THOMAS HARDY This page intentionally left blank THOMAS HARDY MICHAEL MILLGATE 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 2 6 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Michael Millgate 2004 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2004 First published in paperback 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data applied for Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Antony Rowe, Chippenham ISBN 0–19–927565–3 978–0–19–927565–6 ISBN 0–19–927566–1 (Pbk.) 978–0–19–927566–3 (Pbk.) 13579108642 To R.L.P. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS ix 1 1. Hardys and Hands 7 2. Bockhampton 28 3. Dorchester 51 4. London 73 5. The Poor Man and the Lady 97 6. St Juliot 112 7. Far from the Madding Crowd 129 8. Marriage 150 9. Sturminster Newton 167 10. The Return of the Native 181 11. Illness 198 12. Return to Dorchester 217 13. Max Gate 238 14. The Woodlanders 256 15. The Writing of Tess 270 16. The Publication of Tess 285 17. Florence Henniker 301 18. The Making of Jude 317 19. The Publication of Jude 340 20. Keeping Separate 356 21. Pessimistic Meliorist 378 22. The Dynasts 394 23. After the Visit 408 viii Contents 24. A Funeral 429 25. A Second Marriage 448 26. Life-Writing 468 27. Tea at Max Gate 484 28. Plays and Players 503 29. Last Things 518 30. Afterwards 533 543 547 549 551 605 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS following page 000 1. The Hardy cottage, Higher Bockhampton 2. South Street, Dorchester 3. Jemima Hardy 4. Thomas Hardy senior 5. Kate Hardy 6. Mary Hardy 7. Horace Moule 8. Thomas Hardy, c. 1856 9. The Revd Henry Moule and his wife and family 10. Louisa Harding 11. Tryphena Sparks 12. Martha Sharpe (?) 13. John Antell the shoemaker 14. Hardy, c. 1862 15. Eliza Bright Nicholls 16. Jane Nicholls 17. Hardy’s sketch of Findon Church 18. Hardy’s illustration to ‘She, to Him. I’ 19. Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset 20. Hardy’s receipt for his first literary earnings 21. Hardy’s sketch of the view from 16 Westbourne Park Villas 22. Turnworth Church, Dorset following page 000 23. Emma Lavinia Gifford, c. 1870 24. Hardy, c. 1870 25. Emma Gifford with the Holders at St Juliot, c. 1870 26. Drawing by Hardy for the restoration of St Juliot Church, 1870 27. ‘Riverside’, Sturminster Newton x List of Illustrations 28. Hardy’s sketchmap for The Return of the Native 29. Drawings by Hardy for the building of Max Gate 30. Max Gate when first built 31. Drawing of Hardy in his study, c. 1892 32. Scenes from classical history and mythology drawn by Hardy for Lilian Gifford 33. The Hardys with Nellie Gosse at Weymouth, 1890 34. Hardy and his dog, Moss, at Max Gate, 1890 35. Florence Henniker 36. Rosamund Tomson 37. Agnes Grove 38. Hamo and Agatha Thornycroft following page 000 39. Max Gate, 1901 40. Hardy’s study in 1900 41. Hardy, c. 1886 42. Hardy, c. 1900 43. Emma Hardy in early middle age 44. Jemima Hardy in old age 45. Cartoon of Hardy by Will Dyson 46. The pets’ cemetery, Max Gate 47. Emma Hardy, c. 1905 48. Portrait of Hardy by Jacques-Émile Blanche, 1906 49. Hardy’s manuscript of ‘A Singer Asleep’ following page 000 50. Florence Emily Dugdale, aged 19 51. Hardy and Florence Dugdale at Aldeburgh, 1909 52. Hardy receiving the freedom of the Borough of Dorchester, 1910 53. Henry and Kate Hardy, 1914 54. Thomas and Florence Hardy with Wessex, 1914 55. The Hardy Pedigree, written out by Hardy, c. 1917 56. Gertrude Bugler as Marty South in The Woodlanders, 1913 57. Hardy in old age 58. Thomas and Florence Hardy with Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies 59. Florence Hardy, c. 1930 60. Hardy with Edmund Gosse, 1927 61. Stinsford churchyard List of Illustrations xi The family of Thomas Hardy senior 10–11 The family of Jemima Hand 16–17 (Family trees designed by Kinny Kreiswirth and compiled by Vera Jesty and Michael Millgate) Thomas Hardy’s Dorset 34 The world of Hardy’s boyhood and youth 35 (Maps drawn by Ken Jordan) Hardy’s own map of his fictional Wessex 234–5 Illustrations are reproduced by kind permission of: Mr Frederick B. Adams, 41, 57; Mr John Antell, 6, 13; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, 14, 15, 16, 45, 53; the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, 23, 25, 43; Mrs Gertrude Bugler, 27; University Library, University of California at Riverside, 52, 56; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library, 33, 60; W. & R. Chambers, Ltd., 20; the Trustees of the Thomas Hardy Memorial Collection in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, 2, 8, 9, 17, 21, 22, 24, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 39, 44, 47, 51, 54, 55, 58; Professor Leslie Greenhill, 61; Harold Hoffman papers, Miami University of Ohio, 10; Mr David Holmes, 49; Mr T. W. Jesty, 46; Mr Henry Lock, for the H. E. F. Lock Collection, on loan to the Dorset County Museum, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12; Mrs Elfrida Manning, 38; Michael Millgate, 31, 61; Princeton University Library, the Morris H. Parrish Collection, 40, the Robert H. Taylor Collection, 59; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, 26; Mrs Daphne Wood, 50. Copyright illustrations reproduced with permission: Simmons Aerofilms, 19; Pitkin Pictorials Ltd., 1; Tate Gallery (8 Tate London 2004), 48. This page intentionally left blank PROLOGUE undertake the revision of a biography is scarcely less risky—less of a Tventure over potentially dangerous waters—than embarking on it in the first place. However much the biographer knows, that knowledge can never account for more than a fraction of the life actually lived. No sources are entirely unproblematic, and they may in any case remain permanently deficient for those periods or aspects of a life commonly considered to be of particular significance: early childhood, for example, sexual relationships, and those supremely elusive processes of literary and artistic creativity. In returning, however, to Thomas Hardy: A Biography some two decades after its original appearance, I do at least have the confidence of knowing that much material of interest and importance has been published during the inter- vening years. The collective edition of Hardy’s letters is now complete, editions of his interviews, his public writings, and the letters written by his wives have all appeared, and the editing of his surviving notebooks continues. Genea- logical researchers, local historians, and writers on Wessex have turned up important new pieces of information. Scholarly research has revised and sometimes revolutionized earlier assumptions about such issues as the pre- cise nature of Hardy’s open literary collaboration with Florence Henniker, his secret assistance to Florence Dugdale, and his participation in the writ- ing of the official biography published shortly after his death. And Hardy’s stature continues to grow. His poetry, admirably edited, is now altogether more widely and sympathetically read than it was fifty or even twenty years ago. Film and television productions have helped to keep his novels and stories alive in the popular imagination, and although a comprehensive scholarly edition of the fiction is still lacking there are excellent editions and textual studies of individual works and of the previously uncollected stories. Useful editorial work has also been incorporated into some of the numerous paperback editions that collectively testify to Hardy’s continuing presence 2 Prologue in school and university syllabuses on both sides of the Atlantic and, indeed, around the world. Because of my own role in the editing of Hardy’s letters, his wives’ letters, his ghosted biography, and some of the other new resources for the study of his life and work, the twentieth birthday of Thomas Hardy: A Biography in 2002 became an occasion for looking back not just to 1982 but to the early 1960s when I began working towards my first book in the field, Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist, published in 1971. That retrospective stocktaking led to the projection and now the completion of this new, expanded, and exten- sively revised edition of Thomas Hardy: A Biography that draws on all the addi- tional information that has recently become available and, more broadly, on the full range of materials and insights that I have accumulated in the process of working on Hardy over a period of some forty years.