Thomas Hardy’s Vision of Wessex Thomas Hardy’s Vision of Wessex Simon Gatrell University of Georgia © Simon Gatrell, 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-333-74834-3 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-41127-6 ISBN 978-0-230-50025-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230500259 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gatrell, Simon. Thomas Hardy’s vision of Wessex / Simon Gatrell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Hardy, Thomas, 1840–1928—Settings. 2. Hardy, Thomas, 1840–1928—Knowledge—Wessex (England) 3. Regional literature, English—History and criticism. 4. Wessex (England)—In literature. 5. Country life in literature. I. Title. PR4757.S46G37 2003 823′.8—dc21 2003049764 10987654321 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 To Michael Millgate Contents Preface viii List of Illustrations xi Introduction xii 1 The Conception and Birth of Wessex 1 2 Variations on the Original Theme 27 3 The First Evolutionary Leap 45 4 Tess of the d’Urbervilles 61 5 Handling New Wessex 91 6 The Collected Editions 1 112 7 The Collected Editions 2 140 8The Poetry 164 9 Cider, Mead and Ale 188 10 Sounds 195 11 The Languages of Wessex 202 12 Wessex Rail 226 13 Conclusion: Politics, Guides and Critics 234 Notes 244 Index of Place Names 256 General Index 260 vii Preface An important note to the reader In its original conception this book was to have included all revisions that Hardy made to the various aspects of Wessex. This was found to be econom- ically unviable, and instead much of the material will be found at a website associated with the book: http//www.english.uga.edu/Wessex. Many of the endnotes direct the reader to the website for further information, and indeed the arguments in the book are now supported by only the essential minimum of illustration. The website has three levels, all of which may be accessed from the front page. The first responds directly to the book’s end- notes, and also has a full list of books consulted; the second includes a range of secondary material relevant to details of Wessex discussed in the book; the third is an archive listing almost all (to claim completeness would be folly) the revisions Hardy made in his fiction to aspects of Wessex (for the poetry the reader should consult Samuel Hynes’s edition, details of which are given in the following section). I welcome lists of errors on the website, for though I have striven to exclude them, they are surely there. Please send them to me at [email protected]. Texts Hardy’s work is quoted, unless otherwise indicated, in its first edition form, with variants where relevant in bold face, since it is with the first serial and book appearance, and variants from them, that I am concerned. Prose quotations are identified by volume (v), book or part number and chapter (c, where necessary) number, except where indicated. Three-decker novels often had a separate numeration of chapters in each volume. There will be found on the website a key that will allow readers to adjust the chapter numbers for one-volume reference. Poetry quotations are from The Complete Poetical Works of Thomas Hardy Vols I–V, edited by Samuel Hynes (1982–95). Abbreviations The most important of these refer to the website. In the notes, references are in this form: ws followed by an abbreviation for each chapter. Users should follow the instructions on the front page of the website: http//www.english. uga.edu/Wessex. viii Preface ix The following books are also abbreviated for economy of reference: Bibliographical Study: Thomas Hardy: A Bibliographical Study, R L Purdy (Second edition, 1968). DCM: Documents in the Hardy collection in the Dorset County Museum. I am grateful to the curator for permission to quote from the collection. Hardy in History: Hardy in History: A Study in Literary Sociology, Peter Widdowson (1989). Hardy the Creator: Hardy the Creator: A Textual Biography, Simon Gatrell (1988). Letters: The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy edited by Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate, vol. I–VII (1978–88). An eighth and supplementary volume will appear soon. Life and Work: The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy edited by Michael Millgate (1984). Proper Study: Thomas Hardy and the Proper Study of Mankind, Simon Gatrell (1993). Thanks This book is a product of more than thirty years’ work on Hardy’s texts, and owes something to everyone I have talked with about Hardy during that period, in Oxford, Coleraine, Dorchester, Athens, and elsewhere, and to the people who have helped me at all the libraries I have visited. I am deeply grateful to you all. But there are some whose influence and friendship has been perpetual, and others who have helped with issues specific to this book, and I must let them know how important they have been. Michael Millgate is the Hardy scholar, and has been a good and generous friend to me from our first meeting. Bill and Vera Jesty used to live at Max Gate, the splendid house that Hardy built, and they have given me not just the extraordinary experience of sleeping in the room in which Hardy wrote Tess of the d’Urbervilles, but their company on many walks around Dorset, and the benefit of their huge knowledge of the past and present of Wessex. Many of the ideas fleshed out here were first floated in talks with them. It has been wonderful to share all this with such good friends. Pamela Dalziel’s scholarship is an inspiration, and her friendship a resource. During the long gestation of the material that underpins this study Dale Kramer was in a sense my partner; he and I worked together on two different proposals for complete critical editions of Hardy’s fiction, and both times it was not his fault that the projects fell through. Discussion and argument with Dale have made the issues of Hardy’s texts come alive for me. Peter Shillingsburg’s gift has been to stimulate me to think harder and faster and more clearly on textual (and all other) matters when I am in his company; I only hope some of that strength and clarity has lasted long enough. The two curators of the Dorset County Museum I have worked with, Roger Peers and Richard de x Preface Peyer, have in their different ways, and under different conditions, made the Hardy collection in the museum a site of pure pleasure; Lillian Swindall was very helpful throughout my specific work on this book. The University of Georgia has been wonderfully supportive, and I have been blessed with a remarkable series of graduate students who have worked on Hardy with me here; each of them has contributed something significant: Jane Gatewood, Sarah Dangelantonio, Frank Mitchell, Russ Greer and Mark Rollins – and to their names I must add that of Kathy Agar. Without the encouragement of Nelson Hilton, the idea of the website that has made the whole project viable would never have got off the ground, and without Alice Kinman’s hands-on assistance it would never have seen the light of the screen. Adam Parkes has read parts of the manuscript, a piece of work only less valuable to me than our common enthusiasm for cricket and football. Without the love and encouragement of Tita and Clym neither this nor any other of my work would have seen the light of day. Simon Gatrell December 2002 List of Illustrations 1. Illustration that Hardy drew to ‘In a Ewelease Near Weatherbury’ in Wessex Poems (1898). xii 2. Hardy’s map for the first edition of The Return of the Native (1878). 29 3. Alfred Parsons’s illustration for ‘Wessex Folk’(1891). 91 4. The first map of Wessex, from the Bookman (1891). 94 5. Map of Wessex in Annie Macdonnell’s Thomas Hardy (1894). 101 6. The map of Wessex made for the Osgood, McIlvaine collected edition of Hardy’s work (1895). 113 7. The Raeburn illustration for Desperate Remedies.116 8. The Raeburn illustration for Under the Greenwood Tree. 117 9. The Raeburn illustration for A Pair of Blue Eyes.120 10. The Raeburn illustration for Far From the Madding Crowd. 122 11.