Childhood and youth

Hardy’s mother, Jemima, was a former maidservant and cook. She came from a poor family, but she had acquired from her mother a love of reading, and her literary tastes included Latin poets and French romances in English translation. She provided for her son’s education. First she taught little Thomas to read and write before he was four, and then she instilled in him a growing interest in literature. Hardy had a great affection for his mother throughout all her life. Thomas Hardy was in his mid-sixties when Jemima died. Her tenacious maternal stranglehold had so hampered his emotional maturity that he claimed he was 'a child till he was sixteen, a youth till he was five-and-twenty, and a young man till he was nearly fifty'. Nevertheless, he grieved for the mother who had not only been the primary influence in his early life but had also, with her stories, songs and sayings, provided the source of many of his Wessex tales. Despite her many faults, anyone who cares for Hardy's work should be delighted he had such a wonderful Mother of Invention.

His father, who was a keen violin player, passed on to young Thomas a love of music. Both Thomas’s father and paternal grandfather were important members of the Stinsford Parish Church choir. As Paul Turner writes: “Apart from parental influences, Hardy’s childhood was dominated by two things: the local church, and the natural world around him.”.

apprenticeship

Hardy received his early schooling at the local National School in Lower Bockhampton, which opened in 1848. The school was run by the “National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church”. In 1850, when he was ten, Jemima Hardy enrolled her son at a non-conformist school run by the British and Foreign School Society in Dorchester, where he learnt Latin and French among other subjects. Young Thomas had begun his formal education at the age of eight and ended at the age of 16. However, as a boy, he read both Greek and Roman classics in translation and the Bible, which he knew exceptionally well. He was also very fond of reading romances. His favourite authors were William Harrison Ainsworth, Walter Scott, and Alexander Dumas. In addition, he read Shakespeare’s tragedies. Although he was quite fond of school, he preferred solitude and reading books. In Dorset young Thomas witnessed the decline of the old pastoral society and the rise of industrialism.

Unable to pursue a scholarly or clerical career, Hardy became apprenticed in 1856 to a local architect, John Hicks, who specialised in church restoration. His occupation required extensive trips to various locations in Dorset. At Hick’s office Hardy met another boy, Henry Bastow, who had a similar interest in classical literature, especially poetry, and in religious matters. Hardy could only read early in the morning, between five and eight, before he left for the office. In Dorchester he met a local schoolmaster and an poet William Barnes (1801-1866), who published poetry about rural life in local dialect. He may have been the inspiration for Hardy to start writing poetry on a similar theme.

Hardy’s architectural apprenticeship, which lasted a little more than four years, provided him with important experiences which would later inform his fiction and poetry. While still in Dorchester, Hardy met Horace Moule, a vicar’s son, and a student of Queen’s College, Cambridge. Eight years older than Hardy, Horace was at the start of a career as scholar. He became Hardy’s best friend and mentor who encouraged him to read Greek tragedies and contemporary English literature. At that time the most recent developments in English literature included the publication of Alfred Tennyson’s poems Idylls of the King, George Meredith’s two important novels Richard Feverel and Evan Harrington, Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. Apart from those, in 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, a book which exerted a profound influence on Hardy.

London

In April 1862, Hardy decided to suspend his architectural apprenticeship and left for London. He rented lodgings at 3, Clarence Place, at Kilburn, near Edgware Road. Some biographers speculate that his decision was caused by yet another unsuccessful love affair. Thomas had already been infatuated with two Dorset girls: Elizabeth Sarah Bishop (Lizbie Browne), who “scorned him as too young,” and Louisa Harding, to whom he spoke only two words, a shy “Good evening” in the lane. (Halliday, 25,26) Now he had proposed and been rejected by a Dorchester girl, Mary Waight, who was older than he. Hence, possibly the move to London was caused not only by his desire to learn more but also to make a fresh start in life.

In London Hardy spent five years working as an assistant architect for Arthur Blomfield (1829-1899), who restored and designed churches, usually in a Gothic Revival style. Blomfield was very glad of his new associate and proposed him for a member of the Architectural Association. Hardy also explored the scientific and cultural life of London. In spring 1863, he heard Charles Dickens’s public lecture. He visited museums, galleries and attended plays and operas. Hardy particularly enjoyed Shakespeare and ancient tragedy at the Drury Lane Theatre. He read the works of Herbert Spencer, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin and Charles Darwin. Under the influence of these works, Hardy began to reconsider his traditional Christian upbringing and decided to abandon his youthful plan of ordination into the Anglican Church. He became increasingly disillusioned with institutional Christianity. While in London Hardy also became acquainted with the poetry of contemporary Victorian poets, Robert Browning and Algernon Charles Swinburne, and he began to write his own poetry, but it was rejected for publication. In 1865, Hardy wrote a satirical sketch “How I Built Myself a House”, which was published in Chambers Journal and won him a prize. In that year Hardy bought a number of books on literature and began to study it more intensely. He also continued to write poetry which foreshadowed the themes of his later prose fiction: human misery, uncaring universe, loneliness, chance.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 779