[Hardy-l] Findon Website

[Keith Wilson]

I apologise to those of you uninterested in this exchange, but the latest misrepresentations of the discussion necessitate a reply (a reply I'd prefer not to have to spend time on).  The reason I am doing so is because my concerns about what has occurred go to the heart of the usefulness of TTHA to the community of Hardy scholars and enthusiasts. However, because of the pressure of other obligations, whatever response this posting elicits, it will have to be my last one on this subject. 

RM wrote: 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
 
KW's response:
Neither you nor I is in a position to know what "everyone else realised,"  but the logical conclusion to draw from your phrasing  ..." -- this following, rather oddly, a reference to her
>family's retirement to *Findo* and the sheep fairs," was that the typo was Millgate's and not yours:  i. e. that it was part of the 'rather odd" phrasing with which you were taking issue.  That was what my comment "what's with this Findo?" referred to, since I had been unsuccessful in finding the typo in Millgate himself, as your unfortunate phrasing suggested we all could. Do be assured, Rosemarie, that if you want to litter your messages with typos, to a degree that causes misunderstanding in your readers, I'm not "worrited" about it -- though I am a little bemused by the archiving of such off-hand ephemera into scholarly permanence, as TTHA solemnly does.  

>"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 Ishould say)

It's not a question of confirming your findings or interests.  It's a question of indicating that your claim that none of this was in Millgate and that on this topic the website was "the most substantial account" was incorrect and gave a false impression of where the real scholarship lay. 

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./

I have no idea what you are talking about here -- I said nothing about "Neutral Tones" being "ineligible": ineligible for what?  All I said about "Neutral Tones" was that I didn't remember
 
"who the eminent scholars are who have read pregnancy into "Neutral Tones," but it's a big jump from that unprovable speculation to phrasing such as your "If he *did* father her child (as well as Tryphena's)," which sounds to me to say he fathered Tryphena's child."
 
So no I haven't changed my mind since I never raised the matter in the terms you suggest in the first place. And I also have no idea why you are troubled by "much suppositional stuff  [unspecified] in Millgate"  when you are prepared not only to indulge in chaotic supposition yourself but seem to admire the Findon website for doing much the same.  Millgate's occasional suppositions/speculations are founded on plausible deductions from evidence provided.  Yours and the Findon website's aren't. 
 
  RM wrote:>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?

The complaint is that you said Millgate had no information about Hardy's visits to Findon, and you suggested that the website was more reliable on this matter.   This was untrue, and a misrepresentation of Millgate's work.  I don't know what you now imagine to be "good" -- the fact that the index and the contents to which it refers disprove your claim?

RM wrote: >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?
 
Of course people can encounter information without reading Millgate, and nothing I said indicated they couldn't.  My point was that most of the information found on the website almost certainly derived from Millgate, as the readily available, published source of information that hadn't been readily available until Millgate published it.  If the website did derive this information from Millgate, the fact should have been acknowledged as a common scholarly courtesy.  If it didn't, for the information to be "the most substantial account" you claim it is, the website would need to provide some provenance/source for its claims.  The only material on TH and Eliza Nicholls that the website contains that isn't in Millgate seems to be contained in the following:
 
"At the end of 2002, a gentleman named Roy Buckle sent me an e-mail with a snippet of scandal.   Skeletons always come out of the cupboard eventually.    It had come to his knowledge that Eliza had a child whilst in the West Country in Penzance and this boy was fostered and Eliza banished to London.   The boy's name was Pulson and he remained in foster care until he was 14 years old and later the young Pulson Nicholls refused to see anything of his mother."

The website doesn't even assert that this putative baby was Hardy's -- it rests content with the superficial innuendo contained in "skeletons always come out of the cupboard."  Unlike the website, Roy Buckle has now kindly provided us with the, anonymous, source of this information: 

"What I said was I was interested in how the relationship between Hardy and Miss Nicholls actually developed in view of the suggestion that she may have borne a child as the result of it.   I also heard from a lady in USA, who seems to have been following the Hardy-l discussions,and said she believed she was related to Hardy through Eliza Nicholls (who she said was known in the family as Polly). I certainly agree that the account referred to is a little fanciful . . . "

Neither you nor I is in any position to assess the reliability of this very partial information, which necessarily limits its status as a "substantial account."  It seems thus far to rest on unsupported rumour, as Roy himself freely attests in his phrasing: "may have borne," "the account referred to is a little fanciful."  But the point is not what is contained in the one piece of unsupported speculation that this "substantial" website provides, but whether, as you claimed, Millgate's comments on Eliza Nicholls were only "vague" and made no mention of Hardy's visitis to Findon. This was an extreme misrepresentation of what is to be found, well documented by research support, in Millgate.      

RM wrote: 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.

I have no idea what you mean by "truth and history fac[ing] each other in the arena," nor am I concerned with what Millgate's "place in history" will be.  I'm simply concerned that when the President of the TTHA takes it upon herself to speak about a Hardy scholar's work in an "arena" in which she exercises some influence by virtue of her position, she gets her facts right and doesn't misrepresent the work of fellow scholars.  All this Forum material is archived (with the implication that it is therefore of some scholarly use), and it will all be available to future generations of Hardy scholars.  Indeed, you choose to select and publish material from the Forum in the Thomas Hardy Review.  In that kind of context, your casual  "Findon Shmindon Blindon" approach -- with its implication that only lesser minds bother with trivial detail, getting things right, and expressing themselves clearly -- risks being a disservice to the Hardy scholarship in which I thought you were wanting TTHA to be a major force. 

Best, Keith
 
 
 
 
 
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