Stating it briefly, it is that the law which governs human events is
rendered just beyond calculation by an admixture of luck.
rendered just beyond calculation by an admixture of luck.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v12 - Gre to Hen
It is a romance of that
human quality which meets with a response in every novel-reader's
heart. Mr. Hardy's heroines are all charming; but he has presented
us to no more winning type than this flower of a mediæval day, with
"the hues of the Southern sea in her eyes and under the rose-brown
flush of her skin, the sound of its waves in the ripple of her
laughter. "
FATHER LE BLANC MAKES A CALL; AND PREACHES A
SERMON
From But Yet a Woman. ' Copyright 1883 by Arthur S. Hardy, and reprinted
by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston
F
ATHER LE BLANC had a profound belief in human agencies.
He loved to play the ministering angel, for his heart was a
well of sympathy.
There was even a latent chiding of
Providence at the bottom of this well sometimes, when the sight
of the poor and the suffering stirred its depths with pity for
those lonely wayfarers who, neglected by this world, seem for-
gotten also of God. This was but one of those many themes
which this mind, at once simple, honest, and profound, turned
over and over reflectively, never seeing its one aspect except as
on the way to the other. "The difficulty does not lie in believ-
ing the truths of the Church," he once said, "but in those other
things which we must believe also. " Or again, "Belief is an edi-
fice never completed, because we do not yet comprehend its plan,
and every day some workman brings a new stone from the
quarry. " So that while Father Le Blanc was very devout, he was
not a devotee. He flavored his religious belief with the salt of a
good sense against which he endeavored to be on his guard, as
he was even against his charity and compassion. The vision of
Milton's fallen Spirit, beating its wings vainly in a non-resisting
air, drew from his heart a profound sigh.
## p. 6927 (#311) ###########################################
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
6927
His thoughts turned very naturally to Stéphanie and her
journey that day, for he was on the way to secure the nineteenth
volume of the 'Viaje de España' of Pontz, for which he had been
long on the search, and which awaited him at last on the Quai
Voltaire. Those old books which filled the shelves of his room
in the Rue Tiquetonne had left his purse a light one. "But,"
said Father Le Blanc, "I am not poor, since I have what I
want. "
After possessing himself of his coveted book, he took up his
way along the quai, with his treasure under his arm. "I have a
mind to call on her," he said, still thinking of Stéphanie. "The
art of knowing when one is needed is more difficult than that of
helping;" and he paused on the curbstone to watch a company
of the line coming from the caserne of the Cité. A carriage,
arrested a moment by the passage of the troops, approached the
spot where he was standing, and he recognized M. De Marzac.
The priest was evidently sauntering, and M. De Marzac called to
his driver to stop.
"I see you are out for a promenade," he said. "Accept this
seat beside me, and take a turn with me in the Bois. "
Father Le Blanc was not in his second childhood, for he had
not yet outgrown his first; consequently the temptation was a
strong one. But M. De Marzac was no favorite of his, and not
even the fine day nor this opportunity to enjoy it could counter-
balance M. De Marzac's company. Dislike at first sight is more
common than love, as discord is more common than harmony.
So he excused himself as about to make a visit. "Well, then,
that decides it," he said to himself, as he trudged down the quai
with the gait of a man with an object in view. "Now I must
go. "
At the door of the hôtel in the Boulevard St. Germain he
stopped a moment before entering, and took a deep inspiration.
To tell the truth, the day was so fine he regretted going in-doors.
"I feel that I have a pair of lungs," he said, as he rang the
porter's bell.
Stéphanie was not expecting a visit from Father Le Blanc, yet
was glad to see him. She was in that period which lies after
decision and before action, when, having made all her prepara-
tions for an early start in the express of the next morning, there
was nothing to be done but sit down and wait for the hour of
departure.
## p. 6928 (#312) ###########################################
6928
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
"The air is so pure that I feared to find you were out. And
you go to-morrow! "
"Yes," Stéphanie said, "Si Dios quiere, as the Spaniards say. "
"But I shall be there before you. I leave this evening. "
"This evening! "
"And without fatigue," said the priest mysteriously, drawing
his volume from under his arm. "It is my nineteenth journey. "
"You have been to Spain? " said Stéphanie, taking the book,
but still perplexed.
"Oh, never! except in those leaves which you are turning; and
for two reasons," he added laughingly: "the guide-books tell us
that there are in Spain priests by the thousand, but not a single
cook! Still, you perceive that I am about to follow you, and —
who knows! -shall perhaps lodge at the same inn. That is a
country in which nothing becomes obsolete, and I have no doubt
but that if you inquire for it, they will show you in Toboso the
very fonda at which Don Quixote dismounted. "
Stéphanie thought she heard in this pleasantry something
more than was said. Certainly Father Le Blanc had not even
whispered, "Though you are going away, my child, I shall follow
you in my thoughts and in my prayers;" and yet that is what
she heard. Some of his most commonplace sentences were SO
many half-hidden channels, such as the brooks make under the
grass of the meadows, into which overflowed the currents of his
sympathy and kindliness. In spite of a strong natural reserve,
an invincible trust in this homely face crowned with white hairs
mastered her.
"You are very good to think of me, father," she said, in a
voice so full that it brought straight from his heart the message
he had come to deliver.
"All who suffer are my children; and you suffer-and that
grieves me. The Master who took upon himself the sorrows of
the world, bade his followers imitate him. Why will you not
lean a little upon me, daughter? I am an old man who has rav-
eled the path before you. "
She turned her eyes upon him, and they said, "I do not speak;
but read, and comfort me. "
"Sorrow is a very real thing," he continued in a voice full of
sweetness and authority. "It is neither a morbid nor an un-
healthy state. When it seems deepest, when after the world
has failed us, self also proves insufficient,-it may even be a
## p. 6929 (#313) ###########################################
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
6929
blessed one. I do not chide, I even agree with you. But I wish
you also to agree with me. Be our life wide or narrow, whether
we live humbly or sit on a throne, whether we dwell in our own
thoughts, in the midst of action or in the search of pleasure, we
come to the verdict of the Hebrew king,- that verdict which I
read in your face and which broods over your life. All is empti-
ness and vanity! It is not the range but the depth of our experi-
ence which convinces us, and from the first we apprehend this
truth dimly. We own this sad statue of Sorrow in the block from
the outset, before experience chisels it out for us; and in our first
search for happiness, when we look on the splendors of the young
world for what they do not contain, it is this intimation of what
they cannot yield, and the capacity of our own natures, which
both allure and deceive us. "
She seemed to be listening to the story of her own life.
“And as we live on, this conviction deepens. The voices with-
out echo and reinforce those within. We are ever looking to some-
thing better than we have or are, and whether we attain it or lose
it, there is no rest for our feet. It is the man who is fooled and
deluded that is to be pitied. He who finds life and self sufficient
is either a monster or a caricature. Do you not see that I do not
argue with your tears? But do not think to dry them in Spain,
my child.
Sorrow is the handmaid of God, not of Satan. She
would lead us, as she did the Psalmist, to say, 'Who will show us
any good? ' that after having said this, we may also say with him,
'Lord, lift thou the light of thy countenance upon us.
> >>
"All else is a broken cistern," said Father Le Blanc, taking
up his thoughts after a pause. "See how time deceives us! He
covers the sore, he even heals the wound, but he gives no
immunity from a fresh one. " Stéphanie's eyes fell. "God only
renders us superior to calamity. Honestly," said he, lifting his
hands as if he appealed to his own conscience, "priest of God
though I am, in understanding I am as a child. I cannot explain
-I testify. I witness to you this mystery, that out of the very
hurt which brings me low, the spiritual life is developed. And,"
he added, as he would the benediction to a discourse at St.
Eustache, "blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are they which
mourn, blessed are they which hunger and thirst, for these are
they which shall be filled; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "
How much soever of gratefulness she felt for these words,
she could not answer them. Had he held her hand, her answer
XII-434
## p. 6930 (#314) ###########################################
6930
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
would have been a pressure. But Father Le Blanc was not hurt
by her silence. Though words bubbled easily over his lips, none
better knew the difficulty of sometimes saying, "Thank you. ”
He sat quietly, smoothing the wrinkles of his soutane over his
broad knee, with his eyes on the floor.
"When you return," he said at last, looking up, "I shall ask
you all the questions which are not answered in my nineteen
volumes. Think of it, at my age! never to have seen the sea.
Yet I have lain stretched out on its yellow sands in the sun,
listening to the music of its blue waves-in the Rue Tiquetonne!
And when I go to my window at night, it is to stand on the
summit of some high cliff, and the roar of the city is that of the
sea at its base. Chained as we are to our little patrimony in the
Rue Tiquetonne, the imagination is a free rover in space and
time. I wager you are surprised to hear an old man talk of
imagination," he said, taking her share of the conversation, and
putting in her mouth the replies which he wished to answer,—
"imagination, which is supposed to belong only to youth. I say,
rather, youth belongs to imagination, which is then a wild Bar-
bary colt, and carries one wherever it wills; but at my age it
has become domesticated, and it is on its back that I have ridden,
as did Sancho on that of his patient donkey, over all the byways
of Spain. And when you see some worthy colleague of mine on
his ass, plodding before you with a shovel hat on his head a
metre in length, you will say to yourself, There is my friend
ahead of me. '"
Her hands crossed on her knees, plunged in a delicious revery
which this voice penetrated without disturbing, Stéphanie raised
her eyes to his face and smiled.
He took his book from the table where she had laid it, and
put it under his arm again. He had dropped his few seeds of
comfort, and was ready to permit God to water them. So he
sought an excuse to go.
"I am like a schoolboy," he said, tapping the volume, "with
a new copy-book, who cannot rest till he has written something
on the first page. What a good friend this book will be! I count
upon him in advance;" and his eyes spoke to hers; "he will not
speak unless I question him; we shall perchance differ pro-
foundly, but he will not reproach me; I shall rifle his pockets.
and put him aside at my pleasure, yet he will not feel neglected.
I shall invite him to-night to a tête-à-tête before my fire, and
## p. 6931 (#315) ###########################################
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
6931
fall asleep while he is doing his best to entertain me; but when
I awake, his countenance will be unruffled. Doubtless because
all the while he is aware that I still prize him.
What strange
things we do to those whom we love! Absolutely, madame,"
said Father Le Blanc, rising, and with a self-accusing gesture,
"I am an inveterate sermonizer, and I have not given you even
the opportunity to interrupt me. "
Stéphanie followed him to the door of the room, and at the
threshold put her hand softly upon his arm.
"Thanks, father, for this visit," she said. Her voice was low;
it was all she said, but her look and that gesture were more
eloquent than words.
"I say to you as they will say to you in Spain," replied
Father Le Blanc, "go your way with God, my daughter. "
When he had gone she went to the window and watched him
as he crossed the court-yard, following him out through the gates,
where he stopped to say something to the porter, who touched
his hat to him. She seated herself there in the wide-open win-
dow which projected over the area, as did its counterpart at the
other end of the room over the garden in the rear. Flanked
by two long and narrow projections, this court-yard with its large
paving-blocks of stone was not very inviting in its aspect. It
was in the other window, overhanging the garden, whose case-
ment the trees brushed, over which the vines swayed with the
wind, that she loved to sit. But her thoughts were far away.
It was still early in the afternoon, but the sun went slowly
down behind the tall roofs of the neighboring houses before she
rose to do what greatly surprised Lizette, who thought madame
altogether too much of a saint for a woman who neglected mass
and confession. When madame was dressed, and Lizette had
taken her place beside her in the carriage, she wondered at the
route taken by the coachman, whose instructions she had not
overheard. She supposed they were going to the Bois or the
Parc Monceau. And still greater was her surprise when she
found herself a little later in St. Eustache, placing a chair for
madame at the vesper service.
It was nearly over. Father Le Blanc himself in the pulpit
was finishing his exhortation.
The words of the preacher
gathered force from the immense space in which they were
uttered; from those dim, aspiring vaults into which they were
gathered, and where they died away without a confusing murmur.
## p. 6932 (#316) ###########################################
6932
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
Break your theological rocks, O ritual-hating brother, on the
King's highway, and worship him after your own fashion. For
every wayfaring heart overfed upon these symbols, you shall
show us one starved on your formulæ. Not only for thy weaker
brother, to whom God has not given the brains of the doctors in
the Temple, shall these vaults of stone be the very arches of
heaven; not only for thy frailer sister, in the keeping of whose
warm heart God has placed the sacred things of this life, shall
the incense of this swinging censer be the very fragrance of
celestial fields; but unto many of thine own dignity also shall
this star above the altar be the very star of Bethlehem.
"My children," Father Le Blanc was saying, "you put all
your treasures into earthen vessels. Your aspirations, so noble,
soar upward like the branches of the tree, but your roots are in
the earth, that you must certainly leave. All your faith which
will not take denial; all your hopes which will not be gainsaid;
all your wide-embracing affections, you place in humanity,- in a
few frail hearts which cannot meet the infinity of your need and
of your desire. And all these things which must fail you and
pass away, which you have perchance already gauged and found.
wanting,- why will you put them in the place of heaven, to
which you go to live forever; in the place of God, whose love.
knows no variableness nor shadow of turning? It is not I who un-
dervalue them; it is you who overestimate them. Measure them
rightly, and I shall no longer be to you a prophet of woe or a
sorrowful comforter. Love them without sacrificing yourself to
them. Make them the rivers that water your life, and also the
rivers that bear you to the infinite sea into which they shall be
merged. Then shall this life cease to be for you a vale of tears
walled about with tombs, and become the pathway to your abid-
ing country. Its beauties shall not satiate, if you see behind
them the world of spiritual beauty.
What will it matter to you
that its fetters chafe, that the soul discovers it is imprisoned,
when that end, in which every beauty of flesh and color is en-
gulfed, is not an end but a beginning? 'Verily, verily, I say unto
you, whoso loseth his life for My sake shall find it! >»
"For My sake," thought Stéphanie.
And Father Le Blanc, who had not seen this listener,— who,
having sown the seed, had left it humbly to God,-was thus
himself permitted to water it.
## p. 6932 (#317) ###########################################
## p. 6932 (#318) ###########################################
ABHO
THOMAS HARDY.
## p. 6932 (#319) ###########################################
74. 5
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## p. 6932 (#320) ###########################################
THUMAS HARDY.
1
## p. 6933 (#321) ###########################################
6933
THOMAS HARDY
(1840-)
BY ANNA MCCLURE SHOLL
HOMAS HARDY is of that rare fellowship of novel-writers who
are actuated in their portrayal of life by a spirit as disin-
terested and as seemingly unsympathetic as the spirit of
nature itself. His realism is indeed less the realism of art than of
the raw material of every-day existence. His straightforward account
of the changes and chances of this mortal state is unsoftened by
optimistic prejudice. But precisely how far his creations are true to
the facts of human experience, is a matter of individual rather than
of general judgment. An analysis of his most characteristic novels
may show that their realism is after all one-sided, and that they are
closer exponents of a Hardy theory regarding life, than of life itself.
What is this theory? and how is it embodied in Hardy's novels?
Stating it briefly, it is that the law which governs human events is
rendered just beyond calculation by an admixture of luck. There is
just enough of chance in the moral order to warrant the implication
of jugglery in the Ten Commandments. Acknowledging no creed,
this most modern of modern novelists is eminently Calvinistic in his
portrayal of men and women as predestined to misfortune or failure;
as pulled about or tossed about at the impish pleasure of the god
Circumstance. The keynote of his work indeed is the effect of cir-
cumstance- of luck upon man's war with the lower elements in
his nature. Some foreordained event for which he is in no wise
responsible turns the tide of the battle against him; yet he is held
accountable for his defeat. He reaps where he has not sown. He is
overwhelmed with punishments for sins committed by others. He
is literally badgered through life by the modern devil of ill luck.
In 'A Pair of Blue Eyes' the heroine Elfride is victimized by circum-
stances. The adverse star is already risen above her brow when the
book opens. She goes artlessly as a child into the hopeless labyrinth
of mischance from which death alone can release her. Tess is an
innocent sinner, browbeaten by bad luck into a guilty one.
So per-
sistent is this evil fortune, this malign spell which might be broken
by a word more or less, that Tess becomes well-nigh an irresponsible
being, a mere bruised flower floating on an irresistible current of
doom.
## p. 6934 (#322) ###########################################
6934
THOMAS HARDY
Between these two heroines, the one of Hardy's earliest, the other
of his latest day, is a long sequence of men and women, all more
or less handicapped by fortune. Their humanity is traceable with
greater distinctness in their failures than in their successes. Hardy
is perhaps the first novelist except George Eliot who has had the
courage to portray failure. What he himself calls "the optimistic
grin which ends a story happily" is never present in his work. His
stories end much as the little dramas of real life end: in compromise,
in the tacit acknowledgment that it is better to make the best of a
bad bargain and so to live on in a semblance of security, than to die
for the impossible.
Hardy himself began to undergo life in 1840. At the age of six-
teen he entered upon the study of architecture. For several years he
vacillated between literary pursuits and his chosen profession. His
first novel, 'Desperate Remedies,' published in 1870, showed at least
that he was a good story-teller. Characteristically, the persons of
the book are all engaged more or less in a tussle with adverse cir
cumstances; but the melodramatic elements in the intricate plot
remove it from the sphere of great art. 'Under the Greenwood
Tree' followed fast upon 'Desperate Remedies. ' In this woodland
story, Hardy first exhibits the fairest qualities of his genius. It is
free from the taint of the battledore-and-shuttlecock conception of
man and the almighty Something in the clutch of which he wrig-
gles. It is an idyl of the fields. That wonderful grasp of rural life
which marks Hardy out from his contemporaries and links him at
times with Shakespeare, is here shown in its fullness; the smell of
the primeval earth is here; between Hardy and the rustic there is a
living bond. Few authors have been able to do as he has done, to
depict Hodge in his native fields in such a manner that the humor-
ous aspect of the picture will be most apparent.
Hardy's peasantry say nothing which is consciously witty. His art
has discovered the unconscious humor of their homely talk. The
serenade of the church choir in 'Under the Greenwood Tree,' the
gossip of the rustics opening a vault in 'A Pair of Blue Eyes,' are
rich in this elemental humor. So talk the clowns of Shakespeare;
Grandfer Cantle is linked with Dogberry. Yet the clowns of Hardy
have a worldly wisdom of their own. In 'The Return of the Native'
the question of the advisability of church-going is discussed by the
natives of Egdon Heath. "I ha'n't been these three years," said
Humphrey; "for I'm so mortal sleepy of a Sunday, and 'tis so mortal
far to get there, and when you do get there 'tis such a mortal poor
chance that you'll be chose for up above, when so many bain't, that
I bide at home and don't go at all. " Here are a few observations on
dancing:-
-
## p. 6935 (#323) ###########################################
THOMAS HARDY
6935
"You be bound to dance at Christmas, because 'tis the time of the year:
you must dance at weddings, because it is the time of life. At christenings
folks will even smuggle in a reel or two, if 'tis no further on than the first or
second chiel. And this is not naming the songs you've got to sing. For my
part, I like a good hearty funeral as well as anything. You've as splendid
victuals and drink as at other parties, and even better, and it don't wear
your legs to stumps in talking over a poor feller's ways as it do to stand
up in hornpipes. »
In A Pair of Blue Eyes,' Hardy's third novel, he passes under
the domination of the one aspect of life which has impressed him
most forcibly. Little Elfride, the blue-eyed heroine, the dainty child
of the hills, formed by nature for tenderness and joy, is unlucky
enough to have been beloved, before the story opens, by a village
youth in her father's parish. She was not altogether unconscious of
his far-off worship. She led him on a little. Through that slight
girlish concession to a passing coquetry she blights her life. Her
punishment is out of all proportion to her offense. The youth pines
away and dies. His mother becomes the active enemy of Elfride.
She blackens a thoughtless adventure of the girl's with a subsequent
lover into a sin, and by means of this scandal alienates forever the
one man above all others whom Elfride really loves. She in her turn
tightens the miserable tangle of affairs by an over-exaggeration of
her imprudence. She makes the mistakes of a schoolgirl, and is
punished for the sins of a woman.
In The Return of the Native' it is the hero who plays this
uneven game with chance; and chance, as so often happens in
Hardy's novels, takes the form of a woman. It is Eustacia Vye,
"with pagan eyes full of nocturnal mysteries," who leads Clym Yeo-
bright into the wilderness of love, stripped of his ambitions. "Throw
a woman into this bargaining matter of life, and its intricacies are
increased tenfold," might be Hardy's motto in the treatment of his
"dainty heroines. ” And here a word may be said concerning these
heroines. Hardy's women are even more real than his men. He
understands woman nature, or rather the nature of the eternal woman
as opposed to the woman who is an artificial product of a period or
of a system. Sue in Jude the Obscure' is the one striking excep-
tion to this rule. She is the type of the over-civilized, neurotic
female who has unholy shivers over nature's pure ordinance of mar-
riage. Happily she has no predecessors. She has little in common
with the warm, bright Bathsheba, with the tender, fair Lady Con-
stantine, with demure little Anne, with the quaint and gentle Eliza-
beth Jane, with Elfride, or with the frankly human 'Group of
Noble Dames. ' Hardy's women are always lovable; and because
they are so they make men more or less irresponsible, and thus add
## p. 6936 (#324) ###########################################
6936
THOMAS HARDY
to the confusion, the moral disorder, of which Hardy sees SO
much in the working out of character. In Two on a Tower' Lady
Constantine draws the eyes of the boy astronomer from the stars to
gaze into her own. She enters his life only to render his primitive
austere devotion to science forever impossible. Eustacia Vye leads
Clym Yeobright a devious dance in the direction of nowhere. Jude
is purloined from a possible Oxford career, first by Arabella, then by
Sue. But women are not altogether to blame for the mischief which
is always brewing in Hardy's novels. The Mayor of Casterbridge'
is the story of a man hampered by himself. In a fit of drunkenness,
he sells his wife and child to the highest bidder. For his hour of
dissipation he pays a lifetime of struggle and remorse.
The irony of circumstance is ever present in Hardy's portrayal of
the ambitions and good intentions of men and women. Their "hopes
and fears, so blind and yet so sweet,” have always death about them
to Hardy: the trickery of death, its hideous surprises, its untimely
interventions. In 'Life's Little Ironies,' a middle-aged man, laboring
under the delusion that marriage can patch up a wrong done to a
woman, heroically resolves to take this step after many years of
cowardice. His melodramatic self-sacrifice to the woman once sacri-
ficed to him is turned by the irony of circumstance into mere clumsi-
ness, since his appearance in the neglected little family ruins the
chances of his daughter to make a match of smug respectability.
In Fellow-Townsmen,' one of the 'Wessex Tales,' Lucy Saville, a
middle-aged widow, says no to the man who has loved her and waited
for her through many years, because she does not think it good form
to say yes at once. She sends a note after him, however, asking him
to call again; but he has taken her at her word, and has left the
town forever. Such an incident has a marked resemblance to certain
incidents of real life. Hardy has the courage always to tell a thing
as it really happened, not as weak-hearted humanity would like it to
happen.
In 'Tess' Hardy has written the modern classic of misfortune;
in Tess the finest and most characteristic qualities of his art are
focused. In the portrayal of this primitive tragedy, this spirit-rending
story of a girl's struggle with destiny, Hardy has put forth his con-
summate effort. In 'Tess' the Calvinistic idea of fate, predestination,
the treacherous power outside of ourselves which makes for confus-
ion, as opposed to the rational Greek idea of pursuing punishment
for sins committed,- in Tess' this Calvinistic idea receives its fin-
ished embodiment. The subtle poison of the book lies in the false
theory which actuated its production, not in the working out of the
theory. Tess is a pure woman; the defiant sub-title is unnecessary.
Only the inexperienced would wag their heads dubiously over it as
## p. 6937 (#325) ###########################################
THOMAS HARDY
6937
they read the tale in sheltered and respectable parlors. Hardy to
the contrary, it is society, not the Almighty, which is to blame for
the moral gaucherie, for the malignant blunders which entrap Tess.
Nature is non-moral. She herself would have put no obstacles in the
way of the recuperation of this fair-souled, high-minded country lass,
knocked into the mud by a lustful hoof. The virginal spirit of the
maiden would have regained the birthright violently snatched from
her, if conventional opinion in the form of Angel Clare had not inter-
vened. This young man, half seraph, half prig, meets Tess at a dairy,
miles away from the scene of her trouble. He is a gentleman's son,
and the gentle nature in him is drawn to this rare wild flower sprung
from the forgotten graves of the D'Urberville knights. He loves the
maiden Tess. On their marriage day he confesses a certain folly of
his, a three-days' unholy fever for an unworthy woman. Tess gives
back confession for confession. Clare, under the spell of false tradi-
tion, throws her from the heights which she has regained back into
the limbo of the hopeless. He cannot separate her body from her
soul. He the deliberate sinner passes judgment on her, the sinned
against. Rejected by love itself as unclean, Tess drifts on to her
tragic doom. The mercifulness of nature and of God are alike un-
known to her. Her case is against man. In 'Tess' Hardy has per-
haps unconsciously stigmatized the man-made moral order.
The soil which smells of grass and flowers in 'Under the Green-
wood Tree,' in 'Jude the Obscure' sends up a sour odor to the nos-
trils. If 'Tess is the classic of the unlucky, 'Jude' is the classic of
the neurotic woman. The hero has after all little to do with the
working out of the story. His part is to a great degree passive.
Like certain other heroes of Hardy, he is born under an evil star.
His boyish ambition to become a student at Oxford is thwarted con-
tinually by the assertions of his lower nature; but-and this again
is essentially in the spirit of Hardy-accident, chance, take sides
with his baser elements. He is tricked into marriage with the sensual
Arabella. He has the misfortune to run across his cousin Sue at a
time when it is most necessary for the accomplishment of his pur-
pose that he should enter into the sexless temper of the scholar. Sue
is intellectual, pseudo-passionate, morbidly pure. She is a type of
the modern woman, whose intellect is developed at the expense of
her earthy nature. The awful innocence of Sue throughout the book
is the innocence of the bold thinker whose flights of fancy reach to
Mars, but who knows nothing of the soil underfoot. It is futile to
call the actions of the two bewildered children Jude and Sue immoral;
a new adjective will have to be evolved to meet their essentially
modern case. 'Jude' is the book of an era where between one and
one there is always a shadowy third.
## p. 6938 (#326) ###########################################
6938
THOMAS HARDY
Hardy's novels of rustic life will give probably the most pleasure
to coming generations. The chapters of the dairy life in 'Tess,'
the idyl of the lush green meadows, will save her tragedy from
oblivion. 'Far from the Madding Crowd,' with its troop of men
and maidens of the fields, will give solace when 'A Laodicean' is
well-nigh forgotten. The Trumpet-Major' and 'The Return of the
Native' are revivingly sweet and clean with the breath of the sea
and with the heather-scented wind of the moors. In Hardy's stories
of his beloved Wessex country there is the perennial refreshment
of nature. His peasantry are primitive. Their quaint humor, their
wise saws, their hold upon Mother Earth, might have been character-
istic of the homely parents of the race in the first dawn of the world.
They are "representative of a magnificent antiquity. "
Hardy is as much in sympathy with the natural world as he is
with those men and women who seem a part of the soil on which
they live. He has the love of genius for the open air. Nature is
the perpetual background for the scenes of his novels; and as in
Shakespeare, the aspect of nature reflects the moral atmosphere of
the scene. The happiest time of Tess's life begins in the flowery
months of May and June. Her desolate existence, after she has been
forsaken by her husband, coincides with the bitter, barren winter-
time upon the upland moors. Elfride's love story seems well-nigh a
part of the processes of nature in its interchange of storm and sun-
shine. The majority of Hardy's people are near to nature: sensitive,
passionate lovers of the sea, and of the heath. His genius compre-
hends at once the natural, primitive man, and man the product of
modern hypercultivation. In this wideness of human view lies per-
haps his surest claim to greatness.
Alma Marune Sholl
THE MELLSTOCK «WAITS »
From Under the Greenwood Tree'
S
HORTLY after ten o'clock the singing-boys arrived at the tran-
ter's house, which was invariably the place of meeting,
and preparations were made for the start. The older men
and musicians wore thick coats, with stiff perpendicular collars,
and colored handkerchiefs wound round and round the neck till
## p. 6939 (#327) ###########################################
THOMAS HARDY
6939
the end came to hand, over all which they just showed their ears
and noses like people looking over a wall. The remainder,—stal-
wart, ruddy men and boys,- were mainly dressed in snow-white.
smock-frocks, embroidered upon the shoulders and breasts in orna-
mental forms of hearts, diamonds, and zigzags. The cider mug
was emptied for the ninth time, the music-books were arranged,
and the pieces finally decided upon. The boys in the mean time
put the old horn lanterns in order, cut candles into short lengths
to fit the lanterns, and a thin fleece of snow having fallen since
the early part of the evening, those who had no leggings went
to the stable and wound wisps of hay round their ankles to keep
the insidious flakes from the interior of their boots.
Mellstock was a parish of considerable acreage, the hamlets
composing it lying at a much greater distance from each other
than is ordinarily the case. Hence several hours were consumed
in playing and singing within hearing of every family, even if
but a single air were bestowed on each. There was East Mell-
stock, the main village; half a mile from this were the church
and the vicarage, called West Mellstock, and originally the most
thickly populated portion. A mile northeast lay the hamlet of
Lewgate, where the tranter lived; and at other points knots of
cottages, besides solitary farmsteads and dairies.
Old William Dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass; his
grandson Dick, the treble violin; and Reuben and Michael Mail,
the tenor and second violins respectively. The singers consisted
of four men and seven boys, upon whom devolved the task of
carrying and attending to the lanterns, and holding the books
open for the players. Directly music was the theme, old William
ever and instinctively came to the front.
"Now mind, naibors," he said, as they all went out one by
one at the door, he himself holding it ajar and regarding them
with a critical face as they passed, like a shepherd counting
out his sheep. "You two counter-boys, keep your ears open to
Michael's fingering, and don't ye go straying into the treble part
along o' Dick and his set, as ye did last year; and mind this
especially when we be in 'Arise, and hail. ' Billy Chimlen, don't
you sing quite so raving mad as you fain would; and all o' ye,
whatever ye do, keep from making a great scuffle on the ground
when we go in at people's gates; but go quietly, so as to strik'
up all of a sudden, like spirits. "
"Farmer Ledlow's first ? "
## p. 6940 (#328) ###########################################
6940
THOMAS HARDY
2
"Farmer Ledlow's first; the rest as usual. >>>>
"And Voss," said the tranter terminatively, "you keep house
here till about half-past two; then heat the metheglin and cider
in the warmer you'll find turned up upon the copper; and bring
it wi' the victuals to church porch, as th'st know. "
Just before the clock struck twelve, they lighted the lanterns
and started. The moon, in her third quarter, had risen since the
snow-storm; but the dense accumulation of snow-cloud weakened
her power to a faint twilight, which was rather pervasive of the
landscape than traceable to the sky. The breeze had gone down,
and the rustle of their feet and tones of their speech echoed
with an alert rebound from every post, boundary stone, and
ancient wall they passed, even where the distance of the echo's
origin was less than a few yards. Beyond their own slight
noises nothing was to be heard, save the occasional howl of foxes
in the direction of Yalbury Wood, or the brush of a rabbit
among the grass now and then, as it scampered out of their way.
Most of the outlying homesteads and hamlets had been visited.
by about two o'clock; they then passed across the Home Planta-
tion toward the main village. Pursuing no recognized track,
great care was necessary in walking lest their faces should come
in contact with the low-hanging boughs of the old trees, which
in many spots formed dense overgrowths of interlaced branches.
"Times have changed from the times they used to be," said
Mail, regarding nobody can tell what interesting old panoramas
with an inward eye, and letting his outward glance rest on the
ground, because it was as convenient a position as any. "People
don't care much about us now! I've been thinking we must be
almost the last left in the country of the old string players.
Barrel organs, and they next door to 'em that you blow wi' your
foot, have come in terribly of late years. "
"Ah! " said Bowman, shaking his head; and old William, on
seeing him, did the same thing.
"More's the pity," replied another. "Time was-long and
merry ago now! - when not one of the varmints was to be heard
of; but it served some of the choirs right. They should have
stuck to strings as we did, and kept out clar'nets, and done away
with serpents. If you'd thrive in musical religion, stick to
strings, says I. "
"Strings are well enough, as far as that goes," said Mr.
Spinks.
## p. 6941 (#329) ###########################################
THOMAS HARDY
6941
"Old
"There's worse things than serpents," said Mr. Penny.
things pass away, 'tis true: but a serpent was a good old note; a
deep, rich note was the serpent. "
"Clar'nets however be bad at all times," said Michael Mail.
"One Christmas-years agone now, years-I went the rounds
wi' the Dibbeach choir. 'Twas a hard frosty night, and the keys
of all the clar'nets froze-ah, they did freeze! -so that 'twas
like drawing a cork every time a key was opened; the players o'
'em had to go into a hedger's and ditcher's chimley-corner, and
thaw their clar'nets every now and then. An icicle o' spet hung
down from the end of every man's clar'net a span long; and as
to fingers-well, there, if ye'll believe me, we had no fingers at
all, to our knowledge. ”
"I can well bring back to my mind," said Mr. Penny, "what
I said to poor Joseph Ryme (who took the tribble part in High-
Story Church for two-and-forty year) when they thought of hav-
ing clar'nets there. 'Joseph,' I said, says I, 'depend upon't, if
SO you have them tooting clar'nets you'll spoil the whole set-
Clar'nets were not made for the service of Providence; you
can see it by looking at 'em,' I said. And what cam o't?
Why, my dear souls, the parson set up a barrel organ on his own
account within two years o' the time I spoke, and the old choir
went to nothing. "
out.
"As far as look is concerned," said the tranter, "I don't for
my part see that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar'net.
'Tis farther off. There's always a rakish, skampish countenance
about a fiddle that seems to say the Wicked One had a hand in
making o' en; while angels be supposed to play clar'nets in
heaven, or some’at like 'em, if ye may believe picters. "
«<
"Robert Penny, you were in the right," broke in the eldest
Dewy. They should ha' stuck to strings. Your brass-man is
brass-well and good; your reed-man is reed-well and good;
your percussion-man is percussion-good again. But I don't care
who hears me say it, nothing will speak to your heart wi' the
sweetness of the man of strings! "
"Strings forever! " said little Jimmy.
human quality which meets with a response in every novel-reader's
heart. Mr. Hardy's heroines are all charming; but he has presented
us to no more winning type than this flower of a mediæval day, with
"the hues of the Southern sea in her eyes and under the rose-brown
flush of her skin, the sound of its waves in the ripple of her
laughter. "
FATHER LE BLANC MAKES A CALL; AND PREACHES A
SERMON
From But Yet a Woman. ' Copyright 1883 by Arthur S. Hardy, and reprinted
by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers, Boston
F
ATHER LE BLANC had a profound belief in human agencies.
He loved to play the ministering angel, for his heart was a
well of sympathy.
There was even a latent chiding of
Providence at the bottom of this well sometimes, when the sight
of the poor and the suffering stirred its depths with pity for
those lonely wayfarers who, neglected by this world, seem for-
gotten also of God. This was but one of those many themes
which this mind, at once simple, honest, and profound, turned
over and over reflectively, never seeing its one aspect except as
on the way to the other. "The difficulty does not lie in believ-
ing the truths of the Church," he once said, "but in those other
things which we must believe also. " Or again, "Belief is an edi-
fice never completed, because we do not yet comprehend its plan,
and every day some workman brings a new stone from the
quarry. " So that while Father Le Blanc was very devout, he was
not a devotee. He flavored his religious belief with the salt of a
good sense against which he endeavored to be on his guard, as
he was even against his charity and compassion. The vision of
Milton's fallen Spirit, beating its wings vainly in a non-resisting
air, drew from his heart a profound sigh.
## p. 6927 (#311) ###########################################
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
6927
His thoughts turned very naturally to Stéphanie and her
journey that day, for he was on the way to secure the nineteenth
volume of the 'Viaje de España' of Pontz, for which he had been
long on the search, and which awaited him at last on the Quai
Voltaire. Those old books which filled the shelves of his room
in the Rue Tiquetonne had left his purse a light one. "But,"
said Father Le Blanc, "I am not poor, since I have what I
want. "
After possessing himself of his coveted book, he took up his
way along the quai, with his treasure under his arm. "I have a
mind to call on her," he said, still thinking of Stéphanie. "The
art of knowing when one is needed is more difficult than that of
helping;" and he paused on the curbstone to watch a company
of the line coming from the caserne of the Cité. A carriage,
arrested a moment by the passage of the troops, approached the
spot where he was standing, and he recognized M. De Marzac.
The priest was evidently sauntering, and M. De Marzac called to
his driver to stop.
"I see you are out for a promenade," he said. "Accept this
seat beside me, and take a turn with me in the Bois. "
Father Le Blanc was not in his second childhood, for he had
not yet outgrown his first; consequently the temptation was a
strong one. But M. De Marzac was no favorite of his, and not
even the fine day nor this opportunity to enjoy it could counter-
balance M. De Marzac's company. Dislike at first sight is more
common than love, as discord is more common than harmony.
So he excused himself as about to make a visit. "Well, then,
that decides it," he said to himself, as he trudged down the quai
with the gait of a man with an object in view. "Now I must
go. "
At the door of the hôtel in the Boulevard St. Germain he
stopped a moment before entering, and took a deep inspiration.
To tell the truth, the day was so fine he regretted going in-doors.
"I feel that I have a pair of lungs," he said, as he rang the
porter's bell.
Stéphanie was not expecting a visit from Father Le Blanc, yet
was glad to see him. She was in that period which lies after
decision and before action, when, having made all her prepara-
tions for an early start in the express of the next morning, there
was nothing to be done but sit down and wait for the hour of
departure.
## p. 6928 (#312) ###########################################
6928
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
"The air is so pure that I feared to find you were out. And
you go to-morrow! "
"Yes," Stéphanie said, "Si Dios quiere, as the Spaniards say. "
"But I shall be there before you. I leave this evening. "
"This evening! "
"And without fatigue," said the priest mysteriously, drawing
his volume from under his arm. "It is my nineteenth journey. "
"You have been to Spain? " said Stéphanie, taking the book,
but still perplexed.
"Oh, never! except in those leaves which you are turning; and
for two reasons," he added laughingly: "the guide-books tell us
that there are in Spain priests by the thousand, but not a single
cook! Still, you perceive that I am about to follow you, and —
who knows! -shall perhaps lodge at the same inn. That is a
country in which nothing becomes obsolete, and I have no doubt
but that if you inquire for it, they will show you in Toboso the
very fonda at which Don Quixote dismounted. "
Stéphanie thought she heard in this pleasantry something
more than was said. Certainly Father Le Blanc had not even
whispered, "Though you are going away, my child, I shall follow
you in my thoughts and in my prayers;" and yet that is what
she heard. Some of his most commonplace sentences were SO
many half-hidden channels, such as the brooks make under the
grass of the meadows, into which overflowed the currents of his
sympathy and kindliness. In spite of a strong natural reserve,
an invincible trust in this homely face crowned with white hairs
mastered her.
"You are very good to think of me, father," she said, in a
voice so full that it brought straight from his heart the message
he had come to deliver.
"All who suffer are my children; and you suffer-and that
grieves me. The Master who took upon himself the sorrows of
the world, bade his followers imitate him. Why will you not
lean a little upon me, daughter? I am an old man who has rav-
eled the path before you. "
She turned her eyes upon him, and they said, "I do not speak;
but read, and comfort me. "
"Sorrow is a very real thing," he continued in a voice full of
sweetness and authority. "It is neither a morbid nor an un-
healthy state. When it seems deepest, when after the world
has failed us, self also proves insufficient,-it may even be a
## p. 6929 (#313) ###########################################
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
6929
blessed one. I do not chide, I even agree with you. But I wish
you also to agree with me. Be our life wide or narrow, whether
we live humbly or sit on a throne, whether we dwell in our own
thoughts, in the midst of action or in the search of pleasure, we
come to the verdict of the Hebrew king,- that verdict which I
read in your face and which broods over your life. All is empti-
ness and vanity! It is not the range but the depth of our experi-
ence which convinces us, and from the first we apprehend this
truth dimly. We own this sad statue of Sorrow in the block from
the outset, before experience chisels it out for us; and in our first
search for happiness, when we look on the splendors of the young
world for what they do not contain, it is this intimation of what
they cannot yield, and the capacity of our own natures, which
both allure and deceive us. "
She seemed to be listening to the story of her own life.
“And as we live on, this conviction deepens. The voices with-
out echo and reinforce those within. We are ever looking to some-
thing better than we have or are, and whether we attain it or lose
it, there is no rest for our feet. It is the man who is fooled and
deluded that is to be pitied. He who finds life and self sufficient
is either a monster or a caricature. Do you not see that I do not
argue with your tears? But do not think to dry them in Spain,
my child.
Sorrow is the handmaid of God, not of Satan. She
would lead us, as she did the Psalmist, to say, 'Who will show us
any good? ' that after having said this, we may also say with him,
'Lord, lift thou the light of thy countenance upon us.
> >>
"All else is a broken cistern," said Father Le Blanc, taking
up his thoughts after a pause. "See how time deceives us! He
covers the sore, he even heals the wound, but he gives no
immunity from a fresh one. " Stéphanie's eyes fell. "God only
renders us superior to calamity. Honestly," said he, lifting his
hands as if he appealed to his own conscience, "priest of God
though I am, in understanding I am as a child. I cannot explain
-I testify. I witness to you this mystery, that out of the very
hurt which brings me low, the spiritual life is developed. And,"
he added, as he would the benediction to a discourse at St.
Eustache, "blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are they which
mourn, blessed are they which hunger and thirst, for these are
they which shall be filled; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "
How much soever of gratefulness she felt for these words,
she could not answer them. Had he held her hand, her answer
XII-434
## p. 6930 (#314) ###########################################
6930
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
would have been a pressure. But Father Le Blanc was not hurt
by her silence. Though words bubbled easily over his lips, none
better knew the difficulty of sometimes saying, "Thank you. ”
He sat quietly, smoothing the wrinkles of his soutane over his
broad knee, with his eyes on the floor.
"When you return," he said at last, looking up, "I shall ask
you all the questions which are not answered in my nineteen
volumes. Think of it, at my age! never to have seen the sea.
Yet I have lain stretched out on its yellow sands in the sun,
listening to the music of its blue waves-in the Rue Tiquetonne!
And when I go to my window at night, it is to stand on the
summit of some high cliff, and the roar of the city is that of the
sea at its base. Chained as we are to our little patrimony in the
Rue Tiquetonne, the imagination is a free rover in space and
time. I wager you are surprised to hear an old man talk of
imagination," he said, taking her share of the conversation, and
putting in her mouth the replies which he wished to answer,—
"imagination, which is supposed to belong only to youth. I say,
rather, youth belongs to imagination, which is then a wild Bar-
bary colt, and carries one wherever it wills; but at my age it
has become domesticated, and it is on its back that I have ridden,
as did Sancho on that of his patient donkey, over all the byways
of Spain. And when you see some worthy colleague of mine on
his ass, plodding before you with a shovel hat on his head a
metre in length, you will say to yourself, There is my friend
ahead of me. '"
Her hands crossed on her knees, plunged in a delicious revery
which this voice penetrated without disturbing, Stéphanie raised
her eyes to his face and smiled.
He took his book from the table where she had laid it, and
put it under his arm again. He had dropped his few seeds of
comfort, and was ready to permit God to water them. So he
sought an excuse to go.
"I am like a schoolboy," he said, tapping the volume, "with
a new copy-book, who cannot rest till he has written something
on the first page. What a good friend this book will be! I count
upon him in advance;" and his eyes spoke to hers; "he will not
speak unless I question him; we shall perchance differ pro-
foundly, but he will not reproach me; I shall rifle his pockets.
and put him aside at my pleasure, yet he will not feel neglected.
I shall invite him to-night to a tête-à-tête before my fire, and
## p. 6931 (#315) ###########################################
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
6931
fall asleep while he is doing his best to entertain me; but when
I awake, his countenance will be unruffled. Doubtless because
all the while he is aware that I still prize him.
What strange
things we do to those whom we love! Absolutely, madame,"
said Father Le Blanc, rising, and with a self-accusing gesture,
"I am an inveterate sermonizer, and I have not given you even
the opportunity to interrupt me. "
Stéphanie followed him to the door of the room, and at the
threshold put her hand softly upon his arm.
"Thanks, father, for this visit," she said. Her voice was low;
it was all she said, but her look and that gesture were more
eloquent than words.
"I say to you as they will say to you in Spain," replied
Father Le Blanc, "go your way with God, my daughter. "
When he had gone she went to the window and watched him
as he crossed the court-yard, following him out through the gates,
where he stopped to say something to the porter, who touched
his hat to him. She seated herself there in the wide-open win-
dow which projected over the area, as did its counterpart at the
other end of the room over the garden in the rear. Flanked
by two long and narrow projections, this court-yard with its large
paving-blocks of stone was not very inviting in its aspect. It
was in the other window, overhanging the garden, whose case-
ment the trees brushed, over which the vines swayed with the
wind, that she loved to sit. But her thoughts were far away.
It was still early in the afternoon, but the sun went slowly
down behind the tall roofs of the neighboring houses before she
rose to do what greatly surprised Lizette, who thought madame
altogether too much of a saint for a woman who neglected mass
and confession. When madame was dressed, and Lizette had
taken her place beside her in the carriage, she wondered at the
route taken by the coachman, whose instructions she had not
overheard. She supposed they were going to the Bois or the
Parc Monceau. And still greater was her surprise when she
found herself a little later in St. Eustache, placing a chair for
madame at the vesper service.
It was nearly over. Father Le Blanc himself in the pulpit
was finishing his exhortation.
The words of the preacher
gathered force from the immense space in which they were
uttered; from those dim, aspiring vaults into which they were
gathered, and where they died away without a confusing murmur.
## p. 6932 (#316) ###########################################
6932
ARTHUR SHERBURNE HARDY
Break your theological rocks, O ritual-hating brother, on the
King's highway, and worship him after your own fashion. For
every wayfaring heart overfed upon these symbols, you shall
show us one starved on your formulæ. Not only for thy weaker
brother, to whom God has not given the brains of the doctors in
the Temple, shall these vaults of stone be the very arches of
heaven; not only for thy frailer sister, in the keeping of whose
warm heart God has placed the sacred things of this life, shall
the incense of this swinging censer be the very fragrance of
celestial fields; but unto many of thine own dignity also shall
this star above the altar be the very star of Bethlehem.
"My children," Father Le Blanc was saying, "you put all
your treasures into earthen vessels. Your aspirations, so noble,
soar upward like the branches of the tree, but your roots are in
the earth, that you must certainly leave. All your faith which
will not take denial; all your hopes which will not be gainsaid;
all your wide-embracing affections, you place in humanity,- in a
few frail hearts which cannot meet the infinity of your need and
of your desire. And all these things which must fail you and
pass away, which you have perchance already gauged and found.
wanting,- why will you put them in the place of heaven, to
which you go to live forever; in the place of God, whose love.
knows no variableness nor shadow of turning? It is not I who un-
dervalue them; it is you who overestimate them. Measure them
rightly, and I shall no longer be to you a prophet of woe or a
sorrowful comforter. Love them without sacrificing yourself to
them. Make them the rivers that water your life, and also the
rivers that bear you to the infinite sea into which they shall be
merged. Then shall this life cease to be for you a vale of tears
walled about with tombs, and become the pathway to your abid-
ing country. Its beauties shall not satiate, if you see behind
them the world of spiritual beauty.
What will it matter to you
that its fetters chafe, that the soul discovers it is imprisoned,
when that end, in which every beauty of flesh and color is en-
gulfed, is not an end but a beginning? 'Verily, verily, I say unto
you, whoso loseth his life for My sake shall find it! >»
"For My sake," thought Stéphanie.
And Father Le Blanc, who had not seen this listener,— who,
having sown the seed, had left it humbly to God,-was thus
himself permitted to water it.
## p. 6932 (#317) ###########################################
## p. 6932 (#318) ###########################################
ABHO
THOMAS HARDY.
## p. 6932 (#319) ###########################################
74. 5
10
. ”
03
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THOMAS HARLY
BY ANNA
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## p. 6932 (#320) ###########################################
THUMAS HARDY.
1
## p. 6933 (#321) ###########################################
6933
THOMAS HARDY
(1840-)
BY ANNA MCCLURE SHOLL
HOMAS HARDY is of that rare fellowship of novel-writers who
are actuated in their portrayal of life by a spirit as disin-
terested and as seemingly unsympathetic as the spirit of
nature itself. His realism is indeed less the realism of art than of
the raw material of every-day existence. His straightforward account
of the changes and chances of this mortal state is unsoftened by
optimistic prejudice. But precisely how far his creations are true to
the facts of human experience, is a matter of individual rather than
of general judgment. An analysis of his most characteristic novels
may show that their realism is after all one-sided, and that they are
closer exponents of a Hardy theory regarding life, than of life itself.
What is this theory? and how is it embodied in Hardy's novels?
Stating it briefly, it is that the law which governs human events is
rendered just beyond calculation by an admixture of luck. There is
just enough of chance in the moral order to warrant the implication
of jugglery in the Ten Commandments. Acknowledging no creed,
this most modern of modern novelists is eminently Calvinistic in his
portrayal of men and women as predestined to misfortune or failure;
as pulled about or tossed about at the impish pleasure of the god
Circumstance. The keynote of his work indeed is the effect of cir-
cumstance- of luck upon man's war with the lower elements in
his nature. Some foreordained event for which he is in no wise
responsible turns the tide of the battle against him; yet he is held
accountable for his defeat. He reaps where he has not sown. He is
overwhelmed with punishments for sins committed by others. He
is literally badgered through life by the modern devil of ill luck.
In 'A Pair of Blue Eyes' the heroine Elfride is victimized by circum-
stances. The adverse star is already risen above her brow when the
book opens. She goes artlessly as a child into the hopeless labyrinth
of mischance from which death alone can release her. Tess is an
innocent sinner, browbeaten by bad luck into a guilty one.
So per-
sistent is this evil fortune, this malign spell which might be broken
by a word more or less, that Tess becomes well-nigh an irresponsible
being, a mere bruised flower floating on an irresistible current of
doom.
## p. 6934 (#322) ###########################################
6934
THOMAS HARDY
Between these two heroines, the one of Hardy's earliest, the other
of his latest day, is a long sequence of men and women, all more
or less handicapped by fortune. Their humanity is traceable with
greater distinctness in their failures than in their successes. Hardy
is perhaps the first novelist except George Eliot who has had the
courage to portray failure. What he himself calls "the optimistic
grin which ends a story happily" is never present in his work. His
stories end much as the little dramas of real life end: in compromise,
in the tacit acknowledgment that it is better to make the best of a
bad bargain and so to live on in a semblance of security, than to die
for the impossible.
Hardy himself began to undergo life in 1840. At the age of six-
teen he entered upon the study of architecture. For several years he
vacillated between literary pursuits and his chosen profession. His
first novel, 'Desperate Remedies,' published in 1870, showed at least
that he was a good story-teller. Characteristically, the persons of
the book are all engaged more or less in a tussle with adverse cir
cumstances; but the melodramatic elements in the intricate plot
remove it from the sphere of great art. 'Under the Greenwood
Tree' followed fast upon 'Desperate Remedies. ' In this woodland
story, Hardy first exhibits the fairest qualities of his genius. It is
free from the taint of the battledore-and-shuttlecock conception of
man and the almighty Something in the clutch of which he wrig-
gles. It is an idyl of the fields. That wonderful grasp of rural life
which marks Hardy out from his contemporaries and links him at
times with Shakespeare, is here shown in its fullness; the smell of
the primeval earth is here; between Hardy and the rustic there is a
living bond. Few authors have been able to do as he has done, to
depict Hodge in his native fields in such a manner that the humor-
ous aspect of the picture will be most apparent.
Hardy's peasantry say nothing which is consciously witty. His art
has discovered the unconscious humor of their homely talk. The
serenade of the church choir in 'Under the Greenwood Tree,' the
gossip of the rustics opening a vault in 'A Pair of Blue Eyes,' are
rich in this elemental humor. So talk the clowns of Shakespeare;
Grandfer Cantle is linked with Dogberry. Yet the clowns of Hardy
have a worldly wisdom of their own. In 'The Return of the Native'
the question of the advisability of church-going is discussed by the
natives of Egdon Heath. "I ha'n't been these three years," said
Humphrey; "for I'm so mortal sleepy of a Sunday, and 'tis so mortal
far to get there, and when you do get there 'tis such a mortal poor
chance that you'll be chose for up above, when so many bain't, that
I bide at home and don't go at all. " Here are a few observations on
dancing:-
-
## p. 6935 (#323) ###########################################
THOMAS HARDY
6935
"You be bound to dance at Christmas, because 'tis the time of the year:
you must dance at weddings, because it is the time of life. At christenings
folks will even smuggle in a reel or two, if 'tis no further on than the first or
second chiel. And this is not naming the songs you've got to sing. For my
part, I like a good hearty funeral as well as anything. You've as splendid
victuals and drink as at other parties, and even better, and it don't wear
your legs to stumps in talking over a poor feller's ways as it do to stand
up in hornpipes. »
In A Pair of Blue Eyes,' Hardy's third novel, he passes under
the domination of the one aspect of life which has impressed him
most forcibly. Little Elfride, the blue-eyed heroine, the dainty child
of the hills, formed by nature for tenderness and joy, is unlucky
enough to have been beloved, before the story opens, by a village
youth in her father's parish. She was not altogether unconscious of
his far-off worship. She led him on a little. Through that slight
girlish concession to a passing coquetry she blights her life. Her
punishment is out of all proportion to her offense. The youth pines
away and dies. His mother becomes the active enemy of Elfride.
She blackens a thoughtless adventure of the girl's with a subsequent
lover into a sin, and by means of this scandal alienates forever the
one man above all others whom Elfride really loves. She in her turn
tightens the miserable tangle of affairs by an over-exaggeration of
her imprudence. She makes the mistakes of a schoolgirl, and is
punished for the sins of a woman.
In The Return of the Native' it is the hero who plays this
uneven game with chance; and chance, as so often happens in
Hardy's novels, takes the form of a woman. It is Eustacia Vye,
"with pagan eyes full of nocturnal mysteries," who leads Clym Yeo-
bright into the wilderness of love, stripped of his ambitions. "Throw
a woman into this bargaining matter of life, and its intricacies are
increased tenfold," might be Hardy's motto in the treatment of his
"dainty heroines. ” And here a word may be said concerning these
heroines. Hardy's women are even more real than his men. He
understands woman nature, or rather the nature of the eternal woman
as opposed to the woman who is an artificial product of a period or
of a system. Sue in Jude the Obscure' is the one striking excep-
tion to this rule. She is the type of the over-civilized, neurotic
female who has unholy shivers over nature's pure ordinance of mar-
riage. Happily she has no predecessors. She has little in common
with the warm, bright Bathsheba, with the tender, fair Lady Con-
stantine, with demure little Anne, with the quaint and gentle Eliza-
beth Jane, with Elfride, or with the frankly human 'Group of
Noble Dames. ' Hardy's women are always lovable; and because
they are so they make men more or less irresponsible, and thus add
## p. 6936 (#324) ###########################################
6936
THOMAS HARDY
to the confusion, the moral disorder, of which Hardy sees SO
much in the working out of character. In Two on a Tower' Lady
Constantine draws the eyes of the boy astronomer from the stars to
gaze into her own. She enters his life only to render his primitive
austere devotion to science forever impossible. Eustacia Vye leads
Clym Yeobright a devious dance in the direction of nowhere. Jude
is purloined from a possible Oxford career, first by Arabella, then by
Sue. But women are not altogether to blame for the mischief which
is always brewing in Hardy's novels. The Mayor of Casterbridge'
is the story of a man hampered by himself. In a fit of drunkenness,
he sells his wife and child to the highest bidder. For his hour of
dissipation he pays a lifetime of struggle and remorse.
The irony of circumstance is ever present in Hardy's portrayal of
the ambitions and good intentions of men and women. Their "hopes
and fears, so blind and yet so sweet,” have always death about them
to Hardy: the trickery of death, its hideous surprises, its untimely
interventions. In 'Life's Little Ironies,' a middle-aged man, laboring
under the delusion that marriage can patch up a wrong done to a
woman, heroically resolves to take this step after many years of
cowardice. His melodramatic self-sacrifice to the woman once sacri-
ficed to him is turned by the irony of circumstance into mere clumsi-
ness, since his appearance in the neglected little family ruins the
chances of his daughter to make a match of smug respectability.
In Fellow-Townsmen,' one of the 'Wessex Tales,' Lucy Saville, a
middle-aged widow, says no to the man who has loved her and waited
for her through many years, because she does not think it good form
to say yes at once. She sends a note after him, however, asking him
to call again; but he has taken her at her word, and has left the
town forever. Such an incident has a marked resemblance to certain
incidents of real life. Hardy has the courage always to tell a thing
as it really happened, not as weak-hearted humanity would like it to
happen.
In 'Tess' Hardy has written the modern classic of misfortune;
in Tess the finest and most characteristic qualities of his art are
focused. In the portrayal of this primitive tragedy, this spirit-rending
story of a girl's struggle with destiny, Hardy has put forth his con-
summate effort. In 'Tess' the Calvinistic idea of fate, predestination,
the treacherous power outside of ourselves which makes for confus-
ion, as opposed to the rational Greek idea of pursuing punishment
for sins committed,- in Tess' this Calvinistic idea receives its fin-
ished embodiment. The subtle poison of the book lies in the false
theory which actuated its production, not in the working out of the
theory. Tess is a pure woman; the defiant sub-title is unnecessary.
Only the inexperienced would wag their heads dubiously over it as
## p. 6937 (#325) ###########################################
THOMAS HARDY
6937
they read the tale in sheltered and respectable parlors. Hardy to
the contrary, it is society, not the Almighty, which is to blame for
the moral gaucherie, for the malignant blunders which entrap Tess.
Nature is non-moral. She herself would have put no obstacles in the
way of the recuperation of this fair-souled, high-minded country lass,
knocked into the mud by a lustful hoof. The virginal spirit of the
maiden would have regained the birthright violently snatched from
her, if conventional opinion in the form of Angel Clare had not inter-
vened. This young man, half seraph, half prig, meets Tess at a dairy,
miles away from the scene of her trouble. He is a gentleman's son,
and the gentle nature in him is drawn to this rare wild flower sprung
from the forgotten graves of the D'Urberville knights. He loves the
maiden Tess. On their marriage day he confesses a certain folly of
his, a three-days' unholy fever for an unworthy woman. Tess gives
back confession for confession. Clare, under the spell of false tradi-
tion, throws her from the heights which she has regained back into
the limbo of the hopeless. He cannot separate her body from her
soul. He the deliberate sinner passes judgment on her, the sinned
against. Rejected by love itself as unclean, Tess drifts on to her
tragic doom. The mercifulness of nature and of God are alike un-
known to her. Her case is against man. In 'Tess' Hardy has per-
haps unconsciously stigmatized the man-made moral order.
The soil which smells of grass and flowers in 'Under the Green-
wood Tree,' in 'Jude the Obscure' sends up a sour odor to the nos-
trils. If 'Tess is the classic of the unlucky, 'Jude' is the classic of
the neurotic woman. The hero has after all little to do with the
working out of the story. His part is to a great degree passive.
Like certain other heroes of Hardy, he is born under an evil star.
His boyish ambition to become a student at Oxford is thwarted con-
tinually by the assertions of his lower nature; but-and this again
is essentially in the spirit of Hardy-accident, chance, take sides
with his baser elements. He is tricked into marriage with the sensual
Arabella. He has the misfortune to run across his cousin Sue at a
time when it is most necessary for the accomplishment of his pur-
pose that he should enter into the sexless temper of the scholar. Sue
is intellectual, pseudo-passionate, morbidly pure. She is a type of
the modern woman, whose intellect is developed at the expense of
her earthy nature. The awful innocence of Sue throughout the book
is the innocence of the bold thinker whose flights of fancy reach to
Mars, but who knows nothing of the soil underfoot. It is futile to
call the actions of the two bewildered children Jude and Sue immoral;
a new adjective will have to be evolved to meet their essentially
modern case. 'Jude' is the book of an era where between one and
one there is always a shadowy third.
## p. 6938 (#326) ###########################################
6938
THOMAS HARDY
Hardy's novels of rustic life will give probably the most pleasure
to coming generations. The chapters of the dairy life in 'Tess,'
the idyl of the lush green meadows, will save her tragedy from
oblivion. 'Far from the Madding Crowd,' with its troop of men
and maidens of the fields, will give solace when 'A Laodicean' is
well-nigh forgotten. The Trumpet-Major' and 'The Return of the
Native' are revivingly sweet and clean with the breath of the sea
and with the heather-scented wind of the moors. In Hardy's stories
of his beloved Wessex country there is the perennial refreshment
of nature. His peasantry are primitive. Their quaint humor, their
wise saws, their hold upon Mother Earth, might have been character-
istic of the homely parents of the race in the first dawn of the world.
They are "representative of a magnificent antiquity. "
Hardy is as much in sympathy with the natural world as he is
with those men and women who seem a part of the soil on which
they live. He has the love of genius for the open air. Nature is
the perpetual background for the scenes of his novels; and as in
Shakespeare, the aspect of nature reflects the moral atmosphere of
the scene. The happiest time of Tess's life begins in the flowery
months of May and June. Her desolate existence, after she has been
forsaken by her husband, coincides with the bitter, barren winter-
time upon the upland moors. Elfride's love story seems well-nigh a
part of the processes of nature in its interchange of storm and sun-
shine. The majority of Hardy's people are near to nature: sensitive,
passionate lovers of the sea, and of the heath. His genius compre-
hends at once the natural, primitive man, and man the product of
modern hypercultivation. In this wideness of human view lies per-
haps his surest claim to greatness.
Alma Marune Sholl
THE MELLSTOCK «WAITS »
From Under the Greenwood Tree'
S
HORTLY after ten o'clock the singing-boys arrived at the tran-
ter's house, which was invariably the place of meeting,
and preparations were made for the start. The older men
and musicians wore thick coats, with stiff perpendicular collars,
and colored handkerchiefs wound round and round the neck till
## p. 6939 (#327) ###########################################
THOMAS HARDY
6939
the end came to hand, over all which they just showed their ears
and noses like people looking over a wall. The remainder,—stal-
wart, ruddy men and boys,- were mainly dressed in snow-white.
smock-frocks, embroidered upon the shoulders and breasts in orna-
mental forms of hearts, diamonds, and zigzags. The cider mug
was emptied for the ninth time, the music-books were arranged,
and the pieces finally decided upon. The boys in the mean time
put the old horn lanterns in order, cut candles into short lengths
to fit the lanterns, and a thin fleece of snow having fallen since
the early part of the evening, those who had no leggings went
to the stable and wound wisps of hay round their ankles to keep
the insidious flakes from the interior of their boots.
Mellstock was a parish of considerable acreage, the hamlets
composing it lying at a much greater distance from each other
than is ordinarily the case. Hence several hours were consumed
in playing and singing within hearing of every family, even if
but a single air were bestowed on each. There was East Mell-
stock, the main village; half a mile from this were the church
and the vicarage, called West Mellstock, and originally the most
thickly populated portion. A mile northeast lay the hamlet of
Lewgate, where the tranter lived; and at other points knots of
cottages, besides solitary farmsteads and dairies.
Old William Dewy, with the violoncello, played the bass; his
grandson Dick, the treble violin; and Reuben and Michael Mail,
the tenor and second violins respectively. The singers consisted
of four men and seven boys, upon whom devolved the task of
carrying and attending to the lanterns, and holding the books
open for the players. Directly music was the theme, old William
ever and instinctively came to the front.
"Now mind, naibors," he said, as they all went out one by
one at the door, he himself holding it ajar and regarding them
with a critical face as they passed, like a shepherd counting
out his sheep. "You two counter-boys, keep your ears open to
Michael's fingering, and don't ye go straying into the treble part
along o' Dick and his set, as ye did last year; and mind this
especially when we be in 'Arise, and hail. ' Billy Chimlen, don't
you sing quite so raving mad as you fain would; and all o' ye,
whatever ye do, keep from making a great scuffle on the ground
when we go in at people's gates; but go quietly, so as to strik'
up all of a sudden, like spirits. "
"Farmer Ledlow's first ? "
## p. 6940 (#328) ###########################################
6940
THOMAS HARDY
2
"Farmer Ledlow's first; the rest as usual. >>>>
"And Voss," said the tranter terminatively, "you keep house
here till about half-past two; then heat the metheglin and cider
in the warmer you'll find turned up upon the copper; and bring
it wi' the victuals to church porch, as th'st know. "
Just before the clock struck twelve, they lighted the lanterns
and started. The moon, in her third quarter, had risen since the
snow-storm; but the dense accumulation of snow-cloud weakened
her power to a faint twilight, which was rather pervasive of the
landscape than traceable to the sky. The breeze had gone down,
and the rustle of their feet and tones of their speech echoed
with an alert rebound from every post, boundary stone, and
ancient wall they passed, even where the distance of the echo's
origin was less than a few yards. Beyond their own slight
noises nothing was to be heard, save the occasional howl of foxes
in the direction of Yalbury Wood, or the brush of a rabbit
among the grass now and then, as it scampered out of their way.
Most of the outlying homesteads and hamlets had been visited.
by about two o'clock; they then passed across the Home Planta-
tion toward the main village. Pursuing no recognized track,
great care was necessary in walking lest their faces should come
in contact with the low-hanging boughs of the old trees, which
in many spots formed dense overgrowths of interlaced branches.
"Times have changed from the times they used to be," said
Mail, regarding nobody can tell what interesting old panoramas
with an inward eye, and letting his outward glance rest on the
ground, because it was as convenient a position as any. "People
don't care much about us now! I've been thinking we must be
almost the last left in the country of the old string players.
Barrel organs, and they next door to 'em that you blow wi' your
foot, have come in terribly of late years. "
"Ah! " said Bowman, shaking his head; and old William, on
seeing him, did the same thing.
"More's the pity," replied another. "Time was-long and
merry ago now! - when not one of the varmints was to be heard
of; but it served some of the choirs right. They should have
stuck to strings as we did, and kept out clar'nets, and done away
with serpents. If you'd thrive in musical religion, stick to
strings, says I. "
"Strings are well enough, as far as that goes," said Mr.
Spinks.
## p. 6941 (#329) ###########################################
THOMAS HARDY
6941
"Old
"There's worse things than serpents," said Mr. Penny.
things pass away, 'tis true: but a serpent was a good old note; a
deep, rich note was the serpent. "
"Clar'nets however be bad at all times," said Michael Mail.
"One Christmas-years agone now, years-I went the rounds
wi' the Dibbeach choir. 'Twas a hard frosty night, and the keys
of all the clar'nets froze-ah, they did freeze! -so that 'twas
like drawing a cork every time a key was opened; the players o'
'em had to go into a hedger's and ditcher's chimley-corner, and
thaw their clar'nets every now and then. An icicle o' spet hung
down from the end of every man's clar'net a span long; and as
to fingers-well, there, if ye'll believe me, we had no fingers at
all, to our knowledge. ”
"I can well bring back to my mind," said Mr. Penny, "what
I said to poor Joseph Ryme (who took the tribble part in High-
Story Church for two-and-forty year) when they thought of hav-
ing clar'nets there. 'Joseph,' I said, says I, 'depend upon't, if
SO you have them tooting clar'nets you'll spoil the whole set-
Clar'nets were not made for the service of Providence; you
can see it by looking at 'em,' I said. And what cam o't?
Why, my dear souls, the parson set up a barrel organ on his own
account within two years o' the time I spoke, and the old choir
went to nothing. "
out.
"As far as look is concerned," said the tranter, "I don't for
my part see that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar'net.
'Tis farther off. There's always a rakish, skampish countenance
about a fiddle that seems to say the Wicked One had a hand in
making o' en; while angels be supposed to play clar'nets in
heaven, or some’at like 'em, if ye may believe picters. "
«<
"Robert Penny, you were in the right," broke in the eldest
Dewy. They should ha' stuck to strings. Your brass-man is
brass-well and good; your reed-man is reed-well and good;
your percussion-man is percussion-good again. But I don't care
who hears me say it, nothing will speak to your heart wi' the
sweetness of the man of strings! "
"Strings forever! " said little Jimmy.
