Thomas Hardy At 173

Thomas Hardy was born on this date 173 years ago.  The year 1840 seems to belong to a long-lost world.  Wordsworth was still alive and writing poetry.  For some reason, it occurs to me that, in 1840, Abraham Lincoln was a 31-year-old lawyer in Illinois.  Imagine that:  Thomas Hardy and Abraham Lincoln and William Wordsworth were all alive at the same time. (It certainly makes our age seem paltry, doesn't it?  But that's another story.)

On the other hand, however, Hardy seems very close to us.  He died less than a 100 years ago -- in 1928, which doesn't seem so far away.  The living veterans of World War II were born before Hardy's death.  And think of this:  Philip Larkin was six-years-old when Hardy died.

Now, that is a wonderful piece of poetic continuity:  the lives of William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy and Philip Larkin overlapped one another.

John Everett, "Maumbury Rings, Dorchester, Dorset" (1924)

     Birthday Poem for Thomas Hardy

Is it birthday weather for you, dear soul?
Is it fine your way,
With tall moon-daisies alight, and the mole
Busy, and elegant hares at play
By meadow paths where once you would stroll
In the flush of day?

I fancy the beasts and flowers there beguiled
By a visitation
That casts no shadow, a friend whose mild
Inquisitive glance lights with compassion,
Beyond the tomb, on all of this wild
And humbled creation.

It's hard to believe a spirit could die
Of such generous glow,
Or to doubt that somewhere a bird-sharp eye
Still broods on the capers of men below,
A stern voice asks the Immortals why
They should plague us so.

Dear poet, wherever you are, I greet you.
Much irony, wrong,
Innocence you'd find here to tease or entreat you,
And many the fate-fires have tempered strong,
But none that in ripeness of soul could meet you
Or magic of song.

Great brow, frail frame -- gone.  Yet you abide
In the shadow and sheen,
All the mellowing traits of a countryside
That nursed your tragi-comical scene;
And in us, warmer-hearted and brisker-eyed
Since you have been.

C. Day Lewis, Poems 1943-1947 (1948).

Day Lewis's reference to Hardy's "bird-sharp eye" brings to mind Llewellyn Powys's memory of meeting Hardy in 1919:  "He came in at last, a little old man (dressed in tweeds after the manner of a country squire) with the same round skull and the same goblin eyebrows and the same eyes keen and alert.  What was it that he reminded me of?  A night hawk?  a falcon owl? for I tell you the eyes that looked out of that century-old skull were of the kind that see in the dark."  Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy (1941), page 159.  For those who may be interested, in previous posts I have mentioned the observations of Powys, H. M. Tomlinson, Blunden, and Siegfried Sassoon upon meeting Hardy in his late years.

John Everett, "Near Corfe Heath, Dorset" (1924)

     
       Waiting Both

A star looks down at me,
And says:  'Here I and you
Stand, each in our degree:
What do you mean to do, --
            Mean to do?'

I say:  'For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Till my change come.'  -- 'Just so,'
The star says:  'So mean I: --
            So mean I.'

Thomas Hardy, Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925).

William Strang, "Thomas Hardy" (1920)

Life Explained, Part Twenty-Five: "The Hedgehog"

A sweet-smelling garden at night.  Beneath the stars, a hedgehog makes its rounds.  Enough in themselves to provide a perfectly suitable Explanation of Life.

                  The Hedgehog

The garden is mysterious at night
And scented! and scented! in the night of stars.
The hedgehog snuffles somewhere among leaves,
Just by the arch-way.  So it is with time
-- Mute night and then a voice that says nothing,
Busying itself, complaining and insisting:
When this has end, silence will come again.

C. H. Sisson, Collected Poems (Carcanet 1998).

                              Robin Tanner, "Wren and Primroses" (1935)

To think of Time as a hedgehog making its patient, imperturbable way through a garden, beneath a starry sky, is a fine image indeed, and is quite comforting.

"Those of us who have allowed our minds to be besotted by the pressure of personal affairs, who perhaps are wasting our time in amassing wealth that we can never hope to enjoy, might well have our folly corrected by an accidental glimpse of this self-contained individualist in his shirt of thorns moving out of the cavernous shadows of some cool odorous flower-bed.

Through the trembling leaves of the garden trees the summer stars shine bright on the outlandish back of the small quadruped, impressing the conscious intelligence with a clear comprehension of the wealth of earth-poetry revealed by the mere existence of so fabulous an urchin directing its activities by the light of the Milky Way."

Llewelyn Powys, "Hedgehogs."

                                    Paul Drury, "March Morning" (1933)

Meeting Thomas Hardy

Siegfried Sassoon's impressions upon meeting the elderly Thomas Hardy (please see my post of April 16) were not, it seems, uncommon.  The following accounts (which may be found in Edmund Blunden's Thomas Hardy) suggest that encountering Mr. Hardy was indeed a marvelous event. 

"The picture drawn by Mr. Powys is memorable.  'Presently I found myself seated near a good log fire.  A little white dog lay stretched on the hearthrug.  Near the chimney-piece I noticed the portrait of Shelley, and on the top of the bookshelf a small bust of Sir Walter Scott.  He came in at last, a little old man (dressed in tweeds after the manner of a country squire) with the same round skull and the same goblin eyebrows and the same eyes keen and alert.  What was it that he reminded me of?  A night hawk? a falcon owl? for I tell you the eyes that looked out of that century-old skull were of the kind that see in the dark.'  And when Mr. Powys went his way, he left Hardy gazing into the October night."

Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy (1941), page 159.  The parallels with Sassoon's fireside visit with Hardy ("the wizard of Wessex") are remarkable.  Here is another account:

"To the end of his life Hardy kept some quality of childhood, which caused Mr. H. M. Tomlinson to write, 'Sometimes when talking to him you felt this child was as old as humanity and knew all about us, but that he did not attach importance to his knowledge because he did not know that he had it.  Just by chance, in the drift of the talk, there would be a word by Hardy, not only wide of the mark, but apparently not directed to it.  Why did he say it?  On the way home, or some weeks later, his comment would be recalled, and with the revealing light on it.'"

Ibid, page 273.  In closing, this is from Blunden himself:

"[This] book represents the warm affection which I feel to this day for one of the kindest and brightest of men, one who received the youngest of us without the faintest shade of distance or inequality, and whose memory, even from days all too few of walks and talks, shines steadily through all decline and change."

                                   Thomas Hardy in his garden