WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 89, 13 January 1928, Page 8

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES' AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

‘ When Mr. Thomas Hardy, whose death is announced to-day, was born at the little Dorsetshire village of Higher Bockhampton, on June 2, 1840, Wellington had not been six months founded. When he wrote his first verse in IS(>5 Lord Palmerston was the Queen’s Prime Minister, and when he wrote his first novel in 1871 it appeared almost a decade before Disraeli’s last. Those are long stretches of time, but only last year Mr. Hardy was still writing verse that leading periodicals in Britain and America were glad to print in the forefront of their pages. Setting out in life as ar. architect, Thomas Hardy began writing poetry, and then tried a novel. It is said that it was his great contemporary novelist, George Meredith, who coaxed Hardy into writing a novel, his original bent being to verse. fhe needi of ready money, too, is alleged to have helped. The first novel was “Desperate Remedies ” modelled in the main on the stvle of Wilkie Collins. But it was not until the fourth novel had appeared in 1874—“ far from the Madding Crowd ’ —that popular success came. 'lbis story was first published anonymously iu the “Cornhill Magazine,” and it was supposed by many that George Eliot was thd author.

No other novelist but Thomas Hardy r has recreated a kingdom for his owii use. Many have imagined realms of fancy like Howell’s Altruria, or Stevenson's Gruhewald. But Hardy revived, fictionally speaking, part of the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom of _ Wessex, modernised it in a curious way bv leaving as they were important goegraphical names, gave other pseudonyms. (as Melchester for Salisbury and Christminster for Oxford), and filled in with other towns and villages of his own where he chose. _ Mr. Hardy’s Wessex is not a region of strict boundaries: it touches Exeter, Bristol, Salisbury, and Winchester; but i-’ the main it may be considered as equivalent' to the County of Dorset. This Wessex he peopled with the men and women of his many novels. One excellent edition of the novels has in each volume a map of this semiimaginary kingdom, and Hardy readers find pleasure in linking up the real and imaginary geography. •

Dorset and its human history affected Mr. Hardy with very evident emotion. Dorset, he tells us in one place, looks “a vrey old, aged” county': a home of venerable traditions, symbolised by its lonely barrows, its weathered towers, its homely streets. Its old towns, Roman in plan, Georgian in architecture, combine the virtues of nice precision, severe regularity and comfortable cleanness; the ages have met and mingled _to result in a grave decorous compromise. Dorset, it has been noted, has a character distinct from- its neighbours. Cornwall and Devon, with their Atlantic seaboard, their Elizabethan romance, their vague memories of Mediterranean commerce, all the wild medley of tradition and of myth, are of another spirit. Nor are Somerset, Wiltshire, and Hampshire of one character with Dorset, which seems to have kept by itself primitive and quaint in its own way.'

In Dorset, each influence that has made England, military from the Romans, ecclesiastic from the Saxons, feudal from the Normans, has sunk deeplv into the land, whilst each has been touched in turn bv the aboriginal character of Dorset." There are great mounds of barrows, camps, and rings all over the district, prehistoric earthworks of which the learned cannot determine the origin and date; one race may have succeeded to its-predecessor s works and changed them to its needs, so that what was made by human hands now appears as part of the landscane. Of the Dorset folk, Mr. .Hardv savs: “They are the representatives of antiquitv. Many of these labourers about here bear corrupted Norman names; many are the descendants of squires m the last century, and their faces even now strongly resemble the portraits in the old manorhouses. Many are, must be, the descendants of the Romans, who lived here in great pomp and state for four hundred years. I have seen faces here that are duplicates of those fine faces I saw at Fiesole, where I also picked up Roman coins, the counterpart of those we find here so often. They even use Latin words here, which have survived everything.”

What is the most moving, passage in the Hardv novels? Not a few people when asked this question think of tliat scene in 4 “Under the Greenwood Iree when Dlartv .South enters the churchyard in the moonlight and goes to a secluded corner behind the bushes where rose the unadorned stone tnat marked the last resting place of Giles Winterbourne,” whom she had loved in resolute silence, and who had died in serving the fine Grace Dlelbury. There Diary laid her flowers “Now, my own, own love,” she whispered,. “vou are mine, and on’y mine; for she forgot ’ee at last, although foT her vou died! But I—whenever I get tin Fl!' think of ’ee, and whenever I lie down I’ll think of ’ee. Whenever I plant the young larches I’ll think that none can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad, ano whenever 1 turn the cider wring, I’ll say none could do it like you If ever I forget vour name let me forget home and heaven' . . - But no, no, my love, 1 never can forget ’ee; for you was a good man, and did good things!” BY DtELLSTOCK CROSS AT THE YEAR’S END. Whv go the east road now? . . . That wav a youth ment on a morrow After mirth, and he brought hack sorrow Painted upon his brow: Why go the east road now? Whv go the north road now ? Torn, leaf-strewn, as if scoured by foemen— ■ Once edging fiefs of my forefom yeomen— Stalwart peers of the plough: Wliy go the north road now? Whv go the west road now? Thence to us came she, bosom-burn-ing, , „ Welcome with . joyousness returning • ■ • , . She sleeps under the bough: Why go the west road now? Whv go the south road now? That wav marched they some are forgetting, ... i Stark to the moon left, past regretting Loves who have falscd their vow . . - Why go the south road now. Whv go anv road now? White stands the handpost for brisk onbearers, , “Halt!” is the word for wan-ch.-eked farers Musing on Whither and How . . ■ Why go any road now? Such are for new feet now; Hark there to chit-chat, kisses, laugnYea, there be plenty to go hereafter Bv these wavs, I trow! . . . Thev are for new feet now. —Thomas Hardy.