A pair of blue eyes

An early Hardy novel in the handsome 'New Wessex Edition' from Macmillan, a hardback version, perhaps the hardback precursor, of the Penguin Classic edition of 'Two on a Tower' noticed on 15th July. And like this last, also from the library, with the loan sheet inside the front cover endorsed both  'group loan' and 'group housebound', and with many of the date entries involving someone or something called 'artemis'. Perhaps, in the main, an older person's read?

A novel which lifts large chunks from the long courting of Hardy's first wife and which was written shortly before he married her. My recollection is that this novel, while helping to get Hardy established in the literary scene, did not do particularly well, but perhaps it did well enough to set him up in the married state - his wife being from a class which did not boil its own eggs. Nothing much would get done in the household without the paid help, wifey being far too posh to polish. But what did she think about being held up to the gaze of readers of serialised novels in this way? The portrait was not particularly unkind, but I would not care to be exhibited for inspection & discussion in this way, to be pawed over by the great unwashed while they slopped down their beer or cocoa or whatever: perhaps you need a strong streak of exhibitionism married to a strong streak of literary ambition (for one's partner, in this case) to get over one's scruples in such a matter.

A novel in which Hardy could not resist flaunting his hard won education, with cultural, literary and classical allusions scattered throughout. Rather tiresome when taken at this dosage, but luckily something which he grows out of in later novels.

Much gentle humour of the sort also noticed on 22nd July - something that the likes of Waugh and Maughan do not manage; their humour has a much sharper edge to it, spiteful rather than playful. A trait perhaps reflected in Hardy's kindness to budding or aspiring authors in his old age; he was always willing to give them a bit of time and trouble. And worked around the humour, quite a lot of gentle musings on death and quite a lot of them around graves. A consciousness of the fickle, fragile and transient nature of the lives of his times - ironic considering what turned out to be his own considerable longevity, and this despite his pipe.

I also remarked on that day my easiness of belief, a remark exemplified here in that it did not occur to me until I read some of the wrapping that one of the main characters in this book is based on one of the main characters in Hardy's life, a main character whom I had read all about in Tomalin. The correspondence is clear once it has been pointed out, but when first reading the book I was far to wrapped up in the story to think on where this particular character had been lifted from.

Nor was I aware of the constraints imposed by serialisation, which in this case required forty chapters of roughly equal size, each closing in a way to encourage the reader to wait for the next. One might have thought that one would notice this when reading the thing in book form, but I did not.

And I have only just noticed, as I type, that the loves of the tragic heroine, herself with damaged ancestry with her mother having married well beneath herself, had a steady upward trajectory: first village boy, then village boy who goes on to better himself, then learned literary & middle class type (the main character of the previous paragraph but one), then fourth and lastly a lord, a courtly and courteous lord from the same ancestral stock as herself and whom she marries. Only to be carried off in childbed a few months later. Perhaps it is this steady climb which gives the novel, with all its twists and turns, a bit of backbone to steady the reader on his way; it seems unlikely to be a coincidence.

A eureka moment: since writing the foregoing, it has dawned on me that maybe the whole idea is that she gets better at lovemaking, gets more ambitious and aims higher. There are various pointers to this in the text. But I also think that part of the point is that improving her game does not necessarily improve the outcome.

All in all a good novel, if not quite a masterpiece. A much more comfortable read than a lot of modern fiction with all their explicit sex, violence and unsettled mores. In which I might be showing my age; it may well be that Hardy's novels were lambasted in his own day for exactly the same trio. But I assert not: I think that Hardy was a very shrewd observer & recorder of human affairs, affairs which have not changed that much in their essentials in the years since his time and crafts which so many of today's writers neglect. Their interests and skills lie elsewhere.

PS: I close with the observation that Hardy was one of the few famous novelists to survive the cull which followed the arrival of the my Kindle. We still have our Hardy paperbacks while Elliot, Lawrence, Trollope and Tolstoy have largely vanished, vanquished by electrical freebies or near freebies from Gutenburg and Amazon. A mixture of Macmillan, Papermac (a flavour of Macmillan) and Pan paperbacks which survived on a BHular whim.

Cakes and Ale

Following the end of the post of 5th July, I have now gone through ‘Cakes and Ale’ a couple of times – so despite what I am about to say the thing was clearly gripping to that extent.

The Kindle version included a substantial introduction from academe and a substantial preface by the author, the latter written some time after the event and covering, amongst other things, the allegation that he was having a pop at Hardy. Both interesting adjuncts to the text itself.

An easy enough read, but a rather awkward feeling book, with the framing device of have a first person narrator not working very well for me. Maybe writing a novel about writing & promoting novels is not that easy, even though it must be tempting; that is, after all, what a successful author of novels, even short ones, has had time to get to know about. Plus Somerset Maughan struck me as being rather bitchy, in the same sort of way although not as badly, as Evelyn Waugh. Maybe more than a touch of class snobbery towards those, like Hardy (and like himself) who were of modest origins, ambitious and keen to better themselves, this last including ingratiating themselves with people with little merit beyond their titles. He also struck me as being far too interested in the transient and confected nature of most literary fame, leaving the unfortunate impression that this was mainly because he suspected that his own was going to be very transitory. Confected in the sense that writing a good book was not really the point; it was knowing how to puff it that counted, knowing how to be nice to all the right people and how to get one’s face in all the right papers. Longevity was a help too – where Hardy scored big time. I note in passing that we have a recent demonstration of confection from the Potter stable.

And OK, some of it could be read as a bit of a pop at Hardy, a bit tactless perhaps given what was known about his relations with and his poetry about his first wife, not to mention the consequent insecurity and angst of his second wife, but it did not strike me as a big deal, although there were words about the not so nice details of looking after an old man, words which would strike a chord with anyone who has had a spell at it. Furthermore, a lot of novels of the time included pops at recognisable people, Aldous Huxley for example, a contemporary of Maughan who gets a slight mention in this novel, and with spot the model being a popular drawing room sport for the literati of the day. And what is more, I do not find his portrayal of himself, the narrator, as being at all flattering and in one memorable scene he portrays himself as a bit of a prat; a memorable scene which had a real life model which his contemporaries knew all about - so he did take it as well as dish it out. While Hardy was rather different in that a lot of his most memorable confections are taken from himself, his life or his wife: he stuck himself in the pillory, rather than others: very public spirited of him.

Nice tale about the author (the author in the book who can be taken for Hardy, Driffield, not the writer of the book itself or the other, younger, author in the book) doing a bunk in the middle of the night, leaving all his creditors in the lurch. A practise which was called shooting the moon, a natty bit of slang which I have not come across before and which Wikipedia/Google suggest is to do with a card game called 'Hearts' in which shooting the moon is a known gambit. Not a game I have ever heard of.

An interesting read, but I don’t think I shall be venturing further into the Maughan oeuvre.