Thomas Hardy's 'Facts' Notebook

A Critical Edition

William Greenslade

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351879286
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature
• Index: Literature

Within weeks of Thomas Hardy's return to his native Dorchester in June 1883, he began to compile his 'Facts' notebook, which he kept up throughout the years when he was writing some of his major work - The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. From his intensive study of the Dorset County Chronicle for 1826-1830, he noted and summarised into 'Facts' (with the help of his first wife, Emma) hundreds of reports, many of them suggestive 'satires of circumstance', for possible use in his fiction and poems. Along with extensive reading in memoirs and local histories, this immersion in the files of the old newspaper involved him in a wider experience - the recovery and recognition of the unstable culture of the local past in the post-Napoleonic war years before his birth in 1840, and before the impact of the modernising of the Victorian era. 'Facts' is thus a unique document amongst Hardy's private writings and is here for the first time edited, the text transcribed in 'typographical facsimile' form, together with substantial annotation of the entries and critical and textual introductions.

The Notebook

( To be destroyed uncopied )

Facts
from Newspapers, Histories, Biographies, & other chronicles — (mainly Local)

1a

Condition of Rural England, temp. Hy VIII : ———

The landlord leases land more & more frequently to capitalist farmers — the class of yeoman arise — Farmer dependent on his hay & straw for his winter keep. Cattle & sheep were fattened in summer & killed at its close, their flesh being salted for winter use — “Summer is y-cumin in,” meant much more in those days than it does in ours on this account. Sheep farming takes the place of agriculture — vast enclosures are made from the common field, wh was the chief cause of Ket’s rebellion in 1549 — “The 15^th cent. & the early years of the 16^th were the golden age of the English husbandman, the artisan, & the labourer.” It was not till after the Dissolution of monasteries that the roads went out of repair.

From review in Spec.of Thorold Rogers’s Hist. of Agriculture.(c^t)

Source: Spectator, 21 July 1883 (no. 2873): 938–9. This is a review of vols iii and iv (1882) of James Edwin Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices in England, 1259–1793, 7 vols (Oxford, 1866–1902).

Note: c^t: cutting.

2a

Families of the ancient Saxon & Norman race — either extinct or reduced to lowest fortune — Could one of those illustrious shades return to earth he might behold one of his descendants dancing at the lathe — another tippling with his dark brethren of the apron&a fifth poaching upon the very manors possessed by his ancestors.

Hand: ELH.

Text: no gap between this and subsequent item.

Source: Sylvaticus, pseud. (i.e. J.F. Pennie), The Tale of a Modern Genius; or, the Miseries of Parnassus. In a Series of Letters, 3 vols (London, 1827), ii, 128–9.

Note: John Fitzgerald Pennie (1782–1848) of East Lulworth, Dorset. TH probably consulted the copy lent to him by his Wimborne friend, the judge, H.T. Atkinson (CL, i, 111 fn.). If so, this and following items from Pennie were recorded at some time between late 1881 and December 1882 when TH returned The Tale of a Modern Genius to Atkinson (CL, i, 111), and were later entered in ‘Facts’. For a discussion of Pennie’s life and career see Glanville J. Davis, ‘John Fitzgerald Pennie — “Sylvaticus”’, PDNHAS, 118 (1996): 7–12. Michael Millgate has suggested that in writing The Dynasts TH could have been influenced by Pennie’s Britain’s Historical Drama, with its Preface (1832) (Millgate, 1971, 316).

2b

At Landulph — Cornwall — mural monument — Here lyeth the body of Theodore Paleologus, of Pesaro, in Italy, descended from ye imperial lyne of ye late Christian emperors of Greece, being the sonne of Camilio, ye sonne of Prosper, ye sonne of Theodore, ye sonne of John ye sonne of Thomas second brother of Constantine Paleologus the 8^th of that name & last of y^t lyne of y^t reigned in Constantinople until subdued by the Turks; who married w^t Mary ye daughter of William Balls of Hadlye in Souffolke gent. & had issue 5 children&& departed this lyfe at Clifton ye 21^st of Jan. 1636.

Hand: ELH.

Text: y^t: in pencil. that: crossed through in pencil.

Source: Pennie, ii, 129.

Note: see Nikolaus Pevsner, Cornwall (The Buildings of England) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1951), p.73; but also A.R. Wagner, English Genealogy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p.250.

2c

Poet, after much anxiety gets his epic printed — and at great labour to himself calls round on his subscribers — but they

“absolutely swore to my face, when I presented them with their copies that they never subscribed to the work or even heard of it.”

Autobiog^y. of Pennie of E.Lulworth

Hand: ELH.

Source: Pennie, iii, 5.

2d

Louisa Durbach, German prodigy — Whilst watching her cattle she wrote rude verses — in this she was accidentally assisted by a contrived neighbouring shepherd, who, although they were divided by a river, contrived to lend her his whole library, consisting of R.Crusoe, The Asiatic Banise (German romance) & the Arabian Nights.

Autobiog. of Pennie of L.

Hand: ELH.

Source: Pennie, i, 162.

Note: Louisa Durbach: Anna Louisa Durbach (1722–91), b. Silesia, poet whose work included the ode ‘The Battle of Lowoschutz’. For Pennie she was an exemplar of ‘what powerful obstacles true genius might ultimately surmount’. Asiatic Banise: Die Asiatische Banise, oder Das blutig, doch muthige Pegu (1689), by Henrich von Ziegler — an oriental romance much read in the eighteenth century.

3a

B, Smuggler, loved Mary W. — was the happiest of the happy whenever he could obtain, which was but seldom, the hand of Mary in the dances on the village green. But Mary was thoughtless & vain — a jilt. James W. the officer of excise was her favoured beau (was this the Wallis, who lived at Lower House, & whom g.f^r knew?)

Smuggler was jealous. One evening he found her sitting on J.’s knee at a little village party to which J. had been invited from strategem, that he might not be on the look out to interrupt the landing, or send for the military stationed in the next town for his service. B. entreated M. to quit the knee of W. & come to him; but she obstinately refused. He then frantically exclaimed “Mary, I cannot live to see you in the arms of another — I will end my existence!” [Shall I end &c.] The unfeeling maid nodded her head & burst into a fit of laughter. He ran to an adjoining stable. No one attempted to follow him, either through fear, or a belief that he intended no violence. Report of a pistol: ran: weltering in blood: expired. Buried by moonlight — no priest — no bell.

The heartless M. went that evening to a merry junketting in a neighbouring village. Played at forfeits, & b.man’s buff, & romped & laughed with the gayest there. On her way home was frightened by something never went abroad alone again.

Life of Pennie.

Hand: ELH and TH.

Text: (was this the Wallis&g.f^r knew?): pencil insertion in TH’s hand.

Source: Pennie, iii, 174–6.

Note: B.: Ben Roberts. Mary W: Mary Wilmot. The village is East Lulworth.

TH’s interpolated insertion almost certainly refers to his paternal grandfather, Thomas Hardy (1778–1837), whose connivance in smuggling activity in the Bockhampton of the early 1800s would have made TH aware of the existence of James Wallis, the excise-man (see ‘Memorandum 1’, in PN, 8–9; Millgate, 1982, 8). See note to item 163a.

4a

Ball from musket passes close to lips of soldier — so close as to take off the skin of from both. ib.

Hand: ELH.

Source: Pennie, iii, 177–8.

Note: soldier: George Ford of East Lulworth, ‘chief of the smuggling sea-gangs along the southern coast’.

4b

Girl who committed suicide — was buried on the hill where two roads meet: but few followed to her unblest grave: no coffin: one girl threw flowers on her. Stake driven through her body. Earth heaped round the stake like an ancient tumulus. ib. (This is like M’s description to me of the similar burial on Hendford Hill, when she was a child).

Hand: ELH.

Source: Pennie, iii, 182–3.

Note: Girl: Jane Gilbert. Hendford Hill: S. of Yeovil, Somerset, mentioned in ‘A Tragedy of Two Ambitions’ (LLI) (CS, 416). M: TH’s mother, Jemima; ELH is writing as for TH here. See also TH’s note in ‘Memoranda, 1’: ‘burial of suicides at cross roads abolished c 1830. (stake driven through it: between 9 & 12.) Times’ (PN, 24); TH’s ‘The Grave by the Handpost’ was based on this custom (Brady, 216). See also items 32f, 57a, 117a.

4c

Birth of a first born child — The running gossip, as she was called, went from house to house to invite the female neighbours to be present — & one stood on the stairs for the purpose of giving notice to another below, who stood tap in hand ready to broach the barrel the moment the child was born. No sooner were the glad tidings announced than the chimney corner blazed from side to side with an immense turf fire — bowl brought forwa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• The Nineteenth Century Series General Editors’ Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Critical Introduction
• Textual Introduction
• The Notebook
• Appendix One: Erasures and Excisions
• Appendix Two: ‘Accidents of Locality’
• Bibliography
• General Index
• Subject Index