August 1 Farewell Dinner

I was sorrowful that as a non-Hardy Society member I was not invited to the farewell dinner in the Corn Exchange, so then decided to just ask, and they let me in! I sat next to Stanley and John, two retired bachelor Anglican ministers who live together (at Stanley’s description) in a former monastery near the Barbican [London] that was set up by a wealthy London commoner as a public school and a home for impoverished gentlemen. The public school moved away in the 19th Century, but the home for poor old men (John’s description) is still there. We discussed modern architecture and the social services provided by our respective churches.

I also visited with Patrick, a retired teacher, who on hearing I’m a Mormon asked if I am one of [my John’s] many wives. I’m always tempted to say yes, but didn’t. Stanley asked if the news was accurate about the polygamist group in Texas marrying underage girls, and when I said probably so, he was quite shocked.

At the conclusion of the dinner, the Society auctioned several lots of memorabilia re: Hardy, under the guidance of a famous auctioneer, who was very funny, and made people buy things at prices I’m sure they were not happy with. John and I sat on our hands. Miriam, a slight lady with a gray pageboy bob, told me afterward that she was surprised to see us not bid on anything. “We expect the Americans to buy it all,” she said. I‘m not sure if she approved or disapproved of that. “Not with this exchange rate,” I said. And not at John’s teacher’s salary.

Clarifications

I think I am going deaf. And/or memory is even more malleable than I had believed it to be. I know this blog is for family consumption and I make no pretensions to journalistic precision, but I do like to get things right. So, even though these clarifications will matter to no one who reads this blog but me:

1. Linda has one son in Boston. Her other children, daughters, are in Winchester, not Brazil. Julia has a son in Brazil.

2. Margaret and David Grantham (not Graham) live in Warwick, etc.

3. [An error of omission] T.E. Lawrence and Florence Hardy were friends, even though Lawrence had no use for women in the romantic sense. As per Stephen Mottram’s handout, Lawrence wrote to another good female friend, Charlotte Shaw (wife of GBS): Poor Mrs. Hardy, though. She has given up so many years, just to keep him alive, & he was so difficult, so unlike a great man. Not serene, not over-seeing, not happy. No health in him: she can’t have liked him really. He would not let her have any life of her own, & now it is too late to start. They couldn’t laugh together, you know, heartily. And she is so nice… Hardy and Lawrence knew each other after both were famous. Maybe they gave each other peace from pushing and star-struck fans.

4. The shaggy little ponies are called “heath croppers,” not “tree croppers.”

5. Judge Jeffries’ Bloody Assize was in 1685. I’m still not sure what it was about. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were six Dorset farm laborers tried and sentenced to deportation for forming a union. The Yetties sang a song about them (I don’t know how old): apparently, one of the union’s activities was to threaten farmers with fire if they didn’t get rid of the newly invented thrashing machines, which were starving out the laborers and their families. “The flames grow high in Dorset,” begins the chorus, “the ricks of corn are burning.” Maybe it will be on John’s CD.

6. “Puddle” was “Piddle” until a visit by Queen Victoria. I know I won’t remember them all, but there is Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle, Piddlehinton, Piddletrenthide, Puddletown, and Poole, of course (although I don’t think the last one’s actually related).

7. I was commiserating with a librarian at the Dorchester Library (at the Top o’ Town near the car park and the Hardy statue) about her job as a tech consultant now that everybody uses computers and the internet. “They took all the really interesting old things out of the library and put them in the Dorset Records Office, and now I don’t ever do those lovely long searches through the archives for people--it’s no longer the job I signed up for.” So I asked her the difference between heath and moor, and she got out the big old volumes of the OED, unabridged, to look them up (while people waited impatiently in line for help with the internet). The two words were used as synonyms for each other, and there was no definite difference, except under “moor” was mentioned bog, marsh, peat, and fen, but not under “heath.” Heath was equated with “down” and “upland,” too, however, so I guess altitude isn’t a difference. Both have the flora of “heath, heather, and ling,” and the same fauna listed. Does that clarify everything?

8. It is the Corn Exchange, not the Corn Hall, although the Town Hall is in the same building, on the upper level. Here is a photo of the Town Pump with the Corn Exchange behind it, across the High Street.

The Yetties

We went to another folk concert, this time in the Corn Hall on the High Street. The Yetties, named for their town Yetminster, were popular nationwide during the 70s. In some ways they reminded me of the Beach Boys--both singing about the traditions of their native area, both sort of good-ole-boy, both obviously playing many years together. Maybe later I can upload a couple of clips of video from the concert.
“Fill up the cider cup and have another round; of all the drinks of England, no better can be found!” We missed the cider tasting (and Hardy-passage-reading) scheduled immediately before the concert--we were having dinner at Judge Jeffries Inn (Hanging Judge of the Bloody Assizes)--but most of the rest of the audience were pretty well lubricated by the time of the concert, and there was much laughter and singing of choruses. It was fun. John bought The Yetties’ double CD in which they read Hardy poetry and play his personal fiddle. Their photos on the CD are much younger and svelter.

The rain poured down outside the open doors of the Corn Hall during the concert, but the time it was over at 11 p.m., it had stopped, and we splashed home through a cool breeze, tryiing to miss stepping on slugs and snails on the pavement.

July 31 T.E. Lawrence and Mrs. Hardy

We ventured another coach tour, despite the mixed pleasures of the last one--this time led by Stephen Mottram, a tall, ambling, crook-tooth man with a sharp sense of humor and willingness to gossip while purportedly debunking the rumors about long-dead literary personalities. I must say first off that Peter O’Toole looks exactly like Lawrence, it is amazing, except that Lawrence was short (and I don‘t know if O‘Toole was).

Stephen had written a long and interesting handout for the tour, so for me there was more background than on some of the trips. We rode to Moreton, Moreford in Hardy’s Wessex, and walked up to St. Nicholas Church. Here is John near an ivied cedar tree in the graveyard. The inside of the church was blown out by a WWII German bomb, and the new etched windows, all in a theme of light, are very interesting. My favorites were the Galaxy Window and this, The Days of Darkness. Notice the smoking candles.

The St. Nicholas pastor refused a Lawrence memorial in his graveyard, so he is buried in a cemetery a short walk away. Here is the cemetery cat asleep in the bracken--bowls of food and water are set out behind the headstone--somehow it seems like Lawrence asked for that tradition to be initiated, but it hardly seems possible he had such foresight, as he died in a motorcycle accident. I must have heard wrong. But he did threaten suicide occasionally, once memorably to the Prime Minister, if he were to be denied reinlistment in the RAF (he was allowed in). We saw Bovington Camp, still full of uniformed soldiers, and Clouds Hill, Lawrence’s cottage, and made a dramatic stop in the middle of the narrow tree-shaded lane where he (non-fatally) clipped the two boys on bicycles and flew to his own death.

Near Moreton (and running through Dorchester) is the River Frome. Signs near the ford warn not to go upstream or downstream, as nesting swans will attack if disturbed. Boys were playing on a little island in the center of the stream. They are probably used to coach-loads of old people going by--a television crew was setting up a shooting at St. Nicholas when we arrived, and we chased them from the Lawrence gravesite too. They waited for quite a long time, giving us grumbly looks, but the Hardy Society is like a star in its course, and will not be moved from its appointed rounds.

Last on our tour was a visit to Egdon Heath, partially-imaginary setting to Return of the Native. I wondered to my tour-mates what is the difference between a heath and a moor, as there seems to be one but no one is quite sure what it is. A heath is sandy and flat in the lowlands, while a moor is boggy and upland, seems to be the consensus. Heather grows on both. The little heath ponies are called “tree croppers” in Hardy’s writing, I think.

The Odor of England

From one vantage out of our bedroom window is the Dorset Cereal Factory, a handsome red brick building which engenders the only traffic on our street--Peverell Avenue East--that I’m aware of. Last night walking home after visiting the Holy Trinity Catholic church on the High Street and peeking into the rectory garden (if “rectories” are what they’re called in Catholic parishes), I noticed something giving me strong waves of joy and nostalgia--the smell of the air. John thought it might be the cereal factory, and it is a sort of a breakfast smell. I wonder what the yellow fields are across from our window. I don’t think it’s strictly wheat--it doesn’t smell like my dad’s farm. Maybe it’s just the scent of grass hay. Whatever plant or combination of plants it is (and I noticed it on the other side of Dorchester too, so I don’t think it’s just the cereal factory), it is very evocative--maybe even more so before I noticed it.

I was thinking too, how for an early bookworm like me, England is Storybook Land. The second-hand book sale in the church hall reminded me of it. The hedgerows and little fields, the narrow streets of the village, the market, the Church, the broad-faced farm woman in a skirt and wellies (even her tarty daughter with pink hair and a lip piercing), are all denizens of that land. It’s magical because I met it first in a book. The Pevinses England is just as fantastical to me as Narnia is. Even grimy, busy London is magic, from Oliver Twist to Sherlock Holmes to Mrs. Dalloway to Peter Wimsey to Rumpole to Inspector Dalgliesh. Who knows who I’ll run into next week in Baker Street or St. James Park or the Old Bailey or Whitechapel Road or Kensington SW1. A native could never have this sense of wandering into the world of Story. (Or maybe they could--maybe that’s one reason why people love Hardy so much--you can actually tramp out to look at the dairy where Tess met Angel, take a walk to see the church wall and stained-glass window she lay under and thought about noble ancestors long-gone.)

In the US a few places have that same sense of existing half in reality and half in story. Manhattan appeals to me because of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin (and the novels of S.J. Rozen and a hundred movies). Hoofing it through the West Eighties, I look up at the buildings and wonder which one has an upper floor full of orchids. Boston belongs to Robert Parker, Chicago to Sarah Paretsky, New Orleans (I admit it) to Anne Rice and her vampires. I sort of have that feeling about the Avenues in Salt Lake, since my own story is set there and exists in an imaginative Avenues overlaid on top of the real one.

But England is covered, leaf by leaf, with the pages of stories from even before I could read--Peter Rabbit, Rat and Mole, Christopher Robin, Wendy Darling and her brothers, Mr. Tumnus, Tom Bombadil, Arthur and Merlin. How fortunate I am to walk and breathe in my own body through the land of imagination.

July 30 John Delivers

Even with an early night, I needed (and took) a nap this morning after John and Linda left for the lectures. On Mountain Daylight Time we’re going to bed around 4pm and getting up for the day at midnight. I can’t tell if I’m tired from jetlag or tired from running around all day long. I must say, however, that trips with just John are much less tiring and stressful than trips with students. Maybe part of it is staying in one place for more than three days.

John gave his presentation today, on his students’ reactions to walking through Hardy country. The other presenter in his session was a Polish doctoral student from Yale, who discussed the imprinted emotional image in Hardy’s prose and poetry--it was a small group and even I made a comment (on “flashbulb memory,” e.g., where were you when you heard Kennedy had been shot. Oh right, none of you were born yet--well, I was five and in kindergarten, and all the teachers were crying and when I went home and told my mom she didn‘t believe me, and then she started crying too. I don‘t know what the equivalent would be now--the Challenger accident?)

Anyway, John discussed what happens in our groups of students with the mix of landscape, literature, group dynamics and personal stuff. It is a very potent mix. One question from the audience was, “ethically, how do you let students know ahead of time what they’re in for?” and the answer is that he can’t. Something different happens each time that is very hard to predict. We did discover the importance of frequent debriefing, even if people get sort of bored by it, and this last trip--UK07--had considerably less emotional drama (which was good, or at least safer). Anyway, it was an interesting talk and interesting discussion afterward. I decided I have a crush on Michael Irwin (I won‘t tell him that).

July 29 People

I know why John likes to come to this conference. It gives a very different view of England than the typical American experience of West End Theatre/ Tower of London/ changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. Most of the attendees are older, if not elderly, with a scattering of earnest and ambitious young foreign scholars (one of the papers coming up is “Thomas Hardy’s Popularity in Iran”). John said the Hardy Society has made deliberate overtures to younger people recently, as their original membership is dying off. We have met young women from China, from Russia, from Dublin (still foreign I guess) several from America. There is a contingent of young French academics, usually smoking at the back door of the church.

But the most interesting people are the mid- to older English men and women. Our housemate at the B&B, for example, Linda, is a white-haired, energetic, and voluble woman who retired a few years ago with her husband and now lives in Spain. “We have one son in Brazil and one in Boston in America,“ she said. “It made it easier to leave England when the time came.” She has a rental car for the week--she brought us home from the concert last night in the rain, giving us a tour of Poundbury on the way. In fact, her previous home was in Poundbury, which is a planned community owned/administered by the Duchy of Cornwall--I‘ll have to take a photo of the ‘medieval‘ market hall, built four years ago. In England, Linda was active in Labour politics, and she is quite defensive of Tony Blair. “All those Old Labour socialists quit the Party practically the week he was elected because he didn’t put up the minimum wage to where they wanted it,” she said. “We’d been 18 years out of power, did they think he could do it all in an instant?” I met an Old Labour socialist on the coach yesterday, Julia, a lively woman on crutches (“I need a hip replacement that I’m avoiding”) with fuchsia lipstick and blue eye shadow who told me that she grew up listening to her Tory dad and socialist mum argue politics. “Labour’s not even Labour anymore,“ she mourned. “And of course with the war, we marched, but did Blair listen? No. People who voted Labour for generations don’t identify as Labour now. The Conservatives will sweep the next election.”

When people hear that we’re American, they often start a political conversation, then stop and inquire politely into our views before proceeding. I don’t know if or why Thomas Hardy readers are mostly left-leaning, or perhaps society-joiners in general are left-leaning, or maybe only Labour-types are speaking about politics at this conference (at least to Americans), or Brits know that not many of the 25% of Americans who support the current administration are visitors to England.

But the political talk is only casual--most of the conversation is wildly diverse, about the incredible range of interests and occupations of this group of people bound by a single passion. John met Margaret and David Graham last time he came to the conference. They are from Warwick, she a social worker and he a businessman who had a transformative experience as an older adult going back to University and is now an educational consultant. Last night at the concert I talked shop with her about disability assessments and diagnostic overlaps--why do attention deficit problems so often coexist with anxiety disorders? Or aspergers, dyslexia and anxiety? Rosemary also sat by me on the coach tour and talked about her bird-watching and truffle-hunting adventures with her (female) partner. She removed a spider that had wandered into Julia’s hair during the previous stop at a Tess site, and we discussed the differences in the common names of bugs and insects between rural Devon (where she is from) and rural Utah (for her, Daddy Long Legs is a sort of large annoying Mayfly, apparently, not the spidery creature with a round gray body and multiple bent legs that I thought it was). On hearing that we planned to travel to the fens, she recommended a book as background--“Waterland” by Graham Swift. Furze Swann himself is 87 years old or something, and perfectly mythological. This morning I decided to go the lectures with John, and heard a sharp and funny talk about Hardy and The Moon from Michael Irwin, director of the last conference, who with his grizzled hair and sideburns looks like a heavy-faced, bow-legged Welsh miner or a melancholy farmer. He spent five minutes discoursing “at the risk of chauvinism” on the superiority of the English word ‘moon’ to that of all other languages (even the French ‘le lune’ or whatever it is--as a part of his work he translates French opera into English and pays attention to the lengths of vowels and consonants). We also heard from Simon Gatrell, a British academic from the University of Georgia, on cross-dressing in Hardy’s novels (one sensed he may have a personal interest in the topic); and an argument for a more varied Hardy canon, with a passionate introduction to a less-read poem as both aesthetically superior and emotionally typical of Hardy. Maybe I’ll insert the poem, if I can find it on the web.

The Face at the Casement
If ever joy leave An abiding sting of sorrow, So befell it on the morrow
Of that May eve....
The travelled sun dropped To the north-west, low and lower, The pony's trot grew slower, And then we stopped.
'This cosy house just byI must call at for a minute, A sick man lies within it Who soon will die.
'He wished to marry me, So I am bound, when I drive near him, To inquire, if but to cheer him, How he may be.'
A message was sent in, And wordlessly we waited, Till some one came and stated The bulletin.
And that the sufferer said, For her call no words could thank her; As his angel he must rank her Till life's spark fled.
Slowly we drove away, When I turned my head, although notCalled; why I so turned I know not Even to this day.
And lo, there in my View Pressed against an upper lattice Was a white face, gazing at us As we withdrew.
And well did I divine It to be the man's there dying, Who but lately had been sighing For her pledged mine.
Then I deigned a deed of hell; It was done before I knew it; What devil made me do it I cannot tell!
Yes, while he gazed above, I put my arm about her That he might see, nor doubt her My plighted Love.
The pale face vanished quick, As if blasted, from the casement, And my shame and self-abasement Began their prick.
And they prick on, ceaselessly, For that stab in Love's fierce fashion Which, unfired by lover's passion, Was foreign to me.
She smiled at my caress, But why came the soft embowment Of her shoulder at that moment She did not guess.
Long long years has he lain In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather: What tears there, bared to weather, Will cleanse that stain!
Love is long-suffering, brave, Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel; But O, too, Love is cruel, Cruel as the grave.

[sorry about the formatting]

Part of it is that people are much more open here than in general life, because they assume the shared interest in all things Hardy. I remember during previous trips to the UK traveling on the train or waiting in a queue, the people most willing to make conversation were from South Africa or Canada or New Zealand. But today, standing waiting for John in the church hall/ 2nd-hand book sale/ coffee-break area, several people approached me in the most friendly manner, and even forgave me my lukewarm feelings for Hardy--after all, I‘m married to an aficionado. Actually, when I confess that I like Hardy’s poems better than his novels, and he‘s not even my favorite poet at that, quite a few spouses of both genders admit that they are here for their husband or wife and don’t like Hardy that much either. So I guess it’s another shared experience. Maybe it would be the same at a fly-fishing conference, or a workshop on playing the dulcimer.