H04047 HARDY AND LAMMAS 7/30/04 HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE
From: ? patrick@prassociates.co.uk
Subject: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 30, 2004 6:30:46 AM PDT
As we approach Lammas (1 August), I am reminded of TH's poem 'The Voice of
Things'.
Does anyone know what he was talking about? Was he reminded of a beach in
Cornwall where he first met Emma, or once walked with her at Lammas-tide?
Patrick Roper
From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu
Subject: Re: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 30, 2004 10:17:39 AM PDT
I believe you are right, Patrick, when you infer that the poem is about
Hardy's relationship with Emma. The three stanzas appear to represent
three stages in that relationship occurring at twenty-year intervals. The
first and last refer to actual visits to Cornwall--the scene of his first
falling in love with Emma, and then his return after her death. However,
the middle stanza could not be about an actual visit, but it does signify a
time period around which a dramatic change took place in the relationship.
Florence wrote of Emma dying to Hardy twenty years after they married, and
I envision here the poet making a mental return to the scenes of his early
love, and finding changes in the physical surroundings that reflect the
bitterness of his emotions at that time. The poem concludes with a lament
at his inability to atone for his failure to mend the rift that had
occurred.
Incidentally, Hardy's 1870 visit to to Cornwall was made in May, and his
1913 one in March, so I'm not clear why he refers to Lammas-tide in the
poem.
Betty Cortus
hardycor@owl.csusm.edu
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From: segr@segr-music.net
Subject: RE: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 30, 2004 10:23:45 AM PDT
Not in May, Betty!
The 1870 visit was also in March..
Roy B.
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From: patrick@prassociates.co.uk
Subject: RE: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 30, 2004 10:52:36 AM PDT
Betty,
Many thanks for this response. I do understand that TH went to Cornwall
first in March 1870 (When I set out for Lyonnesse etc.), but I thought he
subsequently went to see Emma on several other occasions.
If he did not go in August, he perhaps wrote of Lammas-tide because this is
traditionally the period when the year turns into its autumnal mode. It may
still be hot (as it is here in England today), but the year is visibly
waning and winter not so far away as was the case in his relationship with
Emma.
Lammas was also still more of an event in the West Country in the 19th C
than it is today. Vide TH's wonderful description of reaping in FFMC:
"Another week passed. The oat-harvest began, and all the men were a-field
under a monochromatic Lammas sky, amid the trembling air and short shadows
of noon. Indoors nothing was to be heard save the droning of blue-bottle
flies; out-of-doors the whetting of scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears
rubbing together as their perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily
to each swath. Every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons
in the form of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and
cheeks. Drought was everywhere else."
I do think that "monochromatic Lammas sky" with its dull-sounding m's so
wonderfully describes the oppressive heat of an August day in Dorset.
Patrick Roper
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From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu
Subject: RE: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 30, 2004 12:08:10 PM PDT
Ah! I see you are both right Patrick and Roy. Hardy's first trip to
Cornwall did take place in March. I just realized, though, that his second
visit--the one in which he really fell in love with Emma, the air-blue
gown and all that--occurred in August, which explains the evocation of
Lammas-tide. In the LIFE he speaks of visiting "various picturesque
points on the wild and rugged coast near the rectory" with Emma during
that trip, which I now think must surely the one he is referring to in the
poem.
Betty
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From: wesspix1@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 30, 2004 12:23:35 PM PDT
Hardy's second visit (that of the "air blue gown") to St Juliot was 8 August
1870; Millgate gives the 18th (the date of the battle of Gavelotte) as the
date for the scene that inspired "In Time of 'The Breaking of the Nations'"
.. 8 August is only a week after Lammas, which is in theory 1 August.
However I don't know whether Hardy would have kept "Old Lammas" in the same
way as "Old Midsummer Day"- under the old dating, Lamas Day would have been
the 13th new dating (I think - I'm not an expert in the Julian and
Gregoriant calendars...). I believe that Lammas Day was the only festival of
the kind that wasn't moved 12 days forward when the calendar changed under
George II.
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From: segr@segr-music.net
Subject: RE: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 30, 2004 1:39:03 PM PDT
An interesting biographical question has indeed been raised here.
Although the presence of the chorus of the waves makes it clear
he is at the coast somewhere, to stimulate some fresh ideas I'd
like to suggest that Emma and Cornwall may not come into this at all.
In stanza 1 he (Hardy?) recalls pacing the headlands forty years or so ago.
So we may be back in the 1860s with Hardy often exploring the coast in
Dorset and even Sussex: not with Emma, of course, though "accompanied" by
the
waves applauding his feelings of untroubled exhilaration.
Twenty years later he was not in Cornwall, certainly, but apparently
revisiting those old haunts in a very different mood; growing cynical
with Life and its frustrations.
Finally he is there again, beset by gloom, perplexity and disillusionment.
One question obviously is: what is the reason for returning to the same
locality
to reflect on Life's vicissitudes? Was there something(someone)special he
connected with the early visits that gave him cause for regret later in
life?
Roy Buckle.
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From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu
Subject: RE: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 30, 2004 5:32:48 PM PDT
You raise an interesting point Roy. Of course we have no way of knowing
for sure what events in Hardy's life actually inspired this poem. But we
can make a calculated guess, and I can think of nothing other than the the
failure of his first marriage which would have caused him such regret as
is registered here in the final stanza. He wrote this poem soon after he
had found and read Emma's bitter denunciations of him written before she
died. Florence said he read them over and over again, and they must surely
have been uppermost in his mind at that time. He had also just recently
come upon her happier diary "Some Recollections," reviving memories of
their idyllic early times in Cornwall. It seems unlikely to me that
another woman, or another coastline were on his mind at the time this was
written.
Betty
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From: segr@segr-music.net
Subject: RE: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 31, 2004 1:50:11 AM PDT
Your conjecture, Betty, seems to depend on the date the poem was composed.
I can't find a reference to this and wonder how you know?
Or is that also a guess?
It's getting to be worrisome!
Roy.
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From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu
Subject: RE: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 31, 2004 7:23:38 AM PDT
Of course we don't know the exact date of composition Roy, it isn't given,
but once again we can make an educated guess. It first appeared in
*Moments of Vision * in 1917 after his 1913 and 1916 trips to Cornwall.
If he had composed it earlier than these visits, especially the later one,
one would expect it to have appeared in an earlier volume of poetry, maybe
*Satires of Circumstance,* along with the other Emma poems. Both Pinion
and Purdy attribute the poem to his emotions after these trips to Cornwall.
Purdy writes: " This poem [The Voice of Things] would seem to date from
Hardy's journey to Cornwall in March 1913, or better, his last visit to
these scenes in September 1916."
The time factors of the three twenty-year intervals in the poem would tend
to corroborate this. We know that something pivitol happened in Hardy's
life at roughly these intervals--his first trip to Cornwall in 1870, a low
point in the deterioration in his marriage more or less twenty years later
(this according to Florence), and his last journey to Cornwall after Emma's
death.
Once again, we can't say for sure that some other woman and some other
seashore did not inspire the poem, but until I see evidence of such a
relationship that fits this pattern, I think I'll go along with Pinion and
Purdy.
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From: segr@segr-music.net
Subject: RE: Hardy & Lammas
Date: July 31, 2004 8:28:16 AM PDT
OK Betty! Better be safe with Purdy...
I'll let you know if I uncover anything else(Findon and all that).
Roy.
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