Buildings of the Past and the Present Architecture in Thomas Hardy's Novels

Scuola Dottorale di Ateneo Graduate School Dottorato di ricerca in Lingue Culture e Societa’ Moderne Ciclo XXVII o XXVIII Anno di discussione 2016 Buildings of the Past and the Present Architecture in Thomas Hardy’s Novels SETTORE SCIENTIFICO DISCIPLINARE DI AFFERENZA : L-LIN/10 Tesi di Dottorato di Elena Rimondo, matricola 810503 Coordinatore del Dottorato Tutore del Dottorando Prof. Alessandra Giorgi Prof. Enrica Villari 1 Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 3 Part I – Architecture and Space ......................................................................................... 20 Chapter One – The Architecture of Nature and the Nature of Architecture ........................... 24 Chapter Two – Attempts at Newness...................................................................................... 44 Chapter Three – The Taming of the Shrew............................................................................ 64 Part II – Architecture and Time.......................................................................................... 89 Chapter Four – The Disputable Value of Age in Buildings.................................................... 95 Chapter Five – The Critique of Eclecticism: A Laodicean ................................................... 117 Chapter Six – ‘The Letter Killeth’: Jude the Obscure and the Critique of Idolatry...............137 Bibliography.......................................................................................................................... 156 1 Acknowledgements My first and greatest debt in writing this thesis is first to Prof. Enrica Villari, whose supervision during these three years has been fundamental. My heartfelt thanks go to Prof. Isabelle Gadoin and Prof. Phillip Mallett for their guidance and their precious suggestions. I am also grateful to Prof. Jeanne Clegg, Prof. JoAnna Mink, Jonathan Memel and Samantha Briggs for their advice, to Anna Bulek for her help with Polish pronunciation, and to Elizabeth Freeman for her invaluable suggestions. For their encouragement and support, I am also indebted to Prof. Kent and Pamela Cartwright, to Prof. Lorenza Gramegna and Tracy Hayes. Finally, my warmest thanks go to Marco and my parents for their infinite patience, and this dissertation is for them. 2 Introduction It is surprising that architecture in Thomas Hardy’s novels did not attract the attention of the first critics, given that Hardy was an architect by profession and buildings feature prominently in his works. The role played by buildings in his novels has always been overshadowed by the other major theme, i.e. that of landscape. It is true that natural scenes are omnipresent in Hardy’s works, but it is the purpose of this thesis to argue that architecture should not be subordinated to natural landscape and that a clear-cut distinction between natural objects and human artefacts is not only impossible, but also harmful for a complete understanding of the role played by setting in the Wessex Novels . The attention Hardy paid to the natural landscape of the South West of England is not at odds with his almost obsessive concentration on buildings. What W. H. Smith wrote of the literature from the 18 th century onwards well explains why architecture and nature form a whole in Hardy’s novels: The best architectural descriptions are the fruit of that sensitiveness to environment which results also in a love of nature. The two qualities are usually found together; in fact a really good description of a building seldom fails to make some reference to the surrounding landscape, for the best descriptions come from vivid mental pictures, and it is hard to visualize an object apart from its setting. 1 Moreover, there is reason to believe that Hardy himself would have shared the belief that such a thing as a pure “natural landscape” no longer existed, at least not in his post-industrial revolution England. It is true that sometimes Hardy constructs a setting in a way which induces us to believe that unspoilt natural places still exist(ed), like Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native or, to a lesser extent, Little Hintock, the setting of The Woodlanders . Yet Hardy is equally good at seeding hints which make those idyllic descriptions fall apart like a house of cards. These hints, dating back to Desperate Remedies , continued to intrude into the 2 Wessex Novels , until the final outburst of a squalid modernity in Jude the Obscure . 1 Warren Hunting Smith, Architecture in English Fiction , New Haven, Yale University Press, 1934, p. 3. 2 W. J. Keith pointed out that in his regional novels Hardy included the factors of modernity (for example the railway, the penny post, the reaping machines, etc.), which other regional novelists tended to omit (see William John Keith, A Regional Approach to Hardy’s Fiction , in Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Thomas Hardy , ed. Dale Kramer, London, Macmillan, 1979, pp. 36-49, p. 38, while Raymond Williams observed that in Hardy’s major novels change is always “central and even decisive” (Raymond Williams, The Country and the City [1973], London, The Hogarth Press, 1985, p. 197). 3 Just as Hardy was deeply conscious that progress was a fact even in the most out-of-the- way districts, so he was convinced that to his contemporaries the word “landscape” did not – and could not – evoke the same images it evoked some decades before to his father, to his grandfather and to those whose memories he used to listen to when he was a boy. Hardy, in other words, was fully aware that the marks left by human beings on the landscape were so numerous that not only had the concept of natural landscape become outdated, but our very idea of landscape had changed as well. Moreover, he was aware that we have grown so accustomed to landscapes shaped by civilisations that we are almost unable to distinguish human artefacts from the rest. The spaces left to nature decrease, while constructions take their places, but at the same time ancient buildings have become so much part of the landscape, that in general we do no longer perceive them as intrusive objects on the landscape. A confirmation of our unawareness of the impact of human marks on the landscape comes from a close look at criticism on Hardy’s works. Not only has landscape always attracted more attention, but it has been considered as separate from architecture, 3 despite Hardy’s having been an architect before devoting himself entirely to literature, and despite his long-lasting interest in architecture. Thomas Hardy’s father ran a building and master-masoning business established by Hardy’s grandfather. 4 In 1856 John Hicks, a Dorchester architect, took him as a pupil in his office. 5 Hardy’s tasks included making surveys of churches with a view to restore them. In 1862 he became assistant architect for A. W. Blomfield in London, where his profession began to disappoint him because he deemed architectural drawing “monotonous and mechanical”. 6 In the same year Hardy became a member of the Architectural Association and obtained two significant rewards. In 1863 his design for a country mansion won the first prize, and his essay entitled ‘On the Application of Colored [sic] Bricks and Terra Cotta to Modern Architecture’ (of which no copy survives) was rewarded with the silver medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects. 7 Hardy’s first published work dates back to this period: 3 This tendency is visible in particular in the first Hardy critics, for example in Grimsditch’s Character and Environment in the Novels of Thomas Hardy . In the chapter devoted to the study of Hardy’s characters in their environment, buildings are almost disregarded, excepting a brief analysis of the great barn in Far from the Madding Crowd (see Herbert Borthwick Grimsditch, Character and Environment in the Novels of Thomas Hardy , London, H. F. & G. Witherby, 1925, Ch. II). 4 See Ralph Pite, Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life [2006], London, Picador, 2007, p. 28. 5 See Ibidem , p. 67. 6 The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy by Thomas Hardy , ed. Michael Millgate, London, Macmillan, 1984 (repr. 1989), p. 49. 7 See Ralph Pite, Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life cit., pp. 95-6. 4 in 1865, his amusing account entitled ‘How I Built Myself a House’ 8 was published in Chamber’s Journal . After his failed attempt to have The Poor Man and the Lady published, Hardy went back to his native Dorset and accepted the offer of George Crickmay, John Hick’s successor, to employ him as an architect in Weymouth. It was during one of his surveys of churches to be restored that Hardy met his future wife. In 1870 Crickmay asked Hardy to make a survey of St Juliot church in Cornwall, where he fell in love with Emma Gifford, the vicar’s sister-in-law. Before completely abandoning the profession to devote himself to writing novels, Hardy worked intermittently for Raphael Brandon in 1870 and, in 1872, for T. Roger Smith. However, Hardy never completely abandoned architecture. Not only did he build himself Max Gate, his house in Dorchester, but in 1881 he entered the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), founded in 1877 by William Morris. 9 Hardy’s commitment to prevent indiscriminate restoration works emerges in particular in his letters and in ‘Memories of Church Restoration’, a speech he wrote

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