Wessex Twilight (November, 1923)
with Jude. That's an impertinence, don't you think? Jude, anyway, is the least autobiographical of all my novels. Where they seem most autobiographical, they are least so. This is generally true of imaginative writing. I remember being struck at one time by a description of an execution in France, in one of Arnold Bennett's novels. It seemed to strike so clearly the note of truth and reality. Later I discovered that Bennett had never even seen a guillotine.
"Young Springrove, in Desperate Remedies, was actually drawn from life, it is true—but not from my life. It was a youth I once knew quite well. He's now dead, poor fellow. ..."
You find yourself back in the drawing-room. Hardy continues chatting amiably. He takes down from his shelves a heavy volume, turns the pages abstractedly. You venture to admire a Hardy portrait, facing the Shelley on the opposite wall.
"We like that one," says Mrs. Hardy, detached, half-dreamily. "Another used to hang there. We tired of it. One day Mr. Hardy tore it up."
Mr. Hardy allows himself a twitch of a smile, although he continues to look elsewhere.
"Now here," he observes, proffering the book, "is a fellow who has written about me with some enthusiasm. Only he has gone to my novels instead of to Who's Who for his facts. He's been impertinent in spots, you see. We've corrected him; I've penciled some notes in his margins. Perhaps you'd care to look over them, if you're interested."
A quaint preoccupation, this.
[7]
