HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0081 9/23/00 "HARDY'S PALLBEARERS" ================================================ Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 14:28:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Jon Houge Subject: Thomas Hardy's pallbearers. At the back of my paperback copy of "The Return of the Native" there is a page "About the Author". There is this statement: ãThe pall-bearers at his funeral give some indication of how great was the appreciation of his genius: Prime Minister Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Kipling, Shaw, Galsworthy, Goss, Barrie, and Housman all paid tribute to Englandâs leading man of letters.ä I have not been able to find this stated anywhere else. Is it possible to find a source of information that could verify this? Any help or response will be appreciated. ========== From: "Houge, John" Subject: Trying to verify something. Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 05:22:14 -0700 Is anybody getting my messages with this question? I've lost count of the times I've sent this and all I get are emails in response to other questions. At the back of my paperback copy of "The Return of the Native" there is a page "About the Author". There is this statement: "The pall-bearers at his funeral give some indication of how great was the appreciation of his genius: Prime Minister Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald, Kipling, Shaw, Galsworthy, Goss, Barrie, and Housman all paid tribute to England's leading man of letters." I have not been able to find this stated anywhere else. Is it possible to find a source of information that could verify this? Any help or response will be appreciated. ========== From: "schweik" Subject: Re: Trying to verify something. Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 13:22:29 GMT Message-id: <39db2f15.3a1e.16838@fredonia.edu> Resent-From: HARDY-L@csusm.edu X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/1299 Reply-To: HARDY-L@csusm.edu X-Loop: HARDY-L@coyote.csusm.edu Precedence: list Reply-To: Status: Michael Millgate, *Thomas Hardy: A Biography*, New York: Random House, 1982, p. 575 provides a fuller list. The *Times* obituary for 17 January 1928 and *The Later Years*, p. 267-8, are the sources Millgate cites. Bob Schweik ========== Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 14:26:19 +0100 (BST) From: Michael Day Subject: Re: Trying to verify something. I don't have any original source to hand, but this account is corroborated by F.P. Pinion: "His ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey; the pall-bearers included the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, Sir James Barrie, John Galsworthy, Sir Edmund Gosse, Professor A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, and Bernard Shaw." F.P. Pinion, A Hardy Companion. London: Macmillan, 1968, p. 14. Michael Day * Research Officer, UKOLN The UK Office for Library and Information * * Networking, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY. * * Tel. +44 (0)1225 323923 Fax +44 (0)1225 826838 * ========== Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 09:53:02 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Trying to verify something. John, I haven't encountered this posting before--perhaps you sent it to another List? Perhaps the quotation is a variant of Millgate's account, which goes: "...the names of the pall-bearers were sufficiently eloquent of Hardy's standing. The list was headed by the Prime Minister [Baldwin] and the leader of the opposition (Ramsay MacDonald); it included the heads of the two colleges (Magdalene, Cambridge, and Queen's, Oxford) of which Hardy was an Honorary Fellow; and it was completed by six of the most eminent literary figures of the day--Sir James Barrie, John Galsworthy, Sir Edmund Gosse, A.E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. The reserved seats in the Abbey were largely occupied by people with famous names, among them Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Sir Arthur Pinero, Arthur Symons, John Burns, Jane Harrison, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Walter de la Mare, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, and the members of the Macmillan firm..." (*Biography*, 575-576) Perhaps Martin Ray would chip in with--where is the representative from the University of Aberdeen? (the first, I believe, to award Hardy with an Honorary Degree?) I wonder why your (slightly inaccurate) list, John, omits Virgina Woolf from the list of literary giants. Cheers, Rosemarie ========== From: Martin Ray Subject: Re: Trying to verify something. Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 14:53:01 -0400 (EDT) Michael Millgate's biography of Hardy confirms this list (p. 575). The two other pall-bearers were the heads of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges of which H. was an honorary fellow. Martin Ray Dr Martin Ray Department of English University of Aberdeen Aberdeen Scotland, UK m.ray@abdn.ac.uk ========== Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 09:34:32 -0700 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: Hardy's pallbearers. Jon, this is confirmed in Michael Milgate's _Thomas Hardy: A Biography_, Oxford UP, 1985. You will find it in Chapter 28 "Afterwards." I'm sorry it took so long to get a response to you. After a horrible glitch in which the whole membership list was erased WE ARE NOW BACK IN BUSINESS!! Members please resume sending your messages to HARDY-L, where they are very much appreciated. Betty Cortus ========== From: WWKerrigan@aol.com Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 15:41:38 EDT Subject: Re: Trying to verify something. That Housman was a pallbearer appears in Norman Page's book on Housman, and I think in other Housman biographies. Wally Kerrigan ==========