CREATOR OF TESS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 18 January 1928, Page 7

CREATOR OF TESS

THE NATION’S HOMAGE

THOUSANDS PAY TRIBUTE. BURIAL OF THOMAS HARDY. | BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT LONDON, Jan. 16. Tlie creator of “Tess” joined the Immortals in the Poets’ corner amid demonstrations of national homage, recalling the funerals of Dickens and Tennyson. In order that Wessex might partake in an ever-enduring honour, a clod of Wessex earth was mingled with London’s clay in which the casket rests. A great queue gathered early for admission to the nave, and later the south transept was filled by literary notables representing the numerous societies with which Hardy had been associated as the acknowledged head of English let tens. Every .seat was filled by two o’clock, when the singing of the choir heralded the procession bearing the casket, which was covered by a white and golden pall. From Saint Faith’s chapel to the sanctuary, holding palls’ fringes on either side, walked the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Sir Edmund Gosse, Professor A. E. Housman, Sir James Barrie, Mr. Bernard Sliaw, Mr. John Galsworthy, and representatives of Oxford and Cambridge. Then came Airs. Hardy, bowed with grief and heavily veiled. The service was the simplest, consisting of the Twenty-third Psalm, followed by a passage from Ecclesiastics: “Let us. praise famous men.” Then tlie pall-bearers accompanied the coffin to the grave next to Charles Dickens’s, where the burial service was completed, closing with Newman’s “Lead, Kindly Light,” and Handel’s “Dead l March.”

Thousands of Londoners during the rest of the day passed by the casket, which was surrounded- by scores of wreaths. Meanwhile a service much more' characteristic of Hardy’s message was taking place at Stinisford in Wellstock church, the village choir singing the hymns- Hardy loved to the accompaniment of a harmonium. When the heart- had been- buried in the shadow of a. yew tree in the churchyard the national tribute to the creator of the Wesisex tales was complete. Air Arnold Bennett, in a letter to the “Dnilv Express,” condemns the arrangement wberebv the distribution of tickets for the Poet’s Corner at Hardy’s funeral wer.e handed over to Messrs MacMillan and Co., the publishers. He says the- Dean -and Chapter cannot divest themselves of Hie responsibility of organising a national, funeral. They are not entitled to say rr We have conrented to interment in the Abbey, invite whom you like-” Lastly, he states lie must point out with -regret and respect that not a single member of the Poval Family was present. One of the main functions of Royalty is to represent and (symbolise the fee-ling of the country. As a rule this function is admirably fulfilled, but the King’s message to Hardy’s widow, though a suitable! and sympathetic gesture, was not enough. Hardy was a citizen of the highest consequence., .and if it had been a military funeral of similar importnice half the male Royalties would avc attended a® a matter of course.