THE THOMAS HARDY VICTORIAN FAIR

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archaeology astronomy evolution phrenology AchaeologMaumbury Rings • Maiden Castle • Max Gate ARDY was fascinated by the different layers of hist- ory in Dorchester. He often features these layers in his Hbook, whether through ghostly sightings of Roman fans in the old roman amphitheatre of Maumbury Rings or recalling illicit archaeological digs on Maiden Castle. Here are a few of the links between Hardy and the archaeology under our very feet…

Casterbridge announced old Rome in every street, alley, and precinct. It looked Roman, bespoke the art of Rome, concealed dead men of Rome. It was impossible to dig more than a foot or two deep about the Southern Face of Maiden Castle, Dorset by Norman Darnton Lupton (1875–1953) © Dorset Museum town, fields and gardens without coming upon some tall soldier or other Photo credit: Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society of the Empire. Mayor of Casterbridge Romano British relics pamphlet © Dorset Museum AUMBURY Rings circle was the frequent spot for At one’s every step forward it rises was the old amphi- appointments of a furtive kind. higher against the south sky, with Mtheatre of the Ro- Mayor of Casterbridge an obtrusive personality that man town of Durnovaria. It is compels the senses to regard it the largest earth amphitheatre AIDEN Castle is and consider. The eyes may bend in the UK. When Hardy was the largest hillfort in another direction, but never alive, evidence could still be Min Europe. It was without the consciousness of its seen of the wild animal pits built by the Durotriges but heavy, high-shouldered presence under the entrance. the Romans later built a at its point of vantage. Across the The new railways threat- temple on it. intervening levels the gale races ened its very existence in In Hardy’s short story ‘A in a straight line from the fort, as the 1840s, but the people of Tryst at an Ancient Earth- if breathed out of it hitherward. Dorchester rallied around it. works’, the writer remem- With the shifting of the clouds the Maumbury Rings became the bers meeting an archaeologist faces of the steeps vary in colour first ancient monument to be there on a dark and stormy and in shade, broad lights ap- saved from demolition by the night. Secretly they dig at pearing where mist and vague- railways due to public protest. the site of the roman temple ness had prevailed, dissolving in and find a statue of Mercury. their turn into melancholy gray, It was to Casterbridge what the Instead of turning it in to the which spreads over and eclipses ruined Coliseum is to modern authorities the archaeologist the luminous bluffs. In this so- Rome… Melancholy, impressive, keeps it for himself. Could thought immutable spectacle all Maumbury Rings, Dorchester, Dorset, 1924 by John Everett (1876-1949) © Dorset Museum Photo credit: Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society lonely, yet accessible from every this be a true story or just is change. part of the town, the historic fiction? Tryst at an Ancient Earthwork

2 Thomas Hardy Victorian Fair ~ The Science of the Victorians Thomas Hardy with The Druid Stone ARDY built his house at Max Gate c.1885 © Dorset Museum Max Gate on heathland Houtside of Dorchester. As they built, they discovered that the site had been a henge, now known as Flagstones. Dur- ing building work, they found a large sarsen stone, which Hardy erected in his garden and called The Druid Stone. They also found some Romano-British pots and clothing fasteners.

Hardy was a member of the Romano-British bowls found by Hardy © Dorset Museum Dorset Natural History and An- tiquarian Field Club. He wrote up his findings in a small book- let (pictured).

These fascinating objects will be on display in the Wessex Museums’ Thomas Hardy exhibition 28 May – 30 October 2022. The exhibition is spread across Dorset Muse- Manuscript for ‘The um, Poole Museum, The Salis- Clasped Skeletons’ bury Museum and Wiltshire Roman-British fibular and annular by Thomas Hardy brooches found by Hardy © Dorset Museum © Dorset Museum Museum.

Aye, even before the beauteous Jael Cleopatra with Antony, So long, beyond chronology, The Clasped Skeletons Bade Sisera doff his gear Resigned to dalliance sheer, Lovers in death as ’twere, Surmised Date 1800 B.C. (In an Ancient And lie in her tent; then drove the nail, Lay, fatuous he, insatiate she, So long in placid dignity British barrow near the writer’s house) You two lay here. Long after you’d lain here. Have you lain here!

why did we uncover to view Wicked Aholah, in her youth, Pilate by Procula his wife Yet what is length of time? But dream! OSo closely clasped a pair? Colled loves from far and near Lay tossing at her tear Once breathed this atmosphere Your chalky bedclothes over you, Until they slew her without ruth; Of pleading for an innocent life; Those fossils near you, met the gleam This long time here! But you had long colled here. You tossed not here. Of day as you did here;

Ere Paris lay with Helena – Aspasia lay with Pericles, Ages before Monk Abélard But so far earlier theirs beside The poets’ dearest dear – And Philip’s son found cheer Gained tender Héloïse’ ear, Your life-span and career, Ere David bedded Bathsheba At eves in lying on Thais’ knees And loved and lay with her till scarred, That they might style of yestertide You two were bedded here. While you lay here. Had you lain loving here. Your coming here!

3 Thomas Hardy Victorian Fair ~ The Science of the Victorians Astonom ORSET’S dark night’s and relative lack of light pollution make it a great place to look up at the stars. DWhether you are a romantic who likes wishing on shooting stars, or you prefer to muse on the infinity of space-time as you look up. Hardy did both. Here are a few of our favourite starry quotes from Hardy…

The sky was clear - remarkably ble. The sovereign brilliance of clear - and the twinkling of all Sirius pierced the eye with a steel the stars seemed to be but throbs glitter, the star called Capella of one body timed by a common was yellow, and Aldebaran and pulse. Betelgeuse shone with a fiery red. Far from the Madding Crowd Far from the Madding Crowd

The silver and black-stemmed ARDY’S birches with their characteris- novel Two tic tufts, the pale grey boughs of Hon a Tower beech, the dark-creviced elm, all is all about a young appeared now as black and flat astronomer. He is outlines upon the sky, where- allowed to carry out his in the white stars twinkled so work at Charborough vehemently that their flickering House, where he has seemed like the flapping of wings. an affair with the own- Under the Greenwood Tree er. The tower that his observatory is based on But behind these beautiful can still be seen on the descriptions, Hardy was really horizon on the right, into the science of the stars, from the A31 heading too. Here he talks about the East between Bere Regis different colours of the stars, and Wimborne. now known to be because Hardy researched his of their different heats and astronomy carefully for places on the star’s life cycle: the book. Right, is a picture of the letter that Letter from Thomas Hardy to E A difference in colour of the stars he sent to The Royal Ob- Dunkin at The Royal Observatory (27th November, 1881) © Dorset Museum. Held at Charborough Tower, Dorset, 1924 by - oftener read of than seen in servatory, asking for help with Dorset History Centre, H.5043b. John Everett (1876-1949) © Dorset Museum England - was readily percepti- his research.

4 Thomas Hardy Victorian Fair ~ The Science of the Victorians ARDY also uses the Until a person has thought out URING Hardy’s stars to think about the stars and their inter-spaces, lifetime, there were I stayed here till it was dark, and the stars came out, Hhow small people he has hardly learnt that there Dhuge advances in sci- and that night I resolved to be an astronomer. are in terms of the vastness are things much more terrible entific thinking. In 1905, Al- Though called a fixed star, it is, like all fixed stars, moving of the universe. This can be a than monsters of shape, namely, bert Einstein published The with inconceivable velocity; but no magnifying will show that really terrifying thought. monsters of magnitude without Theory of Relativity. Space- velocity as anything but rest.’ known shape. Such monsters are time and relativity suddenly ‘I think astronomy is a bad study the voids and waste places of the became new ideas for He asked her how many stars she for you. It makes you feel sky. non-scientists to play with. thought were visible to them at human insignificance Two on a Tower Dorset County Museum that moment. too plainly.’ still has Hardy’s copy of She looked around over the “Did you say the stars were Einstein’s book, which he magnificent stretch of sky worlds, Tess?” read in his 60s. that their high position “Yes.” unfolded. ‘Oh, thou- “All like ours?” These fascinating objects sands, hundreds of “I don’t know, but I think so. will be on display in the thousands,’ she said They sometimes seem to be like Wessex Museums’ Thomas absently. the apples on our stubbard-tree. Hardy exhibition 28 May ‘No. There are Most of them splendid and sound – 30 October 2022. The only about three - a few blighted.” exhibition is spread across thousand. Now, “Which do we live on - a splendid Dorset Museum, Poole Mu- how many do you one or a blighted one?” seum, The Salisbury Muse- think are brought “A blighted one”. um and Wiltshire Museum. within sight by the Tess of the d’Urbervilles help of a powerful telescope?’ ‘I won’t guess.’ ‘Twenty millions. So that, whatever the stars were made for, they were not Charborough Tower by Harry Pouncy made to please our eyes. It is just © Dorset Museum the same in everything; nothing is made for man.’

And to add a new weirdness to what the sky possesses in its size and formlessness, there is involved the quality of decay. For all the wonder of these everlasting stars, eternal spheres, and what not, they are not everlasting, they are not eternal; they burn out like candles. Two on a Tower

Hardy’s copy of Albert Einstein’s The Theory of Relativity © Dorset Museum

5 Thomas Hardy Victorian Fair ~ The Science of the Victorians Hardy & Evolution Darwinian Science ARWINIAN science pervades Hardy’s entire oeuvre, elms and ashes with great forks in which stood pools of water that over- ARDY’S vora- from the embedded fossils Knight stares into while flowed on rainy days and ran down their stems in green cascades. On cious reading Dhanging from a cliff in A Pair of Blue Eyes, to the strug- older trees still than these huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as Hand prodi- gle for survival by the trees of The Woodlanders, the passages everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as gious program of self- describing Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native, and the pro- obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf education, begun in cess of sexual selection evidenced by Bathsheba Everdene’s was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was interrupted; the his teens and contin- choice of male partner in Far From the Madding Crowd. For both lichen ate the vigour of the stalk, and the ivy slowly strangled to death ued throughout his life, Hardy and Darwin chance and change are a permanent con- the promising sapling’ (The Woodlanders, Ch 7) took in such subjects as dition of experience for all things. Hardy was fascinated by astronomy, cosmology, theories of descent, he read Auguste Weismann on heredi- Two particular elements of Darwinian theory have significance geology, evolutionary ty, and Thomas Malthus on population control. Both of these for Hardy’s writings: that despite the constant suffering taking theory, antiquities, an- works heavily influenced the creation of Little Father Time and place in the natural world survival depends upon the link thropology, psycholo- his tragic actions in Jude the Obscure. Hardy was an acclaimer of between life and pleasure; and that of maladaptation, or gy, mythology and the Darwin, copying into his Notebooks an excerpt from The what Hardy termed ‘the FAILURE OF THINGS to be what they Classics. These inform Examiner of 1876: ‘Science tells us that, in the struggle for life, are meant to be’ in his New Year’s Thought for 1879. This his sublime creation of the surviving organism is not necessarily that which is absolutely quote continues with ‘[this] lends them, in place of the intended character, setting and plot. With regards to the human condi- the best in an ideal sense, though it must be that which is most interest, a new and greater interest of an unintended kind’. Interest of an tion in Hardy’s novels, the past is the present, adaptation and in harmony with surrounding conditions’, a perfect example of unintended kind is evident in the delineation of Thom- change do not imply progress, and chance and will do not imply which is personified by Arabella Donn in Jude. as Leaf from Under the Greenwood Tree and Christian Cantle in providence. The Return of the Native, both characters who are not men, but Hardy was greatly impressed by the irreversibility of the ‘They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled through rather unmen. They each symbolise the essence of malad- evolutionary accident that had led human beings to develop a interspersed tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with spreading roots whose aptation, but in opposition to eugenicist thoughts at the cosmological awareness of their own biological natures and mossed rinds made them like hands wearing green gloves, elbowed old time that such aberrations should be eradicated, Hardy mortality, as seen in Gabriel Oak’s discernment of the celebrated such figures, and how they are integral to their vastness of the universe in Far From the Madding Crowd, and respective communities. Tess Durbyfield’s out of body experience while a milkmaid at Talbothays dairy. ‘“I know I’ve got no head, but I thought if I washed and put on a clane Hardy was inca- shirt and smock-frock I might just call” said Leaf, turning away disap- pable of observing pointed and trembling. “Poor feller!” said the tranter turning to Geof- the world and its frey. “Suppose we must let en come? His looks are rather against en, mindless process- and he is terrible silly; but ‘a have never been in jail and ‘a won’t do no es without some harm”. Leaf looked with gratitude at the tranter for these praises, and kind of emotional then anxiously at Geoffrey to see what effect they would have in helping reaction, and these his cause. “Ay: let en come”, said Geoffrey decisively. “Leaf – th’rt wel- we see in novels, sto- come ‘st know”. And Leaf accordingly remained’. (Under the Greenwood ries and poetry. For Tree, Part 5, Ch 1). he was ‘a man who The Origin of Species, first edition used to notice such Hardy’s novels things’.

6 Thomas Hardy Victorian Fair ~ The Science of the Victorians Phenolog ARDY was always intrigued by the unusual. Phrenology was the study of people’s personalities, based on Hmeasurements of their heads. In Dorchester, there was a doctor in the nineteenth century who took casts of hanged prisoners’ heads. He would then meas- ure them and use phrenology to try to find links between their head shape and criminal tendencies. The death mask of Edwin Preedy is on display in Shire Hall and that of another prisoner is displayed in Dorset County Museum. A Phrenological Curiosity Sacrificed to Science

S a young architect in London, a curious Hardy ARDY also reflects the darker side of phrenology. In got his own head measured by a phrenologist. The the same book, Grammer Oliver promises to give her A report came back telling him that he wasn’t very aware of Hhead to the local doctor to experiment on after she locality, eventuality or time – not a great prognosis for someone is dead. who would spend their life telling stories about their local area. We can’t tell how much Hardy believed in phrenology. There is One day when I was there cleaning, he said, ‘Grammer, you’ve a large a note with his report from his sister, saying that he had left it in brain—a very large organ of brain,’ he said. ‘A woman’s is usually four an old coat pocket – hardly a prized possession. ounces less than a man’s; but yours is man’s size.’ Well, then—hee, hee!— Phrenology is now seen as a pseudo-science. But in Hardy’s after he’d flattered me a bit like that, he said he’d give me ten pounds to novels, the characters really believe in it. have me as a natomy after my death. The Woodlanders A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her fortune with the abandoned cards. … Mr. Melbury was The doctor is described as being like a standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, “Tell her Roman god, sacrificing the old woman’s body fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of to science. In the end, she is freed from her science—what do you call ‘em? Phrenologists. You can’t obligation and able to keep her body intact teach her anything new” after death. The Woodlanders These fascinating objects will be on display in the Wessex Museums’ Thomas Hardy exhibition 28 May – 30 October 2022. The exhibition is spread across Dorset Museum, Poole Museum, The Salisbury Museum and Death Mask of Edwin Preedy with phrenologist’s measuring Thomas Hardy’s phrenology report, 1864 equipment, in Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum. © Dorset Museum Wiltshire Museum.

7 Thomas Hardy Victorian Fair ~ The Science of the Victorians ITH grateful thanks to Dr Tracy Hayes of The Thomas Hardy Society for the article on Hardy and Darwinian Science and Wto Harriet Still of Wessex Museums for the other sections, which form part of the research for the Wessex Museums’ Thomas Hardy exhibition 28 May – 30 October 2022.

Dorset Museum Wessex Museums The Thomas Hardy Society www.dorsetmuseum.org www.wessexmuseums.org.uk www.hardysociety.org