[Hardy-l] Findon Website

[Betty Cortus]

Here are the comments Michael Millgate  made back in 2002 regarding   
the Findon Website: Betty

I checked out the Hardy segment of the Findon website and it is  
indeed the
case that the few known details of the TH/Eliza relationship are wildly
elaborated and stretched out to cover a much greater period of time  
(e.g.,
there's absolutely no evidence for the many "countryside walks", let  
alone
for the asserted childhood "friendship" begun before TH was nine or  
Eliza
eight).  And TH seems at one point to have acquired a third wife
("worsening relationships with his second wife" from 1892-4 onwards)  
and to
have entered his "later years" in the 1890s (which was when he began
cycling).  But Valerie Martin does add a few interesting details about
Eliza's family and about Findon itself, though these seem too often  
to be
essentially gossip- and speculation-based (e.g., a check of Eliza's  
birth
certificate would immediately have shown that her death was not  
caused by
the Spanish flu).

All in all, therefore, I've resolved to be grateful for such details  
(and
for the photos and maps) and not trouble too much about the essentially
innocent misrepresentation of my long-ago research!  Curiously, Ms  
Martin
seems to have missed the reproduction of TH's drawing of Findon church
following p. 144 of my biography (not present, however, in the Clarendon
paperback issue).

-- Professor Michael Millgate   
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