be of the same stock as Nelson’s officer. Captain H rdy. The Grammar School in South Street, which was lmilt in 1569. was endowed by another Thomas Hardy, who was a Squire at Melcombe Regis, and an _ancestor of Thomas Hardy, the novelist.