HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H03047 6/2/03 "EMIGRATION AND SOCIAL CLASSES"
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Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 09:46:08 -0400
From: "Diana Archibald" <Diana_Archibald@uml.edu>
Subject: Hardy's connection to Australia


Hello,

I am working on an article for publication and have come upon a dead
end on one issue. I'm hoping someone on this list can help me. My
questions: Did Hardy have any particular connection to Australia?
Did he, for instance, know anyone himself who immigrated there? I
understand that a few years before he was born, some union organizers
(i.e. "criminals") were transported to Australia. Did that story
make any particular impression on him? Was he personally aware of
any other convicts transported?

What I'm trying to determine is whether Hardy's image of Australia is
shaped merely by the popular image of that far away land or is
influenced by more personal experience. I've briefly checked a few
sources (letters, biography, critical works) and have as of yet come
up with nothing. I would appreciate any suggestions--either facts,
anecdotes, or sources to examine more closely.

Thank you very much for your help,

Diana Archibald
UMass Lowell

Diana_Archibald@uml.edu

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Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 13:30:44 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: Hardy's connection to Australia

Hardy's very dear friend, Henry Bastow (apprentice architect in Dorchester,
with Hardy), went to "Tasmania" (as architect and surveyor) in February,
1861. In Dorset, the two young men had worked, walked and talked and
sketched together. Hardy's replies to Bastow's letters became perfunctory
over time and eventually he let the correspondence drop. Bastow was a
Christian Salvationist and a proselytiser. Hardy did, though, keep all
Bastow's letters to the end of his life. There is, however, no trace of
Hardy's letters to Bastow.

If you can find them you might gather some clues to:

"....whether Hardy's image of Australia is
>shaped merely by the popular image of that far away land or is
>influenced by more personal experience."

Good luck, Diana,

Cheers,
Rosemarie

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Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 16:21:40 -0400
From: "Diana Archibald" <Diana_Archibald@uml.edu>
Subject: Re: Hardy's connection to Australia

Thanks, Rosemarie,

I had asked about the Australia connection because I'm writing about
_Jude_ and the way Australia is portrayed in that novel almost as
another world. Of course, immigration to Australasia was usually
thought of as a sort of death. I find it so interesting that Little
Father Time is born there....

In light of the usual idea of Australia as land of criminals, I find
your information about Bastow fascinating. Did he go there as a
missionary, then? Any suggestions of where I might begin looking for
those letters? I am not a Hardy scholar, more of a general
Victorianist. My specialization is emigration in Victorian
literature, however. Are all of Hardy's papers in Dorchester?

Thanks for the help!

Best,

Diana

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From: Jcphardysoc@aol.com
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 16:30:41 EDT
Subject: Re: Hardy's connection to Australia

Dear Forum Readers

I have long been curious as to Hardy's silence about the Tolpuddle Martyrs ('the union organizers') whose 1834 conviction for administering an illegal oath became a national cause celebre, and was probably still a talking point in the rural Dorset of Hardy's childhood. Of course, the Martyrs' real crime in the eyes of the then Dorset establishment was to have founded a trade union branch with the objective of raising agricultural wages, but this was not in itself a crime by this date, hence their indictment and conviction on a legal technicality.

Hardy's early radicalism would surely have made him sympathetic to their aims and indignant about their harsh treatment, but even in his essay 'The Dorsetshire Labourer' he does not allude to the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Perhaps his sympathies lay more with those of his own social class (Hardy's father as a self-employed master builder would have been higher in the social ranking than agricultural labourers) who aspired to middle-class professions - 'The Poor Man and the Lady' theme. Maybe also Hardy's family's Anglicanism as opposed to the Martyrs' non-conformity (five of the six Martyrs were Methodists) has some bearing.

This is conjecture on my part, but I would welcome the views of other Furum readers.

Best wishes

John Pentney

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Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 10:40:37 +1000
From: "David B. Cornelius" <dcorney@midcoast.com.au>
Subject: Hardy's connection to Australia

Just a couple of points on the topic under discussion:
Australia was another world for the English, and probably still is. In relation to those people it was ‘a sort of death’. Transportation or emigration enabled authors to rid themselves of superfluous characters, temporarily or permanently. Dickens made such use of the country with Magwitch who had been unjustly convicted and made good, Micawber, who also made good, and Mr Peggotty and Little Em’ly. Those interested in other views of the country might read what Trollope or Mark Twain had to say of it.
“In light of the usual idea of Australia as land of criminals” is a bit gratuitous. Australia was populated by relatively peaceful aboriginal peoples though this was generally ignored by authors except those who wrote official documents like governors and explorers. New South Wales became a dumping ground for the victims of a careless industrial nineteenth century England. Some of these were vicious criminals, while others were political prisoners like the Tolpuddle Martyrs and many Irish rebels. Most eventually adapted to the difficulties of their new environment and made useful contributions to the development of the country.
It may not be well-known in America but it too was used by England as a criminal depository until the revolution yet few regard it as a ‘land of criminals’ despite its government. (that too is gratuitous.)
I think Hardy was too concerned with courting his middle-class readers to allow any radical ideas to get in his way. He may have espoused the ‘poor man’ image, but that was only the poor middle-class man. To my mind he only once touches on urban poverty and that was a brief description in “Desperate Remedies” (If there are others I would be interested to find out.). Having lived in the city and priding himself of being equally at home there, Hardy gives scant regard to its problems.
Two books that give some insight to the social context of Hardy’s time are Merryn Williams, (1972), Thomas Hardy and Rural England, London, Macmillan and Merryn and Raymond Williams, (1980), Hardy and Social Class, Thomas Hardy: The Writer and his Background, N. Page, New York, St Martin's Press Inc: 29-40.

Regards,
David Cornelius

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From: "darse" <dlirvin@ucdavis.edu>
Subject: Australia and convicts
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 19:28:19 -0700

Many, I'm sure, on the list are already familiar with The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes (New York: Knopf, 1986). It doesn't mention Hardy but for those interested it is an extremely readable history of Australia's early years as a dumping off point for convicts. Chapter 6, in particular, does quite a nice job of identifying the gap between the Australian image of the heroic, innocent-victim convict and the contemporary, middle-class British attitude towards the "criminal-class" (that is, the social group that "bred" criminals, which is not to be confused with the more "deserving" poor). It would be interesting to see if this unsympathetic approach to the issue of deportation had anything to do with Hardy's silence on the subject of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. After all, as David Cornelius points out, Hardy may well have been too attune to his middle-class readers to want to touch too closely on a controversial topic. The Fatal Shore, in case anyone is interested in an abridged version, was made into a PBS series hosted by Robert Hughes--Australia: Beyond the Fatal Shore, 2000. It ran from September 5th to September 7th, produced by Oxford Film and Television for the BBC: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/australia/aboutseries.html I haven't seen it so I can't say anything for sure . . . enjoy! Darcy Irvin

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From: "deborah maltby" <maltbydk@hotmail.com>
Subject: Tolpuddle Martyrs and Dorsetshire Labourer
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 15:20:21 +0000

Responding to John Pentney and David Cornelius on Hardy's silence on rural
labour agitation and particularly the Tolpuddle Marytyrs:

This is something I too have been looking into, because I am working on
Hardy's representations of rural workers. I think in addition to his
reluctance to offend middle-class readers, he may have been promulating a
myth of the ideal rural England of his childhood in reaction to the
encroachments of industrialization. He does seem awfully patronizing as he
gently pokes fun at them; for example, in _FFMC_.

I also question the accuracy of the way "The Dorsetshire Labourer" portrays
the rural people. Hardy seems to believe that their employment, wage, and
housing conditions are fairly good. Other books with data on 19th century
Dorset wages seem to contradict this (especially see Barbara Kerr's 1968
book _Bound to the Soil: A Social History of Dorset_ and J.H. Bettey's 1977
book _Rural Life in Wessex 1500-1900_)

In "The Dorsetshire Labourer," Hardy argues that stereotyping the rural
people as "Hodge" is unfair, as they are individuals with a wide range of
intelligence, morality, and attitude. He then proceeds to generalize
extensively about them.

I do wonder whether any of Hardy's diaries or letters reveal more about his
attitudes towards the rural workers.

Deborah Maltby

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From: Jcphardysoc@aol.com
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 18:26:55 EDT
Subject: Re: Hardy's connection to Australia - Urban Poverty


Dear Forum Readers

With reference to David Cornelius' item about Hardy and the urban poor, his most memorable reference is in The Mayor of Casterbridge. The denizens of Mixen Lane in the Casterbridge suburb of Durnover [Mill Lane in Fordington] clearly represent an semi-criminal urban underclass, albeit that of a small country town rather than a large industrial city. Doubtless, this derives from Hardy's personal knowledge of this then slum area of Dorchester (now quite gentrified) and of course Hardy enjoyed friendship with the Rev Moule, vicar of Fordington, and several of his sons.

The Rev Moule's heroic action in dealing with the 1850s cholera outbreak in his parish is fictionalized by Hardy in his short story 'A Changed Man'.

Best wishes

John Pentney

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Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 10:29:58 -0400
From: Robert Schweik <schweik@fredonia.edu>
Subject: Hardy and Social Class


With respect to the recent thread on Hardy's treatment
of social class in his writings, I'd recommend as useful
the chapter titled "Social Issues: Class in Hardy's Novels"
in Patricia Ingham's Thomas Hardy, Authors in Context Series,
Oxford World's Classics (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003),
pp. 104-128.

Bob Schweik

Robert Schweik Distinguished Teaching Professor, Emeritus Department of English State University College Fredonia, NY 14063 USA schweik@fredonia.edu schweikr@localnet.com

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Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 14:27:24 -0700
From: Betty Cortus <hardycor@owl.csusm.edu>
Subject: Re: Hardy and Social Class
s:

I just received my copy of Roger Ebbatson's _Hardy: The Margin of the
Unexpressed_ (Sheffield AP, 1993). Chapter Five "Speaking Class," deals
with this subject in "An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress" and
"The Dorsetshire Labourer."
Betty Cortus
hardycor@owl.csusm.edu

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Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 08:53:45 -0400
Subject: Re: FFTMC and Gabriel's projected emigration to British Columbia
From: "Philip & Andrea Allingham" <apalling@tbaytel.net>


"Oak [was] emigrate to the goldmines/goldrush of California. Money Bags.
Initially Oak was going to emigrate to British Coliumbia (ms version) where
he would have become a fur-trapper probably. Not nearly so much money in
that and also the "animal rights" question might have bothered Hardy."

While I do not disagree with the conjecture that Hardy as an animal rights
activist would have been uncomfortable with the notion of Gabriel's
emigrating to the new Canadian province of British Columbia to work,
perhaps, for the Hudson's Bay Company as a trapper, I do not agree that that
was what "B. C." would have suggested in 1873. That territory in 1858
experienced a considerable gold rush of its own which brought with it a
flood of Europeans, Americans, and Chinese. However, by the time Hardy was
writing FFMC, the main "rush" was over, and, although there was still
considerable mining activity, the new province (it became the Crown Colony
of "New Caledonia" shortly the rush began) was developing its agricultural
and lumbering sectors. In other words, although some readers might
associate B. C. with the prospect of easy money (as the correspondent put
it, "money bags"), the connection was not strong enough--hence the change to
California, still very much the Golden State to Hardy's Victorian
readership. For D. H. Lawrence in "Lady Chatterly's Lover," British Columbia

(specifically, Victoria) must have represented a chance for a new life away
from the class-consciousness of the mother country in a pre-industrial
woodland
setting.

As a postscript, "Lytton" in the B. C. interior was named after the British
Overseas Secretary of the time, Sir Edward G. D. Bulwer-Lytton, who helped
create the Crown Colony ofNew Caledonia, which eventually united (under fear

of American invasion) with the nearby colony of Vancouver Island to become
British Columbia.

Upon the fall of Lord Palmerston's administration in 1858, Bulwer accepted a

cabinet post under Lord Derby as Colonial Secretary. When gold was
discovered
on the Fraser River in 1858, Bulwer drafted a bill to secure the Crown's
rights
to the territory and created the colony of "New Caledonia," aptly named by
Bulwer for its many mountain chains. His bill provided for representative
government at the end of a five-year period. (See "The Victorian Web.")

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Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 10:12:02 -0400
From: "Diana Archibald" <Diana_Archibald@uml.edu>
Subject: Re: FFTMC and Gabriel's projected emigration to British Columbia

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Certainly the LITERARY image of Canada (and Australia, by the way, as I mentioned in my last post) ought to be separated from the REALITY of day-to-day existence for immigrants. Yes, certainly the British would be well aware of various gold rushes around the globe, whether in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, or Canada, but these countries each retained a unique reputation in much of British literature. While convicts were most certainly dumped in the American colonies before they revolted from the "Mother Country," the U.S. did not come to be portrayed usually as a land of convicts as Australia appears in so many pieces of literature. While Canada had it's own gold rushes, the IMAGE of "Britain's Eldest Daughter of Empire" as a land of vast trees and land waiting to be tilled (see Carlyle) persisted in the literary and public imagination (of Britain). While native peoples existed (and still live) in all four of these countries, often these lands are portrayed in the literature of the Victorian period as if they are "empty"--with perhaps the exception of New Zealand, which is sometimes figured as Maoriland.
My point in relation to the post by "Philip & Andrea Allingham" <apalling@tbaytel.net> is to go even further to suggest that perhaps Hardy felt the evocation of Canada in the literary imagination would be too linked to the idea of wilderness and not enough to money. America, from the first writings about that land, was portrayed as a place of prosperity, a country where one can make one's fortune. (When conducting research for my book on emigration in literature, I came across an old song about how in America the pigs walk up to people with forks already in their backs, delicious roast pork ready to eat.) Whether authors praise or criticize America (or do both at the same time--often the case), usually somewhere in the work money comes into the mix.
In Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, for example, the narrator remarks the following about Americans:

Dollars. All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down into dollars. . . . Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. . . . The more of that worthless ballast, honour and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Name and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation . . . Do anything for dollars!

Yes, characters could "get rich quick" in America, but there's also always an underlying taint to emigrating to America, as if the earnings from such a land were soiled.

Best,
Diana Archibald University of Massachusetts Lowell

Diana_Archibald@uml.edu

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Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 10:39:59 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: FFTMC and Gabriel's projected emigration to British
Columbia

Philip-- this "correspondent" did not associate British Columbia (BC) with
the prospect of "easy money." The reference to BC was in regard to the fur
trade. The "Money Bags" (fragment sentence) referred to California.

This is the salient point, I suspect, of Hardy's MS alteration.

Thanks,

Rosemarie
_______

and, although there was still
considerable mining activity, the new province (it became the Crown Colony
of "New Caledonia" shortly the rush began) was developing its agricultural
and lumbering sectors. In other words, although some readers might
associate B. C. with the prospect of easy money (as the correspondent put
it, "money bags"), the connection was not strong enough--hence the change to
California, still very much the Golden State to Hardy's Victorian

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Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 11:45:42 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: FFTMC and Gabriel's projected emigration to British
Columbia


This is true, Diana, -- but there is a symbiotic relationship between the real
world and the imaginative. While on the subject of emigrants, what do you make
of Angel Clare's abortive move to Brazil? Some vague memory at the back of my
mind tells me it had something to do with British interests in that country at
the time-- do you have any light to throw on this?

A note, while on the subject -- or rather, getting off it, somewhat-- Hardy
deletes B.C in the MS of FFMC, in favour of California, but does make another
oblique reference in this novel to the fur trade. He speaks of the ancient
Greenhill Fair (Ch XLIX in the MS Penguin version) as the "Nijnii Novgorod of
Wessex." The link between the two, although Greenhill is a livestock exchange
primarily, is animal husbandry -- Nijnii Novgorod, now Gorki (on the Volga)
was better renowned (in Hardy's day) for being the major fur-trading centre of
the western world, or more precisely, of both the eastern and western worlds.

Cheers,
Rosemarie

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Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 08:36:13 -0400
Subject: Re: FFTMC and Gabriel's projected emigration to British Columbia
From: "Philip & Andrea Allingham" <apalling@tbaytel.net>

Dear Rosemarie:

My humble apologies to the "correspondent" who is the patient scholar whose
painstaking analysius of the "cancelled words" from the FFMC manuscript has
yielded so much insight into Hardy's creative processes.

I am interested as to why he struck out "trapper" because the trade's
implicit cruelty and relative isolation (tending a trapline is a lonely
business even today; in the 18th and 19th centuries it permitted only the
very occasional visit to a fort or rendezvous to exchange furs for European
goods) seem appropriate for a man who, having lived a very separate
existence tending sheep (punctuated by a weekly trip to church and another
to market), loses all. Hardy describes him externally and perhaps even in
circumstances in terms of the solitary Cyclops of The Odyssey, Polyphemus,
also a shepherd (though, obviously, that the Homeric original is a
malevolent being and cannibal does not apply). Changing from animal-tender
to animal-skinner might be Gabriel's way of punishing the scheme of
things--of course, the implications of "trapper" depend upon where in the
plot the possibility is broached.

"British Columbia" must be some sort of topical allusion--in other words,
Hardy must have read something about the new Pacific province while
composing FFMC, and I imagine it was much in the news in the early 1870s.
Since it did not exist as a Canadian province in 1870 (the date I presume
Hardy had in mind, since Troy considered running off to participate in the
Franco-Prussian War), the allusion would have constituted an error. Prior to
the 1858 goldrush, the only Whites in New Caledonia were connected with the
furtrade; in 1871, the 12,000 White inhabitants (most of British origin)
agreed to enter the Dominion of Canada--providing Canada connected it to the
eastern provinces by rail. The financing and construction of the railway
would have placed B. C. much in the news, I suspect, but I cannot help but
wonder what specific story in the press was the source of the allusion. Life
in B. C. would have been a far cry both in terms of society and climate for
Shepherd Oak!

Once again, thanks for sharing the gleanings of your scholarship with other
Hardy devotees.

Philip

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Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 11:00:44 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: FFTMC and Gabriel's projected emigration to British
Columbia


Thanks Philip,

-- just to clarify one or two points.

Franco-Prussian war: I'm not sure which war Hardy had in mind when he wrote
the unfinished passage about Troy's running off to the war. Perhaps he
revised this passage precisely because he couldn't find a war --so to
speak. Had it been the Franco-Prussian war (the closest in time to the
writing of the novel -- this is why I suggested it, in CW --) this would
have dated the novel and as you know Hardy was reluctant to offer specific
internal datings to his novels. This may be another reason for the
incompletion of the passage.

British Columbia -- the deletion in the ms looks like British Columbia --
not "trapper." Yes-- BC was of topical interest : it was all happening at
the time of FFMC's publication. The merger of the crown colony of Vancouver
Island and the new mainland colony (1866) was followed by BC's joining the
Canadian Federation in 1871. The Canadian Pacific railway reached Vancouver
in 1885. This would have been hot news for potential emigrants throughout
the 1870s.

Cheers,
Rosemarie


I am interested as to why he struck out "trapper" because the trade's ...

>"British Columbia" must be some sort of topical allusion--in other words,
>Hardy must have read something about the new Pacific province while
>composing FFMC, and I imagine it was much in the news in the early 1870s.
>Since it did not exist as a Canadian province in 1870 (the date I presume
>Hardy had in mind,

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