Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So Tracy,
Speaker 1: you and I both, like many high school students, had
Speaker 1: to read some Thomas Hardy had to read Yes, did
Speaker 1: read no oh um. And I I will also confess
Speaker 1: that though I have actually read a good bit of
Speaker 1: his work between that and and college, I've always had
Speaker 1: a really hard time connecting with a lot of it. Um.
Speaker 1: But when I first read about his life story, which
Speaker 1: is quite a while back, and especially his very different
Speaker 1: relationships with his first and second wives, I became kind
Speaker 1: of fascinated with his life story. Which was always my
Speaker 1: problem studying literature is that I would always be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I want to know about the writer and their foibles. Um.
Speaker 1: You guys have your interpretation party, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: be over here in biographies, Um, he goes with Thomas
Speaker 1: Hardy just like a lot of writers. Once you know
Speaker 1: about his life, a lot of his work becomes a
Speaker 1: little more interesting because he was clearly, very clearly working
Speaker 1: through his own stuff on the page while he was writing.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to talk about Thomas Hardy, but
Speaker 1: we are also going to talk about the two women
Speaker 1: who were very very central to his life, Emma Gifford
Speaker 1: and Florence Dougdale. So Thomas Hardy was born June second,
Speaker 1: eighteen forty in Dorset, England, and he was the first
Speaker 1: child born to a stonemason also named Thomas Hardy and
Speaker 1: Jemima hand Hardy. They had three more children after the
Speaker 1: younger Thomas was born. The family home was in a
Speaker 1: pretty remote area and living in these surroundings of this
Speaker 1: open heath land of Higher brock Hampton really left an
Speaker 1: impression on him. Uh, imagery of that kind of surroundings
Speaker 1: and upbringing that would come up a lot in his
Speaker 1: writings as an adult and as a young boy, Thomas
Speaker 1: got a pretty rudimentary education initially. Uh. He attended a
Speaker 1: village school for only a year that didn't even start
Speaker 1: until he was eight, in part because he was often
Speaker 1: pretty sickly as a child in his early years. But
Speaker 1: after that first year he then started attending school in Dorchester,
Speaker 1: which offered a much more structured curriculum. As a teenager,
Speaker 1: Hardy became an apprentice to an architect named John Hicks,
Speaker 1: This arrangement started when Hardy was sixteen and it lasted
Speaker 1: for about six years. When he was twenty two, Hardy
Speaker 1: made the move of more than a hundred miles to
Speaker 1: London to start a new job there. He had other
Speaker 1: career ambitions, which you will get to in a moment,
Speaker 1: but he thought that architecture would offer him a solid
Speaker 1: way to make and save up some money. So he
Speaker 1: had gotten his job as a draftsman working for the
Speaker 1: office of Arthur Blomfield. And at this point in Blomfield's
Speaker 1: career he was already well known and was president of
Speaker 1: the Architectural Association, but he had not worked on the
Speaker 1: projects that made him famous, including the Royal College of Music.
Speaker 1: Blomfield is another interesting one that we might talk about
Speaker 1: in the future. Hardy only stayed with Blomfield's firm for
Speaker 1: five years. He continued to have poor health, just as
Speaker 1: he had as a child, and it was determined that
Speaker 1: a return to the country would be best for his health,
Speaker 1: so he left his London job in eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: although he did remain friends with Arthur Blomfield for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. Like as we mentioned a moment ago,
Speaker 1: architecture really wasn't a job that Hardy considered his calling.
Speaker 1: He wanted to attend university and then become an Anglican priest,
Speaker 1: but in his years in London he had changed. He
Speaker 1: didn't have the religious zeal that he had had up
Speaker 1: through his early twenties, and because he had so many illnesses,
Speaker 1: he really hadn't been able to save up a lot
Speaker 1: of money, not what he would need to support himself
Speaker 1: through this planned higher education, so he turned to poetry.
Speaker 1: So this kind of seems like a man who may
Speaker 1: have felt desperate burying himself in his feelings in a
Speaker 1: way to express them. You don't normally go that life
Speaker 1: plan didn't work out. The only other option is to
Speaker 1: be a poet. But Hardy didn't really approach poetry that
Speaker 1: way at all. He basically kind of set this out
Speaker 1: as a goal for himself, and he really wanted to
Speaker 1: become a great poet, and he was very methodical about
Speaker 1: his approach about developing his work. So he worked on
Speaker 1: developing his own style and his own voice, and he
Speaker 1: did produce a number of poems and sent them to publishers,
Speaker 1: but none of those early works made it to print.
Speaker 1: Hardy's first novel, was The poor Man and the Lady,
Speaker 1: and he wrote that in the months after he left London.
Speaker 1: This was never published, though he shopped it around. Several
Speaker 1: publishers seemed interested in it, but ultimately they passed. The
Speaker 1: book hard he had written was about class division, as
Speaker 1: you may have guessed from the title, and the advice
Speaker 1: Hardy got was to work on making his writing more
Speaker 1: about the larger narrative and less obvious in conveying his
Speaker 1: sentiments on things. It was a little heavy handed, maybe inelegance,
Speaker 1: and this is really unsurprising considering that it was his
Speaker 1: first attempt. We do not really know how clunky or
Speaker 1: artful The poor Man and the Lady was, though, because
Speaker 1: some elements of it were integrated into later work, including
Speaker 1: a poem with the same name, but the writer destroyed
Speaker 1: the manuscript later in his life. Yeah, there were discussions
Speaker 1: after he got famous that he might kind of put
Speaker 1: it back together in some way, but that never happened.
Speaker 1: After taking all of those suggestions that he got from
Speaker 1: publishing houses to heart, though, hard he wrote another novel,
Speaker 1: this Desperate Remedies, and that was published in eighteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: Although initially hard He left his name off of it.
Speaker 1: When a new edition was published in eight he wrote
Speaker 1: a preface to it, acknowledging its tendency to lean pretty
Speaker 1: heavily on plot devices of popular fiction at the time
Speaker 1: writing quote. The following story, the first published by the author,
Speaker 1: was written nineteen years ago, at a time when he
Speaker 1: was feeling his way to a method. The principles observed
Speaker 1: in its composition are no doubt too exclusively those in
Speaker 1: which mystery, entanglements, surprise, and moral obliquity are depended on
Speaker 1: for exciting interest. During this time in Hardy's life and
Speaker 1: his early literary career, he was still working in architecture
Speaker 1: to make ends meet when he left London. First he
Speaker 1: went back to work with John Hicks and then moved
Speaker 1: on to a more lucrative position at the firm of G. R.
Speaker 1: Crick May. And it was in his architectural work that
Speaker 1: he was called to look at a church in Cornwall
Speaker 1: and to make a report on its condition. That was
Speaker 1: on March seventh, seventy. When he got there, the rector
Speaker 1: was in bed sick and the rector's wife was taking
Speaker 1: care of him, so the person who readed him was
Speaker 1: the rector's sister in law. Emma living at Gifford. They
Speaker 1: sat and talked, and Hardy was really smitten. Emma is
Speaker 1: often described as vivacious and smart as a whip, and
Speaker 1: for her part, learning that this architect's assistant also wrote
Speaker 1: fiction made him really alluring to her, and before too
Speaker 1: long they were courting. Emma became an incredibly significant figure
Speaker 1: and influence on Hardy's life and work, So we really
Speaker 1: want to make sure we take time to talk about
Speaker 1: her background here for a bit. She was born the
Speaker 1: same year as Hardy eighteen forty, although her birthday was
Speaker 1: several months after his on November. But aside from birth year,
Speaker 1: they had very very different starts in life. Whereas Thomas
Speaker 1: was the oldest child in the family, Emma was the
Speaker 1: youngest of five. She grew up in wealth in a
Speaker 1: house that prioritized intellectual pursuits. So though Hardy was working
Speaker 1: in a respectable job and offered Emma intellectual engagement, there
Speaker 1: was a very significant class separation between them, which persisted.
Speaker 1: She recorded in her account of their first meeting how
Speaker 1: shabby Hardy had looked. While they were first becoming a couple,
Speaker 1: Hardy was working on his book Under the Greenwood Tree
Speaker 1: that was published in eighteen seventy two, and it tells
Speaker 1: the story of the mill Stock Parish Choir and the
Speaker 1: people within it. But his next work, called A Pair
Speaker 1: of Blue Eyes, was obviously deeply influenced by Emma's presence
Speaker 1: in his life. The same year that Under the Greenwood
Speaker 1: Tree was published, which was initially anonymously, Hardy was asked
Speaker 1: to contribute a monthly fiction serial to Tinsley's magazine. That
Speaker 1: fiction was A Pair of Blue Eyes, and Hardy took
Speaker 1: a big leap of faith with that assignment because he
Speaker 1: decided that he was going to leave his architecture job
Speaker 1: and work on fiction full time. That was starting in
Speaker 1: about the middle of eighteen seventy two. This meant that
Speaker 1: he was giving up his steady income without much promise
Speaker 1: of a few sure. Tinsley's magazine was fairly new, having
Speaker 1: been established in eighteen sixty seven, and it was subheaded
Speaker 1: as Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Light Literature. The owner, William Tinsley,
Speaker 1: had had some success in the magazine and publishing field,
Speaker 1: but it also been known to mismanage money just terribly
Speaker 1: and had gone through several bankruptcies before founding Tinsley's magazine,
Speaker 1: but soon another literary magazine, Cornhill Magazine, also asked Hardy
Speaker 1: for a serialized story, and this resulted in Far from
Speaker 1: the Matting Crowd, Hardy's famous pastoral novel about Bathsheba, Everdeene
Speaker 1: and the Three Men Vuying for her Love. Cornhill had
Speaker 1: a much larger readership than Tinsley's, and Hardy's work developed
Speaker 1: a following through this publication. The serialized story was published
Speaker 1: in book form in eighteen seventy four, and it established
Speaker 1: so many of the hallmarks of Hardy's work. It is
Speaker 1: said in Wessex, where many of his fictional works take place,
Speaker 1: in juxtaposes the idyllic surroundings against the challenges and difficulties
Speaker 1: of life. That same year it was published in book form,
Speaker 1: Thomas Hardy married Emma Gifford. Their courtship had been going
Speaker 1: on for four years at that point, and Thomas had
Speaker 1: made regular trips to visit Emma in Cornwall since their
Speaker 1: first meeting, and this was no small feat. He actually
Speaker 1: had to take four different trains just to get there,
Speaker 1: which was something that Emma called the nights move because
Speaker 1: of its similarity to chess. Any time that he traveled
Speaker 1: to Cornwall for work, he spent as much time as
Speaker 1: possible with Emma, and they would take long walks together.
Speaker 1: She also wrote about how he would um She would
Speaker 1: ride her horse slowly and he would walk alongside, and
Speaker 1: they would just go for miles, which is quite charming.
Speaker 1: One story goes that a walk that took them to
Speaker 1: Tintagel Castle had them so moony over one another that
Speaker 1: they didn't even notice that the castle was closing to
Speaker 1: visitors for the day, and they ended up locked in.
Speaker 1: They got out of the castle only after they waved
Speaker 1: their handkerchiefs at people outside in the cove below the castle,
Speaker 1: and then someone came to unlock the doors. But though
Speaker 1: they had clearly established their devotion to one another, this
Speaker 1: marriage was vehemently discouraged by their families. There were very
Speaker 1: real concerns that this class difference between them would prove
Speaker 1: to be too difficult to overcome. Emma's family thought that
Speaker 1: she would be marrying down. Hearty's family thought that he
Speaker 1: could never keep a spouse who had been raised in
Speaker 1: that kind of privilege really happy. But the two of them,
Speaker 1: they did not listen to their family's wishes. They got
Speaker 1: married on September four, and then they went on a
Speaker 1: honeymoon in France. The marriage was not quite what either
Speaker 1: of them had anticipated, and we will talk about that
Speaker 1: after we have a sponsor break the Hearties first several
Speaker 1: years of marriage were a little bit no matic. They
Speaker 1: stayed primarily in London, but they moved from home to home,
Speaker 1: and during this time Thomas Hardy's output was a little
Speaker 1: bit hit or miss. He was writing, and he was
Speaker 1: writing consistently, but the quality was not consistent. In eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six he published a comedic commentary on social conventions
Speaker 1: titled The Hand of Ethelberta. This had also been a
Speaker 1: serialized piece for Courthnhill magazine following the success Afar from
Speaker 1: the Matting Crowd, and it's about a young woman who
Speaker 1: grew up poor than married a wealthy man who dies
Speaker 1: before Ethelberta is even twenty one, leaving her a very
Speaker 1: well off widow. She then takes up a writing career
Speaker 1: while hiding that her family is working class and choosing
Speaker 1: a second husband from several suitors. This is generally considered
Speaker 1: Thomas Hardy's weakest work, but in eighteen seventy eight he
Speaker 1: started another novel, which began as a serial, this time
Speaker 1: publishing in the fiction magazine Bell Grava. This work, The
Speaker 1: Return of the Native, was much better received than the
Speaker 1: Hand of Ethelberta, but it still didn't get the kind
Speaker 1: of critical praise that Far from the Matting Crowd had.
Speaker 1: Like his other work, you can see him echoing the
Speaker 1: things that he was experiencing in his personal life. The
Speaker 1: novelists set in Egdon Heath that's the Hearty's fictional part
Speaker 1: of Wessex, and it tells the story of Eustacia Vai
Speaker 1: who finds herself in an unhappy marriage to clym Yeobright,
Speaker 1: who's a native of the area and the person referenced
Speaker 1: in the title. So that unhappy marriage was likely informed
Speaker 1: at least to some degree by what was playing out
Speaker 1: in the Hardy Home, because right from the beginning of
Speaker 1: their life together, Emma had been unhappy, as basically everyone
Speaker 1: who knew them predicted would happen. She did not particularly
Speaker 1: enjoy living in London. For example, she couldn't go horseback riding,
Speaker 1: which was one of her favorite activities in Cornwall, and
Speaker 1: she did not really like being a writer's wife, even
Speaker 1: as and perhaps a specially as that writer became famous.
Speaker 1: Emma was so enchanted by Thomas talking about his efforts
Speaker 1: to become a writer when they first met, because she
Speaker 1: also wanted to be a writer, but he was not
Speaker 1: especially supportive of her efforts in her own writing, and
Speaker 1: he seemed to be pretty dismissive of it. In the
Speaker 1: early eighteen eighties, Hardy turned out three more novels, The
Speaker 1: Trumpet Major in eighteen eighty, Ala to Sean in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, and Two on a Tower in eighteen eight two.
Speaker 1: The Trumpet Major was set in eighteen o four and
Speaker 1: tells the story of a romance that plays out against
Speaker 1: the backdrop of Napoleon's army invading. Two on a Tower
Speaker 1: is the story of a woman who falls in love
Speaker 1: with an astronomer, only to have that romance obstructed. The
Speaker 1: most different of these books is a Lao to Sean,
Speaker 1: which Hardy worked on while he was really sick and
Speaker 1: thought he might not live the story of a woman
Speaker 1: who inherits a castle and hires architects to work on it,
Speaker 1: and then finds herself a acted to each of them.
Speaker 1: We don't know for certain what illness Hardy was dealing
Speaker 1: with at this point, but later in his life he
Speaker 1: said it was bladder inflammation. In eighteen eighty three, the
Speaker 1: Hearties moved to Dorchester, in southern England, not far from
Speaker 1: where Thomas had grown up. This was once again intended
Speaker 1: to bolster his health, particularly after he had gone through
Speaker 1: that illness while writing, but there had also always been
Speaker 1: this distinct awareness when they were in London that he
Speaker 1: had grown up in a far lower social class than
Speaker 1: most of the people he knew and his wife, so
Speaker 1: he was probably kind of eager to leave for that
Speaker 1: reason as well. In Dorset, Hardy acquired a plot of
Speaker 1: land and designed a home for it, which was called
Speaker 1: max Gate. His brother, who had followed in their father's
Speaker 1: line of work, did the stonework for max Gate, and
Speaker 1: so for the first time, after a decade of marriage,
Speaker 1: the Heartys had a home that was theirs, not a rental,
Speaker 1: and all of that nomadic moving around London was over.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighties six, Hardy published The Mayor of Casterbridge,
Speaker 1: and this book reflects his new life in Dorchester. The
Speaker 1: writing includes pieces of the place's history interwoven into the
Speaker 1: fictional plot, and it also has locations from around Dorchester
Speaker 1: used as settings for various events. The mayor referenced in
Speaker 1: the title is the character of Michael Henchard, who had
Speaker 1: become the mayor of Casterbridge after having grown up in
Speaker 1: a life of poverty and being a laborer. Hardy's next
Speaker 1: novel was The Woodlanders. This book published in eighteen eighties seven,
Speaker 1: after having run as a series in McMillan's magazine. It
Speaker 1: is once again a critique of class divisions and makes
Speaker 1: clear that it has become all too common for people
Speaker 1: of higher social status to be lauded as great, even
Speaker 1: though they are often morally corrupt, while honest, good people
Speaker 1: of lower social standing are not afforded the same praise.
Speaker 1: That whole book is set in the timber industry and
Speaker 1: a family business. After The Woodlanders, Hardy published a collection
Speaker 1: of some of his short story which had appeared in
Speaker 1: various magazines over the years. This was titled Wessex Tales.
Speaker 1: He published several similar collections and the remaining years of
Speaker 1: his career. In eighteen ninety two, Hardy had worked on
Speaker 1: a serialized story titled The Well Beloved. A sketch in
Speaker 1: Temperament actually had a different title initially, but that's what
Speaker 1: it's known for these days. But unlike his other serialized works,
Speaker 1: it was not published right away as a novel. The book,
Speaker 1: whose protagonist falls in love with a woman and then
Speaker 1: with her daughter, and then with her granddaughter, is very
Speaker 1: critical of marriage. It was eventually reworked, possibly because Emma
Speaker 1: was unhappy at the thought of the original being novelized,
Speaker 1: and it was released as the last of Hardy's novels
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety seven, but was not the last he
Speaker 1: had written. In eighteen ninety one, Tessa the Derbervilles was
Speaker 1: released as a three volume novel after running as a
Speaker 1: serial in the magazine Graphic. This novel is considered one
Speaker 1: of his best. It relays the story of a young
Speaker 1: woman named Test derby Field, whose father discovers he's actually
Speaker 1: descended from a noble family, the Derbervilles. Tests is sent
Speaker 1: to the Derberville mansion to make their case, and the
Speaker 1: derby Field family hopes that these wealthy Derbervilles will confer
Speaker 1: a fortune upon Tests once they realize they're related. But
Speaker 1: Tess is seduced by a son of the family and
Speaker 1: gives birth to a child who dies as a baby.
Speaker 1: Her life continues to unravel from that point and she's
Speaker 1: just stuck in a life that has no hope at
Speaker 1: happiness and that leads her to desperate action. This novel
Speaker 1: was originally criticized for the perceived immorality of the main character,
Speaker 1: although Hardy's intent was to show a woman who was
Speaker 1: victimized by a social hierarchy and the power that hierarchy
Speaker 1: allows people to wield to the ruination of others. In
Speaker 1: Hardy published his most bleak work, to the Obscure ass
Speaker 1: is once again a significant element and a driver of
Speaker 1: the story, with the titular character of Jude wanting to
Speaker 1: pursue higher education but instead having to become a stonemason.
Speaker 1: He is also lured into an unhappy marriage and then
Speaker 1: is abandoned by his wife and falls in love with
Speaker 1: his cousin, Sue, who marries another man in her own
Speaker 1: unhappy match. The two Jude and Sue eventually lived together
Speaker 1: as a couple, but as they are unmarried, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of obstacles that come up in their lives.
Speaker 1: The Danue mole of this book is ultimately unhappy, and
Speaker 1: like Tests, the book was criticized for encouraging immorality. It
Speaker 1: is also today considered one of his best works. The
Speaker 1: harsh criticism of these two novels is sometimes mentioned as
Speaker 1: a possible reason why Hardy went back to his first
Speaker 1: literary love of poetry after publishing Jude the Obscure. Though
Speaker 1: he had turned to serial fiction and novels as a
Speaker 1: way of making a living as a writer, he had
Speaker 1: always continued to write in After finally publishing his much
Speaker 1: edited Novelization of the Well Beloved, Hardy published his first
Speaker 1: book of verse, which was titled Wessex Poems. It had
Speaker 1: a preface that read, quote of the miscellaneous collection of
Speaker 1: verse that follows. Only four pieces have been published, though
Speaker 1: many were written long ago and others partly written. In
Speaker 1: some few cases the verses were turned into prose and
Speaker 1: printed as such, it having been unanticipated at that time
Speaker 1: that they might see the light. This book seemed to
Speaker 1: critics almost a curiosity. Hardy had illustrated the book himself.
Speaker 1: He also makes a note in the preface that like oh,
Speaker 1: those illustrations might not have anything to do with the text,
Speaker 1: they're just there um. And while some of the poems
Speaker 1: are very straightforward, others are verse fiction, much of a
Speaker 1: historical For example, of these two variations, one is titled
Speaker 1: to a Lady offended by a book of the writers,
Speaker 1: and it opens with now that my page up closes,
Speaker 1: doomed maybe never to press thy cozy cushions more, or
Speaker 1: wake thy ready yays as heretofore, or stir thy gentle
Speaker 1: vows of faith in me. In contrast, the poem Leipzig,
Speaker 1: which has the date eighteen thirteen as a subtitle, is
Speaker 1: set up with a scene note at the beginning quote
Speaker 1: the master Tradesman's parlor at the Old Ship in Casterbridge evening,
Speaker 1: and it features a German character known as Old Norbert
Speaker 1: who relays a story about his mother's life. During the
Speaker 1: late eighteen nineties, I kept finding various dates Emma moved
Speaker 1: into the attic at max Gate, making it her own
Speaker 1: sort of apartment. They actually had work done to make
Speaker 1: it like a cute little livable space, and she would
Speaker 1: take her breakfast in lunch there when she was not
Speaker 1: out or entertaining. She did continue to have dinner downstairs,
Speaker 1: although at this point her marriage with Thomas was more
Speaker 1: or less non existence in terms of the two of
Speaker 1: them having a real and shared life together. Several years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen o three, Hardy started publishing an epic poetic
Speaker 1: drama titled The Dinasts. It's a drama, but one that
Speaker 1: was never intended for the stage. Set during the Napoleonic Wars,
Speaker 1: that first volume alone contains six acts and thirty five scenes.
Speaker 1: The writing uses historical events as the framework to tell
Speaker 1: the stories of the people impacted, as well as to
Speaker 1: offer up commentary by spirits and intelligences. In nineteen o five,
Speaker 1: Hardy had a meeting with a young woman named Florence
Speaker 1: Emily doug Dale at max Gate. This was a significant meeting,
Speaker 1: and we are going to talk about Florence after we
Speaker 1: hear from the sponsors who keep stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: history class going. That meeting between Thomas Hardy and Florence
Speaker 1: Dugdale had been initiated as a fan letter. Florence wrote
Speaker 1: to Hardy and said she loved his work and would
Speaker 1: love to visit him. And he wrote her back and
Speaker 1: he said sure. He only asked that she sent a
Speaker 1: card a day or two ahead of time to give
Speaker 1: him notice. Florence would later relay this story as though
Speaker 1: it was Mrs Hardy she was supposed to meet at
Speaker 1: max Gate, although why she altered that story as a
Speaker 1: matter of speculation. She also told several different versions of
Speaker 1: how she and Emma would have met to support that.
Speaker 1: Even her siblings all got different versions. Apparently none of
Speaker 1: those were true. Um Florence was a writer of children's
Speaker 1: books as well as a local theater critic, and she
Speaker 1: had greater literary ambitions. Hardy claimed, after having talked to
Speaker 1: her a couple of times, that he needed research assistance
Speaker 1: for the rest of the Dynasts, and she was enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about helping him. Florence was in her mid twenties at
Speaker 1: the time she was born on January twelfth, eighteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Her father, Edward Dugdale, was the headmaster of St Andrew's
Speaker 1: National School for Boys. Florence was well educated and trained
Speaker 1: as a teacher, which was her primary vocation. Writing was
Speaker 1: her side job. She taught at her father's school, just
Speaker 1: as he had been with Emma. Hardy was quite taken
Speaker 1: with Florence. He wrote and published a poem titled After
Speaker 1: the Visit, which opens with the stanza, come again to
Speaker 1: the place where your presence was as a leaf that
Speaker 1: skims down a drowsy way, whose ascent but dims the
Speaker 1: bloom on the farer's face. The poem goes on to
Speaker 1: note the smell of the flowers in the air, the
Speaker 1: beauty of the changing colors of the clouds, and quote
Speaker 1: the large, luminous living eyes regard me in fixed, inquiring
Speaker 1: wise as those of a soul that wade scarce consciously
Speaker 1: the eternal question of what life was. Yeah later in life,
Speaker 1: when he republished that poem, he wrote a subhead that
Speaker 1: it was to F. E. D. S. So at that
Speaker 1: point everyone knew it was for her. For the next
Speaker 1: several years, Florence became more and more ensconced in life
Speaker 1: at max Gate, although she was living in London, so
Speaker 1: traveling back and forth to Dorset was actually a lot.
Speaker 1: She served as a research assistant, a friend, and eventually
Speaker 1: an editor for both of the Hearties. Uh Emma was
Speaker 1: writing her own novels for a bit, including one that
Speaker 1: is about a woman who is the muse for all
Speaker 1: of her husband's work. A lot of autobiographical stuff going
Speaker 1: on in their writing. There has actually been a great
Speaker 1: deal of speculation about whether or not Florence and Thomas
Speaker 1: started up a romantic relationship during this time. Depending on
Speaker 1: the biography you read, people will say with certainty what
Speaker 1: they think it is as though it is fact, but
Speaker 1: we don't really have any evidence. They were certainly very
Speaker 1: close and they spent a lot of time together, and
Speaker 1: they even traveled together to visit hearties friends, but we
Speaker 1: don't know anything with certainty. It does appear that Emma
Speaker 1: didn't know that Florence was helping Thomas at first. Florence
Speaker 1: had introduced herself to Emma at a lecture that Emma
Speaker 1: had given at the Lyceum Club, and the two had
Speaker 1: become friends. And for a while this was a tenuous
Speaker 1: situation because each spouse thought Miss Dougdale was their friend.
Speaker 1: There was some competition and even fights over it. This
Speaker 1: seems like a super healthy dynamic. Oh my goodness, listen,
Speaker 1: I have thoughts from the behind the scenes um. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eight, Thomas Hardy was offered a knighthood and he
Speaker 1: turned it down. The reasons for this decision are a
Speaker 1: little unclear. There is one speculation that is kind of
Speaker 1: the salacious version, that had he accepted the knighthood, it
Speaker 1: would have made Emma Lady Hardy and given her a
Speaker 1: title which she would have enjoyed, and he declined just
Speaker 1: to prevent her from having it. We do know that
Speaker 1: he made that decision without talking it over with his wife.
Speaker 1: But Hardy was also again the entire idea of honors
Speaker 1: like knighthoods, and it's just as likely that he turned
Speaker 1: it down because he didn't want to appear like one
Speaker 1: of the villainous people of privilege in his many novels
Speaker 1: about classism. He did, however, accept the Order of Merit In,
Speaker 1: perhaps because that particular award was in recognition of persons
Speaker 1: who quote may have rendered exceptionally meritorious service towards the
Speaker 1: advancement of art, literature, and science, so it would have
Speaker 1: felt less like a class related honor and based truly
Speaker 1: on his own achievement. In late nineteen twelve, Emma Hardy
Speaker 1: was unwell. She had been an avid cyclist for years,
Speaker 1: but she started to find that her rides were just
Speaker 1: too taxing. She hired a maid named Dolly, who was fourteen.
Speaker 1: Dolly was a great comfort to her. She didn't seem
Speaker 1: to mind carrying meals and other necessities up and down
Speaker 1: the stairs to the attic. Emma refused to have a
Speaker 1: doctor visit, and Thomas dropped the subject, but by the
Speaker 1: end of November she was no longer interested in food.
Speaker 1: She visited with some friends on November twenty five, that
Speaker 1: was the day after her birthday, and they saw that
Speaker 1: she was unwell, but they chalked it up to depression.
Speaker 1: On the twenty six Emma consented to have a doctor
Speaker 1: visit that she did not agree to a physical exam.
Speaker 1: The doctor thought she had made herself unwell by refusing
Speaker 1: to eat, and she died the next day. At this point,
Speaker 1: the Hardys had been married for thirty eight years, although
Speaker 1: about half of that most people would say was fairly estranged.
Speaker 1: After Emma died, Thomas discovered a manuscript called Some Recollections,
Speaker 1: which was a biography about her life up until her marriage,
Speaker 1: and another work titled What I Think of My Husband.
Speaker 1: Parts of Recollections were actually incorporated into an autobiography that
Speaker 1: Hardy worked on later, and he is said to have
Speaker 1: burned What I Think of my Husband after reading it.
Speaker 1: Over the years, the exact role of Emma Hardy and
Speaker 1: the nature of her personality have in the focus of
Speaker 1: a lot of theorization and discussion and presumption. Some friends
Speaker 1: of Hardy described her in tremendously negative ways. Those descriptors
Speaker 1: have stuck around through the years. They're often repeated, but
Speaker 1: also considered as though their fact, with no context for
Speaker 1: their larger relationship. Hardy's family his sisters in particular, were
Speaker 1: known to tell people all kinds of damaging things about Emma.
Speaker 1: She has been described as snobbish, spoiled, and even crazy,
Speaker 1: as jealous and ridiculous, but it's been pretty rare for
Speaker 1: historians to really look at her life and seek out
Speaker 1: what she was actually like. She was, for example, a
Speaker 1: vocal advocate for animal rights, and she was active in
Speaker 1: the anti vivisection movement. She wanted reforms for the poor,
Speaker 1: to improve the education of underprivileged children, and she wanted
Speaker 1: teachers to be in quote an exalted position. She was
Speaker 1: also deeply invested the suffrage movement, and she was known
Speaker 1: to throw spectacular parties at max Gate. Hardy himself seems
Speaker 1: to have recognized after Emma's death that their estrangement was
Speaker 1: not solely her doing. He mourned not just for her,
Speaker 1: but for having lost what they had when they met
Speaker 1: at thirty and became really infatuated with one another. Some
Speaker 1: of this suggests that he just never came to terms
Speaker 1: with either the idea that a person is never the
Speaker 1: idealized version that you may have in your head, or
Speaker 1: the notion that people grow and change. He had wanted
Speaker 1: the Emma he believed her to be when they married,
Speaker 1: and then finding out she might be anything other than
Speaker 1: that was something he had never really made space for. Additionally,
Speaker 1: Hardy was known to at minimum flirt a lot with
Speaker 1: other women, sometimes in long drawn out series of correspondence,
Speaker 1: and just as we can't know for certain if things
Speaker 1: ever became physical or otherwise inappropriate it in his relationship
Speaker 1: with Florence while Emma was still alive, we also don't
Speaker 1: know with certainty if he ever had affairs with anyone else.
Speaker 1: In an article written by Jane Thomas in the Hearty
Speaker 1: Society Journal, in the writer sums up the situation in
Speaker 1: this way quote, there is evidence that Emma was difficult, embarrassing, irritating, demanding, childish, aggressively, religious,
Speaker 1: and perhaps even a trifle mad towards the end. There
Speaker 1: is also evidence that she was disappointed, neglected, discouraged, excluded,
Speaker 1: pushed aside, and suffered very much whatever she might have
Speaker 1: gained for being the partner for the best part of
Speaker 1: forty two years of a famous man who was married
Speaker 1: to his work and with whom she had looked forward
Speaker 1: to an active creative partnership based on mutual love of literature.
Speaker 1: It can be pretty easy to assume that Emma and
Speaker 1: Thomas Hardy lived entirely separate lives by the time she
Speaker 1: moved into the attic, but she had actually been doing
Speaker 1: a lot of the kinds of work that Florence Dugdale
Speaker 1: started doing. Throughout her husband's career. She had, for example,
Speaker 1: kind of done all that secretarial stuff and helped with
Speaker 1: research and and helped keep all of his contracts in order.
Speaker 1: And Emma had begun to feel, whether justified or not,
Speaker 1: that she had done a lot of work to support
Speaker 1: her husband's career over the years, and that she had
Speaker 1: gotten nothing in return. She had, according to Hardy's own admission,
Speaker 1: been the one to decide that he should give up
Speaker 1: architecture and take the risk of a life of writing.
Speaker 1: And the years after Emma's death, Hardy's output was significant,
Speaker 1: and his regret over their life together was a significant
Speaker 1: motivator for that output. He told a friend that many
Speaker 1: of those poems had simply come to him after Emma died,
Speaker 1: saying quote one looked back through the years and saw
Speaker 1: some pictures. One of those poems was After a Journey,
Speaker 1: in which he writes, in part quote, yes, I have
Speaker 1: re entered your olden haunts at last, the places where
Speaker 1: you often used to go through the years, through the
Speaker 1: dead scenes. I have tracked you. What have you now
Speaker 1: found to say of our past? Viewed across the dark
Speaker 1: space wherein I have lacked you. Summer gave us sweets,
Speaker 1: but autumn wrought division. Things were not lastly as firstly
Speaker 1: well with us, Twain you tell, But all's closed now
Speaker 1: despite time's derision. I see what you were doing. You
Speaker 1: were leading me onto the spots we knew when we
Speaker 1: haunted here together often used to go the waterfall above
Speaker 1: which the mist bow shone, and the then fair hour
Speaker 1: in the then fair weather, and the cave just under,
Speaker 1: with a voice still so hollow that it seems to
Speaker 1: call out to me from forty years ago, when you
Speaker 1: were all aglow, and not the thin ghosts that I
Speaker 1: now freely follow. After a Journey and many other poems
Speaker 1: about Emma were public is in nineteen fourteen as a
Speaker 1: group called Poems of nineteen twelve nineteen thirteen. That book
Speaker 1: came out after Hardy had married Florence Dougdale, who moved
Speaker 1: into max Gate shortly after Emma's death. Later, Florence would
Speaker 1: say of the retrospective love poems Thomas had written to Emma, quote,
Speaker 1: all the poems about her are a fiction, but a
Speaker 1: fiction in which their author has now come to believe.
Speaker 1: Various biographers have characterized Florence as not really in love
Speaker 1: with her much older husband, but definitely in a state
Speaker 1: of deep admiration for his work. But that's changed a
Speaker 1: little in recent years due to several letters that came
Speaker 1: to light in twenty These letters were written to a
Speaker 1: former student named Harold Barlow at various points in his life.
Speaker 1: The verse was written in February nineteen fourteen, when Barlow
Speaker 1: was in Africa. Florence wrote, quote, perhaps you have read,
Speaker 1: if you have the English papers, that I am now
Speaker 1: the proud and very happy wife of the greatest living
Speaker 1: English writer, Thomas Hardy. Although he is much older than myself,
Speaker 1: it is a genuine love match on my part, at least,
Speaker 1: for I suppose I ought not to speak for him.
Speaker 1: At any rate, I know I have for a husband
Speaker 1: one of the kindest, most humane men in the world.
Speaker 1: She also shared with Barlow her chagrin at their marriage
Speaker 1: being a matter of public interest, writing quote, accounts of
Speaker 1: me and my portrait have been printed in every paper
Speaker 1: I think in England, I have been shown in the cinematograph,
Speaker 1: written about all over America and Europe. I am tired
Speaker 1: of this publicity. Since Barlow was not someone with a
Speaker 1: platform to publicize these personal missives, there appears to be
Speaker 1: no motivation to write so lovingly of Hardy, unless she
Speaker 1: just meant it. The two of them lived together seemingly,
Speaker 1: very happily for the next fourteen years, during which Hardy
Speaker 1: wrote every single day. In December of Hardy developed pleurasy.
Speaker 1: When he was sick for several weeks. On January eleven,
Speaker 1: his doctor visited in the evening, and then after the
Speaker 1: physician left, Hardy had a heart attack and died. Florence
Speaker 1: wrote to Harold Barlow again several years after Hardy's death,
Speaker 1: telling her friend and former student quote, I am writing
Speaker 1: this late in the evening, alone in the room where
Speaker 1: I first met my husband. A little French bulldog is
Speaker 1: snoring by the fire. He is my faithful and generally
Speaker 1: my only companion. I thank you for your kind words.
Speaker 1: Of sympathy about my great loss. It was such a
Speaker 1: wonderful thing to live in close association with that great
Speaker 1: mind and that noble personality. After having lived fourteen years
Speaker 1: with such a companion, it is little wonder that I
Speaker 1: feel intolerably lonely and find the world very empty today.
Speaker 1: Max Gate is part of the National Trust and it's
Speaker 1: open to the public. Oh, Thomas Hardy in your marriage
Speaker 1: is Um that was a little bit of a longy.
Speaker 1: So I actually have a different thing than listener mail,
Speaker 1: which is just that I wanted to mention that we
Speaker 1: recently did our first live stream and we had wonderful
Speaker 1: people that got take us to it and had like
Speaker 1: a very lively chat going on the whole time, which
Speaker 1: was beautiful to see. And then you and I got
Speaker 1: to do calls with a number of people, several dozen
Speaker 1: people afterwards, and it was just really really wonderful and
Speaker 1: sort of reinvigorating. And um, I I knew that I
Speaker 1: had really been missing live shows, but like it brought
Speaker 1: into incredibly sharp focus how much I missed connecting with everyone.
Speaker 1: So I want to thank everyone who was part of
Speaker 1: that and Loop Live because they were great to us.
Speaker 1: It was just such a fun night and I am
Speaker 1: eternally grateful, and I just wanted to say that if
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, we'll do I'll
Speaker 1: do listener mail again in the future. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to get all that out. You could do so at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also find us on social media as missed in History
Speaker 1: And if you would like to subscribe to the show,
Speaker 1: that is a simple, simple procedure. You can do that
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