HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H25/97 12/31/97 HARDY AND YEATS =================================================== From: Seth Lachterman Subject: RE:Hardy and Yeats Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 14:18:57 -0500 Did Hardy have any exposure to any of Yeats's occult friends? Seth ********** Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 10:52:40 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: RE:Hardy and Yeats Oddly TH biographers are noticeably thin on Hardy and Yeats (mostly reiterating TH's entries in the LIFE), despite the fact the two frequently kept good company. Since I easily get led astray it is no doubt utterly irrelevant to mention that TH found Yeats's mystical poem "The Shadowy Land" somewhat opaque, although his own well-thumbed volume of W.Smith's New Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology and Geometry gets closer to the WA context, as also the anecdote (in Lea?) regarding the real-life occupant of "Conjuror Trendle's" house (prototype near West Holme). According to one local historian this house was occupied by "a seventh of a seventh" (seventh son of seventh son) -- this "seventh" status indicated the possession of occult powers, in sum a "conjuror". Rosemarie Morgan ********** From: Martin Ray Subject: Re: Hardy and Yeats Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 17:16:54 +0000 (GMT) Re: Yeats My favourite anecdote about Hardy and Yeats occurs in Lady Margaret Newbolt, _The Later Life and Letters of Sir Henry John Newbolt_ (London: Faber & Faber, 1942). The Royal Society of Literature conferred on Hardy its gold medal on his 72nd birthday. Newbolt and W.B. Yeats went down to Max Gate to present it to him on the Society's behalf on 2 June 1912, in what Hardy had asked should be a private ceremony. Newbolt gives the following account: [start]At the house we were received by our host and hostess, who told us to our surprise that they had asked no other guests to meet us - our ceremony was to be without witnesses. In the last few minutes before dinner I asked Yeats whether he had any idea of a plan for carrying out so unique a solemnity - was it possible to make of it anything but a three minutes' agony of embarrassment? He with Irish good sense and readiness at once indicated a possible order of events - I was to speak first, then he would add a few words and produce the medal from his pocket. Hardy would say thank you and the whole thing would be done. It could not and would not be a long or impressive ceremony, we thought, but we hoped that it need not be an anxious one: there could be nothing in it that was not easily foreseen. Our anticipation was wrong in every detail. The dinner lives in my memory as beyond all others unusual and anxious. Mr and Mrs Hardy faced one another the longer way of the table: Yeats and I sat rather too well spaced at the two sides: we could hold no private communication with each other. I had the feeling that I was about to play a card game which I did not know. Hardy, an exquisitely remote figure, with the air of a nervous stranger, asked me a hundred questions about my impressions of the architecture of Rome and Venice, from which cities I had just returned. Through this conversation I could hear and see Mrs Hardy giving Yeats much curious information about two very fine cats, who sat to right and left of her plate on the table itself. In this situation Yeats looked like an Eastern Magician overpowered by a Northern Witch - and I too felt myself spellbound by the famous pair of Blue Eyes, which surpassed all that I had ever seen. We were no longer in the world of our waking lives, and I wondered whether my three companions perceived the fact as I did. At last Hardy rose from his seat and looked towards his wife: she made no movement, and he walked to the door. She was still silent and unmoved: he invited her to leave us for a few minutes, for a ceremony which in accordance with his wish was to be performed without witnesses. She at once remonstrated, and Yeats and I begged that she should not be asked to leave us. But Hardy insisted and she made no further appeal but gathered up her cats and her train with perfect simplicity and left the room. Hardy sat down again and asked us to open the business upon which we had been good enough to come. His manner was courteous but not easy - he seemed to have some anxious perplexity upon his mind: as if he too was playing a game and was doubtful of the rules. I was not surprised that he listened uneasily to my little lecture on the Novels of Thomas Hardy - but when I ended and Yeats began his much longer and more remarkable oration, the shadow on his face deepened unmistakably. On and on went Yeats - in his happiest and most serious manner: but the look on Hardy's face was one of apprehension - the ceremony was all but over and he was still dreading the worst. Yeats ended, drew out the medal and presented it. He did it well and I thought all fear of awkwardness was past: but Hardy sat with the trophy in his hand and dismay still on his face. Then he put his other hand into the tail pocket of his coat and drew out a roll of paper, which he began to smooth out before him. 'I thank you', he said, 'for your kindness: and this is my reply'. We were moved to protest - we genuinely felt that we had caused him nervousness enough already. But he explained that he had a particular reason - he was bound to give us his speech aloud - we were offering to read it later to ourselves - because he had already given a copy of it to the reporters from London. The world would read next morning that he had addressed the Deputation in such and such words and phrases - he could not allow himself to make the falsehood theirs instead of his (pp. 166-68). [end] Dr Martin Ray University of Aberdeen m.ray@abdn.ac.uk ********** Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 13:00:14 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: RE: Hardy and Yeats This coheres perfectly with Hardy's own (typically terse) account: On June 1 at Max Gate they had a pleasant week-end visit from Henry Newbolt and W.B.Yeats, who had been deputed by the Royal Society of Literature to present Hardy with the Society's gold medal, on his seventy-second birthday. These two eminent men of letters were the only individuals entertained at Max Gate for the occasion; but everything was done as methodically as if there had been a large audience. Hardy says: "Newbolt wasted on the nearly empty room the best speech he ever made in his life, and Yeats wasted a very good one: mine in returning thanks was as usual a bad one, and the audience was quite properly limited (Life, 385). Could it be that the "properly limited" is Hardy's way of struggling with the Emma incident? Martin Seymour Smith mentions that Emma at this time was heavily self-medicating for her pain -- with a mixture of opium and alcohol. Perhaps Hardy's anxiety started with Yeats' being held to cat-conversation for the entire meal -- possibly signifying an all-too familiar onset (given drug-induced insensitivity) of rapid deterioration into yet more ghastly embarrassments? A long way from Withered things -- on second thoughts, could be the reverse? Rosemarie Morgan **********