HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO2078 12/3/02 "ELIZA NICHOLLS QUESTION" ============================================================ From: "Kristina Hall" Subject: Re: To explain "rhet. theory" query Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 00:35:53 +0000 Does anyone have information on Eliza Nicholls? I am not sure where to start my search here. She may have been engaged to Thomas Hardy around 1863? also, did Hardy have a middle name or family name of Pulson? the reason I ask is Eliza Nicholls may have been one of my ancestors, and if so, we know this; she was from Pensance, Cornwall She had a child out of wedlock, and she gave him up for adoption because the father wouldn't marry her. It's just odd because the place, dates, and storyline seem to fit, and I am curious. please give me any information you can think of, even just a place to start. thanks! Kristina Hall ========== Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 10:35:47 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: Eliza Nicholls The biographies are probably the best place to start. Michael Millgate's biography (Oxford UP, 1985) of Hardy gives a good deal of information about the relationship between Hardy and Eliza Nicholls. She is also mentioned in Martin Seymour-Smith's biography (1994). Millgate writes: "Eliza Nicholls was the most important figure in Hardy's early emotional life--they seem to have been more or less formally engaged from about 1863 until 1869. . . . " Nicholls is credited with being the inspiration of a number of Hardy's poems, and some of her family background is recorded in both these biographies. Hardy did not have a middle name. Betty Cortus ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: Eliza Nicholls Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 20:25:03 -0000 Is there possibly a link here with TH's story 'A Mere Interlude' so much of which is set in Penzance (Pen-zephyr)? Patrick Roper ========== From: "Roy Buckle" Subject: ELIZA NICHOLLS Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 00:30:53 -0000 Trawling the net with a search engine I uncovered a site with Hardy content some of which may be new to members. The website is: www.findonvillage.com and the section to look at is entitled "Nepcote". It is a splendid site with photos and other illustrations to delight and inform the mind! I am particularly glad to discover there details of the pond that "We stood by"... Roy Buckle sometimes called "erb" www.segr-music.net ========== Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 09:13:51 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: ELIZA NICHOLLS Roy-- this is a most illuminating site. Thanks so much for hunting it out and sharing it. Cheers, Rosemarie ========== From: "erb" Subject: Re: ELIZA NICHOLLS site Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 15:11:01 -0000 Thanks, Bill (and Rosemarie of course but with whom I have other matters to excuse). In my idle way I had hoped the 'LINKS' managers would provide the necessary correctives when referring to this site. I have already queried the less obvious puzzles with the site owner who may have read the magisterial book you mention. (Haven't we all.) However, I have also been in touch with the lady who started it all on the forum recently. The lady (KH) thinks she is descended from the Eliza offspring (and that of the old Tomcat) but has furnished no hard evidence so far. I have advised the site-owner to wait before absorbing more Tom-Elizaisms into her pages. For what it's worth, though, 'KH' says the offspring was a boy named Pulson, born in Penzance and fostered while Eliza was sent from her parents' home to work in London after the father declined to marry her. Afterwards the boy refused to have anything to do with his mother. If this were to be proved true of TH then we would have a shameful history before us. Not quite how he described 'The Ruined Maid', is it? Somewhat in the spirit of recent forum messages one might also recall the following: "I feel some curse. O, five were there?" 'The Chosen' Or if one prefers the tale in triolets: "At last one pays the penalty- The woman - women always do." 'The Coquette, and After' Sorry, dear Betty, to be so long-winded but it's Christmastide nearly and there is something about all this that reminds one of Dickens! Roy. www.segr-music.net ========== Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 21:25:18 -0600 From: Bill Morgan Subject: Re: ELIZA NICHOLLS site Dear Roy and Forum members, Let me add my thanks to Rosemarie's: good work, Roy, in finding and pointing out this site. And I see that you are still in touch with the site's author and manager. Perhaps you will let her know that her work has been welcomed by correspondents to the Forum. But a few cautions about the site: (1) It is obviously indebted to Michael Millgate's magisterial biography but does not include any credits or documentation; it might, therefore, be misleading to students who happen upon it and who would be well advised to go to Millgate for a more thorough and footnote-able representation of the Hardy-Eliza relationship; (2) It includes a few mistakes that could likewise be misleading to students: --it asserts as a fact that Hardy met Eliza at Kimmeridge, whereas Millgate says he *may* have done so. --it identifies the "She to Him" sonnets as "He to She" poems. --it mis-labels "Neutral Tones" a sonnet. --it speaks confusingly of Emma and Florence, suggesting at one point that Hardy's relationship with his *second* wife deteriorated during the period of 1892-4. None of this is to gainsay the initiative of the site's manager in putting together the story of TH and Eliza as an illustrated narrative with local interest in Findon and vicinity: kudos to her for creating such an attractive site. And, I repeat: thanks to you for finding the site and bringing it to the Forum's attention. best, Bill Morgan ========== Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 09:20:12 - From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: ELIZA NICHOLLS site Hello Roy --et al, These are Michael Millgate's observations on the Eliza Nicholls site: ____________ I checked out the Hardy segment of the Findon website and it is indeed the case that the few known details of the TH/Eliza relationship are wildly elaborated and stretched out to cover a much greater period of time (e.g., there's absolutely no evidence for the many "countryside walks", let alone for the asserted childhood "friendship" begun before TH was nine or Eliza eight). And TH seems at one point to have acquired a third wife ("worsening relationships with his second wife" from 1892-4 onwards) and to have entered his "later years" in the 1890s (which was when he began cycling). But Valerie Martin does add a few interesting details about Eliza's family and about Findon itself, though these seem too often to be essentially gossip- and speculation-based (e.g., a check of Eliza's birth certificate would immediately have shown that her death was not caused by the Spanish flu). All in all, therefore, I've resolved to be grateful for such details (and for the photos and maps) and not trouble too much about the essentially innocent misrepresentation of my long-ago research! Curiously, Ms Martin seems to have missed the reproduction of TH's drawing of Findon church following p. 144 of my biography (not present, however, in the Clarendon paperback issue). -- Professor Michael Millgate ==========