Thomas Hardy

I just found it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🥳🥳🥳 but it wasn't easy...

You were right, it was Betjeman! See p28 of The Kipling Journal, PDF available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/45273347

Betjeman was describing dinner parties at Oxford.

I googled it but didn't have much time and didn't find an answer as to who might have written it or said it about him.

I have reread Jude recently. I previously read it half a century ago. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to read it again but I did. First time I think I sobbed my heart out.
It is worth reading reading good novels when you are at different stages in your life. You see thing’s differently. Hardy’s poor wife, Emma, tried to stop Jude the Obscure from being published.
I have read quite a lot (but not all) of Hardy.
I think my favourites are Under the Greenwood Tree and the Mayor of Casterbridge.

Ahh this is a lovely thread to have stumbled across. Watched the short documentary on iPlayer about Hardy the other week - old one rebroadcast yonks ago now but only just got round to watching - and it reminded me how much I admire his work. It so ignited my enjoyment I took Jude the Obscure off my shelf to reread and even visited Max Gate the other week as part of a holiday down there. Very interesting.

We did some of his poetry and the Mayor of Casterbridge for A level and never will I forget the definition of hubris as it completely stumped me - “To what extent does Michael Henchard’s hubris contribute to his downfall?” Discuss! 😂

You've sent me down a rabbithole of internet searches! Betjeman, Larkin, others... still can't trace it anywhere. You sure you didn't write it yourself?! 🤣

I found a book of Hardy's poems with the date 11.5.88 on it so I suppose that's when I bought it.
On the inside cover I've written

'There first heard Thomas Hardy's poetry,
Master of metre, local as his lanes,
The one expressive village fatalist.'

Did Betjman write that about him? I do wish I'd made better notes. 🙁

Great storyteller. If you read him, note a couple of things that you find again and again in his novels. First, the way individual tragedy is dwarfed/trivialised by the landscape. D H Lawrence admired this in Hardy. Hardy’s characters move through ancient landscapes (think of Tess waking up at Stonehenge, or the ancient heath in Return of the Native). He has a strong sense of history, of deep time, of how trivial and ephemeral human life really is.

Second, note how helpless many of his characters are. They have very little control over the horrible things that happen to them. Tess is a helpless victim of human evil, but also of sheer bad luck. It’s the same in all the novels. Things happen to people, but it’s out of their control. Hardy was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer, and you see it everywhere. Schopenhauer believed that life was drive by a cosmic will that was blind and merciless. And Hardy’s characters are the victims of that will. You never get the sort of happy ending you find in Dickens. For Hardy, human life is a tragedy, full stop.

That's OK then.

I don't know whether I should admit to this but the only poem that readily comes to mind if you say the words 'Thomas Hardy', is the one about the ruined maid, but I do myself a disservice there because I have read 'The Oxen' lots of times, and

Christmas: 1924
"Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.

and others.

Oh definitely not. They would just sit on the shelf together like twins.

But don't throw it away. You can't.

I studied FFTMC at uni and fell in love with it then. I need to get a new copy as my uni one is full of so much highlighter and little notes that it’s impossible to read it just for fun now. 🙈

I love TH. His short story, The Withered Arm, is wonderful.

Jude the Obscure is my favourite. I like a bit of tragedy.

We read a couple at school and I can't say I was too keen but I quite liked The Woodlanders and The Return of the Native when I listened to them recently. I think they were both in the free members library on Audible. He isn't really my cup of tea, too melodramatic and depressing, but the language is interesting and the outdoorsy settings remind me of many wonderful childhood holidays down in Wessex.

Love TH, did hi. For O level, and then read everything he wrote. Don't think I could stomach Jude again though. And I got so cross with Angel Clare.
and I love his poetry - the ruined maid cracks me up, but the Darkling thrush and the Christmas Eve animals brings me to tears.
he was a bit of a pig to his wife though.

Don't neglect the poetry either:

https://www.simple-poetry.com/poems/in-a-wood-95789063581

To be fair, it WAS that good.

So good I posted it twice

Love it! Oh gosh, the number of times I have gone to bed with that resolution, and failed to carry it out 🤡

Big Hardy fan in my youth and 20s. Not read them since.

"I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all"

"I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all"

I'll never forget reading Giles Winterborne in The Woodlanders, saying of his wife "“I shouldn't object to her going away from me if she would be happier by doing so.”

My mind was truly boggled and it was one of the first clues that I was trapped in an abusive marriage.

I loved Hardy when I was a teen - I don't think I've read one since! My favourite was always Two on a Tower, but I'm pretty fond of Far From the Madding Crowd as well.

I would need to be in the right mood for Jude or Tess.

This thread has reminded me I've been meaning to read the Claire Tomalin Hardy biography.