Born in Higher Bockhampton on the 2nd of June 1840, Thomas Hardy died at Max Gate, his house on the outskirts of Dorchester, on the 11th January 1928.
Thomas Hardy once commented to a friend that he would never have written a line of prose if he could have earned his living as a poet, yet it is as the author of some of the greatest novels ever written in the English language that he is best remembered. People who have never read his works have at least heard of "The Mayor of Casterbridge", "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" and "Jude the Obscure". These stories of the tragedy of human destiny were set in the wide and varying landscapes of the counties which were once part of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex, at the heart of which lies the county of his birth, Dorset.
Hardy wrote from his personal knowledge and experience. His characters were drawn from people, real and remembered, and his settings were in locations known to him. He could, and did, move buildings and places from their precise geographic position to suit the requirements of his plot. He changed the names, not to confuse, but to indicate that though the places he described in magnificent imagery were real, the events were fiction.
Some of his disguised place names can easily be unravelled:
'Casterbridge' is Dorchester which was a Roman town, Durnovaria, situated at a point where a bridge crossed the River Frome. In his writing the lower end of the town leads to 'Durnover Moor'.
Bere Regis is another place with major Hardy connections, specially in "Tess of the d'Urbervilles " in which the setting of the church is an important feature. "Regis" is Latin for "of the king" and Hardy calls the village 'Kings Bere'. In fact, it was known as Kyngesbyre in 1264. The Turbervilles were once Lords of the Manor; their tombs and a fine window with armorial glass can be seen in the church.
Shaftesbury is called 'Shaston'. The real name is probably derived from the fortified place or "burh" belonging to a Saxon called "Sceaft". In medieval times the place was often called "Shafton" which later was pronounced, and still is locally, "Shaston" possibly because someone misread the "f" as an old form of "s" in documents.
From the 1890's people came to Dorset to see the landscapes which had formed the breathing backgrounds to his writings. He himself collaborated with a young man, Hermann Lea, to produce the definitive guide to "Thomas Hardy's Wessex" first published in 1913 and reprinted as "Highways and Byways in Hardy's Wessex" in 1925, 1969 and 1978.
Many of his settings cluster round his birthplace. He was born in an attractive thatched cottage in the hamlet of Higher Bockhampton within the parish of Stinsford, an area he named 'Mellstock' in his writings. It formed the main stage for his first popularly acclaimed novel "Under the Greenwood Tree", which incidentally was published anonymously in 1872. The previous year his first published novel, "Desperate Remedies " appeared which he had to partly fund.
As a child he had been frail, not starting school until he was eight years old. His family was reasonably prosperous but of humble background. His father was a master mason/builder, inheriting the business from his father and able to indulge his chief passion in life which was music. He was leader of the Stinsford 'quire', instrumentalists who provided music for church services. Jemima, his mother, had been a domestic servant but was widely read and very ambitious for her first born son. Thomas's brother, Henry, carried on the family business and his two sisters, Mary and Kate, trained as schoolteachers.
His mother introduced him to the countryside and filled him with her love of books. He could read before he started school. In the evenings, the family would often sit around the fire to listen to stories of the old ways told by his grandmother, Mary. He stored all these in his mind.
After one year at the village school, also featured in 'Under the Greenwood Tree", Thomas was transferred to a school in Dorchester which taught a wider range of subjects. At sixteen, he was apprenticed to an architect, John Hicks, in South Street, Dorchester. When able he would rise early to study, then walk to his place of work and at the end of the day return home possibly to collect his fiddle and join his father and other instrumentalists at some country celebration. He retained his inherited love of country and church music all his life and often quotes them in his writings.
For a time he worked in London for Arthur Blomfield, but whilst enjoying the wider social activities of the capital, his health deteriorated and he returned to his home five years later. During this time he started writing and submitted many poems but all were rejected. However, one humorous article, written for the entertainment of his friends and entitled "How I built myself a house", was published in Chambers Journal in 1865.
In 1870 he met Emma Lavinia Gifford, sister-in-law of the vicar of St. Juliot in Cornwall to whom he had been sent to plan a church restoration. Despite her higher social position, they fell in love and married four years later. She encouraged his writing as did other friends, especially Horace Moule, son of the Vicar of Fordington in Dorchester.
Following the success of "Under the Greenwood Tree", Hardy was commissioned to write a novel to be serialised for Tinsley's Magazine. This was "A Pair of Blue Eyes" set in Cornwall and echoing, in parts, his courtship of Emma.
Good reviews led him to begin another novel which he set in Puddletown, not far from his birthplace and well known to him as many cousins lived there. Puddletown was renamed 'Weatherbury' and the novel was "Far from the Madding Crowd". His success meant he could now concentrate on his writing but keen readers can often spot evidence of the architect's eye in his descriptions.
For a while he and his wife rented accommodation in London, Yeovil, Sturminster Newton and Wimborne. The two years spent at Sturminster Newton, 'Stourcastle', he described as idyllic. Whilst living there he wrote "Return of the Native" which is staged on Egdon Heath, " whose lowering, titanic presence dominates the men and women who live on it." Egdon was a name he conjured up to describe all the heath lands which stretched from Bockhampton eastwards to Poole Harbour. It is one of his most atmospheric pieces of writing.
In 1883, the Hardys moved to Dorchester where they rented accommodation near Top o'Town whilst Thomas supervised the building of the home he designed, Max Gate. This period was one of great creativity with the publication of "The Mayor Casterbridge" in 1886, "The Woodlanders" in 1887, incidentally his favourite, and his collection of short stories, "Wessex Tales" in 1888. He and his wife continued to visit London regularly, where he was regarded as a figure of literary stature, but always he returned happily to his home in Dorset.
"Tess of the d'Urbervilles", published in 1891, is possibly his greatest novel and the landscapes of the 'Vale of Little Dairies' (Blackmore) and the 'Vale of Great Dairies' (River Frome) together with the wintry 'Flintcomb Ash' on the chalk downs echo the moods as the tragic story unfolds. His chosen subtitle "A Tale of a Pure Woman" caused raised eyebrows in Victorian England, but nothing like the furore caused by the publication of "Jude the Obscure" in 1896.
His marriage was becoming strained after the publication of Jude the Obscure and Emma was outraged at what she took to be his attack upon the sanctity of marriage and feared that people would consider it autobiographical. The Bishop of Wakefield is supposed to have burned his copy whilst others read it in brown paper covers! Hardy was amazed at the reaction it caused and decided to write no more prose.
Poetry now became his life. "Wessex Poems" was published in 1898 with his own drawing of the urns on the gateposts at the entrance to Stinsford Churchyard as the cover. Other collections followed and in 1910 Hardy was awarded the Order of Merit. In the same year he was made a Freeman of the Borough of Dorchester. In his acceptance speech he confessed that he had been making 'free' with the town for some time.
Unexpectedly in November 1912 Emma died and he was stricken with remorse that he had not tried harder to understand her. There followed some of his most beautiful poetry in memory of the love they had once shared.
He was now a great man of English Literature. People came from far and near to meet him. Honours were showered on him: Honorary Doctorates of Literature were conferred by the Universities of Cambridge in 1913 and Oxford seven years later. He remarried in 1914 to Florence Dugdale who had been his secretary since 1912.
When he died, Thomas Hardy's ashes were placed in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey and at the same moment, his heart was laid to rest in the grave of his first wife in Stinsford Churchyard. In old age he had been regarded by some as mean and melancholic but by others as warm and witty. This could be said of many of his novels for even in the most tragic, there are scenes of warmth and humour usually provided by his country characters in their natural element, his beloved homeland of Wessex.