HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H02021 3/6/02 "MRS. SWANCOURT'S JEWELRY" ============================================================ From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Mrs Swancourt's rings Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2002 17:25:06 -0000 I wonder if anyone can help with some queries on an issue I am sure must have been often discussed before. In Chapter 12 of 'A Pair of Blue Eyes', Thomas Hardy writes "This is not all of Mrs Swancourt. She held out to Elfride hands whose fingers were literally stiff with rings, signis auroque rigentes, like Helen's robe." The Latin, from Virgil's Aeneid, refers to Helen's tunic which was embroidered with gold. The line in Virgil actually reads 'signis auroque rigentem' but, as a Classical scholar has pointed out to me, Hardy changed 'rigentem' to 'rigentes' to agree with 'fingers'. My first question is whether Hardy explained any of this in his first, or other, editions of the book or whether he really expected his readers to understand. My scholarly friend went on to say "_Signum_, amongst its many other meanings, may be a signet-ring; hence the humorous application to Mrs Swancourt's rings. .... the reader is expected to observe the incongruity and smile." I wonder if Hardy was really expecting only people like Horace Moule to pick this up? The phrase "signis auroque" is a hendiadys since it means "embroidery and gold" (there are other interpretations along the same lines). Hardy continues his paragraph "These rows of rings were not worn in vanity apparently. They were mostly antique and dull, though a few were the reverse." The phrase 'antique and dull' is an adjectival hendiadys so it seems Hardy was continuing with his thread of Classical allusion. I do wonder, though, about the sentence "These rows of rings were not worn in vanity apparently." What were they worn for? Because Mrs Swancourt had no better place to keep them? (Unlikely). And I am sure they weren't expensive knuckle-dusters. After these complications TH describes each of the rings as though he were writing a catalogue for a second-hand jewellery sale. Why does he do this? The various setting and devices on the rings seem significant in some way and I wonder if anyone has ever worked out what this might be, or concluded that Hardy was just revelling in using the language and the descriptions have no particular significance. TH finishes with "Beyond this rather quaint array of stone and metal Mrs Swancourt wore no ornament whatever." Another hendiadys in there. Did TH use them much (like Virgil and Shakespeare)? Or is this something peculiar to this peculiar passage in PBE? Oh dear, what a lot of words and questions in one e-mail! Patrick Roper ========== From: "James Gibson" Subject: Re: Mrs Swancourt's rings Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 21:14:37 -0000 : Dear Patrick, Rather belatedly, a reply which is the result of a discussion with PAUL TURNER, and for whom we are passing it on. Although it may be bad 'netiquette' I have left your e-mail complete below: 1. Did he expect his readers to understand? Yes, the educated readers that he wanted to appeal to. It was a period when MPs commonly interspersed their Commons speeches with apt quotations from Horace in Latin! Virgil's Aeneid was well known to all educated people - though of course Hardy had a special for knowing it well himself: Dryden's Virgil was one of the books that his mother had given him when he was eight years old. No, Horace Moule was certainly not the only person he expected to understand a witty allusion to Virgil. The point of the joke was that Mrs Swancourt was the very oppisite, visually, of Helen of Troly. for Hardy's satirical allusions to Horace and Virgil at her expense, see my Life of Thomas Hardy, p.37, especially para 4. 2. The phrase 'signis auroque' is not a hendiadys because it means 'embroidery and gold' but because it means 'golden images or figures'. See COD definition: 'the expression of an idea by two words connect by "and", instead of one modifying the other, e.g. nice and warm for nicely warm'. The phrase 'antique and dull' is not a hendiadys. It means 'antique and also dull', not 'antiquely dull' or 'dully antique'. so there seems no reason to credit Hardy with a fondness for this figure of speech. 3. 'Not worn in vanity apparently'. Hardy means that these rings did nothing, and couldn't have been meant to do anything, to make her look prettier. They were ugly in themselves, and in their pictorial subjects; and he sets them out like a sale-catalogue because all they do for their wearer is to show how much she paid for them, and so display her wealth. 4. The phrase 'stone and metal is not a hendiadys either, since it doesn't mean 'stony metal' or metallic stone'. But it's a splendid climax to the portrait of this highly individual character. Most women wear ornaments to make themselves look more attractive. This one wears something as repellent as metal armour or stone fortification. I hope this helps, All best, Helen ========== Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 16:02:24 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: Mrs Swancourt and Bracelets Now that the subject of Mrs. Swancourt and her rings has been revived, I have another question about her attitude to the wearing of jewelry. In Chapter XIV in London, where she is casting a critical eye over the fashionable passers-by in Hyde Park, she says to Elfride: "We were talking of bracelets just now. Look at Lady Luxellian's . . . . It is slipping up her arm - too large by half. I hate to see daylight between a bracelet and a wrist; I wonder women haven't better taste." As most bracelets worn today seem to be loose and dangling, was the fashion of having them worn tight against the wrist, like a wrist-watch for instance, de rigueur for Victorian women? Or was this just one of Mrs. Swancourt's idiosyncasies? Betty Cortus ==========