| H03085 "HARDY ON TOURISM AND TRAVEL" 10/23/03 HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 15:43:36 +0100 Sender: Martin Delveaux <M.Delveaux@exeter.ac.uk> From: Martin Delveaux <M.Delveaux@exeter.ac.uk>
Dear members,
I am planning to do research on Hardy and travelling/tourism and was wondering if you know what Hardy's attitude towards tourism/travelling was, or any publications relating to this theme.
With thanks in advance,
Martin Martin Delveaux Victorian Studies School of English University of Exeter
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 11:06:08 -0700 From: Betty Cortus <hardycor@owl.csusm.edu> Subject: Re: Hardy and tourism/travelling
Here we are, Betty and I, frivolously enjoying the beautiful Oceanside beach at San Diego and pondering Hardy and tourism-- we've come up with a few starting points.
Aside from the major TH Biographies (Millgate, Seymour-Smith and possibly some of the recent Gibsons), *The Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy*, ed Norman Page (OUP, 2000), has a short but useful section on "Travels" (433-434), which, fleshed out with *The Life* (aided by TTHA's searchable *Allusions* CD, edited by Martin Ray), should provide a springboard to your researches, Martin. We also thought *Emma Hardy's Diaries*, edited by Richard H. Taylor (1985) would prove useful, supplemented by *The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy,* edited by Richard H. Taylor (1979) which has some notable travel anecdotes and insightful snippets. Finally, you'll find the "Bicycling" section in Sarah Bird Wright's *A-Z* (Facts on File, Inc, 2002), worth a read as also her sections on *Normandy* and *Italy.* Hope this helps -- and Good Luck!
Rosemarie and Betty On-The-Beach
From: "Patrick Roper" <patrick@prassociates.co.uk> Subject: RE: Hardy and tourism/travelling Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 19:08:52 +0100
Martin Delveaux said:
> I am planning to do research on Hardy and travelling/tourism and > was wondering > if you know what Hardy's attitude towards tourism/travelling was, or any > publications relating to this theme.
Having worked in tourism for many years (I was once Head of Publicity for the English Tourist Board and a vigorous promoter of 'Hardy Country'), this is a topic that very much interests me too.
Attitudes to tourism have changed much over the years and vary greatly from person to person and place to place, a topic I have covered more fully in a chapter I wrote ('The Case against Tourism) in a recent book called 'Governments and Tourism'.
Evelyn Waugh observed that the tourist ãdebauches the great monuments of antiquity, a comic figure, always inapt in his comments, incongruous in his appearance ·. Avarice and deceit attack him at every step; the shops that he patronises are full of forgeries · But we need feel no scruple or twinge of uncertainty, Îweâ are the travellers and cosmopolitans; the tourist is the other fellow.ä
Judging from some of the references to tourism in Hardy's work he, perhaps, also thought the tourist was "the other fellow.":
>From PBE:
"Surprise would have accompanied the feeling, had she not remembered that several tourists were haunting the coast at this season, and that Stephen might have chosen to do likewise."
>From FMC:
"Travellers -- for the variety TOURIST had hardly developed into a distinct species at this date ..."
>From Return of the Native:
"And ultimately,to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle gardens of South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand dunes of Scheveningen."
(The latter observation was prophetic and heathlands and other wild places are rapidly catching up on historic monuments, museums and galleries as places worth visiting. Indeed, there are now valiant attempts being made to restore some of Dorset's heathlands to the condition they were in in Hardy's day.)
>From a Mere Interlude:
"wearying of the other shops she [Baptista] inspected the churches; not that for her own part she cared much about ecclesiastical edifices; but tourists looked at them, and so would she ..." "Their first business was to find an inn; and in this they had unexpected difficulty, since for some reason or other-possibly the fine weather - many of the nearest at hand were full of tourists and commercial travelers."
"The considerate old man, thinking that Baptista was educated to artistic notions, though he himself was deficient in them, had decided that it was most desirable to have, on such an occasion as the present, an apartment with "a good view" (the expression being one he had often heard in use among tourists)."
Patrick Roper
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 14:18:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Shannon Rogers <srogers@mailhost.sju.edu> Subject: Re: Hardy and tourism/travelling
I 'd like to tag onto this (sadly not on any beach!) a suggestion that the Letters, if I'm remembering correctly, have many references to Hardy's own travel experiences,including his first car ride.
Cheers, Shannon
From: "Gary1" <wesspix1@btinternet.com> Subject: Re: Hardy and tourism/travelling Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 19:22:02 +0100
And The Hand of Ethelberta seems to have a fair amount of tourism involved, what with trips to Normandy and visits to church towers...
From: Patrick Mulcahey <mulcahey@pacbell.net> Subject: RE: Hardy and tourism/travelling Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 14:01:09 -0700
Good examples!
Hardy does usually represent the impulse to travel, to be elsewhere, as founded in fallacy, or worse. Eustacia's desire for Paris, and Jude's for Christminster, are sad and doomed. True, everything about Jude and Eustacia is sad and doomed. But even Harry Knight, who is not doomed, or not very, and who disguises his post-Elfride travels as study, confesses he comes back to London with not a half-dozen new ideas worth having. The only reasons for travel in FMC are villainy (Troy) and disgrace (poor dead what's-her-name and her baby); everyone who stays put, stays happy. Going somewhere else to become someone else is either the ultimate tourism or not tourism at all, and certainly doesn't work out very well for Henchard or Arabella or Tess. Perhaps Tess and the Mayor do not travel far enough, but Arabella rebounds all the way from Australia, rebounder that she is. If one has not misbehaved at home, then one may travel to misbehave. Hardy seems to look down his nose at the rootless rich of Sandbourne, where Tess and Alec are just impersonating tourists. Wildeve's and Eustacia's Budmouth plan offers only the same principal attraction, i.e. a chance to shack up. I can't see that how tourists and travelers occupy themselves is of much interest to Hardy. On that odd journey by boat the Swancourts make from London to... I can't remember, Plymouth?... all Elfride can think about is that Mrs Jethway from Endelstow may be slinking around in the dark; Rev. Swancourt gets seasick and is hustled offstage. There's an unattractive passage in that same book, when the newlywed Swancourts have brought Elfride up to London, in which Mrs Swancourt plays the tour guide for Elfride by satirizing passersby on an afternoon outing. That it's said to be an interpolation from an earlier unpublished novel does not explain how uncharacteristic it feels.
The two difficulties in researching travel & tourism in Hardy I am sure you have foreseen: 1) Hardy devotes not much attention to the sort of leisured people inclined to be tourists, and 2) the lives of his fictional characters are lived out in the space of a few hundred square miles. By far the strongest impression of travel in the novels is of Hardy's people toiling from one end of Wessex to another (if that far). Its motive is always escape or necessity. The most characteristic Hardy tourism is when it entails a revisiting of monuments in the characters' own histories.
Picnics, outings and day-trips fare much better (unless you are Mrs Yeobright).
Patrick Mulcahey
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 09:19:09 -0700 From: Betty Cortus <hardycor@owl.csusm.edu> Subject: RE: Hardy and tourism/travelling
Well, ..... (after a little detection work by John Cortus who tracked our correspondent, below, to somewhere nearby on the Pacific coast), we tried to get Patrick to come down today and join us on the beach but he's busy with his own cavortings in San Francisco. So... here we go-- Betty and I feel that if the "travel" topic is to extend to the area of Hardy's fiction (a completely different kettle o' fish) then we are obliged to throw a spanner into the "Mulcahey" works: that is, to say, that Stephen Smith achieves career-success abroad, Swithin St Cleeve ditto, and if Oak contemplates seeking his fortune in California (B.C in the MS), Angel Clare reaches his epiphany in his travels to Brazil (RM). Yes, Rosemarie, and there is also the case of George Somerset who goes to Europe in pursuit of his own reluctant well-beloved, and finally captures her (BC).
Cheers from Oceanside!
Subject: Hardy on tourists Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 13:49:01 -0500 From: "Mink, Joanna" <joanna.mink@mnsu.edu>
Though not a reference to tourists in TH's novels (which I have enjoyed reading from other posters to the Forum), you may appreciate this from Hardy (_Selected Letters_ 178):
In a letter to Hermann Lea, dated 9 Nov. 1904, from Max Gate
"Dear Mr. Lea: In case you should be thinking of giving a view of spots in Upper Bockhampton as scenes in "Under the G. Tree" (or for any other purpose) I think I ought to let you know that there are reasons against it--not the least being the nuisance occasioned to those who live there by trippers with Kodaks looking over hedges, & other undesirable visitors, which would be increased by the publication of such views. Moreover, much of the detail of 60 years ago, as given in the book, is now changed by pulling down, or entirely imaginary. Yours truly, T. Hardy"
Then Millgate adds in a note: "writing again to Lea two days later TH explained that he had himself been surreptitiously 'Kodaked' on his way to the Higher Bockhampton cottage by 'some young men who were on the watch.'"
Cheers, JoAnna Mink
JoAnna S. Mink Professor of English Minnesota State University, Mankato Mankato, MN 56001 joanna.mink@mnsu.edu
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 13:33:01 +0000 From: Martin Ray <m.ray@abdn.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Hardy on tourists
Hardyâs Italian holiday of 1887 is strongly reflected in ÎAliciaâs Diaryâ, the short story which he wrote in August of that year, immediately after his return to Max Gate. The Hardys entered Venice on 13 April, staying until 22 April before going to Milan for a day and then reaching England five days after leaving Venice, which is the same itinerary and in the same month as Alicia and her family in the story (indeed, the timescale of the journey from Venice to England appears identical). The Hardys stayed in a hotel on the Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice, which is where M. de la Feste stays, and Hardyâs Life mentions Milanâs Gallery of Victor Emmanuel (p. 203, Millgate ed.) which Alicia visits. Emma Hardyâs diary which she kept during the trip mentions other sites referred to in the story, such as the Grand Canal, the Rialto, the Bridge of Sighs, the Church of the Frari and Milanâs Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. (Incidentally, Emmaâs diary may have given Hardy the idea for the form of his story.)
'Alicia's Diary' ! ... Is this a first for the Forum?
Best wishes, Martin
Dr Martin Ray School of English University of Aberdeen Aberdeen AB24 3UB
m.ray@abdn.ac.uk
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 14:42:02 +1100 From: "David B. Cornelius" <dcorney@midcoast.com.au> Subject: Hardy and tourism/travelling
There are many of Hardy's characters who do travel outside of Wessex as other replies have mentioned. In "A Laodicean" the protagonists spend considerable time travelling through southern France and northern Italy. Again in "Barbara of the House of Grebe" Edmond Willowes is despatched to the continent to improve his cultural education. Mr Millborne in "For Conscience's Sake" ends up in Brussels. Emmeline, in "The Duchess of Hamptonshire", follows her lover to America. Regards, David Cornelius Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 14:11:22 +0000 From: Martin Ray <m.ray@abdn.ac.uk> Subject: Re: More on Hardy and tourists
I thought the following anecdote regarding tourists might be relevant. It is by Robert Zachrisson, a student of dialect, who is recalling his visit to Max Gate in August 1920:
QUOTE Some months before, Mr Hardy had visited ‘Wellbridge House’, an old seat of the d’Urbervilles, where above the doors there are still the mural portraits of two noble ladies of the family, who look very haughty and vicious, and are supposed to bring bad luck to those who view them too intently. One of Mr Hardy’s friends had asked him which of the rooms he liked best, ‘a very difficult question for a writer of fiction’. He answered at random that ‘one of the lower rooms had a very fine carved ceiling’. When I told Mr Hardy that the present mistress of the house had repeated this remark to me, he retorted humorously: ‘Then she is not at all like the former mistress of the house. When somebody asked her, “Do you know Mr. Hardy?”, she replied “No, I don’t, but if I knew him, I would give him what for, because he gives me all this trouble with visitors”’. SOURCE: Zachrisson, Robert Eugen, ‘Thomas Hardy as Man, Writer, and Philosopher: An Appreciation with a Swedish Hardy Bibliography’, Studier i Modern Sprakvetenskap Utgivna av Nyfologiska Sallskapet i Stockholm, X (1928), 131-59 (p. 136).
Dr Martin Ray School of English University of Aberdeen Aberdeen AB24 3UB
m.ray@abdn.ac.uk
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 11:26:57 +0000 From: Martin Delveaux <M.Delveaux@exeter.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Hardy and tourism/travelling
Dear all,
just to send you a BIG BIG 'thank you' for all your help. Your suggestions have been an invaluable source for my research, and it is fantastic to have such a rich network of knowledge. Keep up the good work! With best wishes,
Martin. Martin Delveaux Victorian Studies School of English University of Exeter |