These men have sap and juice in their talk. When they think they think
clearly. When they speak they express themselves with an energy and
directness which mortify the thin speech of conventional persons. Here
is Farfrae, the young Scotchman, in the tap-room of the Three Mariners
Inn of Casterbridge, singing of his ain contree with a pathos quite
unknown in that part of the world. The worthies who frequent the place
are deeply moved. 'Danged if our country down here is worth singing
about like that,' says Billy Wills, the glazier,--while the literal
Christopher Coney inquires, 'What did ye come away from yer own
country for, young maister, if ye be so wownded about it?' Then it
occurs to him that it wasn't worth Farfrae's while to leave the fair
face and the home of which he had been singing to come among such as
they. 'We be bruckle folk here--the best o' us hardly honest
sometimes, what with hard winters, and so many mouths to fill, and
God-a'mighty sending his little taties so terrible small to fill 'em
with. We don't think about flowers and fair faces, not we--except in
the shape of cauliflowers and pigs' chaps.'
I should like to see the man who sat to Artist Hardy for the portrait
of Corporal Tullidge in _The Trumpet-Major_. This worthy, who was deaf
and talked in an uncompromisingly loud voice, had been struck in the
head by a piece of shell at Valenciennes in '93. His left arm had been
smashed. Time and Nature had done what they could, and under their
beneficent influences the arm had become a sort of anatomical
rattle-box. People interested in Corp'el Tullidge were allowed to see
his head and hear his arm. The corp'el gave these private views at any
time, and was quite willing to show off, though the exhibition was apt
to bore him a little. His fellows displayed him much as one would a
'freak' in a dime museum.
'You have got a silver plate let into yer head, haven't ye, corp'el?'
said Anthony Cripplestraw. 'I have heard that the way they mortised
yer skull was a beautiful piece of workmanship. Perhaps the young
woman would like to see the place.'
The young woman was Anne Garland, the sweet heroine of the story; and
Anne didn't want to see the silver plate, the thought of which made
her almost faint. Nor could she be tempted by being told that one
couldn't see such a 'wownd' every day. Then Cripplestraw, earnest to
please her, suggested that Tullidge rattle his arm, which Tullidge
did, to Anne's great distress.
'Oh, it don't hurt him, bless ye. Do it, corp'el?' said Cripplestraw.
'Not a bit,' said the corporal, still working his arm with great
energy. There was, however, a perfunctoriness in his manner 'as if the
glory of exhibition had lost somewhat of its novelty, though he was
still willing to oblige.' Anne resisted all entreaties to convince
herself by feeling of the corporal's arm that the bones were 'as loose
as a bag of ninepins,' and displayed an anxiety to escape. Whereupon
the corporal, 'with a sense that his time was getting wasted,'
inquired: 'Do she want to see or hear any more, or don't she?'
This is but a single detail in the account of a party which Miller
Loveday gave to soldier guests in honor of his son John,--a
description the sustained vivacity of which can only be appreciated
through a reading of those brilliant early chapters of the story.
Half the mirth that is in these men comes from the frankness with
which they confess their actual thoughts. Ask a man of average morals
and average attainments why he doesn't go to church. You won't know
any better after he has given you his answer. Ask Nat Chapman, of the
novel entitled _Two on a Tower_, and you will not be troubled with
ambiguities. He doesn't like to go because Mr. Torkingham's sermons
make him think of soul-saving and other bewildering and uncomfortable
topics. So when the son of Torkingham's predecessor asks Nat how it
goes with him, that tiller of the soil answers promptly: 'Pa'son
Tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience that much, that church is no
holler-day at all to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent father's
time!'
The unswerving honesty with which they assign utilitarian motives for
a particular line of conduct is delightful. Three men discuss a
wedding, which took place not at the home of the bride but in a
neighboring parish, and was therefore very private. The first doesn't
blame the new married pair, because 'a wedding at home means five and
six handed reels by the hour, and they do a man's legs no good when
he's over forty.' A second corroborates the remark and says: 'True.
Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a
jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth
your victuals.'
The third puts the whole matter beyond the need of further discussion
by adding: 'For my part, I like a good hearty funeral as well as
anything. You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties,
and even better. And it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking over
a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes.'
Beings who talk like this know their minds,--a rather unwonted
circumstance among the sons of men,--and knowing them, they do the
next most natural thing in the world, which is to speak the minds they
have.
There is yet another phase of Hardy's humor to be noted: that humor,
sometimes defiant, sometimes philosophic, which concerns death and its
accompaniments. It cannot be thought morbid. Hardy is too fond of
Nature ever to degenerate into mere morbidity. He has lived much in
the open air, which always corrects a tendency to 'vapors.' He takes
little pleasure in the gruesome, a statement in support of which one
may cite all his works up to 1892, the date of the appearance of
_Tess_. This paper includes no comment in detail upon the later books;
but so far as _Tess_ is concerned it would be critical folly to speak
of it as morbid. It is sad, it is terrible, as _Lear_ is terrible, or
as any one of the great tragedies, written by men we call 'masters,'
is terrible. _Jude_ is psychologically gruesome, no doubt; but not
absolutely indefensible. Even if it were as black a book as some
critics have painted it, the general truth of the statement as to the
healthfulness of Hardy's work would not be impaired. This work judged
as a whole is sound and invigorating. He cannot be accused of
over-fondness for charnel-houses or ghosts. He does not discourse of
graves and vaults in order to arouse that terror which the thought of
death inspires. It is not for the purpose of making the reader
uncomfortable. If the grave interests him, it is because of the
reflections awakened. 'Man, proud man,' needs that jog to his memory
which the pomp of interments and aspect of tombstones give. Hardy has
keen perception of that humor which glows in the presence of death and
on the edge of the grave. The living have such a tremendous advantage
over the dead, that they can neither help feeling it nor avoid a
display of the feeling. When the lion is buried the dogs crack jokes
at the funeral. They do it in a subdued manner, no doubt, and with a
sense of proprieties, but nevertheless they do it. Their immense
superiority is never so apparent as at just this moment.
This humor, which one notes in Hardy, is akin to the humor of the
grave-diggers in _Hamlet_, but not so grim. I have heard a country
undertaker describe the details of the least attractive branch of his
uncomfortable business with a pride and self-satisfaction that would
have been farcical had not the subject been so depressing. This would
have been matter for Hardy's pen. There are few scenes in his books
more telling than that which shows the operations in the family vault
of the Luxellians, when John Smith, Martin Cannister, and old Simeon
prepare the place for Lady Luxellian's coffin. It seems hardly wise to
pronounce this episode as good as the grave-diggers' scene in
_Hamlet_; that would shock some one and gain for the writer the
reputation of being enthusiastic rather than critical. But I profess
that I enjoy the talk of old Simeon and Martin Cannister quite as much
as the talk of the first and second grave-diggers.
Simeon, the shriveled mason, was 'a marvelously old man, whose skin
seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in
position.' He talked of the various great dead whose coffins filled
the family vault. Here was the stately and irascible Lord George:--
'Ah, poor Lord George,' said the mason, looking contemplatively at the
huge coffin; 'he and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be
when one is a lord and t'other only a mortal man. Poor fellow! He'd
clap his hand upon my shoulder and cuss me as familiar and neighborly
as if he'd been a common chap. Ay, 'a cussed me up hill and 'a cussed
me down; and then 'a would rave out again and the goold clamps of his
fine new teeth would glisten in the sun like fetters of brass, while
I, being a small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a
strappen fine gentleman as he was too! Yes, I rather liken en
sometimes. But once now and then, when I looked at his towering
height, I'd think in my inside, "What a weight you'll be, my lord, for
our arms to lower under the inside of Endelstow church some day!"'
'And was he?' inquired a young laborer.
'He was. He was five hundred weight if 'a were a pound. What with his
lead, and his oak, and his handles, and his one thing and t'other'--here
the ancient man slapped his hand upon the cover with a force that
caused a rattle among the bones inside--'he half broke my back when I
took his feet to lower en down the steps there. "Ah," saith I to John
there--didn't I, John?--"that ever one man's glory should be such a
weight upon another man!" But there, I liked my Lord George
sometimes.'
It may be observed that as Hardy grows older his humor becomes more
subtle or quite dies away, as if serious matters pressed upon his
mind, and there was no time for being jocular. Some day, perhaps, if
he should rise to the dignity of an English classic, this will be
spoken of as his third period, and critics will be wise in the
elucidation thereof. But just at present this third period is
characterized by the terms 'pessimistic' and 'unhealthy.'
That he is a pessimist in the colloquial sense admits of little
question. Nor is it surprising; it is rather difficult not to be. Not
a few persons are pessimists and won't tell. They preserve a fair
exterior, but secretly hold that all flesh is grass. Some people
escape the disease by virtue of much philosophy or much religion or
much work. Many who have not taken up permanent residence beneath the
roof of Schopenhauer or Von Hartmann are occasional guests. Then there
is that great mass of pessimism which is the result, not of thought,
but of mere discomfort, physical and super-physical. One may have
attacks of pessimism from a variety of small causes. A bad stomach
will produce it. Financial difficulties will produce it. The
light-minded get it from changes in the weather.
That note of melancholy which we detect in many of Hardy's novels is
as it should be. For no man can apprehend life aright and still look
upon it as a carnival. He may attain serenity in respect to it, but he
can never be jaunty and flippant. He can never slap life upon the back
and call it by familiar names. He may hold that the world is
indisputably growing better, but he will need to admit that the world
is having a hard time in so doing.
Hardy would be sure of a reputation for pessimism in some quarters if
only because of his attitude, or what people think is his attitude,
toward marriage. He has devoted many pages and not a little thought to
the problems of the relations between men and women. He is
considerably interested in questions of 'matrimonial divergence.' He
recognizes that most obvious of all obvious truths, that marriage is
not always a success; nay, more than this, that it is often a
makeshift, an apology, a pretense. But he professes to undertake
nothing beyond a statement of the facts. It rests with the public to
lay his statement beside their experience and observation, and thus
take measure of the fidelity of his art.
He notes the variety of motives by which people are actuated in the
choice of husbands and wives. In the novel called _The Woodlanders_,
Grace Melbury, the daughter of a rich though humbly-born yeoman, has
unusual opportunities for a girl of her class, and is educated to a
point of physical and intellectual daintiness which make her seem
superior to her home environment. Her father has hoped that she will
marry her rustic lover, Giles Winterbourne, who, by the way, is a man
in every fibre of his being. Grace is quite unspoiled by her life at a
fashionable boarding school, but after her return her father feels
(and Hardy makes the reader feel) that in marrying Giles she will
sacrifice herself. She marries Dr. Fitzspiers, a brilliant young
physician, recently come into the neighborhood, and in so doing she
chooses for the worse. The character of Dr. Fitzspiers is summarized
in a statement he once made (presumably to a male friend) that 'on one
occasion he had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct
infatuations at the same time.'
His flagrant infidelities bring about a temporary separation; Grace is
not able to comprehend 'such double and treble-barreled hearts.' When
finally they are reunited the life-problem of each still awaits an
adequate solution. For the motive which brings the girl back to her
husband is only a more complex phase of the same motive which chiefly
prompted her to marry him. Hardy says that Fitzspiers as a lover acted
upon Grace 'like a dram.' His presence 'threw her into an atmosphere
which biased her doings until the influence was over.' Afterward she
felt 'something of the nature of regret for the mood she had
experienced.'
But this same story contains two other characters who are unmatched in
fiction as the incarnation of pure love and self-forgetfulness. Giles
Winterbourne, whose devotion to Grace is without wish for happiness
which shall not imply a greater happiness for her, dies that no breath
of suspicion may fall upon her. He in turn is loved by Marty South
with a completeness which destroys all thought of self. She enjoys no
measure of reward while Winterbourne lives. He never knows of Marty's
love. But in that last fine paragraph of this remarkable book, when
the poor girl places the flowers upon his grave she utters a little
lament which for beauty, pathos, and realistic simplicity is without
parallel in modern fiction. Hardy was never more of an artist than
when writing the last chapter of _The Woodlanders_.
After all, a book in which unselfish love is described in terms at
once just and noble cannot be dangerously pessimistic, even if it also
takes cognizance of such hopeless cases as a man with a chronic
tendency to fluctuations of the heart.
The matter may be put briefly thus: In Hardy's novels one sees the
artistic result of an effort to paint life as it is, with much of its
joy and a deal of its sorrow, with its good people and its selfish
people, its positive characters and its Laodiceans, its men and women
who dominate circumstances, and its unhappy ones who are submerged.
These books are the record of what a clear-eyed, sane, vigorous,
sympathetic, humorous man knows about life; a man too conscious of
things as they are to wish grossly to exaggerate or to disguise them;
and at the same time so entirely aware how much poetry as well as
irony God has mingled in the order of the world as to be incapable of
concealing that fact either. He is of such ample intellectual frame
that he makes the petty contentions of literary schools appear
foolish. I find a measure of Hardy's mind in passages which set forth
his conception of the preciousness of life, no matter what the form in
which life expresses itself. He is peculiarly tender toward brute
creation. In that paragraph which describes Tess discovering the
wounded pheasants in the wood, Hardy suggests the thought, quite new
to many people, that chivalry is not confined to the relations of man
to man or of man to woman. There are still weaker fellow-creatures in
Nature's teeming family. What if we are unmannerly or unchivalrous
toward them?
He abounds in all manner of pithy sayings, many of them wise, a few of
them profound, and not one which is unworthy a second reading. It is
to be hoped that he will escape the doubtful honor of being
dispersedly set forth in a 'Wit and Wisdom of Thomas Hardy.' Such
books are a depressing species of literature and seem chiefly designed
to be given away at holiday time to acquaintances who are too
important to be put off with Christmas cards, and not important enough
to be supplied with gifts of a calculable value.
One must praise the immense spirit and vivacity of scenes where
something in the nature of a struggle, a moral duel, goes on. In such
passages every power at the writer's command is needed; unerring
directness of thought, and words which clothe this thought as an
athlete's garments fit the body. Everything must count, and the
movement of the narrative must be sustained to the utmost. The
chess-playing scene between Elfride and Knight in _A Pair of Blue
Eyes_ is an illustration. Sergeant Troy displaying his skill in
handling the sword--weaving his spell about Bathsheba in true snake
fashion, is another example. Still more brilliant is the gambling
scene in _The Return of the Native_, where Wildeve and Diggory Venn,
out on the heath in the night, throw dice by the light of a lantern
for Thomasin's money. Venn, the reddleman, in the Mephistophelian garb
of his profession, is the incarnation of a good spirit, and wins the
guineas from the clutch of the spendthrift husband. The scene is
immensely dramatic, with its accompaniments of blackness and silence,
Wildeve's haggard face, the circle of ponies, known as heath-croppers,
which are attracted by the light, the death's-head moth which
extinguishes the candle, and the finish of the game by the light of
glow-worms. It is a glorious bit of writing in true bravura style.
His books have a quality which I shall venture to call 'spaciousness,'
in the hope that the word conveys the meaning I try to express. It is
obvious that there is a difference between books which are large and
books which are merely long. The one epithet refers to atmosphere, the
other to number of pages. Hardy writes large books. There is room in
them for the reader to expand his mind. They are distinctly
out-of-door books, 'not smacking of the cloister or the library.' In
reading them one has a feeling that the vault of heaven is very high,
and that the earth stretches away to interminable distances upon all
sides. This quality of largeness is not dependent upon number of
pages; nor is length absolute as applied to books. A book may contain
one hundred pages and still be ninety-nine pages too long, for the
reason that its truth, its lesson, its literary virtue, are not
greater than might be expressed in a single page.
Spaciousness is in even less degree dependent upon miles. The
narrowness, geographically speaking, of Hardy's range of expression is
notable. There is much contrast between him and Stevenson in this
respect. The Scotchman has embodied in his fine books the experiences
of life in a dozen different quarters of the globe. Hardy, with more
robust health, has traveled from Portland to Bath, and from
'Wintoncester' to 'Exonbury,'--journeys hardly more serious than from
the blue bed to the brown. And it is better thus. No reader of _The
Return of the Native_ would have been content that Eustacia Vye should
persuade her husband back to Paris. Rather than the boulevards one
prefers Egdon heath, as Hardy paints it, 'the great inviolate place,'
the 'untamable Ishmaelitish thing' which its arch-enemy, Civilization,
could not subdue.
He is without question one of the best writers of our time, whether
for comedy or for tragedy; and for extravaganza, too, as witness his
lively farce called _The Hand of Ethelberta_. He can write dialogue or
description. He is so excellent in either that either, as you read it,
appears to make for your highest pleasure. If his characters talk, you
would gladly have them talk to the end of the book. If he, the author,
speaks, you would not wish to interrupt. More than most skillful
writers, he preserves that just balance between narrative and
colloquy.
His best novels prior to the appearance of _Tess_, are _The
Woodlanders_, _Far from the Madding Crowd_, _The Return of the
Native_, and _The Mayor of Casterbridge_. These four are the bulwarks
of his reputation, while a separate and great fame might be based
alone on that powerful tragedy called by its author _Tess of the
D'Urbervilles_.
Criticism which glorifies any one book of a given author at the
expense of all his other books is profitless, if not dangerous.
Moreover, it is dangerous to have a favorite author as well as a
favorite book of that favorite author. A man's choice of books, like
his choice of friends, is usually inexplicable to everybody but
himself. However, the chief object in recommending books is to make
converts to the gospel of literature according to the writer of these
books. For which legitimate purpose I would recommend to the reader
who has hitherto denied himself the pleasure of an acquaintance with
Thomas Hardy, the two volumes known as _The Woodlanders_ and _The
Return of the Native_. The first of these is the more genial because
it presents a more genial side of Nature. But the other is a noble
piece of literary workmanship, a powerful book, ingeniously framed,
with every detail strongly realized; a book which is dramatic,
humorous, sincere in its pathos, rich in its word-coloring, eloquent
in its descriptive passages; a book which embodies so much of life and
poetry that one has a feeling of mental exaltation as he reads.
Surely it is not wise in the critical Jeremiahs so despairingly to
lift up their voices, and so strenuously to bewail the condition of
the literature of the time. The literature of the time is very well,
as they would see could they but turn their fascinated gaze from the
meretricious and spectacular elements of that literature to the work
of Thomas Hardy and George Meredith. With such men among the most
influential in modern letters, and with Barrie and Stevenson among the
idols of the reading world, it would seem that the office of public
Jeremiah should be continued rather from courtesy than from an
overwhelming sense of the needs of the hour.