[Hardy-l] Findon Website

[Rosemarie Morgan]

I'm sorry to say , folks, that I've gotten myself into a quagmire -- as 
recorded here below - Do skip this if you wish:
Rosemarie M

ON FINDON WEBSITE:

_______
RM: I agree, Keith-- the (speculations) are bizarre  - but then they always 
are.   How can any speculation as to TH's sperm count or whatever be 
anything but suppositional.   I am more interested in his courtship than in 
his sperm-count, frankly._______________________________

>Keith: These speculations are becoming more bizarre by the minute:

RM " Agreed.

>Keith: 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).

RM: There is some speculation that his illness during the Ethelberta 
episode was venereal/syphilitic
I know nothing of this and can't even remember where I read it- But it 
seems that he *thought* he would die of it. at that time and anyway 
dictated his novel to Emma

>Keith: 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?

RM: Sterility is frequently the result of syphilis. That's not a 
speculation. It is a fact.
But I'm not sure why we are even pursuing this speculation since it  has 
come to nothing, thus far and there is no new evidence.. ???

>Keith: 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.


RM: I think the idea was, if I recall, that TH:s associations with 
prostitutes  MAY HAVE infected him  Genetically speaking he came from a 
highly fertile family so chances are he too was fertile.
>
>Keith: 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?

RM: I agree. Why are we talking about this then?

>
>Keith: 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

RM : Yes-- in my last  and in haste I left off the N -- No matter - I'm 
sure *most* readers knew what I meant

>Keith = (what's with this "Findo"??),

RM: Hey Boyo !! Don't *worrit* about it -- everyone else realised I'd 
accidentally lopped off the 'N"
IT happens -- you know  Dear Keith  --  do get a LIFE! It was a 
typo    Findon Shmindon Blindon

Keith:   ex 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).

RM -- This is good news and yes it's exactly what the Findon website 
records.  Sure. It then confirms my findings (or "interests" I suppose I 
should say)

>Keith--"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).

RM -- I don't know about "last time" (no evidence) I wonder why and how 
Millgate verifies the "one last time" ?   How on earth would he know?  Does 
this poem "Neutral Tones' verify this?  Hardly. But yes-- I did mention 
"Neutral Tones'  to you but you found it inelegible in this context for 
some reason. Changed your mind?  NT ?    hmmm  I wonder why Millgate sees 
"Neutral Tones" as the One Last Time of their meeting  when he doesn't even 
have date/ Dates of composition and of their last meeting when she told him 
the dire news?  What of scholars such as yourself  who don't regard the 
poem  as relevant  (as you said in your last email)     This kind of 
supposition I find most unconvincing as I do much suppositional stuff in 
Millgate./


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


RM  So this is good  What is the complaint then?


>Keith: Nowhere on the web-site is Millgate mentioned,


RM Is THIS your complaint then?   Folks can, you know, encounter 
information without reading Millgate -- perhaps?

>Keith: despite the fact that he seems the obvious source for most of its 
>information.


RM:  Perhaps not to everyone  There is still much Dorset folklore abounding 
among folk who have never even heard of Millgate

   Keith : 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.

RM: I'm sure I should know better.  That is my fate.  But as to Millgate's 
comments on many things I'm not always convinced as to their veracity 
although of course I applaud his scholarship.   The day will come., of that 
I am assured, when Millgate will take his highly respected place in 
history. But history is yet another form of fiction and there will be 
much., much more to say on the subject. when truth and history face each 
other in the arena

Bests
Rosemarie
Please  excuse typos- I write fast and furiously and don't ever check my 
spelling or grammar