HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H9843 6/2/98 "HARDY'S BIRTHDAY" ========================================================== Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 08:21:07 -0400 (EDT) From: Keith Wilson Subject: Hardy birthday Has everybody registered that today is Hardy's 158th birthday? Of course it is also the 45th anniversary of the Coronation, but that's of considerably less interest in the great scheme of things. Keith Wilson Department of English, University of Ottawa 70 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5 Telephone/Voice-Mail: (613) 562 5770; Fax: (613) 562-5990 e-mail: kgwilson@aix1.uottawa.ca ********** Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 14:52:01 +0200 From: Birgit Plietzsch Subject: Re: Hardy birthday And it was a Tuesday, too, 158 years ago! Birgit ********** Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 09:16:21 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy birthday Greetings from Rosemarie Morgan! The following is Helen Granville-Barker's account of Hardy's last (87th) birthday: ". . . There were no guests, just the peaceful routine of everyday life, for that last birthday here. Mr Hardy said to you afterwards, you told me, that he thought it might be the last, but at the time he was not in any way sad or unlike himself. He noticed, as always, and unlike most old people, the smallest things. At luncheon, I remember, one of the lace doilies at his place got awry in an ugly way, showing the mat underneath, and I saw him, quietly and with the most delicate accuracy, setting it straight again--all the time, taking his part in the talk. Wasn't it that day he said, speaking of Augustus John's portrait of him: "I don't know whether that is how I look or not-- but that is how I FEEL"? In the afternoon we left him alone in the library because we thought he wanted to rest a little. It was cold, for June, and a wood fire was lighted. Once we peeped in at him through the garden window. He was not asleep but sitting, walled in with books, staring into the fire with that deep look of his. The cat had established itself on his knee and he was stroking it gently, but half-unconsciously. It was a wonderful picture of him. I shall not forget it. Nor shall I forget the gay and starlingly youthful gesture with which he flourished his hat towards us as, once in the motor-car, later that afternoon, he drove away from us." (Life, Millgate edit., 471) **********