CHAPTER X
Janus (1925)
IT remains to record a few late facts.
In 1914 Hardy married his second wife, Florence Emily Dugdale, a professional writer of occasional pieces for various periodicals and newspapers and the author of a few delightful children's books. She shares the honors that have been enfolding her husband thickly in his declining years.
Upon the death of George Meredith in 1909, Hardy fell heir to the Order of Merit. He has also received an honorary Litt. D. from Cambridge, and is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College in that University. Aberdeen and Oxford have both made him a Doctor of Laws, the latter in spite of the not too complimentary picture of "Christminster" which figured in Jude. He holds the Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature, membership in the Council of Justice to Animals and in the Athenæum Club, and the office of Justice of the Peace for his native district. He bears these burdens very lightly, as is fitting.
For years, however, his many admirers have been raising an annual outcry—for Hardy has never been awarded the sweetest plum of all, the Nobel Prize in literature. There can, of course, be little doubt that The Dynasts was the most imposing and important poetic
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