The Life of Thomas Hardy
The notes have been set down with a fine, careful pencil. The characters are beautifully formed. You look as though you'd like to copy the remarks. Mrs. Hardy fetches you a sheaf of paper. Here are a few of the items you scratch off:
The birthplace of T. H. was not a humble cottage; it was (and is) a low, but rambling and spacious house with a paddock and (till lately) large stablings.
This is impertinent
Primary school 8th to 10th year only—see Who's Who.
He knew the dialect as a boy, but was not permitted to speak it—it was not spoken in his mother's house, but only when necessary to the cottagers, and by his father to his workmen, some 6 or 12.
First to London & the suburbs, then from place to place—Somerset & the Rhine, etc., then Sturminster-Newton, then London several years, then Wimborne. 3 or 4 months every year to London for nearly 30 years, in flats & houses rented for the season.
Hardy stands and watches you silently as you turn the leaves. He has lit a cigarette, holds it in steady fingers, puffs meditatively. He opens a glass china cupboard, takes out a small painted porcelain model of a vine-covered, thatch-roofed house. A curious bit. Whatever can it be used for? Then he tells you that it's a reproduction in miniature of his birthplace. You can get one, he says, for one-and-six at the curio shop in East High
Street, just above St. Peter's. Hardy feels strongly
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