[Hardy-l] Findon Website

Tue Sep 2 14:22:30 PDT 2008

These speculations are becoming more bizarre by the minute:

1. Yes there has long been speculation, as a result of the absence of children in the marriages,  that TH may have been sterile.  But how could it at this point be "proved" to be true?

2. If it could be proved to be true, what would it "not account for" in his early years? Presumably not having had illegitimate children rather than having had them.  Unless one assumes, as you seem to,

3. That he wouldn't have been sterile in his early years because he hadn't yet had a disease (presumably the implication here is venereal disease). But what does contracting a disease (are we now going back to the impossibly inadequately argued line from the TLS article of a couple of years back that TH had syphilis?) have to do with being sterile?  Sterility may be a possible result of disease but by no means a necessary one: it would be possible to be sterile without having a venereal disease and possible to have a venereal disease without being made sterile by it.  And there is no firm, and not even convincing circumstantial, evidence for any of this. 

Given the proven readiness of journalists out for an eye-catching story to extract unsupported claims about TH from the idle speculation of soi-disant Hardy experts -- as happened with the absurd syphilis brouhaha --    shouldn't TTHA exercise a little caution in trundling out this kind of off-the-cuff free-associating if we want to be taken seriously as the Hardy electronic discussion group of record? 

As for your latest claim that  "The Findon site was  (for me) the  first I had known of Hardy's visits there to see Eliza, aside from Millgate's vague "It is not
impossible that Hardy met Eliza while she was in Kimmeridge..." -- this
following, rather oddly, a reference to her family's retirement to *Findo*
and the sheep fairs,"  I have no idea where all this is coming from.  In TH: A Biography Revisited, Millgate not only spells Findon correctly (what's with this "Findo"??), but has 5 references to it in his index, 15 index entries on Eliza Nicholls, a further 8 on Mary Jane Nicholls, and a further 3 on George Nicholls.  In fact, virtually every piece of information about TH on the web-site (plus much more) is presented in reliable form in both the Millgate biographies, from which the web-site information almost certainly derived.  The original version of the biography -- published 25 years before the 2007 date on the Findon webpage -- also has five index entries on Findon.  Here is some of what Millgate published on the subject 26 years ago::

"Hardy could, and did, visit her in Findon, and during the Whitsun weekend of 1866 he sketched the little village church -- the church 'near the Downs', as it is called in his architectural notebook, where the erased word 'Findon' is still faintly discernible" (A Biography, 94).

"He went to Findon one last time, and had the final interview with Eliza which is recorded in 'Neutral Tones', the poem's overwhelming sense of personal immediacy  deriving from the extraordinary imagist precision with which Hardy recreated its setting -- almost certainly the now dried-up pond surrounded by old lime kilns on the ridge overlooking Tolmore Farm ,just west of Findon" (A Biography, 100).

You will find further elaborations on Findon on pp. 81, 82, 91, 92, 96 of A Biography Revisited.

Nowhere on the web-site is Millgate mentioned, despite the fact that he seems the obvious source for most of its information.  That's unfortunate enough.  But then to have the President of TTHA say that his comments about Hardy, Eliza Nicholls and Findon were only "vague" relative to the website's undocumented claims seemingly paraphrased from his own work seems an even unkinder scholarly fate, at the hands not of the Findon website but of TTHA, which should know better.

Best, Keith

.

Keith Wilson
Professor, Department of English
University of Ottawa
70 Laurier Avenue East
Ottawa, Ontario
CANADA K1N 6N5

e-mail: kgwilson at uottawa.ca
tel: 613-562-5800, Ext. 1160
fax: 613-562-5990

________________________________

From: Rosemarie Morgan [mailto:Rosemarie.morgan at yale.edu]
Sent: Tue 02/09/2008 4:11 PM
To: hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu
Subject: Re: [Hardy-l] Findon Website

Yes---  and that's another story! Although if that one proves to be true it
would still not account for his early years before contracting any disease.

But this speculating is going too far perhaps so I'll desist.

All best,
Rosemarie

At 09:29 AM 9/2/2008, you wrote:
>As neither of Hardy's marriages produced an heir, and as speculation
>about his siring illegitimate children elsewhere is extremely
>dubious,  isn't possible that he was sterile?
>
>Just a Thought,
>Betty
>
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>Hardy-l mailing list
>Hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu
>http://coyote.csusm.edu/mailman/listinfo/hardy-l

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