HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO2082 11/29/02 "HARDY AND ANGLO-SAXON" =========================================================== From: Patrick Roper Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 Subject: Hardy & Anglo -Saxon I am sure some of you will know the extent to which Hardy had an interest in Anglo-Saxon Did he study the language at all? And was he known to be interested in A-S literature and, if so, did he record his views anywhere? Many thanks for your help. Patrick Roper. ========== Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 20:55:01 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon Sorry to be tardy with this, Patrick (Thanksgiving celebrations here!) but I think Hardy's letter (below) to Earl Hodgson in October 1900 may go some way to answering your question?-- It's the only letter written by TH which refers to matters A-S. TH writes: _________ I am guilty of a long delay in replying to your kind invitation to do something for the Anglo-Saxon Revw. But as I feel myself quite unable to undertake anything I suppose it does not matter. I have somehow got out of the way of writing for periodicals lately: & to-day I have cut my right thumb (carpentering), which will account for this scrawl. Believe me Yours sincerely Thomas Hardy. _______ *Collected Letters, Vol II*, edited by Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate, 272. The A-S Rev was founded in 1899 and edited by Lady Randolph Churchill. ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 15:54:23 -0000 Part of the reason for my question was that TH seemed to be attracted, to some extent, to A-S sounding names like 'Ethelberta' and 'Elfride'. At the begining of The Hand of Ethelberta TH says "She was the daughter of a gentleman who lived in a large house not his own, and began life as a baby christened Ethelberta after an infant of title who does not come into the story at all, having merely furnished Ethelberta's mother with a subject of contemplation." That seems rather a long-winded way of saying the name has no particular relevance. Am I missing something? (Ethelberta seems hardly ever to have been used by anyone as a name, either before or after Hardy's novel) and Elfrida is very unusual as an English name. Hardy's letter in Rosemarie's reply to my earlier posting also implies that he knew enough about Anglo-Saxon to be considered a worthwhile contributor by the Anglo-Saxon Review (I am assuming it was a journal to do with the Anglo-Saxons and not just with a chauvinistic title). Patrick Roper ========== From: "schweik" Subject: RE: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 17:23:43 GMT In reply to Patrick Roper's inquiry, the *Anglo-Saxon Quarterly* was a general miscellany. It was *not* devoted to publications on Old English--i.e.Anglo-Saxon-- and Hardy's being asked to contribute to it would not imply that he had any expert knowledge of that language. Bob Schweik Robert Schweik schweik@fredonia.edu schweikr@localnet.com ========== From: "erb" Subject: Re: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 19:49:06 -0000 FURTHER TO Patrick's message, it may interest him to know that there are THREE Ethelbertas (i.e. SIX hands hopefully) old enough to appear on the UK electoral roll for 2001. Only one of them was in Wessex. Of Elfrides there are FIFTEEN, widely spread, but TWO in Wessex. Unable to supply further details (or searches). ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 20:24:26 -0000 > FURTHER TO Patrick's message, it may interest him to know that there are > THREE Ethelbertas (i.e. SIX hands hopefully) old enough to appear > on the UK > electoral roll for 2001. Only one of them was in Wessex. > > Of Elfrides there are FIFTEEN, widely spread, but TWO in Wessex. > Unable to supply further details (or searches). If one types 'Elfride' into a search engine various people bearing that name pop up all over mainland Europe, thus at least some of the modern British Elfrides probably have Continental links. 'Ethelberta', however, produces nothing in my searches except references to Thomas Hardy's novel and a mention of a St Ethelberta in Herefordshire, and this latter is possibly a misprint for 'Ethelbert'. I am sure that Hardy knew all about Anglo-Saxon Queen Elfrida who had a strong association with Dorset and (like Emma) was born in Devon. I also wonder if TH, with his interest in theatre and the Classics, was familiar with William Masonās 'Elfrida, A Dramatic Poem Written on the Model of an Ancient Greek Tragedy' (1759). (Shades of 'The Tragedy of the Famous Queen of Cornwall' there?). Another link between Mason and Hardy is that they both shared an interest in church music and organs. But did TH just make the name Ethelberta up? If so, it seems an odd sort of a name to invent and use in the title of a book only to dismiss at the start of the first chapter. If I knew nothing of Hardy and his writing and saw a book called 'The Hand of Ethelberta' I would assume it would probably have Anglo-Saxon connotations and I am sure this fact would not have been lost on TH. It also sounds far more 'Wessex' than 'London' to me. Maybe this is a good moment to ask the rhetorical theorists about how they thought Hardy's readers, or potential readers, might react to these pseudo-Saxon manifestations. Patrick Roper ========== Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 16:20:38 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: RE: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon If TH didn't know William Mason's "Elfrida" he would surely have known his own local Elfrida just down the road from Bockhampton at Corfe Castle who murdered her stepson, Edward the Martyr. Rosemarie ========== From: "schweik" Subject: RE: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 00:49:35 GMT On Hardy's account of Ethelberta's name, although it may seem as if, in Patrick Roper's words, "rather a long-winded way of saying the name has no particular relevance" in fact it is highly relevant in a number of ways. First, the phrasing, "She was the daughter of a gentleman who lived in a large house not his own" puts the fact that Ethelberta's father was a butler--a "gentleman" living in "a large house not his own"--in a way both ironic and, at the same time, conferring on the man a title of "gentleman" which, in other places in the novel the narrator will suggest is appropriate not so much as to elevate Ethelberta's father as to suggest a dead level mediocrity in society generally. Second, the phrasing, "a baby christened Ethelberta after an infant of title who does not come into the story at all, having merely furnished Ethelberta's mother with a subject of contemplation" provides early on a suggestion of the relatively simple quality of Ethelberta's mother's mind. Bob Schweik Robert Schweik schweik@fredonia.edu schweikr@localnet.com ========== Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 23:03:02 -0400 From: Mary Rimmer Subject: RE: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon The note on the first paragraph of _The Hand of Ethelberta_ in the Penguin edition (ed. Tim Dolin), points out that the name is the feminized form of Ethelbert, King of Wessex 860-65. The 'infant of title' is most likely a male, and the implicit gender inversion sets up Ethelberta's future career as 'my lord and my lady both'. As Dolin puts it, giving Ethelberta the name of the titled infant 'prefigures the triumph of the Viscountess Mountclere'. Mary Rimmer ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 12:55:44 -0000 > If TH didn't know William Mason's "Elfrida" he would surely have known his > own local Elfrida just down the road from Bockhampton at Corfe Castle who > murdered her stepson, Edward the Martyr. Rosemarie, yes, I am quite sure he would. Many thanks to the others for their comments on Ethelbert(a). Apparently King Ethelbert of Wessex was buried in Sherbourne Abbey (and Edward the Martyr at Shaftesbury Abbey), and Hardy would, presumably, have known about this local dimension too. Am I right in thinking that TH's interest in these Anglo-Saxon names might, at least partly, be to do with the way in which they defined Wessex? Patrick Roper ========== From: "Michael Barry" Subject: Re: Hardy & Anglo-Saxon Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 00:43:27 -0000 The phrasing, "a baby christened Ethelberta after an infant of title who does not come into the story at all, having merely furnished Ethelberta's mother with a subject of contemplation" provides early on a suggestion of the relatively simple quality of Ethelberta's mother's mind." (Bob Schweik et al) This reminder from The Hand of E struck a chord with me - not (I assume!) connected with Anglo-Saxon, but certainly echoing the female imaginings that lead to infant christenings. In Squire Petrick's Lady, there is "the youngster Rupert. This name had been given to him by his dying mother...." In time her husband "learnt by accident that it was the name of the young Marquis of Christminster, son of the Duke of Southwesterland, for whom Annetta had cherished warm feelings before her marriage". In this story the name and the paternity are at least key plot points, whereas the Ethelberta reference, I agree, does seem irrelevant. However "A Group of Noble Dames" does seem to point up Hardy's love of (apparently) using real local history in his stories, relevant to their plot or not. However - does he apportion men with soft imaginings too? ==========