[hardy-l] A meeting with Hardy

[Will Stevens]

It may be worth putting the following anecdote about Hardy on the record,
even though it’s sketchy and I can’t completely guarantee its authenticity.
It tends to show Hardy in a light which hasn’t been much emphasised in the
biographies which I’ve read.

My father was a Dorset man, born in 1881. (By the way, he married late in
life, and therefore I’m not as impossibly ancient as your first calculations
might suggest!)  He was a countryman of the old school: in his long life he
was a miller, a soldier, a turkey farmer and a publican. He would read the
newspaper and gardening books, but I never, ever, knew him to read fiction,
and certainly not any Hardy. (To drift into possible sentimentality, various
of Hardy’s characters, such as Gabriel Oak and Giles Winterborne tend to
remind me of him.)

One day, to my total astonishment, he told me that he had actually met
Hardy. (At the time, I was at Oxford, reading for a degree in English, so
you can imagine my reaction.) My father was a reserved person, and didn’t
spontaneously talk much about his life, but this is what he told me.

He said that, at one time (alas, I can’t be sure when it was, but I think it
must have been before the First World War) he got involved in a working
party with some other men to go to Max Gate. The job was either to collect,
or to deliver, a load of timber – I can’t recall which.

They knew, of course, that Hardy lived at Max Gate, and that he was somebody
important. So they were surprised that, as they were doing the job, Hardy
came up to them, and they had an extended gossip about local topics. They
came away thinking what a friendly and agreeable man he was. He seems to
have been the antithesis of the depressive and curmudgeonly character that
he is sometimes portrayed to be. (Incidentally, my father was emphatically
not the kind of person to be flattered by a little condescending attention
from somebody important, so I’m pretty sure that they had an extended chat.)

All I can surmise is that, like many of us, Hardy presented himself in
different ways in different circumstances, and that with people like my
father he could be relaxed and forthcoming. In any case, it really isn’t
possible to imagine him writing the novels he did without spending a lot of
time sitting around listening to people’s conversations – and perhaps
joining in.

I’m sorry that this story is so thin, but I’m trying to resist the
temptation to ‘improve’ it by fictionalising it. Are there any other records
of Hardy’s behaviour in similar circumstances?
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