THOMAS HARDY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20318, 28 January 1928, Page 4

THOMAS HARDY.

AN ATTEMPT AT APPRECIATION. By Constant Eeadeb, lI.—THE FIELD HE WORKED IN. In the, realms of literature Thomas' Hardy is "unique in that he deliberately limited the scenes of his survey to one particular region, a region essentially English and called by the Anglo-Saxon name of Wessex. Save for the half-dozen “ Poems of Pilgrimage,” all Hardy’s writings both in prose and poetry—including “ The Dynasts ” —are related directly or indirectly to Wessex. An American writer, Paul Jordan-Smith, says of Hardy: “ One of the secrets of the fascination of this great man, I think, is that he has been content to make an intensive study of a small area of England and make it well nigh his own. Thomas Hardy and Wessex —the one calls to mind the other. To him the ancient flavours of Wessex dialect are as familiar as daily speech. He reacts to its traditions and folk-ways as though they were the altars of his gods. The superstitions of the peasant folk are to him more significant than the philosophies of the sophisticated. He has not wasted his energies by observing the ways of the wide world. He knows full well that the nature of man is the same at all times and places. But by knowing one background he is able to sat his stage with all the power of a Greek dramatist. The very spirit of the earth in Wessex land seems to have penetrated his being. He is saturate with the voices of the soil.” In his critical study Mr Lascelles Abercrombie remarks that one of the most remarkable characteristics of the art of Thomas Hardy is the limitation in its material. “In his finest tragedy, as well as in his vividest humour, he is pretty strictly bound up within a quite definite class of persons; though it is a class certainly which has so, much possibility of human variety in it that there is no question of this limitation crippling his art at all. Indeed, it is hardly felt as a limitation except when he is working outside this class.” Mr Abercrombie asks the question: “ Should this so obvious a limitation to one firmly defined range of human material be considered in theory as a serious disability in Hardy’s fiction?” To this h. answers that, in the matter of sheer art, this limitation turns out a decided advantage. It is,” he declares, “ a capital instance of art’s honourable old trick of making a virtue of necessity. Ho continues: No doubt the limitation of Hardy’s most characteristic expression to the lives and manners and minds of country folk was originally obedience to some obscure necessity of his mind. But consider the series of novels in which his genius is at its greatest, finding its most unquestionable utterance; consider, that is to say, this series: “ Under the Greenwood Tree,” “ Far from the Madding Crowd,” “ The Mayor of Casterbridgc,” “The Return of the Native,” “The Woodlanders,” “ Tess of the D’Urbcrvilles,” and “ Jude the Obscure.” These seven books naturally group themselves into a single whole; the series seems itself to become a work of art. And this is mainly because the uniformity of their chief material gives to these seven books as a whole that isolation which is the primary aesthetic quality. In his “Art of Thomas Hardy ” Lionel Johnson points out that Hardy has done notable service to a great region of England which, with a characteristic love of reality, he has called the land of his inventions, a land to which, however, he has given no imaginary name, but a name of a famous age and meaning. “It is not,” writes Lionel Johnson, ‘‘ with any mere desire to make an open secret of his choice that he has given an ancient name to the country where the childen of his imagination live. ‘ Wessex ’ is full of sig. nifieance, and no outworn appellation of antiquity without a living force.” One of John Masefield’s finest poems—“ August, 1914 ” —expresses a splendid sentiment illustrating the spirit in which Hardy seized hold of this idea of Wessex, and all that it represents. Masefield begins with a tribute to the quiet beauty of the English fields, and to the strength of the men who generation after generation lived and worked therein, and who fought for the freedom of the same fields, hesitating not to die in the good cause. Masefield proceeds;— If there be any life beyond the grave. It must be near the men and things we love, Some power of quick suggestion how to save. Touching the living soul as from above. An influence from the earth from those dead hearts So passionate once, so deep, so truly kind, That in the living child the spirit starts, Feeling companioned still, not left behind. It is the influence of the English earth which forms the background of Hardy’s poetry and stories, a thought which Lionel Johnson elaborates most brilliantly when he writes:— In calling the land of his birth after its ancient name, the land of the West Saxons, Mr Hardy would have us feel the sentiment of historical continuity from the old times to ours; the storms of violent fortune, the slow touches of change, which have left their trace upon the land, whilst leaving it at heart the same: Wessex, the land of the West Saxons, preceded by Romans, and by Celts, followed by Danes and by Normans. In Mr Hardy’s books all that succession of races, their fusion and confusion, are brought before the mind; with a scientific sincerity, and with an artistic beauty to which there is no parallel in English literature. Many an English writer has a “ Patavinitas ” of his own; a touch of native patriotism upon his ways of speech, and habits of thought: but none have quite that cast of mind, that bent of imagination which make Mr Hardy’s concern for Wessex so singular and rare power in aft. An ardent zeal, antiquarian and patriotic, for some county district or _ place, is common enough; but it is rarely directed by a spirit of art; a romantic love of some countryside, rich in memories and legends is common also; but it is rarely combined with the spirit of science. Mr Hardy has all the zeal, say, of the old county historians, and all the romance of Scott, minstrel of the Border; the study of these Wessex books excites two passions, the intellectual love of science, and the emotional love of beauty. Lionel Johnson mentions in passing tfcat this concentration of Hardy’s art upon the varieties of one theme, Wessex and its people, has provoked complaints from readers to whom Wessex is not infinitely interesting. Respecting this Johnson says: “ Our modern journeys to the shrines of local colour ’ the wide world through result in little fine art; they afford no leisure for patient meditation upon the nature of the men and things selected, nor for confident familiarity with them. But that art which meditates at home, and whose concentrated travels arc of the mind is the conquering art. Yet hasty and restless art is fashionable, and as young labourers scorning the soil swarm into distant towns for alien labour, so young labourers at the arts fly abroad for foreign themes - of art. Certainly art should not be parochial, provincial, but the art which sketches the round world with an airv ease is worse than the most untravelled and unadventurecus art. One is moved to wonder when the Ariels of modern art will cease to put a girdle round the globe and begin to think.” In contrast Johnson points out; Mr Hardy’s way of work, to judge by his choice of matter and by the perfection to which it is wrought is the way of elaboration; a cautious anxious way. If the montony, the unity, the sameness of all his work have for some readers so powerful a charm, it is for this reason, that content to labour in one rich field, he shows us the wealth of human nature. Wessex, one part of a small island is his ground; and of Wessex he takes one parr especially the county of Dorset: bo has rarely loft it throughout 15 books. He has studied it in his maturity of mind; lie has loved it with the fervour of a patriot; he has understood it with the instinct of a child; it is his own. Lionel Johnson proceeds to mention that Hardy’s Wessex is not a region of strict boundaries; it touches Exeter, Bristol, Salisbury, Winchester, and even Oxford: hut it. centres on the County of Dorset. All the localities have been identified by the aid of the man included in the standard edition of the novels. “Most careful readers could assign to each novel with no great labour, its corresponding scenery and actual home.” Johnson expresses regret

that such publicity “innocent as it is, it yet savours of intrusion. From pointing out tho originals of places it is but a short step to pointing out the originals of persons; let us rest content in their lifetimes with what our novelist tells us. Granted that Mr Hardy’s Casterbridge is / Dorchester; his Melchester, Salisbury; Ins 1 Sherton Abbas Sherborne; Mr Hardy has not pledged himself to the literal fidelity of a guide book. Nothing is gained by a minute comparison of the real places, with their imagined counterparts; it is better to dwell upon the general characteristics of the county which Mr Hardy reproduces than to linger upon the details which ho combines transposes and employs to suit his immediate ends.” All this to the contrary, some knowledge, of Wessex, as given in Mr Charles G. Harper’s “The Hard v Country,” enhances the enjoyment of the novels and the poems. It matters little to tho reader that the backgrounds arc drawn from reality so long as it is remembered that the characters are entirely imaginary. Mr Harper begins by saying that in tho literary partition of England, wherein the pilgrim may discover tracts definitely and indissolubly dedicated to Dickens, to Tennyson, to Ingoldsby, and many another, no province has been so thoroughly annexed or so effectively occupied as that associated with the Wessex novels, written oy Thomas Hardy. He holds Wessex in fee simple to the exclusion of all others.” Mr Harper continues:— By tho circumstance of birth and of lifelong residence, the “Wessex” of the novels has come to denote chiefly ms native county of Dorset, and in especial tho neighbourhood of Dorchester, the county town, _ but Mr Hardy was early an expansionist, and his outposts were long ago thrown forward to at least make his Wessex in the domain of letters almost coterminous with the ancient kingdom of Saxon times, which includes all England south of the Thames and west of Sussex, with the exception of Cornwall. The very excellent sketch map prepared for tho definitive edition of Mr Hardy’s works very clearly shows the comparative density of the literary settlement he has made. Glancing at it you at once perceive that what he chooses to term “ South Wessex ” —marked in merely matter of fact gazetteers as Dorsetshire—is thickly studded with names of his own mintage unknown to guidebook or ordnance map, and presently observe that the surrounding divisions of Upper North. Mid, Outer, and Lower Wessex —as who should say Hampshire, Berkshire, Wilts, Somerset, and Devon — are too full of the similes already adopted, barely colonised. His nearest frontier post towards London is Castle Royal, to be identified with none other than Windsor; while near by are Gaymead (Theale), Aldrickbam (Reading), and Kennetbridge (Newbury). In the midst of that same division of North Wessex or Berkshire are marked Alfredten and Marygreen, respectively the little town of Wantage, birthplace of Alfred the Great, and the small village of Fawley Magnas, placed on the draughty skyline of the bare and shivery Berkshire downs. Then, near the east, on the eastern border of Upper Wessex, is Quartershort, or Aldershot, and farther within its confines Stoke-Barehills, by which Basingstoke and the unclothed uplands partly surrounding it are indicated. . . . Finally, northernmost of all these transfigured outer landmarks is Christminstcr, the university town and city of Oxford. All who oaro to pursue the comparison between the actual Wessex and the novelist’s descriptions will find ample material in the pages of Mr Hardy’s interesting and instructive volume. The author says in a preface to his book:— “ There is that compelling force in Mr Hardy’s genius which inevitably, sooner or later, magnetically draws those who have read, to see for themselves what manner of places and what folk they must bo in real life from whose characteristics such poignant tragedy, such suave and admirable comedy have been evolved. I have many a time explored Bgdon, and observed the justness of the novelist’s description of that sullen waste; have traversed Blackmoor Vale, where “ the fields are never brown and the springs never dry,” but where the roads —it is a cyclist’s criticism—are shockingly bad; in fine, have visited every literary landmark in the Wessex novels.” Is his essay on Hardy in “ A Literary Pilgrimage in England,” Edward Thomas remarks that if either of the partners, Wessex Life and Romance, has suffered it is not Romance, “ Both in the prefaces and in the stories themselves Mr Hardy tells the public more than a story teller need about his attitude towards things which it is his task to bring for the first time before the mind.” The novelist is “exhibiting Wessex to us in giving the hills aiid rivers their true names, and notably suggesting their appearances, but painting them with a brush dipped in the ‘ earthquake and eclipse ’ of his own mind, and still more the towns and villages and the people themselves. Everywhere he makes a double impression by the sound rusticity of many characters and by his own solitary brooding strongly coloured mind dominating men and landscape.” To this Thomas adds: On the whole then the mixture of ancient with invented resuscitated or slightly perverted names very well symbolises Mr Hardy’s mixed attitude and treatment. Only one wishes—l wish —that he had not conceded so much to the inevitable curiosity. What a pleasure for a man to discover for himself perhaps only a few of the originals.” Lionel Johnson lays stress on the fact that while no place in the world is completely disassociated from history, yet fev, parts of England are more saturated with historical memories, more stratified by the successive passages of historic names, than Dorsetshire. This field Thomas Hardy found ready to his hand. He was well suited by natural tendencies of his mind to such a region, since no other novelist had a greater appreciation of historic, and even of prehistoric, records. He dwells upon the human history of Wessex with an evident emotion. In Wessex the ages have met and mingled, resulting in a grave decorous compromise. Johnson writes: — The whole region, its town, villages, woodlands, pastures, heaths, downs, and people, affect their student in this singular way; an impress of many ages and of many influences is stamped upon them. Dorset has a characteristic difference 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 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. Here each influence—military from the Roman, ecclesiastical from the Saxons, feudal from the Normans—has sunk (i'ceply into the land; whilst the aboriginal character has received each influence in a particular fashion.