pdf download - Westerly Magazine

other respects his attitude was more conservative.His novels are set in the period ofhis grandparents' youth; and as Professor Orelpoints out, when he remarks that his youngerreaders may not remember how important toeveryone a good harvest was before the repealof the Corn Laws, we are apt to forget thatthey were repealed when Hardy himself wasa small boy. Hardy confessed to going to greatlengths to check trivial details in his attemptto recreate a past age in the countryside, eventhough he knew it was impossible that anyoneshould detect a mistake. More than the dispassionatecuriosity of an historian. Hardyseems motivated by a desire to honour thememory of a dead group of countrymen, allknown well by him and amongst them someof his immediate forebears. He wished to makesome record of the manner of their lives whichwould otherwise be forgotten. He shows ushow changes have altered village life; for example,when the village quire, which consistedof instrumentalists as well as singers, all "officiallyoccupied with the Sunday routine", isreplaced by one organist, local interest in thechurch declines sharply.Hardy writes of the loss of village customsand traditions in 'The Dorsetshire Labourer'.These losses were a result of the annual removalwhich had become habitual amongstfarm workers. His description of the hiring fairshows Hardy's compassion for the older workersin their insecurity. For younger workersemployment came easily and the annual removalwas something to look forward to.Hardy's description of it is lively and amusing.Since he was never long in one localitythe labourer, according to Hardy, had "a lessintimate and kindly relation with the soil hetilled". Even so. Hardy admitted that theseworkers were freer and more knowledgeablethan the old labourers who had "lived and diedon a particular plot, like a tree', and he agreedthat workers should not remain stagnant toplease romantic spectators.Amongst these essays are several records ofHardy's friendships. Friendships for examplewith George Meredith, Henry Moule, and thepoet William Barnes. This last is perhaps ofgreatest interest since the two writers hadmuch in common. Barnes, too, was trying torecord a dying way of life in a particularlocality, though his locality was narrower thanHardy's, and his poetry was written in a dialectwhich yearly fewer people spoke. Barnes,Hardy wrote, had realised "that human emotionis the primary stuff of poetry" and thecountrymen about whom he wrote, Hardysaid, had a poetic quality in their lives "lessin the peasant's residence among fields andtrees, than in his absolute dependence on themoods of the air, earth and sky". This statementseems to me significant in relation toHardy's own work. The "absolute dependence"perhaps accounts for the strange passivitywhich often marks Hardy's characters.Students of Hardy and indeed students ofthe nineteenth century will be grateful to ProfessorOrel for this useful book. ProfessorOrel's notes are scholarly and informativerather than critical, and in a work of thiskind this is no disadvantage, as the readerwill wish to concentrate upon the text. Thebook is interesting not only for the expressionit gives to Hardy's ideas, but for the impressionof Hardy's personahty which emerges from it.60 WESTERLY, No. 1, AAARCH, 1968