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W E S S E X PO EM S
TH E POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY
GENERAL EDITORS: ALAN SHELSTON & TREVOR JOHNSON

WESSEX POEMS
AN D

OTHER VERSES

BY

THOMAS HARDY

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
T R E V O R JO H N SO N

Edinburgh University Press

© the respective contributors, 1995

First published in 1995 by

Rybum Publishing

Transferred to digital print 2013

This edition published by

Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF
www.euppublishing. com

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CRO 4YY

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85331 056 0 (hardback)

The right of the respective contributors to be identified as

authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
 CONTENTS

General Editors’ Preface (7)

Acknowledgements (9)

Introduction (11)

Hardys Illustrations for Wessex Poems (45)

Bibliography (51)

Wessex Poems and Other Verses (59)

Preface vii

Contents ix

Index of Tides and First Lines 229

 GENERAL EDITORS5 PREFACE

According to Hardy’s own account, at the end o f the

last century he took the decision ‘to abandon at once
a form o f literary art he had long intended to abandon
at some indefinite time, and resume openly that form o f
it which had always been more instinctive with him’ .
In brief, he gave up the writing o f fiction, and returned
to the writing o f verse. Between 18 71 and 1897 he had
published fourteen novels, together with three volumes
o f stories; between 1898 and 1928 he was to publish -
in addition to his epic poetic drama, The Dynasts, and
independently o f the Selected Poems o f 19 16 and the
Collected Poems o f 19 19 - eight separate volumes o f verse.
O f the first o f these, Wessex Poems, only five hundred
were printed; the last o f them, Winter Words, published
posthumously, had a print run o f 5,000 copies, so firmly
had Hardy established himself in his chosen literary form.
It is now unusual for readers o f Hardy’s poetry to
confront it in its original individual volume form.
Hardys current readers tend to come to the poems
either via selections, or through the medium o f the
various ‘collected’ or ‘complete’ editions. The latter do
indeed publish the poems in their original volume
sequence, but the overall effect o f presenting the reader
with nearly one thousand poems in such an edition
is inevitably overpowering.

(7)
(8) WESSEX POEMS

Each o f Hardy’s original volumes has its own

characteristic integrity. It is the intention o f the Ryburn
edition to reproduce them in a form as close to the
originals as can be achieved. In particular the text o f
each volume will be reproduced exactly. Readers will
thus be able to read the poems as Hardy first gathered
them and as his publishers first produced them, spaciously
laid out and boldly and elegantly printed. Such an
approach not only allows the opportunity o f seeing the
poems on the page as their first readers saw them, it
imposes at once a more coherent and a more measured
perusal, inviting consideration o f the inter-connectedness
o f the poems as they were originally grouped together.
Each volume will carry an introductory essay by a Hardy
scholar which will examine the contexts, biographical
and historical, o f its origins, and offer an independent
critical assessment o f the poetry it contains. It will
contain a substantial bibliography and, for ease o f refer­
ence, a single unified index o f titles and first lines. We
hope thus to present, both to the scholar and to the
general reader, the work o f one o f the greatest poets o f
this century in a format that will do justice to his genius.

HATJ
AJS
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The text for this volume has been newly set from a copy
o f the first edition o f Wessex Poems held by the library o f
Keele University. The editors and publisher are also
grateful to the trustees o f the Thomas Hardy estate for
permission to reproduce Hardys original illustrations;
the Department o f Fine Art, Birmingham Museums
and Art Gallery, for providing photographic prints o f
the illustrations; and Mrs Jo Francis, librarian o f the
Portico Library, Manchester.

EDITOR’ S d e d i c a t i o n
For my friend and fellow-Hardeian
Philip Morgan

(9)
 INTRODUCTION

B y 1898 Thomas Hardy, at the age o f 58, had been

acclaimed more than once as the greatest living English
novelist. Though by no means everyone shared that
view, the acrimonious chorus which greeted the
appearance first o f Tess of the d’ Urbervilles in 1891 and
then Jude the Obscure in 1895 had, if anything, added
to his renown. It certainly added to his sales: a cheap
paperback o f Tess sold 100,000 copies in a year.
Accordingly, when the well-known Edinburgh printers
Ballantynes received the print order for Hardys new
book from his current publishers, Harper Brothers, they
must, one feels, have been astounded to find it was for
a mere 500 copies, at least until they took in the full
implications o f its title: Wessex Poems and Other Verses.
This flirtation with verse seemed - and to all appear­
ances was - an entirely new departure for Hardy. And
if his publishers regarded their most famous authors
reincarnation as a poet with something less than
abounding confidence, he was scarcely more sanguine
himself. For he actually offered to defray the costs
o f publication out o f his own by now quite well-
lined pocket; an offer which Harpers, to their credit,
promptly declined. Yet even the title - compared
with those that followed it - exudes a faint aroma o f
diffidence, suggesting, like that o f his earlier short

(11)
(12) WESSEX POEMS

story collection Wessex Tales, a minor off-shoot o f that

great series o f ‘novels o f character and environment’
which had already been collected as ‘The Wessex
Novels’ .
Harpers may have had a few other qualms too. For
Hardy not only contrived to have 3 1 o f his own boldly
emblematic drawings included, but also seems to have
secured a remarkably generous, not to say lavish, page
layout; 51 poems, half o f them sonnets or quite brief
lyrics, occupy no less than 227 pages o f a sizeable
octavo. Thus Harpers’ understandable caution has made
a first edition o f Wessex Poems a scarce book nowa­
days; a fine copy would probably cost over £5 0 0 . A few
de luxe copies were bound up in white buckram and
Harpers also issued an American edition in 1899 which,
apart from a gilt design from one o f the illustrations
on its front cover, is virtually identical to the English
edition. Although — unsurprisingly — it was excep­
tionally widely reviewed, no reprint was called for until
1903. When, in 19 12 , Wessex Poems was incorporated
into Macmillan’s new ‘Wessex Edition’ o f all Hardy’s
works, the illustrations were dropped and the text
bound up with Poems of the Past and the Present o f 1902.
Over the next thirty years up to his death in 1928,
the growth o f Hardy’s career as a poet made slow but
steady progress. But in 1898 he was almost alone in
knowing it had begun, albeit abortively, thirty years
earlier. As a young architect working in London during
the 1860s, he was already passionately committed to
poetry. During the years 1866-1867 he tells us: ‘ [I] did
not read a word o f prose, except for newspapers and
periodicals’ (Life p. 5 1 1). Many o f his surviving and
 INTRODUCTION (13)

liberally annotated books bear witness to this ‘born

bookworm ’s’ predilection. He was not content merely
to read verse. Sitting up late into the night in his back
bedroom at 16 Westbourne Park Villas in Bayswater, he
wrote, by lamplight - a lifelong custom - a substantial
number o f poems (most o f which in subsequent editions
he subscribed ‘W P V ’ in addition to the date). B y 1866
he was submitting these for publication, piecemeal it
appears, but ‘periodical editors’, who, he later grumbled,
‘did not know good poetry from bad’ , were uniformly
unimpressed (Life p. 51). As far as is known, not a line
saw print at the time. He ‘scarcely ever [sent] out a M S
twice’ (Life p. 49). With hindsight he came to see these
rejections as beneficial in some respects, though he also
felt they had prompted him to destroy too much o f his
early output.
In the summer o f 1867 ill-health and an increasing
‘distaste for life as a science o f climbing’ (Life p. 54) took
him back to resume life and architectural work in his
native county. Once in Dorset, the less exigent demands
o f his new employer, Crickmay, left him with enough
free time to embark on his first, and never-to-be-
published novel, The Poor Man and the Lady. A few
poems do survive —though none are in Wessex Poems —
from his sojourn in Weymouth during the autumn o f
1869. But Wessex Poems does contain, in ‘Ditty’, the
only surviving love lyric from Hardy’s courtship o f
Emma Lavinia Gifford, written in 1870, the year they
met. Their Cornish romance was the catalyst o f Hardy’s
most overtly poetic novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, o f 1873.
This book, as I have tried to show elsewhere,2 contains
several passages which come very close to, and at times
(14) WESSEX POEMS

stray right into, regular verse. It earned him critical

acclaim, including a warmly congratulatory letter from
the poet Coventry Patmore, who, however, perceptively
‘regretted at almost every page... that such unequalled
beauty and power should not have assured themselves
the immortality which would have been impressed
upon them by the form o f verse’ (Life pp. 107-8). Hardy
never forgot Patmore’s remarks.
The poet manque may have smiled a trifle wryly
at Patmore’s prescience, but the success o f Far from
the Madding Crowd in 1874 was a financial watershed.
Its monetary rewards enabled him to marry Emma;
its wide popularity made his work sought after by
editors. Consequently, as he later said, he had time for
‘few or no poems [during] the middle period o f novel
writing’ (Life p. 310). Yet his use o f the term ‘middle
period’ is significant, since at least four poems - three in
Wessex Poems - can be ascribed to 1890, and thereafter,
though he only dated his verse spasmodically, the num­
ber grew steadily.
N or had he ever entirely abandoned his first love. As
early as 1875 he had published the lively, faintly bawdy
dialect narrative ‘The Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s’ in The
Gentleman's Magazine for November. Though written
as early as 1866, he very heavily revised it for republi­
cation. Also in 1875 he envisaged a ballad sequence
on Napoleonic themes, ‘forming altogether, an Iliad o f
Europe from 17 8 9 - 18 15 ’ (Life p. n o ). There are five
such narratives in Wessex Poems (pp. 4 5 -10 1) and they
are preceded by ‘The Sergeant’s Song’, a shorter version
o f which is sung by Sergeant Stanner in The Trumpet
Major, Chapter 5, while in Chapter 4 Corporal Tullidge
 INTRODUCTION (15)

gives a brief account o f the tale that he tells at more

length here in ‘Valenciennes’ . We know that during
1878—9 Hardy engaged in extensive research, both
locally and in the British Museum, into the Napoleonic
wars as they affected Dorset especially. It seems highly
probable that all these narratives - and probably ‘The
Dance at the Phoenix’, which Hardy told Gosse was
‘quite early’ - were written or at least drafted alongside
The Trumpet Major, first fruits o f that fascination with
Napoleonic history which culminated in his magnum
opus, The Dynasts (1904-8). The dates he assigned,
between 1793 and 18 13, would certainly fit such a
‘ballad sequence’ theory, but we must exclude ‘The
Peasant’s Confession’, which he noted as a by-product
o f his research for The Dynasts during 1898. The
cryptically macabre ‘Stranger’s Song’ - sung by an
incognito hangman - comes from his black comedy,
‘The Three Strangers’ , o f 1883 (collected in Wessex
Tales, 1888). The verse epigraph that concludes The
Woodlanders (1887) was not published separately, but
‘In a Wood’ is subscribed ‘See “ The Woodlanders” ’
and clearly derives from the striking passage about
the ‘Unfulfilled Intention’ in Chapter 7 o f that novel,
as also, in my opinion, does ‘The Ivy-W ife’ . It is a
reasonable assumption that both poems were written
circa 1886-7. Finally, ‘Lines’ was composed for his
friend and literary protegee, Lady Jeune, to be spoken at
a charity concert in aid o f her Holiday Fund for City
Children in 1890.
To summarize then, Wessex Poems contains at least 20
poems - and most probably 22 - written or drafted
between 1865 and 1870; a further eight from between
(NS) WESSEX POEMS

1871 and 1889; and a final group o f 2 1-2 3 post-1890

poems. Evidently, we need to take Hardy’s assertion that
he virtually ceased to write poetry between 1870 and
the early 1890s with at least a pinch o f salt, particularly
as that superb lyric ‘He Abjures Love’ , which did not
appear until 1909, is firmly dated 1883. This suggests
that there is a good deal more than a tinge o f post hoc
rationalization in his much later claim that it was the
critical savaging o f Tess and Jude - something he tended
to overstate anyway - which ‘well-nigh compelled him to
abandon [prose] for that form o f ... literary art which had
always been more instinctive with him, and which he
had just been able to keep alive from his early years, half
in secrecy’ (Life p. 309). In fact, though this statement
is broadly correct, he had - as, indeed, he admits
elsewhere — been writing and revising the contents o f
Wessex Poems prior to the publication o f his final three
novels. But it was in total rather than partial ‘secrecy’
that he set about the task, as will be seen.2
Hardy’s reticence, together with the fact that his
correspondence with Harpers on the subject does not
seem to have survived, means that we have to wait until
30 August 1898 for his first, cryptic, hint o f his inten­
tions.3 He told his close friend Mrs Arthur Henniker
about ‘a mysterious occupation I have been amusing
myself with lately’ (Letters II p. 199). Three weeks later
this ‘mysterious’ pursuit is revealed to her as ‘the illus­
tration o f some verses o f mine which I think now o f
publishing... [I] decided a few days ago - to send them
up to the publishers. You may have heard me speak o f
the verses. Some o f them have been lying about for
many, many years - with no thought on my part o f
 INTRODUCTION (17)

publishing them’ (Letters II p. 201). This was, to say the

least, a trifle disingenuous, because, less than a month
later, on 17 October, he tells her: ‘I am in the middle o f
[proof-reading] these “ Wessex Poems” ’ (a title that he
had thought o f on 4 February 1897, incidentally). He
adds, somewhat defensively: ‘I mentioned them to
nobody except here [i.e. to his family] before I did to
you’ (Letters II p. 203). Even allowing for the astonishing
speed with which publishers and printers then worked,
it is very hard to credit that the process o f submission,
acceptance o f the manuscript, discussion o f layout -and
illustrations etc., typesetting, and production o f galley
proofs could possibly have been done so rapidly. Some
hint o f what he was doing seems to have escaped by this
time - or, perhaps, had been ‘leaked’ by Harpers to the
literary press - because on 31 October he is warning his
friend Edward Clodd: ‘don’t expect too much from [the
poems]’ (Letters II p. 204), a warning which he repeated
to Mrs Henniker on 13 November and to William
Archer - who later reviewed the book - on 24
November (Letters II pp. 205-6).
We should not be too surprised if all this seems
needlessly defensive in tone. Hardy was notably thin-
skinned about his work, albeit not entirely without
cause. He had just been wounded by a particularly
malicious review o f Tess when he wrote in his Journal
for 15 April 1892: ‘If this sort o f thing continues no
more novel-writing for me. A man must be a fool to
deliberately stand up to be shot at.’ On the same page
he records the jealous carping o f his ‘good-natured
friends’ , Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson, at
the immense success o f Tess (Life p. 259).
(i 8) WESSEX POEMS

I think it is fair to conclude that the nervously

jocular, deprecatory tone o f his correspondence masks a
deep-seated anxiety about his new venture. His poetry
- which in the General Preface to the 19 12 Wessex
Edition he was to claim as ‘the more individual part o f
my literary fruitage... more concise and quintessential
... than... prose’ - mattered far more to Hardy than he
was ready to admit. ‘When once a man has made
celebrity necessary to his happiness’, D r Samuel Johnson
observed drily,4 ‘he has put it in the power o f the
weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take
away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it.’ Certainly,
to a writer as celebrated as Hardy, the impending
publication o f his poetry must have seemed a ballon
d'essai peculiarly vulnerable to critical puncturing.
However, he put a brave enough face on matters to
sign numerous copies as Christmas gifts to his friends.
To the closest o f them, Edmund Gosse, he inscribed a
copy in the manner o f the Dorset dialect poet William
Barnes, whom they both admired: ‘Vrom his wold
acquaintance, Thomas Hardy’ . Gosses reply expressed
thanks and discriminating praise, to which Hardy
responded with the only sustained comments he made
about Wessex Poems at the time:

Well, the poems were lying about, and I did not

quite know what to do with them. Considering that
the Britisher resents a change o f utterance, instru­
ment, even o f note, I do not expect a particularly
gracious reception o f them. It is difficult to let
people who think I have made a fresh start know that
to indulge in rhymes was my original weakness, and
 NTRODUCTION (19)

the prose only an afterthought. Besides, in the full

tide o f a fashion which seems to view poetry as the
art o f saying nothing with mellifluous preciosity, the
principle o f regarding form as second to content is
not likely to be popular (Letters II p. 207).

Hardy’s tart reference to ‘mellifluous preciosity’ reminds

us that his proposed elevation o f ‘content’ above ‘form’
ran clean counter to the prevailing temper o f the period
- that o f The Yellow Book and the so-called ‘decadence’
o f the 1890s, with its emphasis on ‘Art for A rt’s sake’ .
For poetry as escapism, he had no time at all.
However, in the event, his unease about the recep­
tion o f his verse was only partly justified. Indeed, nearly
thirty years later he was to concede that his poems were
reviewed ‘mostly in a friendly to n e...w ith praise for
many pieces’ (Life p. 319). Naturally, there were some
dissentients; The Saturday Review in particular was
hardly ‘friendly’ :

It is impossible to understand why the bulk o f this

volume was published at all - why Hardy himself did
not burn the verse... lest it should mar his fame
when dead. [Some ballads are] the most amazing
balderdash that ever found its way into a book o f
verse. ... Such verses as ‘Friends Beyond’, ‘Thoughts
o f Ph-a’ and ‘In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury’
... have... real feeling... were the form equal to the
matter they would be poetry [my italics].

So, in this instance Hardy’s gloomy prediction

proved uncannily accurate, though the review does
(20) WESSEX POEMS

concede that ‘I Look into M y Glass’ is ‘a veritable

poem’ - the only one, apparently! Hardy’s fear that his
‘change o f utterance’ would not find favour was also
justified. The Academy's reviewer spent the first half o f
his critique contending that ‘It is a dubious experiment
for a proseman to sit in the Siege Perilous o f poetry
[as]... Mr. Hardy has done. [He] has not had time to
master the mere technique o f verse.’ Nevertheless,
Hardy would have been gratified to find that unlike
‘many versifiers... Mr. Hardy has something to say [and
in] “ Neutral Tones” the truth o f feeling carries the
reader over the lack o f metrical finish.’
Though not wholly without reservations, E K
Chambers wrote the best and the most generous o f the
reviews for The Athenaeum. While he dismisses most o f
the early pieces as ‘trifling... with needlessly inflated
diction’ (not unfair comment on some o f them), he
warmly commends Hardy’s ‘saturnine humour’ . Unlike
most o f his peers, he is in sympathy with Hardy’s
‘matured and deliberate judgement o f life [as the] tragic
outcome o f freakish destinies’ ; praises his ‘sombre irony
and mournful music’; asserts that ‘the note struck is
strenuous, austere, forcible’; and even defends Hardy’s
diction for its ‘vigorous and unworn provincialisms’ .
M uch o f what he says is eminently just and perceptive;
it is a pity that we have no knowledge o f Hardy’s
reaction. One hopes he was pleased that someone had
discerned what he was trying to do.
Another generally commendatory piece came from
W M Archer in The Daily Chronicle, though he does jib
at Hardy’s propensity for ‘seeing all the words o f the
dictionary on one plane,.. regarding them all as equally
 INTRODUCTION (21 )

available and appropriate for any and every literary

purpose’ . Hardy took this in good part, even calling it a
‘happy phrase’ in a letter thanking Archer for his
‘generous criticism’ . Finally, Lionel Johnson and Annie
Macdonell, who had written the first two critical books
on Hardy as early as 1894, both thought highly o f
Wessex Poems. Annie Macdonell had presciently stressed
the highly ‘poetic’ nature o f Hardy’s prose in her book,
but the final word may be left with Lionel Johnson,
himself a distinguished poet, who, in The Outlook,
discerns ‘passion, humour, wistfulness, grimness, ten­
derness... but never jo y ’, which he thinks ‘cruel to
Wessex, which is not an wholly Leopardian land’. In
writing to thank Johnson, Hardy, who had leaned
upon Leopardi for at least one passage in Tess, took the
opportunity to plant a dart in those reviewers who
‘praise by guess and condemn at hazard’ . He was plainly
delighted to have his own verse praised by a poet o f
established reputation.
Yet if we read all the twenty or so contemporary
reviews, we are left with the sense that the prevailing
response - felt, if not expressed - is a genuine puzzle­
ment. Though in retrospect Hardy claimed that this
stemmed from the critics’ pique ‘at his having taken the
liberty to adopt another vehicle o f expression than
prose, without consulting them’ (Life p. 319), only one
reviewer sniped at what he implied was a ‘vanity’
publication. The generally respectful, hesitant, some­
times haphazard comments suggest to me that, while
the reviewers recognized Hardy’s poetry as a manifestly
original and markedly - sometimes abrasively - idiosyn­
cratic performance, it baffled nearly all o f them by
(22) WESSEX POEMS

displaying no discernible affinities, no generic resem­

blances. Even the juvenilia betrays scarcely a trace o f
that - often unwitting - indebtedness to recent poets
which so often stamps early efforts. There is the merest
hint o f Rossetti perhaps, but no trace o f Tennyson, and
if Browning’s presence is felt, it is more in choice o f
subject than in treatment. In terms o f the older English
tradition, Hardy was not nearly as heterodox as he
seemed, but it was not until 19 14 that Edward Thomas
spotted his resemblance to Donne; not until the 1920s
that Hardy himself pointed out how ‘Swiftian’ his
humour was; and, indeed, it was long after his death
that he was accorded his proper place in the pattern
o f English poetry. Bereft o f that handiest o f pegs,
‘influences’ , on which to hang their critical hats, it is to
the credit o f a few commentators that they did identify
at least some o f what we have finally come to perceive
as the essential components o f the Hardy style.
However, the word ‘style’ , since both Hardy and his
critics made so much play with the dialectic between it
and ‘subject’, will provide a useful starting-point for my
own comments. B y so unequivocally giving content
precedence over treatment in the letter to Gosse quoted
above, Hardy was, I fancy, trailing his coat a little. For in
fact —though few noticed it then or since - as concerns
mastery o f form, Hardy gave an overt - indeed, a flam­
boyant - display o f his technical credentials. The simplest
way to demonstrate this is to tabulate the various rhyme
schemes and stanza patterns which he employed.
 INTRODUCTION (23)

Rhym e schemes Number o f

Verse form employed (selected) poems

Couplet AA 1

Triplet A B A (B links 1st line next stanza) 3

Quatrains A B A B /A B B A /A B C B 16

Quintets A A B A B /A B C C B /A A B B A 4
Sestets A B A B C C /A B A B A B /A B A A A B 4
Septets ABABCCB 1

Octets A B A B B C B C /A B A B C D C D / 9
ABABCCCB

Sonnets 9 Petrarchan, 1 Shakespearian 10

Other 1 Sapphics, 1 Ghazal, 1 irregular 3

TO TA L 5i

This takes no account o f the numerous variations

in metre which still further diversify Wessex Poems.
Virtually the only established verse form that Hardy
does not use is the unrhymed iambic (blank verse)
line. The universal failure even to notice his metrical
virtuosity no doubt prompted a sardonic smile in the
virtuoso! Whether it was altogether well-advised is
another question, o f course.
Moreover, far from attempting to disarm them,
Hardy took no steps to meet potential cavillers half-way.
Instead, he threw down a stylistic gauntlet at the outset
by casting his opening poem, ‘The Temporary the A ll’,
in a metre that could hardly have been more intricate
(24) WESSEX POEMS

and unfamiliar or less indigenous, so much so that in

later editions he was constrained to add the explanatory
sub-title, ‘Sapphics’ . I suspect that this was a veiled
challenge, as if to show himself capable o f negotiating
the most intricate metrical obstacle-race with perfect
Swinburnian aplomb. But, once again, no one took
much notice at the time.
Hardy’s diction, on the other hand, excited plenty o f
comment, most o f it adverse, particularly his deploy­
ment o f the ‘one-plane dictionary’ , to which W M
Archer had objected. ‘The Temporary the All’ is vul­
nerable to this charge. There are archaisms (sufficeth,
showance), strained inversions (cherish him can I for
I can cherish him), Anglo-Saxon coinages (fellowlike,
breath while, earth track) reminiscent o f William Barnes,
and syntactical juggling (the while unformed to be all-
eclipsing), not to mention such snatches o f implausible
direct speech as ‘Maiden meet’, ‘held I’, and ‘till arise
my fore-felt / Wonder o f women’ . A good deal o f this
was due to the exigencies o f transposing a quantitative
classical metre into the notoriously intransigent medium
o f English, but it is hard to believe that the result
justified the effort. Certainly, this rebarbative overture
gave - and, in the Complete Poems, still does - a false
impression; Hardy’s divagations from the norm o f
English usage are neither as frequent nor as freakish as
‘The Temporary the A ll’ might suggest. Indeed, the
next lyric, ‘Amabel’ , offers only ‘dorp’ (a dialectal
variant o f ‘thorp’, i.e. village) by way o f the eccentric,
and even that has Dryden’s authority! The compound
epithet ‘custom-straitened’ may be Hardy’s coinage but,
if so, it is —as his compound epithets commonly are - a
 INTRODUCTION (25)

meaningful compression. ‘Amabel’ is one o f the earliest

poems (1865) and not exempt from cliche (Time that
tyrant fell) or poeticism (’ere warmth did wane), while
the lines ‘I felt that I could creep / To some housetop,
and weep’ exemplify, if anything, Pope’s ‘art o f sinking
in English verse’ .
The next poem, curtly entitled ‘Hap’, is a sonnet,
the octave o f which follows the Shakespearian rhyme
scheme (A BA BC D C D ) and the sestet one o f the
Petrarchan variations (EFEFEF). The title hints at an
Elizabethan m otif (the word was commonly used for
‘fortune’, ‘luck’, or ‘chance’ by sixteenth-century poets,
notably Wyatt) and one might almost take it for a
pastiche to begin with. But the tough, gritty language,
‘my hate’s profiting’, ‘ire unmerited’, warn us that the
voice we are to hear is not concerned to be mellifluous.
Rather, as Donne said o f himself, it exhibits a ‘harsh,
masculine, persuasive force’. When we come to the
bleak query

... How arrives it jo y lies slain,

And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?

and the bitter rejoinder with its apparently traditional

villains o f the piece, Casualty (i.e. Hap again) and Time,
we find a modern, post-Darwinian sensibility. For these
are ‘purblind’ doomsters; they represent the negation o f
cosmic benevolence and cosmic malevolence, leaving
no target for defiance to clasp. It may be paradoxical
to speak o f a malevolent nescience, but a theme is
announced here which continued to resonate through
Hardy’s poetry for nearly sixty years without finding a
(26) WESSEX POEMS

resolution, except perhaps in the theme o f human love.

In ‘In Vision I Roam ed’ , for example, Hardy confronts
Bossuet’s ‘silence eternel de ces espaces infinis’ (and the
added nineteenth-century perception that the stars we
see are long dead) with the consolation that, to lovers,
distance sub specie aeternatatis is no real impediment.
Though early, this poem, like the next three, demon­
strates both thought and feeling in lines and phrases like
‘Universe taciturn and drear’, ‘It goes like murky bird
or buccaneer’ and ‘summer-tide / In lewth o f leaves’ .
Similarly, in ‘A Confession to a Friend in Trouble’ we
see Hardy’s insight, penetrating for a man still relatively
young, into what D r Johnson called ‘the treachery o f
the human heart’ .
Already then, in these - mostly early - pieces, we
have evidence o f a probing, sceptical habit o f mind, a
love-hate relationship with ‘progress’ , marked technical
virtuosity, and an unconventional way with words. But
these qualities do not really coalesce until we reach that
remarkable poem ‘Neutral Tones’ .
This now famous and much anthologized lyric was,
in fact, singled out for commendation by several con­
temporary critics. Even the jaundiced Saturday Review
grudgingly conceded its ‘mature strength’ and by 19 19
Middleton M urry was boldly hailing it as ‘major
poetry’ . Perhaps rather too much has been made o f it as
altogether exceptional, in an attempt to sustain the
thesis that Wessex Poems - viewed as a collection - is
markedly inferior to Hardy’s later, putatively more
‘mature’ , verse. But since, as has been shown, at least
half its contents were written - and all more or less
strenuously revised - when Hardy was in his fifties,
 NTRODUCTION (27)

‘Neutral Tones’ need not be made to bear such weight

o f singularity. Even if it is not, in my opinion, one o f
Hardy’s very greatest poems, it remains a remarkable as
well as a highly characteristic achievement, not least in
foreshadowing that heterodox approach to love which
was later to become a salient feature o f both his prose
and his verse.
Even the title - painter’s jargon for a sketch in grey
washes - issues a challenge to the conventionally lush
landscape o f mid-Victorian romance. This chilly, colour­
less setting was acutely likened by J O Bailey to ‘a steel
engraving’ . It provides the perfect objective correlative
for the lovers’ shared feelings o f emptiness and desola­
tion. To this, the simply-rhymed quatrain form and the
mostly plain, even flat, diction - six lines begin with
‘A nd’ - add a sense o f compressed passion, o f inartic­
ulate anguish, which has rarely been equalled. The force
and economy o f the first two stanzas would be hard to
overpraise, but the third flags slightly. Even if one does
not register the ‘ominous bird a-wing’ as verging on
cliche, it is hardly an inevitable simile for a ‘grin o f
bitterness’ . There is, I suggest, a faint w hiff o f Dante
Gabriel Rossetti in the air, o f his ‘Willowwood III’ , for
example, in these rather mannered phrases.
But the final stanza more than compensates. The
subtle ambiguities o f ‘keen lessons’ , the metaphysical
pun on the homophone ‘wrings with wrong’ , and the
startling paradox which perverts the sun, primal source
o f warmth and life, into something leprous and ‘God-
curst’ , lead to a conclusion whose dour plangency
chimes with the opening and resumes its mood o f
grim inanition. Hardy’s own persuasion o f this poem’s
(28) WESSEX POEMS

significance is seen not only in its choice for both his

own verse selections (together, incidentally, with fifteen
from Wessex Poems), but also, as late as 1923, in his
deletion from the text printed here o f the word ‘solved’
(after ‘riddles’ ). Had he come to see a ‘solved riddle’ as
less ‘tedious’ than an unsolved one, or did the double
sibilant in ‘puzzlesAsolved’ offend his ear?
‘Neutral Tones’ initiates a series o f what, faute de
mieux, must be entitled love lyrics. All ten are early
(1866-70) and seven, like a few others published later,
have the word ‘She’ (or ‘Her’) in their titles. Since the
four entitled ‘She to Him i- iv ’ are all sonnets and were
said by Hardy to be ‘part o f a much larger number that
perished’ (Life p. 55), it has been assumed that they are
the residue o f a pure sonnet sequence - a very popular
genre o f the day. But Hardy was well aware - as his short
story ‘An Imaginative Woman’ makes clear - that the
Elizabethan originals often interspersed other forms o f
lyric with quatorzains, adding to the variety which
differing sonnet forms also produced. There are in fact
eleven lyrics from the 1860s, all o f which use ‘She’ or
‘Her’ in the title to signal a woman as the ‘speaker’ , a
feature also found in ‘The Musing Maiden’ - not
printed until 1928 and perhaps retitled then. Moreover,
the early ‘Neutral Tones’ and ‘ 1967’ (in Time's Laughing-
stocks), though commonly ascribed to male ‘narrators’ ,
could equally well be spoken by a woman.
If this hypothesis is accepted as at least plausible, the
following plot for Hardy’s sequence can be extrapo­
lated: the narrator, a country girl, has fallen passionately
in love with a man who is her ‘social superior’ ; he,
though reciprocating her feelings, is spurred by ambi­
 INTRODUCTION (29)

tion to leave her to go to London; there he contracts a

loveless but financially advantageous marriage; dying
from consumption, he returns for a last assignation. The
sequence ends as his mistress surreptitiously watches his
funeral.
M y general point is to stress the bold and original
conceptions that Hardy already held about the nature
and purpose o f poetry in the 1860s. N ot for him that
‘fluting o f creatures who have not a breath o f vital
humanity in them’ which George Meredith complained
o f in Tennyson. On the contrary he chose to explore
the shadowed face o f the moon-goddess, jealousy,
frustration and despair. All these we can see displayed in
the fragments which follow, to which ‘She at His
Funeral’ seems to be meant as a coda. This succinct,
bitter vignette is written from the discarded mistress’s
painfully anonymous perspective. It employs, with
ironic point, the most popular o f all hymn metres, the
so-called ‘common metre’ o f Tate and Brady’s metrical
Psalms (as, for example, in ‘O God our help in ages
past’). It hinges on a series o f mordant contrasts and
adds up to a smart slap in the face for respectability,
something that Hardy was always to relish delivering.
The next, ‘Her Initials’ , is later and not part o f the
sequence. Its ‘poet’ is surely Shelley, one o f Hardy’s
early heroes, for whose characteristic manner ‘effulgent
thought’ is a neat critical encapsulation. Its conclusion is
again taut and tart.
With ‘Her Dilemma’ a deeper note is struck. Few
poems better catch the anguish peculiar to Victorian
loss o f faith. In the manuscript it was cast in the first
person, with the woman as ‘speaker’ . Hardy’s change to
(30) WESSEX POEMS

the impersonal voice here disguises the fact that it was

evidently designed to form part o f the ‘She to H im ’
sequence. This, apart from sonnets, is his sole employ­
ment o f the English poet’s iambic pentameter stand-by.
Heroic quatrains like these were most famously used
in Gray’s ‘Elegy’ , one o f Hardy’s favourite poems.
Here the insistent rhythm, suggesting the ‘clock’s dull
monotones’ , initiates the mood. The ‘sunless’, decaying
church, with its ‘mildewed’ walls and once-beautiful
woodcarvings symbolizing medieval devotion, was
familiar ground to the young architect whose epithet
‘wasted’ combines the sense o f both decay and irrele­
vance. An atmosphere o f dull ecclesiastical inertia is
brilliantly caught up by ‘wormy poppy-head’ , with its
compressed associations o f corruption, drugs and death.
Nothing by way o f miraculous healing is to be looked
for here.
The man has become —like those skeletal figures in
the tombs o f the crypt - his own memento mori. His
death sentence, a mere parenthesis, serves to introduce
the ethical crux on which the poem turns, ‘Tell me you
love m e’ . If the young Hardy had been a conformist,
how easily he might have written - instead o f the flat
‘And hence she lied’ -

But could not lie, her heart persuaded throughly

’Twould cost her soul to be a moment kind.

That was never to be Hardy’s way. However great the

gulf between Johnson’s idea o f truth and Hardy’s,
the last stanza’s defiant hopelessness lives up to Dr
Johnson’s prescription, ‘The mind can only repose on
 INTRODUCTION (31)

the stability o f truth.’ Neither in form nor content is this

an engaging poem. Its stark, uncompromising dissec­
tion o f an aspect o f the human predicament was hardly
less novel in 1898 than it would have been in 1868. In
many ways it is an early touchstone o f Hardy’s genius.
Those who dislike it are those who will never much
care for Hardy.
O f the five sonnets which follow, the first, ‘R evu l­
sion,’ is rather jejune, leaning too heavily on alliteration
and word-play. It is fortunate for us that the adjuration
o f the sestet was unfulfilled. And the four surviving ‘She
to Him ’ sonnets are all rather uneven in diction. The
‘golden style’ o f the Elizabethans obviously exerted a
powerful charm on the young Hardy, as phrases like
‘Toils o f Tim e’ and ‘eyes no longer stars’ demonstrate
in the first o f them. But then we bump into that
quintessential^ Hardian notion o f ‘Sportsman Tim e’ .
The old gentleman with his minatory scythe is trans­
mogrified into a Victorian gamekeeper. Lovers have,
to be sure, been likened to many birds — nightingales,
swans, and doves inter alia. It took Hardy to think o f
partridges! Perhaps because it is notably less aureate in
manner, Hardy chose the second to ‘prose’, as he put it,
in his first published novel Desperate Remedies, where
it provides the nucleus o f his heroine Cytherea’s most
passionate speech.5 The third, although not otherwise
very remarkable, opens its sestet with a wonderful
image, reminiscent o f ‘Neutral Tones’ , for love gone
stale and now futile:

Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,

True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;
(32) WESSEX POEMS

There is a truly Shakespearian depth and subtlety in the

simile o f the weathercock, symbol of mutability, and
the contrast between its slow rusting ‘canker’ and the
fraudulent ‘kiss’ of the wind-lover. The fourth has less
to offer, as it is too caught up in its own word-play.
‘Ditty’, by contrast, begins on a deliberately light,
all but frivolous note which is underlined by Hardy’s
choice o f a verse form savouring o f popular song.
But complimentary vers de societe were not Hardy’s
forte; the third stanza, despite a deprecatory parenthesis,
is darkened by the concept o f a ‘strange and withering
change, / Like a drying o f the w e lls...’, and what
set out to be an airy compliment modulates uneasily
into a sombre reflection on ‘What bond-servants o f
Chance / We are all.’ Who can say what Emma made
o f this solitary tribute, 28 years later? But even in 1870
it must have seemed an ambiguous augury for their
future life together.
Certainly the other love lyrics in this volume tell,
obliquely, a rather sad tale - one which it may be
helpful to continue now, with ‘Thoughts o f P h ...a ’
(p. 163). This is not the place to rehearse the contro­
versy about the precise nature o f Hardy’s relationship
with his cousin Tryphena Sparks from nearby Puddleton,
whom he must have known as a child before he went to
London. When he returned to live in Bockhampton in
the summer o f 1867, he met her again. B y then she was
an attractive, dark-haired student teacher o f sixteen and
they fell in love. At some point they became engaged,
perhaps clandestinely, but they seem to have drifted
apart, she to become a teacher in Plymouth, where she
later married Charles Gale in 1877, he to court and
 NTRODUCTION (33)

marry Emma Lavinia Gifford in 1874. Hardy noted (Life

p. 234) that he wrote the first few lines o f this poem ‘In
the train on the way to London ... a curious instance o f
sympathetic telepathy. [She] was dying at the time and
I quite in ignorance o f it. She died six days later’ (on
17 March 1890). The rest o f the poem was posthumous.
What matters in this context is, o f course, not
the personalities involved but the poetic achievement:
nevertheless, the poem is a testimony to the fact that
Tryphena had once mattered deeply to Hardy, and'here,
in his fiftieth year, he contrived a tribute to her which
is moving, w ry and affectionate. If without the tragic
resonances o f his later elegies for Emma, the ‘Poems
o f 1 9 1 2 - 1 3 ’ , this is a reflection o f assured strength o f
feeling, expressed with great technical skill. The verse
form seems to be Hardy’s invention; even Dennis
Taylor’s assiduous researches have not thrown up an
analogue, though he aptly terms it ‘a monument o f
verse structure built over an absence’ . The meditative
cast o f thought is pointed up by the alternating short
and long lines, suggesting a man musing in an under­
tone, sotto voce as it were. This kind o f reflective poem
was to become characteristic o f Hardy’s mature method.
He later termed them ‘reveries’, but that by no means
implies a dip into a warm bath o f nostalgia. Here,
although the first stanza and, especially, the concluding
three lines are quite lyrical enough for Tennyson, the
conclusion to which Hardy rather grimly works his
way is that ‘haply the best o f her’ is what he has ‘fined’
(i.e. distilled) in his ‘brain’ . His speculations about
Tryphena’s later life, whether consoling or melancholy,
are alike pointless; she has now irrevocably become a
( 34) WESSEX POEMS

‘phantom’ ; a ghost the more loved precisely because he

retains no tangible memorial o f her. And the superb
modulation whereby he returns the reader to his
opening again adds a formal elegance to this graceful,
accomplished, deeply felt elegy. In view o f its identical
date o f 1890 and the firm provenance given by Hardys
illustration, there can be little doubt that the similarly
retrospective ‘In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury’ (i.e.
Puddletown) also refers to Tryphena. Here the theme is
an age-old one, the opposition o f love and time. Success
hinges on Hardy’s treatment o f the subject, and the
revisions in his manuscript are particularly well worth
studying in the Variorum Edition. As late as 1920 he
changed ‘ghast’ (line 11) to ‘wan’ . This poem, with
its lilting, polka-like rhythms, counterpoints the wry,
Donne-like image o f ‘never-napping’ Time, whose
‘little chisel’ chipping away at the once pristine ‘blazon’
(i.e. coat o f arms) compactly suggests how illusory
‘Love’s fitful ecstasies’ must be. But the last verse pits
one concept against the other and the lovely falling
close acts as an emotional counterpoise to the dour
monosyllables o f ‘scorn’ and ‘would not’.
N o other poems in this volume can be confidently
attached to Hardy’s relationship with Tryphena. The
narrative ‘M y C icely’ may glance at her work in her
husband’s hotel; the illustration for ‘Her Immortality’
may represent a path across the poem’s ‘pasture’ towards
Puddletown; ‘To an Orphan [later ‘Motherless’] Child’
could conceivably refer to Tryphena’s - never in fact
orphaned - daughter. But these are all evidently - as the
last is avowedly - ‘whimseys’ . The admixture o f fact,
if any, to fiction is so slight as to be insignificant.
 INTRODUCTION (35)

‘At an Inn’ refers to an incident which took place at

‘The George Inn’ , Winchester, where Hardy met Mrs
A Henniker for lunch prior to showing her round the
cathedral. An intelligent and attractive woman and a
talented writer who collaborated with Hardy on a short
story, she appealed to him strongly, as other poems
make plain. But, though she liked him and was flattered
by his attentions, she kept him dextrously at arm’s
length. After a year or so in the early 1890s their rela­
tionship became an amide amoureuse conducted mostly
by correspondence. Here, Hardy has slightly dramatized
the actual occurrence. The hotel staff, supposing them
to be man and wife, attempted to show them into the
same bedroom to wash their hands. Hardy, making his
‘satire o f circumstance’ sharper, turns this into a benign
misapprehension that theirs is an eloping lovers’ assig­
nation, that they ‘had all resigned / For love’s dear ends’ .
Their ‘ministers’ imputed wish, ‘Ah, God, that bliss like
theirs / Would flush our day’ (and what an apt verb
‘flush’ is here), leads in to the kind o f tartly ironic
upshot familiar to all Hardy’s readers. It is the impos­
sibility o f dispersing the illusion that they are ‘Love’s
own pair’ which ‘chilled the breath / O f afternoon, /
And palsied into death / The pane-flies’ tune’ . To a
detached observer, the situation is charged with comedy;
but Hardy’s singularly acute touches o f insight (who else
would have made a bluebottle on a window-pane both
lyrical and portentous?) illuminate the commonplace
setting and inject the poem with painful actuality. The
conclusion is stark, succinct and eloquent. Hardy had
come a long way emotionally and as a craftsman since
the 1870s.
(36) WESSEX POEMS

The central and longest section o f Wessex Poems is

comprised o f narratives. In this genre, for all his genius
as a novelist, Hardy does not, even at his best, rival his
great contemporaries Tennyson and Browning, though
he shared the general Victorian predilection for such
tales in verse. The unfair charge that this volume is
an illegitimate by-blow o f the prose fiction can only
be sustained in such turgid pieces as ‘The Peasants
Confession’ , where five whole verses do little — and
one nothing whatsoever - but catalogue the names
o f generals, like some versified army list. Some parts o f
‘Leipzig’ verge on the sublime bathos o f McGonagall,
but in general the more ‘parochial’ the poem, the
better. ‘The Volunteer’ is a drily engaging sidelight on
Hardy family history. ‘The Dance at “ The Phoenix’”
offers a view both sad and sardonic o f Dorchester as
a barrack-town. As has already been suggested, o f the
narratives which seem to have derived from Hardy’s
extensive reading for The Trumpet Major, ‘San Sebastian’,
with its disenchanted view o f heroism and military
‘glory’ and its bitter conclusion, is the best. But, like
the local period piece ‘The Burghers’, this might
have been as effective - and perhaps more so - as a
short story. Hardy’s only whole-hearted venture into
William Barnes’s dialectal territory, ‘The Fire at Tranter
Sweatley’s’ - the first o f five oddly assorted ‘Additions’ -
is a spirited piece o f high jinks, but demands a good
dialect reader to fulfil its comic potential as the recita­
tion that it is plainly meant to be.
‘Friends Beyond’, however, which shares its Wessex
ambience and, in the ‘friends” brief comments, a much
milder flavour o f local speech, has always been popular
 INTRODUCTION (37)

- it was a favourite o f Swinburnes — and much

anthologized. Its rippling terza rima stanzas suggest the
insubstantiality o f the ghostly speakers; its mood reflects
the dour fatalism, the w ry acceptance o f the inevitable,
which the major novels share. The early ‘Heiress and
Architect’ is a versified moral fable with a more overt
design upon the reader than Hardy later employed. It is
not unimpressive, but perhaps signals its culminating
punch too obviously. It belongs to that category o f
poems in which Hardy, borrowing from Wordsworth’s
‘Immortality’ ode, claimed to express the ‘obstinate
questionings’ and ‘blank misgivings’ o f a ‘harmless
agnostic’ .6 It shares the bleak persuasions o f ‘A Sign-
Seeker’ , with its conclusion full o f what D r Johnson
termed ‘inspissated gloom’: ‘And Nescience mutely
muses: When a man falls he lies.’ N o doubt it would
be niggling to ask how ‘nescience’ can ‘muse’ at all,
but Hardy’s post-Darwinian lucubrations, though they
stirred up an orthodox hornets’ nest at the time, on
the whole went to prove the truth o f his sagacious
contention in 1896 that ‘If Galileo had said in verse that
the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him
alone’ (Life p. 302). He hoped then ‘to express more
fully in verse ideas and emotions which run counter to
inert crystallized op in io n ...’ . B y 19 17, however, he had
modified his views: ‘I hold that the mission o f poetry is
to record impressions, not convictions’ (Life p.408).
The endemic weakness o f such poems as ‘A Meeting
with Despair’ , ‘To Nature’ and ‘Nature’s Questioning’
is that they display too blatantly what Keats abhorred, ‘a
palpable design upon us’ . Even so, there are memorable
resonances here and there, for example:
(38) WESSEX POEMS

Has some Vast Imbecility,

Mighty to build and blend,
But impotent to tend.
Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

‘In a Wood’, largely because it proceeds by an extended

metaphor and is also less resolutely bent on removing
every vestige o f hope, is much more successful as a
whole. But I propose to end with two masterpieces,
both intensely personal, neither in the least concerned
to proselytize. These, together with some o f the love
poems, make a cogent case for Hardy’s recognition as a
major poet on the evidence o f Wessex Poems alone.
First comes ‘The Impercipient’, entitled in Hardys
manuscript ‘The Agnostic’ , from which what would
have been a markedly weaker fourth verse has also been
deleted. The setting o f the poem is evensong at Hardy’s
best-loved cathedral, Salisbury, seat o f the bishop o f his
native diocese. Its nave is shown in his illustration. Hardy,
perhaps deliberately, chose a hymn stanza (a form o f the
old ‘eight and six’ common metre referred to earlier,
but with an added two lines rhymed A BA BA B). This
metre is redolent with echoes o f the Tate and Brady
Psalms, old hymns like ‘While shepherds watched’ and
so on, forming a kind o f regretful counterpoint to what
Hardy is saying. The single-sentence structure o f each
stanza - and the language in places - is similar to that o f
formal prayers like the Collects. ‘Shining Land’ looks
like a reminiscence o f John Bunyan, but Hardy’s manu­
script read ‘Happy Land’ , which he probably felt to be
too overt and unkind an allusion to the once famous
revivalist hymn ‘There is a Happy Land’ .
 INTRODUCTION (39)

One might well say o f the poem that its prevailing

atmosphere is, as Hardy later said o f himself, ‘churchy’ ,
and it is just this which makes the undertones o f regret
- even o f something verging on anguish - so telling. In
its overall effect, this is a nakedly personal poem, with
Hardy speaking in propria persona, as he rarely does
except in the love poems. But it opens on a note o f
muted irony which is skilfully sustained up to the third
verse’s tart suggestion that the ‘bright believing band’s
“ Christian charity” ’ ought to move them to sympathy
with a ‘soul’ ‘consigned to infelicity’ . It is worth notic­
ing how well Hardy manages to restrict himself to a
two-rhyme system (one throughout, with one rhyme
more per verse), again suggesting the repeated cadences
o f some well-known hymn. The fourth verse shifts in
mood, however; away from the cool, detached, faintly
sardonic discourse o f the first three, to a sustained simile
which gains from beginning like the kind o f emotional
analogy much favoured by evangelical preachers o f the
day, only to turn into a bleak, rebarbative disavowal
which incidentally reveals with extreme cogency the
unbridgeable gulf between faith and doubt. The fifth
initially resumes the detached tone o f the first three, but
then sharply rejects the putative accusation o f a destruc­
tive atheism. Here the awkward ‘liefer have unbe’
(changed later to ‘not have be’) jars slightly, though
Hardy recovers with his extraordinarily moving and
heartfelt image o f the ‘earth-bound’ bird —a form o f life
with which he always had a strong affinity. And the
abrupt, unexpected coda is a tour de force. Compressed
within its three sentences are all Hardy’s feelings o f
impatience with an argument which he now sees to be
(40) WESSEX POEMS

futile. Serene acceptance o f the inevitable has replaced

resentment - how telling is the use o f metaphor
in ‘disquiet clings / About us’ , paradoxically a very
Christian sentiment developed in George Herbert’s
great poem ‘The Pulley’ . I cannot agree with Paul
Zietlow that the ending displays a ‘staccato prosiness’ .
Surely, no sensitive reader could fail to give those final
three plain monosyllables their full liturgical weight.
Yet, however reminiscent they may be o f ‘Dona nobis
pacem’, they are in no sense visionary. Rather, as with
an epitaph from the Greek anthology, it is their lapidary
plangency, the sense that Hardy - like all great poets —
can sometimes command o f something said once and
for all, which makes them so moving. It was an already
sure hand that struck out o f his manuscript the earlier,
anti climactic ending ‘We shall see’ .
The last five poems after the sub-title ‘Additions’
are oddly assorted. Perhaps, since they cover 25 pages,
Hardy decided that he was giving rather short measure
and hastily put this makeweight section together from
what was to hand. Even the solitary illustration looks
hurried. But there can surely be no question that the
last poem o f all, ‘I Look Into M y Glass’, was always
meant to conclude and clinch this volume. It is, in the
strict sense, a simple poem and one which, from the
outset, was recognized for what it is, even by those
hostile to Wessex Poems as a whole. Even the vitriolic
Saturday Review concluded its piece with: ‘It is an
original thought realized and felt completely... the
expression is so clear and simple that it will surely live
when the rest o f the book is forgotten.’ This grudging
postscript was wrong on two counts —one obvious, the
other less so. For the impact o f the poem derives in part
from the fact that its leading idea is not at all original.
Rather, it is universal: what man, nearing sixty, has not,
contemplating his shaving mirror, felt something like
this? Hardy sometimes tried too hard for originality
in Wessex Poems, but here he has opted for a highly
traditional stanza, the alternately rhymed quatrain, or
‘short hymn-stanza’ , in which the third line is extended
to four dissyllabic feet, most familiar perhaps in ‘While
shepherds watched’ but also employed by George
Herbert in what was to become a famous hymn, ‘Teach
me my God and king (‘The Elixir’ was Herbert’s title).
Furthermore, if we look at Herbert’s second verse,
beginning ‘A man that looks on Glasse / On it may stay
his eye. . . ’ , it seems to me at least possible that Hardy -
consciously or not - derived his leading image from
Herbert, o f whose poems he possessed a copy (c. i860).
For, as well as the shared stanza form, Hardy uses ‘glass’
in the archaic sense o f mirror and, in his manuscript, he
even capitalizes the initial ‘G \ Though he proceeds to
a conclusion far removed from Herbert’s, he achieves a
similarly luminous simplicity o f manner, together with
a detectable flavour o f Herbert’s scriptural phraseology.
In ‘wasted skin’ we have the biblical sense o f ‘wasted’
(Jeremiah: 44.6); ‘Would God it came to pass’ is an overt
specimen o f Old Testament diction, and ‘endless rest’
literally translates ‘requiem aeternam’ . These muted
echoes o f a faith that he no longer held lend an added
poignancy to the final stanza which achieves the sort o f
passionate dialectic between thought and feeling
familiar in the best o f Yeats, in ‘A Song’ or ‘Politics’,
for example. The old enemy o f Shakespeare’s sonnets,
(42) WESSEX POEMS

Time, is given a new and even crueller weapon than

death, and Hardy’s restatement o f the French aphorism,
‘Si jeunesse savait: si vieillesse pouvait’, is delivered
in four lines as bone-bare and as memorable as any in
English - lines which might indeed serve as a fitting
epigraph for much o f Hardy’s later poetry, in which no
verse is more time-haunted.
To return to Hardy’s brief Preface after reading the
poems is to experience surprise at its flat, deprecatory,
almost throw-away tone. It is almost as if, reluctant to
give hostages to fortune, Hardy were saying - as he does
say o f his illustrations - that his poems are ‘inserted for
personal and local reasons rather than for their intrinsic
qualities’ . This is part o f the appealing modesty o f a man
who, right at the end o f his literary career and when he
was the universally accepted doyen o f English letters,
still sent stamped addressed envelopes with his verse
contributions to periodicals whose editors would have
given their eye-teeth for any scrap from his pen. Yet,
though Wessex Poems was a good augury, no one,
certainly not Hardy himself, could have predicted what
a rich aftermath it foretold; a second harvest that Philip
Larkin called ‘many times over the best body o f verse
that this century has to show’ .
 INTRODUCTION (43)

References

1. To avoid cumbersome and repetitive footnotes, all

quotations from T he L ife and Work o f Thomas H ardy , ed.
MMillgate (1985), and The Collected Letters o f Thomas
H ardy, vols i- vii , ed. R L Purdy and M Millgate
(1975-88), are acknowledged in parenthesis as, respec­
tively, L ife (followed by page reference) and Letters
(followed by volume and page reference).
2. See my article ‘Time Was Away’ in A M ere Interlude ed.
M Hardie, Patten Press, 1992.
3. But see Letters II, p. 158, where Hardy tells Swinburne
he has been translating a ‘fragment of Sappho’.
4. T he R am bler (Number 146).
5. Desperate Rem edies (1871), Chapter 13, ‘Afternoon’.
6. ‘Apology’ to Late Lyrics and E arlier (1922).
 h a r d y ’ s il l u s t r a t io n s f o r

WESSEX POEMS

We know from Hardy’s letters to Mrs Henniker that he

was working on these illustrations during 1898. He
executed them in pen and ink, heightening some with
Chinese white. To his friends he wrote about them
deprecatingly, saying to Edward Clodd, who liked
them, that they had given him ‘a sort o f illegitimate
interest... as a wholly gratuitous performance’ , and to
Mrs Henniker that they were ‘the worse from my
years o f unpractice’. In fact, trained in the old rigorous
school o f architectural draughtsmanship, he had in his
youth showed both skill and some originality in design,
while he always sustained an interest in water-colour
sketching and offered helpful suggestions to the artists
who, like George du Maurier, illustrated his novels. In
the event, the numerous reviewers o f the poems hardly
spared a line for his illustrations, though Edmund
Chambers, one o f the most perceptive, gave them a
paragraph:

These illustrations... are thoroughly in keeping with

some o f the most marked characteristics o f the book
itself. Primitive in execution, and frequently inspired
by a somewhat grim mortuary imagination, they
are still full o f poetry and show a real sense o f
the decorative values o f architectural outline and

(45)
(46) WESSEX POEMS

nocturnal landscape. Even without the verses, they

are a new light on Wessex.

Though the epithet ‘primitive’ is rather ungenerous,

this still seems a fair summary to me. Certainly Hardy’s
drawings add a dimension to several o f the poems -
‘Amabel’, ‘Her Dilemma’, ‘Her Death and After’ , for
example - which sharpens their impact. The originals
are with the manuscript o f the poems in Birmingham
Museum and comparison o f them with the first edition
makes it clear that they were not at all well reproduced.
They were necessarily somewhat reduced, but the
impressions were often poor and they also tend to be
darker than the originals, a particular disadvantage with
night scenes. B y 19 12 Hardy was telling Macmillans
that he was ‘indifferent’ to their reproduction in the
new ‘Wessex Edition’, since this, he thought, would
necessitate ‘borrowing the originals’ from Birmingham
Museum (to which institution Hardy had given the
Wessex Poems manuscript in 19 11). Though from 1907
they continued to be available in the ‘Pocket Edition’ ,
they were repositioned there, sometimes further reduced
and in some instances so smudgily printed as to be
scarcely recognizable. It is believed that they appear in
this edition in a form much closer to Hardy’s intentions
than has hitherto been achieved; for this the editors and
publishers are grateful to the Birmingham Museum,
whose co-operation has made this improvement pos­
sible. As Hardy provided no captions and as the poems
by no means always offer clear indications of, for example,
the locations intended, I have provided brief explana­
tory notes below. Page numbers precede poem titles.
 h a r d y ’s illustrations (47)

Frontispiece Stinsford Church viewed from its main

gate with its large vase-capitals. The Hardy
family graves are just visible on the left. See note
to page 155 below for the poem to which
Hardy’s drawing refers
[1] The Temporary the A ll Though this sundial was
designed by Hardy for one o f the turrets o f his
M ax Gate home, it was not erected (with a
commemorative inscription) until after his death
6 Amabel This finely detailed hour-glass, with
attendant butterflies, needs no comment, but cf.
Hardy’s poem ‘Near Lanivet’ (Moments of Vision)
19 She (later retitled She at His Funeral) Stinsford
Church from the east. The poem’s ‘speaker’
views the funeral inconspicuously
21 Her Initials Besides his own monogram (bottom
right), Hardy seems to have written ‘Y Z ’ in
capitals in the left-hand margin, perhaps to
preclude speculative identifications?
[25] Her Dilemma This sectional view cannot be
ascribed to any church with certainty. W im-
borne Minster has been suggested
[30] She, to Him, I—I V The images o f a steep hill at
sunset with two lonely figures relate to all three
sonnets in this group. Millgate has suggested that
the tower is Clavel Tower near Kimmeridge and
hence to be associated with Eliza Bright Nicholls
(who would then presumably be the subject o f
the She to Him sequence)
43 The Sergeant’s Song Sergeant Stanner sings this
pastiche o f the defiant patriotic songs o f the
Napoleonic wars in The Trumpet Major (Ch. 5 ).
(48) WESSEX POEMS

Napoleon’s head appears as a cloudy, menacing

presence above a frieze o f bayonets
45 Valenciennes The siege-works (looking towards
Valenciennes)
[53] San Sebastian Dominated by Monte Urgull, at
night
61 The Burghers High West Street, Dorchester.
The ‘nearing friend’ is approaching the street
from the west and the sunset. Some see a resem­
blance to Hardy in the small, spare figure
74 Leipzig The Market Square, Leipzig
78 The street-fiddler plays outside the Old Ship
Inn, Dorchester, as Hardy knew it. Only the
first-floor stone mullions remain
[85] The Peasant's Confession The featureless land­
scape near Waterloo
91 The Alarm Hardys grandfather, in Volunteer
uniform, watches the ‘Barrow-Beacon’ burn in
warning
95 He is now on ‘the steep Ridgeway’ looking over
Weymouth, with its ‘shore line planted / With
foot and horse for miles.’
[106] Her Death and After The ‘Field o f Tombs’ (i.e.
the municipal cemetery) looking towards
Maumbury Rings, a Bronze Age fort and later
a Rom an amphitheatre. Dorchester is in the
distance
113 The tree-arched West Walks at Dorchester by
night
115 The Dance at the Phoenix The scrolled music-
staves show measures o f ‘The Soldier’s Jo y ’, a
favourite tune o f Hardy’s
 h a r d y ’s illustrations (49)

123 The ‘K ing’s O w n’ ride over Stinsford Hill out o f

Dorchester
125 The Casterbridge Captains This was drawn (for
a story based on fact) from the inscribed
pew-panel in the ‘new’ All Saints, to which the
(now lost) panel had been transferred from
the old building when it was pulled down in
18 4 2-5
129 A Sign-Seeker Folk-lore makes the ‘leaping
star’ (comet) an omen
133 My Cicely The ‘ancient West Highway’ (the
Icenway) passing ‘Maidon’ (Mai Dun or Maiden
Castle) on the way out o f Dorchester
140 Exeter Cathedral’s towers from the north-west
142 Her Immortality The ‘pasture’ is Stinsford Leaze
155 Friends Beyond The frontispiece (qv) illustrates
this poem
159 To Outer Nature The dead flowers have an
oddly sculpted look
163 Thoughts of Ph[en]a i.e. Tryphena Gale nee
Sparks, to whom Hardy was once engaged. The
bier on which her body lies has, as Lois Deacon
pointed out, a strong resemblance to a tomb
in Topsham churchyard, where Hardy visited
Tryphena’s grave in 1891
177 Nature's Questionings The symbolic broken key
would seem, from its cruciform pattern and size,
to be for a church door
[182] The Impercipient This particularly fine drawing
is o f the nave o f Salisbury Cathedral (Hardy’s
favourite) seen from the west door, probably
during evensong
(50) WESSEX POEMS

197 In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury Coombe Ewel-

eaze near Puddletown (sc. Weatherbury), home
o f Tryphena Sparks, with whom the poem is
very probably associated. The spectacles may be
an emblem o f Hardy’s sense o f ‘never-napping
Tim e’s’ effects
2 12 Heiress and Architect The dedicatee is Ajrthur]
W[illiam] B[lomfield], by whom Hardy was
employed as an assistant in 1867. For the coffin-
bearers’ difficulties, see the poem’s conclusion
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another crucible, where it is boiled and chemically treated until it produces
the iodine of commerce, useful for a hundred medical and chemical
purposes, and costing as much per ounce as the saltpetre brings per
hundred-weight. The liquor having been withdrawn, the saltpetre is
shovelled upon drying-boards, where it is exposed to the sun for a while,
then put into bags and shipped to Europe and America. It is graded like
wheat and corn, according to quality. The highest grade goes to the powder-
mills, the next to the chemical works, and the third to the fertilizer factories,
where it is made into manure. The iodine is packed in little casks, and
covered with green hides, which shrink with drying until they are as tight as
a drum-head, and keep out moisture. It was these nitrate of soda deposits
that caused the late war between Chili and Peru.
After the independence of South America, when the several republics
were being divided, Bolivia was given a little strip of land between Peru
and Chili in order that she might have a pathway to the sea. It lay between
the twenty-third and the twenty-fifth parallels, and was so recognized on all
the maps of Chili, as well as those of other nations. It was a barren,
waterless desert, worthless in every respect, as was originally supposed, but
some years ago the rich deposits of silver and nitrate of soda were
discovered. When their value became known, Chili suddenly ascertained
that under some ancient right this strip of territory belonged to her, and
kindly offered to divide it with Bolivia in such a way as to leave the silver
and soda on the Chilian side. Bolivia of course resisted, and having a treaty
of offence and defence with Peru, called upon the latter nation to assist in
the defence of her rights. This was the real cause of the war. The ostensible
excuse for it was that Bolivia charged an export duty of ten cents a hundred-
weight on nitrate exported. This the Chilians deemed excessive, and sent a
fleet to defend her citizens in refusing to pay it. Now that she has secured
the territory and the mines, she charges one dollar and twenty-five cents a
hundred-weight export duty on the same article at the same place, and
thinks people impertinent when they complain. The results of the war are
that Bolivia has not only lost her seaports and her nitrate, but Peru has lost
all her guano and a large portion of her richest territory, while Chili is so
much the richer.
 GUANO ISLANDS.

At one time Peru might have prevented the invasion of her territory, and
caused the entire army of Chili to perish, but the instincts of noble
generosity and the unwritten law of common humanity were observed. If
Peru had been as merciless as Chili the struggle would have been shortened
and the result would have been different. Along the coast from Guayaquil,
Ecuador, to Coquimbo, Chili, a distance of more than two thousand miles,
stretches a desert on which a drop of rain never fell. Occasionally a stream,
born of a union between the burning sun and the eternal snows of the
Andes, finds its way to the sea, bringing nourishment to the soil and making
a little oasis where men can live. But unless the water-supply is very great
—and it is only so occasionally—the stream is swallowed by the thirsty
sands and absorbed by the atmosphere, which is so dry that nothing ever
decays, and causes more rapid evaporation than is known elsewhere. In this
desert lie the nitrate mines, and towns have sprung up around them the
inhabitants of which are supplied with water by artificial means. Salt water
is turned into fresh by means of enormous condensers, and a supply is kept
in vast iron reservoirs, from which it is sold to the people at a price about
the same as we pay for beer. At the saloons one can get a glass of filtered
ice-water for five cents; at the reservoirs a bucket of warm, nasty stuff is
sold for ten.
If you ask a learned man why it never rains there, he will say that the
clouds are deprived of all their moisture when they cross the mountains
from the eastward, and when they come up from the westward ocean are at
once sucked dry by the heat that radiates from the sun-baked sands.
Occasionally along the coast are found immense cemeteries in which the
Incas buried their dead; and the contents of the graves are as well preserved
as if their age were counted by weeks instead of centuries. The most
interesting and extensive of the burial grounds is at Pachacamac, south of
Lima, in Peru, where millions of bodies lie, often in three stratas, and very
generally in two. Near this place was the famous temple dedicated to
Pachacamac, the chief divinity of the Incas, and whom they acknowledged
as the creator of the world. It was the Mecca of that day, and each believer
was expected to visit it at least once in his life. The pilgrims came from all
parts of the empire, bringing votive-offerings, which made the temple very
rich; and Pizarro is said to have obtained a vast quantity of plunder from it.
Around the temple arose a large city of monasteries to accommodate the
priests and devotees, and inns to shelter the pilgrims; but the place is in
ruins now.

ACROSS THE CONTINENT.

At one of these towns the whole army of Chili was concentrated—forty

thousand men—preparing for the invasion of Peru. The Peruvian gun-boat
Huascar (pronounced Wascar) came into the harbor, and with a few shots
might have destroyed the reservoirs and the condensing establishments, and
left these forty thousand men to die of thirst, for there was no fresh water
within two hundred and fifty miles of them. But the commander of the
Huascar had a heart. He was a noble, generous German—Admiral Grau—
and he sent word to the Chillano commander that he presented his army
with their lives. He said he would not attack defenceless men, and sailed off
in pursuit of some Chillano gun-boats which had run away when they saw
the Huascar coming.

A STATION ON THE ROAD.

The present terminus of the Bolivia railroad is at Puno, a little town of

five thousand inhabitants, at an elevation of twelve thousand five hundred
feet; but it is proposed to extend it farther up the valley, through another
pass of the Andes, and then down the eastern slopes to the head of
navigation on the Amazon—neither a difficult nor an expensive
undertaking. An expedition has recently started from Buenos Ayres to make
an exploration from the head of navigation on the Paraguay River into the
mountains of Bolivia, for the purpose of constructing a cart-road, and
ultimately a railroad to connect the mining regions of the latter republic
with the Atlantic ports of the continent, and great hopes are entertained of
its success. The little town of Puno owes its origin to the rich mines that
surround it, and some of them are producing generously. It has a small
amount of other commerce in hides and wool, coca-leaves, and cinchona. It
is the centre of the alpaca wool trade, and considerable is exported.
To reach La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, from Puno one must cross Lake
Titicaca, sailing its full length, and, reaching its southern shores, mount a
mule and ride twenty-five miles along the ancient highway of the Incas, a
wonderful road, nearly four thousand miles long, built eight hundred years
or more ago, and still in a good state of preservation, notwithstanding the
neglect of the Spaniards to keep it in repair.
Perhaps the most glorious monuments of the civilization of the Incas
were the public or royal roads, extending from the capital to the remotest
parts of the empire. Their remains are still most impressive, both from their
extent and the amount of labor necessarily involved in their construction,
and in contemplating them we know not which to admire most—the scope
of their projectors, the power and constancy of the Incas who carried them
to a completion, or the patience of the people who constructed them under
all the obstacles resulting from the topography of the country and from
imperfect means of execution. They built these roads in deserts, among
moving sands reflecting the fierce rays of a tropical sun; they broke down
rocks, graded precipices, levelled hills, and filled up valleys without the
assistance of powder or of instruments of iron; they crossed lakes, marshes,
and rivers, and without the aid of the compass followed direct courses in
forests of eternal shade. They did, in short, what even now, with all of
modern knowledge and means of action, would be worthy of the most
powerful nations of the globe. One of the principal of these roads extended
from Cuzco to the sea, and the other, which is followed to La Paz, ran along
the crest of the Cordilleras from one end of the empire to the other, their
aggregate lengths, with their branches, being about four thousand miles.
Modern travellers compare them, in respect of structure, to the best works
of the kind in any part of the world. In ascending mountains too steep to
admit of grading, broad steps were cut in the solid rocks, while the ravines
and hollows were filled with heavy embankments, flanked with parapets,
and planted with shade-trees and fragrant shrubs. They were from eighteen
to twenty-five Castilian feet broad, and were paved with immense blocks of
 CHASQUIS AT REST.

stone. At regular distances on these roads tambos—buildings for the

accommodation of travellers—were erected. To these conveniences were
added the establishment of a system of posts, by which messages could be
transmitted from one extremity of the Incas’ dominions to the other in an
incredibly short time. The service of the posts was performed by runners—
for the Peruvians possessed no domestic animals swifter of foot than man—
stationed in small buildings, likewise erected at easy distances from each
other all along the principal roads. These messengers, or chasquis, as they
were termed, wore a peculiar uniform, and were trained to their particular
vocation. Each had his allotted station, between which and the next it was
his duty to speed along at a certain pace with the message, dispatch, or
parcel intrusted to his care. On drawing near to the station at which he had
to transmit the message to the next courier, who was then to carry it farther,
he was to give a signal of his approach, in order that the other might be in
readiness to receive the missive and no time be lost; and thus it is said that
messages were forwarded at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles a day.
 CHASQUIS ASLEEP IN THE
MOUNTAINS.

The bridges constructed by the Peruvians were exceedingly simple, but

were well adapted for crossing those rapid streams which rush down from
the Andes and defy the skill of the modern engineer. They consisted of
strong cables of the cabuya, or of twisted rawhide stretched from one bank
to the other, something after the style of the suspension-bridges of our
times. Poles were lashed across transversely, covered with branches, and
these were again covered with earth and stones, so as to form a solid floor.
Other cables extended along the sides, which were interwoven with limbs
of trees, forming a kind of wicker balustrade. In some cases the mode of
transit was in a species of basket or car, suspended on a single cable, and
drawn from side to side with ropes. It would appear at first glance that
bridges of this description could not be very lasting, yet a few still exist
which are said to have been constructed by the Incas more than four
hundred years ago. The modern inhabitants of some parts of Peru, Bolivia,
and Chili still use the same means of crossing their torrent rivers.
 A BIT OF LA PAZ.

The city of La Paz has about seventy thousand inhabitants, mostly

Aymara Indians, poor, degraded, and ignorant. The full name of the place is
La Paz de Ayacucho, and it means “the peace of Ayacucho,” being so
christened in 1825, to commemorate the victory which established the
independence of Bolivia from the hated crown of Spain. At that time the
republic was a part of the old Province of Peru, and a separate State was
founded by Bolivar, the Venezuelan Liberator of the Continent, who gave
freedom to these people as he did

THE CATHEDRAL AT LA PAZ.

to his own countrymen, and the new republic was christened in his honor.
La Paz was originally called Nuestra Señora de la Paz—“the peace of the
Virgin”—by Alonzo de Mendoza, who founded it in 1548. It is thirteen
thousand feet above tide-water, and is surrounded by a group of gigantic
mountains, the most notable of which is the volcano Illiniani, twenty-one
thousand three hundred feet high. Through the city runs the river
Chiquiapo, a noble mountain-stream, which is crossed by a number of fine
old bridges. The streets are narrow, irregular, and uneven, being paved with
stone, and having narrow sidewalks, scarcely broad enough for two people
to pass. The town resembles all others of Spanish construction, except that
the houses are mostly built of stone instead of adobe, the walls being
massive and enduring, and in some instances ornamented with carved stone
or stucco-work. The cathedral is large and grand, the front being
handsomely carved, and in a niche over the entrance stands a marble image
of the Virgin, which was presented to the city by Charles of Spain, and
transported from the seaboard at an enormous cost. The cathedral is built
entirely of stone, and was over forty years in course of erection, hundreds of
men being constantly employed. No derricks or other machinery were used
in its construction, but the walls were built in a curious way. As fast as a tier
of stone was laid, the earth was banked up against it inside and outside, and
upon this inclined plane the stones for the next tier were rolled into their
places. Then more earth was thrown on, and the process repeated until,
when the walls were finished, the whole building was immersed in a
mountain of dirt. This was allowed to remain until the roof was laid, when
the earth was carried away upon the backs of llamas and men. It is said to
have taken thirteen years to clear out the inside of the building, as the earth
could only be taken away through the narrow windows and doors. There are
fourteen other churches of considerable size, and several large monasteries,
which are now used for military barracks and schools. A university is
sustained by the Government, and there is a nominal free-school system,
but education is at a low ebb.
In the centre of the city runs the Alameda, a public promenade which is
frequented by all classes of citizens, and during the twilight hours is quite
gay. The cemetery is very extensive, and one of the finest in South America.
There are few stores or shops, most of the trading being done in the market-
places, where all things are sold, and by peddlers who go through the city
with baskets of provisions and notions upon their heads, crying their wares.
The way customers call street-venders is worth noticing and imitating. They
step to the door or open a window, and give utterance to a short sound
resembling shir-r-r-r-r—something between a hiss and the exclamation used
to chase away fowls—and it is singular what a distance it can be heard. If
the peddler is in sight, his attention is at once arrested; he turns, and comes
direct to the caller, now guided by a signal addressed to his eyes—closing
the fingers of the right hand two or three times, with the palm downward, as
if grasping something—a sign in universal use, and signifying “Come.”
There is here no bawling after people in the streets, for in this quiet and
ingenious way all classes communicate with passing friends or others with
whom they wish to speak. The practice dates, I believe, from classical
times. A curious custom is the peddling of fuel through the streets. Llamas
are loaded with their own excrement, which when dried in the sun is called
taquia, and sold by the basketful. It is used by all classes for cooking.

AN ANCIENT BRIDGE IN LA PAZ.

The mineral wealth of Bolivia has been proverbial almost from time
immemorial. The silver-mines of Potosi have long been celebrated as
perhaps the richest deposit of silver ore in the world. From the year 1545,
when they were discovered, to the year 1864, these mines, according to
official data, produced the enormous sum of $2,904,902,690 of our money.
Besides Potosi there are other rich silver-mines, and many large deposits of
gold. The great want of these mines is skilled labor and improved modern
machinery. In early days the Indians were forced to work them against their
will, and were treated with great harshness and cruelty. The historical
student will call to mind the efforts of philanthropists to mitigate their
sufferings. When their labor could no longer be controlled, the mines fell
into comparative decay. The Indians will not work them with energy and
industry to-day. They doubtless hold in memory through their traditions the
wrongs inflicted on their ancestors by merciless taskmasters. If worked by
experienced miners, with all the improved modern machinery, the gold and
silver deposits would yield as abundant returns, perhaps, as in the days of
their early history. Recently a party of Californians have gone into the
country and taken charge of a gold-mine. If a good many others would
follow them, mining in Bolivia would experience a renaissance that would
remind the Bolivians of the El Dorado of the olden time.
The most useful to mankind of all the natural
products of South America was quinine, the drug
made from the bark of the cinchona-tree, which was
discovered in Bolivia by a Franciscan friar in the
early days of the Conquest, and was called cinchona
in honor of the Countess of Conchona, whose
husband was the Viceroy of Peru. She introduced it
into Spain as a remedy for fevers, and there is no
drug in the catalogue that has been used in such
quantities or with such success by suffering
mankind. The entire supply formerly came from Peru
and Bolivia, and it was known as Peruvian bark, but
afterwards the forests along the entire chain of the
Andes were found to contain it, and it furnished one
of the chief articles of export from South America
for three centuries. The supply has been greatly
A BOLIVIAN diminished by the destruction of the trees, as it was
ELEVATOR.
the habit formerly to cut down the trunk, and strip it
as well as the branches of the bark. Nowadays the
forests are protected by law, and the trees are allowed to stand, a portion of
the bark being stripped off each year, which nature replaces again.
 A BOLIVIAN CAVALRYMAN.

England, with that provident foresight which characterizes much of her

political economy, several years ago sent agents into Ecuador, Peru, and
Bolivia, under the direction of the celebrated botanist Mr. Spruce, and made
a collection of cinchona plants, which were taken to Java, Ceylon, and
India, and there have been transplanted and cultivated with great success
and profit. It is found that under proper treatment the tree produces a very
much greater amount of quinine, of a much superior quality, and at less cost
than the bark can be gathered in the mountains of South America, so that
shipments have almost entirely ceased, and the market receives its supply
from the British possessions.
 A HOME IN THE ANDES.

Another plant is coming into prominence, and its export has very largely
increased within the last few years. This is the coca, from which cocoaine
and other medicinal and nerve stimulants are made. In the valleys of the
Andes there are, and have been from time immemorial, extensive
plantations of the coca shrub. It is indigenous in these regions, but the
natives of Peru and Bolivia cultivate the plant in terraces which are likened
to the vineyards of Tuscany and the Holy Land. Erythroxylon coca is allied
to the common flax, and forms, says Dr. Johnston, a shrub of six or eight
feet, resembling our blackthorn, with small white flowers and bright green
leaves. The leaves, of which there may be three or four crops in the year,
are collected by the women and children, and dried in the sun, after which
they are ready for use, and form the usual money exchange in some
districts, the workmen being paid in coca-leaves. Among the Peruvians and
Bolivians the coca-leaves are rolled with a little unslaked lime into a ball
(acullico) and chewed in the mouth. Coca-chewing resembles in some
respects the smoking of opium. Both must be taken apart, and with
deliberation. The coca chewer, three or four times in the day, retires to a
secluded spot, lays down his burden, and stretches himself perhaps beneath
a tree. Slowly from the chuspa, or little pouch, which is ever at his girdle,
the leaves and the lime are brought forth. The ball is formed and chewed for
perhaps fifteen or thirty minutes, and then the toiler rises refreshed as
quietly as he lay down, and returns to that monotonous round of labor in
which the coca is his only and much-prized distraction. Some take it to
excess, and to these the name of coquero is given. This is particularly
common among white Peruvians of good family, and hence the name
“Blanco Coquero” in that country is a term of reproach equivalent to our
“habitual drunkard.” The Indians regard the coca with extreme reverence.
Von Tschudi, the Austrian scientist, who made the most thorough study of
the ancient customs of the Incas, says, “During divine worship the priests
chewed coca-leaves, and unless they were supplied with them it was
believed that the favor of the gods could not be propitiated. It was also
deemed necessary that the supplicator for Divine grace should approach the
priests with an acullico in his mouth. It is believed that any business
undertaken without the benediction of coca-leaves could not prosper, and to
the shrub itself worship was rendered. During an interval of more than three
hundred years Christianity has not been able to subdue this deep-rooted
idolatry, for everywhere we find traces of belief in the mysterious powers of
this plant. The excavators in the mines of Cerro del Pasco throw chewed
coca upon hard veins of metal, in the belief that it softens the ore and
renders it more easy to work. The Indians even at the present time put coca-
leaves into the mouths of dead persons, in order to secure them a favorable
reception on their entrance into another world, and when a Peruvian on a
journey falls in with a mummy, he, with timid reverence, presents to it some
coca-leaves as his pious offering.”

JUAN FERNANDEZ.

The coca-plant resembles tea and hops in the nature of its active
principles, although differing entirely from them in its effects. In the
coqueros the latter are not inviting. “They are,” says Dr. Von Tschudi, “a
bad breath, pale lips and gums, greenish and stumpy teeth, and an ugly
black mark at the angles of the mouth. The inveterate coquero is known at
the first glance; his unsteady gait, his yellow skin, his dim and sunken eyes
encircled by a purple ring, his quivering lips, and his general apathy all bear
evidence of the baneful effect of the coca-juice when taken in excess.” The
general influence of moderate doses is gently soothing and stimulating; but
coca has in addition a special and remarkable power in enabling those who
consume it to endure sustained labor in the absence of other food.
 CUMBERLAND BAY.

Down the coast, just before reaching the city of Valparaiso, is an island
which possesses an interest for every one who has been a boy. Occasionally
an excursion visits the place, and the Englishmen, who constitute a large
fraction of the population of Valparaiso, with what few Americans there are,
go over to spend a day or two, and renew their youth. It is the island of Juan
Fernandez, where Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, “who kept things
tidy,” had the experience that has given the world of boys as much
enjoyment as any that ever came from a book. There was a Robinson
Crusoe—there is not a doubt of it—and there was a man Friday too, and the
island stands to-day exactly as it is described in the narrative; but the
surprising adventures of Mr. Crusoe as therein related do not correspond
exactly with the local traditions of the story. The island was a favorite
stopping-place for vessels in the South Seas, as it has good ship-timber,
plenty of excellent water, abounds in fruits, goats, rabbits, and other flesh
for food, and the rocks on the coast are covered with lobsters, shrimps, and
crayfish. It was a popular resort for buccaneers also, who ran into a well-
protected harbor to repair damages and get provisions. Juan Fernandez, a
famous Spanish navigator, discovered it in 1563, and the King of Spain
gave him a patent to the island, but as he never occupied it his title lapsed.
In 1709 the Scotchman Selkirk, or Selcraig, became mutinous on board the
ship Cinque Ports, and had to choose between being hung at the yard-arm
or put ashore at Juan Fernandez alone. He took the latter alternative, and
was left on the rocks with his sailor’s kit and a small supply of provisions.
To his surprise, after he had been on the island a few days, he found a
companion in an Indian from the Mosquito Coast of Central America, who
some years before had come down on the pirate Damphier, and going
ashore on a hunting expedition, was lost and abandoned by his comrades.
This was the man Friday. Some years after, Selkirk and the Indian were
rescued by Captain Rogers, of an English merchant-ship, and taken to
Southampton, where the Scotchman told his story to Daniel Defoe, and it
got into print, with some romantic exaggeration.
The island is accurately described in the story, and the visitor who is
familiar with “Robinson Crusoe” can find the cave, the mountain-paths, and
other haunts of the hero without difficulty; but Defoe has located it in the
wrong geographical position, having placed it on the other side of the
continent, and mixed up Montevideo with Valparaiso. It is about twenty-
three miles long and ten miles wide in the broadest part, and is covered with
beautiful hills and lovely valleys, the highest peak reaching an elevation of
nearly three thousand feet. A hundred years ago the Spaniards introduced
blood-hounds to kill off the goats and rabbits, and to keep the pirates away,
but the scheme did not work. Upon her independence, in 1821, Chili made
Juan Fernandez a penal colony, but thirty years after the prisoners mutinied,
slaughtered the guards, and escaped. Then it was leased to a cattle company,
which has now thirty thousand head of horned cattle and as many sheep
grazing upon the hills. There are fifty or sixty inhabitants, mostly ranchmen
and their families, who tend the herds and raise vegetables for the
Valparaiso market.
Great care has been taken to preserve the relics of Alexander Selkirk’s
stay upon the island, and his cave and huts remain just as he left them. In
1868 the officers of the British man-of-war Topaz erected a marble tablet to
mark the famous lookout from which Mr. Crusoe, like the Ancient Mariner,
used to watch for a sail, “and yet no sail from day to day.” The inscription
reads: “In memory of Alexander Selkirk, mariner, a native of Largo, county
of Fife, Scotland; who lived upon this island in complete solitude for four
years and four months. He was landed from the Cinque Ports galley, 96
tons, 16 guns, A.D. 1704, and was taken off in the Duke, privateer, on
February 12th, 1709. He died Lieutenant of H.B.M.S. Weymouth: 47 years.
This tablet is erected upon Selkirk’s lookout by Commodore Powell and the
officers of H.B.M.S. Topaz, A.D. 1868.”
No one ever goes to Juan Fernandez without bringing
away rocks and sticks as relics of the place. There is a
very fine sort of wood peculiar to the island which makes
beautiful canes, as it has a rare grain and polishes well.
 TABLET TO
ALEXANDER
SELKIRK.
 SANTIAGO.

THE CAPITAL OF CHILI.

NATURE never intended there should be a city where Valparaiso stands,
but the enterprise of the Chillanos, aided by English and German capital,
has built there the finest port on the west coast of South America, and the
only one with all the modern improvements. The harbor is spacious and
beautiful, and ten months in the year it is perfectly safe for shipping, but
during the remaining two months, when northern gales are frequent, vessels
are often driven from their anchorage, and compelled to cruise about to
avoid being dashed upon the rocks on which the city is built. The harbor is
circular in form, with an entrance a mile or so wide facing the north. A
breakwater built across the entrance would give the shipping perfect
protection, but the sea is so deep—more than a hundred fathoms—that such
a work is considered impracticable. In this harbor, drawn up in lines like
men-of-war ready for review, are hundreds of vessels, bearing the flags of
almost every nation on the earth except that of our own. Occasionally the
Stars and Stripes are seen, but so seldom that, as an American resident
expressed it, “they cure all the sore eyes in town.” Trade is practically
controlled by Englishmen, all commercial transactions are calculated in
pounds sterling, and the English language is almost exclusively spoken
upon the street and in the shops. An English paper is printed there, English
goods are almost exclusively sold, and this city is nothing more than an
English colony.
In Valparaiso, as everywhere else in Chili, there is an intense prejudice
against the United States, growing out of the attitude assumed by our
Government during the late war with Peru. The prejudice has been
aggravated and stimulated by the English residents. This, with the natural
arrogance of the Chillanos, who think they have the finest country on earth,
and that the United States is their only rival, makes it rather disagreeable
sometimes for Americans who go there to reside. For this and other reasons
our commerce with Chili has fallen off from millions to hundreds of
thousands, and it will be difficult to increase it as long as the prejudice of
the people exists, and lines of English, French, German, and Italian vessels
connect Valparaiso with the markets of Europe.

THE HARBOR OF VALPARAISO.

There is no steam communication with the United States, and all freight
is sent in sailing-vessels around the Horn or by way of Hamburg or Havre.
The freight charges from Valparaiso to New York by way of the Isthmus are
more than double those to the European ports, and it is about thirty per cent.
cheaper to ship goods from New York to Europe, and from there to South
America, than by way of Aspinwall and Panama. Passenger fares as well as
freight are subject to this discrimination. One can go from Valparaiso to
Europe via the Strait of Magellan—a voyage of forty-one days—cheaper
than to Panama—a voyage of twenty days, which ought to be made in ten.
It costs about ten cents per mile on a steamer from Valparaiso to the
Isthmus, to California, or to New York, and about two cents a mile to
Europe. As if this were not enough, the steamship company, a British
corporation which controls navigation on the west coast, arranges its time-
tables so as not to connect with the New York steamers at the Isthmus, and
its steamers usually arrive at Panama the day after the Pacific Mail ship
leaves Aspinwall, so as to subject the traveller to the expense and
annoyance of ten days’ delay on the fever-haunted Chagres. Freight and
mails receive the same treatment, and every possible obstacle is raised to
divert trade from the United States to Europe.
Valparaiso means “the Vale of Paradise,” but somehow or other there
was a misconception in this particular, for there is no vale and no symptoms
of Paradise. An almost perpendicular mountain ridge forms a crescent
around the bay, towards the shores of which descend steep, rocky
escarpments. Here and there watercourses have furrowed ravines, or
barancas, as they are called, which offer the only means of reaching the
outer world. Along the narrow strip of sand which lies between the sea and
the cliffs the town stretches three or four miles. In some places there is
width enough for only a single street, at others for three or four running
parallel to each other, but they only extend a few blocks. The one street, the
only artery of commerce in Valparaiso, is “the Calle Victoria,” stretching
around the entire harbor, and skirted by all the banks and hotels, the
counting-houses of the wholesale firms, the shops of the retailers, the
Government buildings, and the fine private residences. The rocky cliffs
have been terraced as the town has grown, and the city now extends back
upon the hills a long distance, one man’s house being above another’s, and
reached by stairways, winding roads, and steam “lifts,” which carry
passengers up inclined planes, like those at Niagara and Pittsburg. What
roads there are were laid out by the goats that formerly fed upon the
mountain side, and these twist about in the most confusing and circuitous
fashion. One has to stop and pant for breath as he climbs them, and an
alpenstock is needed in coming down. The hacks in Valparaiso have three
horses attached to them, and the teaming is done in carts drawn by four
oxen.
An evening view of Valparaiso from a steamer in the bay is quite novel,
as the lines of lights, one above the other, give the appearance of a city
turned up on end. Electric lamps are placed upon the crests of the cliffs,
throwing their rays over into the streets and upon the terraces below with
the effect of moonlight. During the day, however, the irregular rows of
houses, of different shapes and elevations, clinging to the precipices, look
as if a strong wind might blow them overboard, or an earthquake shake
them off into the bay.
The business portion of Valparaiso along the beach shows some fine
architecture, more elaborate than is to be seen elsewhere in Central and
South America, there being a rivalry in handsomely carved façades and
other adornments. The shops and stores are as large, and contain as
complete an assortment of goods, as those in any city in the world. There is
no city in the United States having the population of Valparaiso (125,000)
with so many fine shops, and such a display of costly and luxurious articles.
The people are wealthy and prosperous, the foreign element is large and
rich, and the place is famous, as is Santiago, the capital, for the
extravagance of its citizens. Some of the private residences are palatial in
their proportions and equipments, and millions of dollars are represented
under the roofs of bankers and merchants. There are clubs as fine as the
average in New York or London, public reading-rooms, libraries, picture-
galleries, and all the elements which go to make up modern civilization.
The parks and plazas are filled with beautiful fountains, and with statuary of
bronze and marble, much of which, to the shame of Chili, was stolen from
the public and private gardens of Peru during the late war. The Custom-
house is being torn away to give place to a magnificent monument to Arthur
Pratt, an Irish hero of that struggle. Pratt’s reckless courage made him the
ideal of all that is great and noble in the mind of the Chillanos, who have
erected a monument to his memory in nearly every town. Streets and shops,
saloons, mines, opera-houses, and even lotteries are named in his honor, and
the greatest national tribute is to destroy the old custom-house in order to
erect his monument in the most conspicuous place in the principal city.
The oddest thing to be seen in Valparaiso is the female street-car
conductors. The street-car managers of Chili have added another occupation
to the list of those in which women may engage. The experiment was first
tried during the war with Peru, when all the able-bodied men were sent to
the army, and proved so successful that their employment has become
permanent, to the advantage, it is said, of the companies, the women, and
the public. The first impression one forms of a woman with a bell-punch
taking up fares is not favorable, but the stranger soon becomes accustomed
to this as to all other novelties, and concludes that it is not such a bad idea
after all. The street-cars are double-deckers, with seats upon the roof as well
as within, and the driver occupies a perch on the rear platform, taking the
fare as the passenger enters. The Chillano is a rough individual; he is
haughty, arrogant, impertinent, and abusive. There is more intemperance in
Chili than in any other of the South American States, and consequently
more quarrels and murders, but the female conductors are seldom disturbed
in the discharge of their duties, and when they are, the rule is to call upon
the policemen,

VICTORIA STREET, VALPARAISO.

who stand at every corner, to eject the obstreperous passenger.

Street-car riding is a popular amusement with the young men about
town. Those who make a business of flirting with the conductors are called
“mosquitoes” in local parlance, because they swarm so thickly around the
cars, and are so great a nuisance. Not long ago a comic paper printed a
cartoon in which some of the best-known faces of the swells of Valparaiso
appeared on the bodies of mosquitoes swarming around the car of
“Conductor 97,” who had the reputation of being the prettiest girl on the
line. This put a stop to the practice for a while, and caused some of the
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