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27 1874, First Edition; illustrated.
107 1895, Second Edition, extensively revised by Thomas Hardy.
Far from the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
AUTHOR OF
“A PAIR OF BLUE EYES,” “UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE,” ETC.
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS.
IN TWO VOLUMES
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE.
1874.
Contents
VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTION OF FARMER OAK—AN INCIDENT
CHAPTER II. NIGHT—THE FLOCK—AN INTERIOR—ANOTHER INTERIOR
CHAPTER III. A GIRL ON HORSEBACK—CONVERSATION
CHAPTER IV. GABRIEL’S RESOLVE—THE VISIT—THE MISTAKE
CHAPTER V. DEPARTURE OF BATHSHEBA—A PASTORAL TRAGEDY
CHAPTER VI. THE FAIR—THE JOURNEY—THE FIRE
CHAPTER VII. RECOGNITION—A TIMID GIRL
CHAPTER VIII. THE MALTHOUSE—THE CHAT—NEWS
CHAPTER IX. THE HOMESTEAD—A VISITOR—HALF CONFIDENCES
CHAPTER X. MISTRESS AND MEN
CHAPTER XI. MELCHESTER MOOR—SNOW—A MEETING
CHAPTER XII. FARMERS—A RULE—AN EXCEPTION
CHAPTER XIII. SORTES SANCTORUM—THE VALENTINE
CHAPTER XIV. EFFECT OF THE LETTER—SUNRISE
CHAPTER XV. A MORNING MEETING—THE LETTER AGAIN
CHAPTER XVI. ALL SAINTS’ AND ALL SOULS’
CHAPTER XVII. IN THE MARKET-PLACE
CHAPTER XVIII. BOLDWOOD IN MEDITATION—A VISIT
CHAPTER XIX. THE SHEEP-WASHING—THE OFFER
CHAPTER XX. PERPLEXITY—GRINDING THE SHEARS—A QUARREL
CHAPTER XXI. TROUBLES IN THE FOLD—A MESSAGE
CHAPTER XXII. THE GREAT BARN AND THE SHEEP-SHEARERS
CHAPTER XXIII. EVENTIDE—A SECOND DECLARATION
CHAPTER XXIV. THE SAME NIGHT—THE FIR PLANTATION
CHAPTER XXV. THE NEW ACQUAINTANCE DESCRIBED
CHAPTER XXVI. SCENE ON THE VERGE OF THE HAY-MEAD
CHAPTER XXVII. HIVING THE BEES
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE HOLLOW AMID THE FERNS
CHAPTER XXIX. PARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK
CHAPTER XXX. HOT CHEEKS AND TEARFUL EYES
VOLUME II.
CHAPTER I. BLAME—FURY
CHAPTER II. NIGHT—HORSES TRAMPING
CHAPTER III. IN THE SUN—A HARBINGER
CHAPTER IV. HOME AGAIN—A JUGGLER
CHAPTER V. AT AN UPPER WINDOW
CHAPTER VI. WEALTH IN JEOPARDY—THE REVEL
CHAPTER VII. THE STORM—THE TWO TOGETHER
CHAPTER VIII. RAIN—ONE SOLITARY MEETS ANOTHER
CHAPTER IX. COMING HOME—A CRY
CHAPTER X. ON CASTERBRIDGE HIGHWAY
CHAPTER XI. SUSPICION—FANNY IS SENT FOR
CHAPTER XII. JOSEPH AND HIS BURDEN—BUCK’S HEAD
CHAPTER XIII. FANNY’S REVENGE
CHAPTER XIV. UNDER A TREE—REACTION
CHAPTER XV. TROY’S ROMANTICISM
CHAPTER XVI. THE GURGOYLE: ITS DOINGS
CHAPTER XVII. ADVENTURES BY THE SHORE
CHAPTER XVIII. DOUBTS ARISE—DOUBTS VANISH
CHAPTER XIX. OAK’S ADVANCEMENT—A GREAT HOPE
CHAPTER XX. THE SHEEP FAIR—TROY TOUCHES HIS WIFE’S HAND
CHAPTER XXI. BATHSHEBA TALKS WITH HER OUTRIDER
CHAPTER XXII. CONVERGING COURSES
CHAPTER XXIII. CONCURRITUR—HORÆ MOMENTO
CHAPTER XXIV. AFTER THE SHOCK
CHAPTER XXV. THE MARCH FOLLOWING—“BATHSHEBA BOLDWOOD”
CHAPTER XXVI. BEAUTY IN LONELINESS—AFTER ALL
CHAPTER XXVII. A FOGGY NIGHT AND MORNING—CONCLUSION
List of Illustrations
HANDS WERE LOOSENING HIS NECKERCHIEF.
“DO YOU HAPPEN TO WANT A SHEPPERD MA’AM?”
“GET THE FRONT DOOR KEY.” LIDDY FETCHED IT.
“I FEEL—ALMOST TOO MUCH—TO THINK,” HE SAID.
SHE STOOD UP IN THE WINDOW-OPENING, FACING THE MEN.
SHE TOOK UP HER POSITION AS DIRECTED.
BATSHEBA FLUNG HER HANDS TO HER FACE.
“THERE’S NOT A SOUL IN MY HOUSE BUT ME TO-NIGHT”.
SHE OPENED A GATE WITHIN WHICH WAS A HAYSTACK. UNDER THIS SHE SAT DOWN.
BENDING OVER FANNY ROBIN, HE GENTLY KISSED HER.
HE SAW A BATHER CARRIED ALONG IN THE CURRENT.
TROY NEXT ADVANCED INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM AND TOOK OFF HIS CAP.
VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I.
DESCRIPTION OF FARMER OAK—AN INCIDENT
When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were
within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to
mere chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon
his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising
sun.
His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man
of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good
character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to a
postponing treatment of things, whose best clothes and
seven-and-sixpenny umbrella were always hampering him: upon the whole,
one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of
Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Sacrament people of the
parish and the drunken division of its inhabitants—that is, he went to
church, but yawned privately by the time the congegation reached the
Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he
meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it
stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were
in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were
pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man
whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.
Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak’s
appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own—the mental
picture formed by his neighbours always presenting him as dressed in
that way when their imaginations answered to the thought “Gabriel Oak.”
He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming
upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like Dr.
Johnson’s; his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather
leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy
apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day
long and know nothing about it—their maker being a conscientious man
who always endeavoured to compensate for any weakness in his cut by
unstinted dimension and solidity.
Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small
silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention,
and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older
than Oak’s grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or
not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round
on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision,
nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The
stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes,
when it always went on again immediately, and he escaped any evil
consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with
and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close
to the glass of his neighbours’ windows when passing their houses, till
he could discern the hour marked by the green-faced timekeepers within.
It may be mentioned that Oak’s fob being difficult of access, by reason
of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers (which
also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a
necessity pulled out by throwing the body extremely to one side,
compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account
of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a
bucket from a well.
But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his
fields on a certain December morning—sunny and exceedingly mild—might
have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face one
might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on
to manhood: there even remained in his remoter crannies some relics of
the boy. His height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his
presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. But
there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike—for which the mind
is more responsible than flesh and sinew—a way of curtailing their
dimensions by their manner of showing them; and from a quiet modesty
that would have become a vestal, which seemed continually to impress
upon him that he had no great claim on the world’s room, Oak walked
unassumingly, and with a faintly perceptible bend, quite distinct from
a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an
individual if he depends for his valuation as a total more upon his
appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which Oak did not. He
had just reached the time of life at which “young” is ceasing to be the
prefix of “man” in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of
masculine life, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly
separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth
indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had
not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the
character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In
short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.
The field he was in sloped steeply to a ridge called Norcombe Hill.
Through a spur of this hill ran the highway from Norcombe to
Casterbridge, sunk in a deep cutting. Casually glancing over the hedge,
Oak saw coming down the incline before him an ornamental spring waggon,
painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a waggoner
walking alongside bearing a whip perpendicularly. The waggon was laden
with household goods and window plants, and on the apex of the whole
sat a woman, young and attractive. Gabriel had not beheld the sight for
more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill
just beneath his eyes.
“The tailboard of the waggon is gone, Miss,” said the waggoner.
“Then I heard it fall,” said the girl, in a soft, though not
particularly low voice. “I heard a noise I could not account for when
we were coming up the hill.”
“I’ll run back.”
“Do,” she answered.
The sensible horses stood perfectly still, and the waggoner’s steps
sank fainter and fainter in the distance.
The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by tables
and chairs with their legs upwards, backed by an oak settle, and
ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses,
together with a caged canary—all probably from the windows of the house
just vacated. There was also a cat in a willow basket, from the
partly-opened lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and
affectionately surveyed the small birds around.
The handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the only
sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary up and down
the perches of its prison. Then she looked attentively downwards. It
was not at the bird, nor at the cat; it was at an oblong package tied
in paper, and lying between them. She turned her head to learn if the
waggoner were coming. He was not yet in sight; and her eyes crept back
to the package, her thoughts seeming to run upon what was inside it. At
length she drew the article into her lap, and untied the paper
covering; a small swing looking-glass was disclosed, in which she
proceeded to survey herself attentively. Then she parted her lips and
smiled.
It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the
crimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft lustre upon her bright face
and dark hair. The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed around her
were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season they invested the
whole concern of horses, waggon, furniture, and girl with a peculiar
charm of rarity. What possessed her to indulge in such a performance in
the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and unperceived farmer who were
alone its spectators—whether the smile began as a factitious one, to
test her capacity in that art, nobody knows; it ended certainly in a
real smile. She blushed at herself, and seeing her reflection blush,
blushed the more.
The change from the customary spot and necessary occasion of such an
act—from the dressing hour in a bedroom to a time of travelling out of
doors—lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically possess.
The picture was a delicate one. Woman’s prescriptive infirmity had
stalked into the sunlight, which had invested it with the freshness of
an originality. A cynical inference was irresistible by Gabriel Oak as
he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would have been. There
was no necessity whatever for her looking in the glass. She did not
adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do
one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in
taking up the glass. She simply observed herself as a fair product of
Nature in the feminine direction, her expressions seeming to glide into
far-off though likely dramas in which men would play a part—vistas of
probable triumphs—the smiles being of a phase suggesting that hearts
were imagined as lost and won. Still, this was but conjecture, and the
whole series of actions was so idly put forth as to make it rash to
assert that intention had any part in them at all.
The waggoner’s steps were heard returning. She put the glass in the
paper, and the whole again into its place.
When the waggon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point of
espial, and descending into the road, followed the vehicle to the
turnpike-gate at the bottom of the hill, where the object of his
contemplation now halted for the payment of toll. About twenty steps
still remained between him and the gate, when he heard a dispute. It
was a difference concerning twopence between the persons with the
waggon and the man at the toll-bar.
“Mis’ess’s niece is upon the top of the things, and she says that’s
enough that I’ve offered ye, you grate miser, and she won’t pay any
more.” These were the waggoner’s words.
“Very well; then mis’ess’s niece can’t pass,” said the turnpike-keeper,
closing the gate.
Oak looked from one to the other of the disputants, and fell into a
reverie. There was something in the tone of twopence remarkably
insignificant. Threepence had a definite value as money—it was an
appreciable infringement on a day’s wages, and, as such, a higgling
matter; but twopence— “Here,” he said, stepping forward and handing
twopence to the gatekeeper; “let the young woman pass.” He looked up at
her then; she heard his words, and looked down.
Gabriel’s features adhered throughout their form so exactly to the
middle line between the beauty of St. John and the ugliness of Judas
Iscariot, as represented in a window of the church he attended, that
not a single lineament could be selected and called worthy either of
distinction or notoriety. The red-jacketed and dark-haired maiden
seemed to think so too, for she carelessly glanced over him, and told
her man to drive on. She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel on a
minute scale, but she did not speak them; more probably she felt none,
for in gaining her a passage he had lost her her point, and we know how
women take a favour of that kind.
The gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle. “That’s a handsome
maid,” he said to Oak.
“But she has her faults,” said Gabriel.
“True, farmer.”
“And the greatest of them is—well, what it is always.”
“Beating people down? ay, ’tis so.”
“Oh no.”
“What, then?”
Gabriel, perhaps a little piqued by the comely traveller’s
indifference, glanced back to where he had witnessed her performance
over the hedge, and said, “Vanity.”