"THOMAS HARDY 1840-1928 POET & NOVELIST lived here 1878-1881". Ceramic tile replacing a brown LCC plaque of 1940. [PB: I haven't found a photograph of this earlier plaque.)
[PB; Why did the Hardys come to Trinity Road / "Upper Tooting" (and this house in particular)? What happened while they were here? And why did they leave?]
I have always argued that it was not Dorset's heathlands of his childhood that inspired Thomas Hardy's awesome Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native (and The Mayor of Casterbridge and elsewhere), but Wandsworth Common. Hardy lived for three years only a hundred yards or so from the Common, in a house built on land filched from the Common only a few years earlier.
(Independently, the author and one-time resident of Jessica Road Graham Swift reached much the same conclusion c.2005. See his essay on Wandsworth in Making an Elephant.)
The Common at this time (1878-1881) was nothing like today's mainly manicured park-land opposite Bellevue or near Spencer Park, or the football pitches on the Battersea side of the railway line. Neither was it like the heavily wooded and tangled "Scope" to the west of Trinity Road.
When I was child in the 1950s, this area — which we called "Bushy Common", not the newfangled name "The Scope", it was indeed wild and covered in gorse, with very few trees. It was also very wet, and covered in what we called "Tussock Grass" (in fact, Purple Moor Grass Molinia — of which there is now very little left). When the Common was wet (and this area nearly always was), we travelled across it by jumping from tussock to tussock.
An area by the side of Burntwood Lane formed all-season football pitches because they were covered in slag or clinker (we were told it was from Battersea Power Station). Heaven help your knees and elbows if you fell on it, so there we never practised sliding tackles. I don't know exactly when this area was replanted with silver birches (or did they re-seed themselves?). But if you dig an inch or two, you can still find the layer of black slag. [PB: I have since been told by my neighbour Pam ? at no. 4 Loxley that the area was used to store piles of rubbish during the "Winter of Discontent" of 1978-79, so would probably have been quite a health hazard. Was it temporarily fenced while nature was getting going?].
Summarise and quote e.g. Edward Thomas and others on the glories of its gorse in flower. The ponds, lakes and scattered quarries etc. Its wildness.
Certainly his description of Egdon Heath fits it exactly...
Arrived 22 March 1878.
Initially I wrote this as a joke/humorous piece, but...
If there is a possible objection / problem with my theory, it is that Hardy had started writing The Return of the Native before he arrived before he arrived on Trinity Road (it was published in 12 monthly instalments from January to December 1878).
[Had he already written all the parts, or was he still writing? (Many serial writers e.g. Dickens, Collins, struggled to keep up with monthly publishing schedules.) If the latter, perhaps he moved to Wandsworth Common precisely because he was writing about Egdon Heath? Hence he could be living in London, a tyro literary lion, yet in immediate physical touch with heathland? Fanciful? Probably, but perhaps not?]
See Wikipedia: Egdon Heath.
I have started to collect material on the possibility that TH was influenced by the execution of Kate Webster at Wandsworth Prison in July 1879, shortly after he came to live in Trinity Road.
She was the only woman ever to have been executed here. It was widely reported at the time. Did it perhaps influence Tess of the Durbervilles? Were there crowds at the gates of WP, as there were when I was a child?
Check Stewart McLaughlin's book (Wandsworth Prison) — did execution only start at Wandsworth the previous year, with the execution of Thomas Smithers (8.10.1878), the first name he lists? It seems so.
See the wretch that long has tost
On the thorny bed of pain,
At length repair his vigour lost,
And breathe and walk again:
The meanest floweret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening paradise.
Thomas Gray, Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude (1754)
Hardy's Resting Places
Melissa Shields Jenkins
Review of Mark Ford. Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016. xvi + 305 pp. $27.95
English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, ELT Press Volume 61, Number 2, 2018 pp. 262-265.
THOMAS HARDY'S EVENTFUL and productive life that almost wasn't (his midwife mistook him for a stillborn baby and cast him aside [End Page 262] for a time) has spawned a number of fine popular and scholarly biographies. It could be tempting to ask what could be added to the already voluminous record. Mark Ford's Thomas Hardy: Half A Londoner deftly and convincingly answers that question. The book suggests that our conception of how to situate Hardy in space has become calcified and rigid, with an excessive focus on Dorchester and the rural. Ford asks: what can be gained if we shift our gaze, if we acknowledge that Hardy's remains exist in both country and city, then and now?
Ford's fast-paced, engaging literary biography asserts that "the focus on Wessex in critical responses to Hardy's work has obscured the importance on London to his career and development." The book goes on to source Hardy's interest in the city/country divide — a divide emphasized thematically in The Mayor of Casterbridge and in several poems — within the five years in London that launched his career, and his seasonal trips to the city thereafter. Ford sees in the London forays seeds of Hardy's overlooked talents in writing the urban, particularly in his poetry. Ford's sly nod to this Wessex-centered tradition comes in the map of London that precedes his biography, in contrast to the maps of Max Gate, Dorchester and surrounds that precede other biographies and the many maps of "Wessex" that introduce Hardy's published works. The text that follows tracks Hardy through that city, with minimal detours, in order to suggest that "the spectral presence of the city" emanates through all of Hardy's oeuvre. The book traces the "social, sexual, and professional opportunities" that kept this Dorchester man from staying away from London for too long, and looks for London smells and sounds within even his most rural-facing works.
The book begins with a vivid account of Hardy's death and burial in two places — his heart in Stinsford and his ashes in Westminster Abbey. Then, it swings back to his first extended stay in London as a young adult and the mature summers spent there that led him to call himself "half a Londoner" in a letter to Edmund Gosse. The book nears its end by noting Hardy's relative rootlessness while in London (he "never felt able to afford a permanent London residence"), how the city facilitated his extra-marital frustrations and attempts, how London "exacerbated his sense of the complexities and incongruities latent in the relationship between the private and the public," and, finally, how the start of the Great War caused a shift in, but not an end to, Hardy's intimacies [End Page 263] with the great City. In Ford's words, "Hardy's reluctance to brave the crowds and confusion of the city in his late seventies and eighties by no means resulted in an old age spent isolated from sophisticated or artistic metropolitan circles: for London, in these years, came to him."
In between, we are treated to many small details about Hardy's life in London. We read about his feelings about crowds, romantic disasters at railway stations, and London's famous architecture. We follow his writing life in and out of the city in both health and illness and convalescence. We receive an extended treatment of Hardy's lost novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, and its replacements, Desperate Remedies and A Pair of Blue Eyes. Ford does not shy away from equating Hardy with the male protagonists of his novels (from Will Strong of Poor Man and the Lady to the unfortunate Jude), which provides even more ways for Ford to supplement gaps in the biographical record.
Occasionally, Ford allows himself to stray from his main goal, which is to present Hardy as more of a cosmopolitan club-life author and man than is often considered. The detours are reflections of Ford's love...
more...
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/679233/pdf
Novelist and poet, best known for his novels set in rural 'Wessex' such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd. Born Upper Bockhampton, Dorset.
Before turning to writing full-time he studied architecture in London from 1862 — 67 under Arthur Blomfield, an architect based in Covent Garden, most of the time at 8 Adelphi Terrace, from where Hardy had a good view of the Thames.
It was during this time that he became familiar with London and its society and began writing. For the next 20-odd years he lived on and off in London and the suburbs. When first married he and Emma lived for 3 years in Tooting but then moved back to Dorset. From then on they spent every "season" approximately April-July in London socialising. For this they rented a variety of houses or flats across London: Kensington, Bloomsbury, etc. In all, Hardy lived at over 30 different London addresses. The start of WW1 put an end to this pattern.
Died at home, Max Gate, Dorchester, Dorset.
Hardy wished his body to be buried with his first wife. But the nation wanted him in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner. So the compromise was to bury just his heart in Dorset. The two funerals were on the same day, starting at the same time.
Much of our information comes from Mark Ford's "Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner" published 2016.
https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/thomas-hardy-w2
"We came from Bolingbroke Grove to Arundel Terrace and slept here for the first time. Our house is the south-east corner one where Brodrick Road crosses Trinity Road down towards Wandsworth Common Station, the side door being in Brodrick Road" (p.).
Author [name?] comments in his chapter "Life and Literature in a London Suburb 1878-1880: AET 37-39: "Two days later they [Thomas and Florence Hardy] beheld their furniture descending from a pair of vans at 1 Arundel Terrace ("The Larches"). They had stayed at Bolingbroke Grove to be near." The addition of these details suggests that the diary or letters say more than is quoted here. Find and add.
Author? Editor?, Thomas Hardy and Florence Hardy, The Life of Thomas Hardy (Wordsworth Literary Lives), (2007), p.?.
Where were they staying at Bolingbroke Grove? Did they know someone? Who?
Where were they staying at Bolingbroke Grove? Did they know someone? Who?
I asked the 5-Houses Group to keep their eyes open for a possible answer, and Sarah Vey duly obliged (3 November 2023):
My boss once referred to me at the Rottweiler, as I tend not to let things go and am rather tenacious when trying to solve a puzzle, which has stood me in good stead in family tree research.
I gained access to the 2021 online edition of The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy Vol 1, by Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate, by getting my remaining Uni student daughter to find it on York Uni’s online records.
I used the search term “Bolingbroke Grove”, and bingo, a letter written by Thomas Hardy to his illustrator, Arthur Hopkins, who was, in 1878, doing the drawings for Return of the Native.
The letter, copy attached, is dated 8th Feb 1878 and was written by Hardy, whilst lodging at no 1 Bolingbroke Grove. You will see in the second image an explanation of temporary lodgings near Wandsworth Common and Upper Tooting. It is obviously not one of the five houses, but I thought maybe you would like the info anyway. I don’t think it will make the cut to be included in our Lost Houses project, but you might like to share with the group in your Chronicles.
[PB: Arthur Hopkins was brother to Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet with whom Hardy is often compared.]
[PB: I've collected some material about AH, which I must add.]
[Many changes to notice...area initially very open and "rural"... closing in of views to south and north...few houses, mostly very large, being swiftly replaced by small terraces...etc etc]
[NB Show how furze/gorse is represented on these maps.]
A number of researchers have stated that Hardy lived at "1 Trinity Road" at this time. This is a misreading of the Census form. Houses were being built along Trinity Road [itself only named in ?/while Hardy was living here/previously it had been called ?] at such a rate at this time that the Post Office had not determined firm numbers for them. Presumably the house numbers refer to the position in the named terrace — in this case, Arundel Terrace [on the previous page of the Census?], next to Lion Terrace, or after a side-road entered the main road (Brodrick Road). Which direction did the numbering go?
Live in Thomas Hardy's London home
Julia Flynn, Daily Telegraph, 21 Oct 2014
Thomas Hardy is associated with the Dorset countryside. But, as Julia Flynn exclusively discovers, the novelist also spent time in Wandsworth. Now his former home is for sale
London's literary lion: Thomas Hardy's home in Wandsworth
(Click on image to enlarge)
Of all the blue plaques you come across in London, few are as unexpected as the one at Trinity Road, Wandsworth. It commemorates Thomas Hardy.
You associate Hardy with Dorset, as surely as you associate Wordsworth with the Lake District. So the thought of the writer in the heart of London, rather than surrounded by green fields and apple-cheeked country wenches, takes a bit of getting used to. It is like bumping into Woody Allen on a prairie in Kansas.
But the Trinity Road house — in which a stylish two-bedroom flat has just come on the market for £760,000 — represents an interesting chapter in Hardy's life.
He lived here with his wife, Emma, from 1878 to 1881, before he had established himself as a writer. The couple had married in 1874 but never had children. They were so mismatched in some respects that some biographers have questioned whether the marriage was even consummated.
Without the patter of tiny feet, the house must have been a cheerless place, and one imagines Hardy retreating to his study to work, bound up in his writing.
His literary career was still precarious. He had enjoyed his first success with Far From the Madding Crowd a few years earlier, but struggled to find a publisher for his next novel, The Return of the Native. It eventually appeared in 1878. The Trumpet-Major % for which he did research at the British Museum % came out two years later, but to no great critical acclaim.
As a country boy, born and raised in Dorset, Hardy was a fish out of water in the metropolis. He had first come to London in his early 20s, when he worked as an architect. One of his jobs was to exhume bodies from the old St Pancras cemetery to make way for the building of the new Midland railway. He lodged in Paddington and Kilburn at different times. But as he approached 40, his financial future was still far from secure.
Novel touch: the Trinity Road home is now a light, airy residence ready for a new chapter
He certainly could not have afforded to live in Trinity Road in 2014. It is one of the most sought-after streets in an increasingly trendy area. The bigger houses in Nappy Valley, as it has become known, cost more than £1 million.
"The area has come up fast, with a lot of young professional couples moving in," says Paul Herring, of Kinleigh, Folkard%&%Hayward. "Fifteen years ago, it was still a poor relation of Battersea, and quite grim in places. Now even one-bedroom flats on a good street cost around £450,000."
Victorian Wandsworth was more down-at-heel % not to mention more insalubrious. Hardy had never enjoyed the best of health. After the fresh air of Dorset, south London must have felt dank and smoggy.
Trinity Road was given its present name while Hardy was living there. Before that, it had been Wandsworth Lane, the main route linking Wandsworth and Streatham. It was not a glamorous area. The Surrey County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, now Springfield University Hospital, was just a few hundred yards away.
In October 1880, the novelist became so ill that he was housebound and in traction. He described it as "a tedious illness of five months". Hardy had to dictate his next novel, A Laodicean, to his wife. It is not one of his most highly regarded works, but offers intriguing glimpses of his life at this time.
One of the main themes is the contrast between the medieval and modern worlds. This is exemplified by new devices, such as telegrams and photographs, which Hardy uses to further his plot, much as a modern novelist might use Twitter.
He would hardly recognise his old home on Trinity Road. Sarah Walton has lived in the top-floor flat for the past 13 years. She has turned it into a thoroughly modern residence: light, airy and beautifully furnished. The old attic is now a pretty en-suite bedroom. There is even planning permission for a roof terrace.
"The Hardy connection with the property is fascinating, and we often get people stopping to photograph the blue plaque," says her husband, Ben.
"We can see the Shard, Canary Wharf and the London Eye from the bedroom window. That would have felt very strange to Hardy. But then he would have seen sheep grazing on Wandsworth Common, which would feel equally strange to us."
Ben Walton is the founder of Ben's Canteen, a neighbourhood cafe on St John's Hill, Battersea. There you can see the budding Thomas Hardys of the 21st century beavering away on their laptops.
Perhaps one or two of them will eventually find their way into print. Yet how many will be read all over the world, like the shy Dorset boy who serendipitously came to Wandsworth to write?
Trinity Road, Wandsworth, for sale at £760,000 with Kinleigh, Folkard & Hayward (020 8675 1123; www.kfh.co.uk)
__________________________
For an area not obviously celebrated for its literary heritage, Wandsworth has been home to a significant number of well-known authors. Those commemorated by blue plaques in the borough include:
- The novelist George Eliot, who lived in Wimbledon Park Road with her lover G H Lewes — a relationship that scandalised Victorian society.
- The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who lived at a house on Holybourne Avenue, Roehampton.
- The Irish playwright Sean O'Casey, who briefly lived at a flat on Prince of Wales Drive, Battersea.
- The First World War poet Edward Thomas, who lived in Shelgate Road. He was killed in action in France.
- The prolific Victorian adventure writer G A Henty, who lived at 33 Lavender Gardens.
- The poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, almost as well known for his penchant for flagellation as his verse, who lived at 11 Putney Hill.
Property description
The former residence of Thomas Hardy, this 961 sq. ft. upper maisonette is round the corner from Wandsworth Common and has 2 superb double bedrooms and a private garden. Built over the 1st and 2nd floors, the principle rooms have a wonderful duel aspect allowing natural light in from both sides along with great ceiling heights, there is an incredible feeling of space and airiness.
On the first floor, the sizable reception room is decorated with beautiful colours and has a traditional period fire place that is flanked by dwarf cupboards with open shelving over. With space for both dining and relaxing, it makes for the perfect reception room ideal for entertaining. Supported by the kitchen, with its substantial range of shaker style units, stainless steel range oven and Belfast style sink, the combination of both these rooms creates a cooks and entertainers haven. The bathroom is superb; contemporary and stylish, well fitted and decorated, it is incredibly appealing and relaxing.
On the half landing, the current owners have achieved planning permission to create a private roof terrace in addition to the private rear garden.
On the 2nd floor, both the bedrooms have built in wardrobes and are great sizes. The garden is situated at the back of the building and is laid to gravel with floral borders.
Trinity Road is situated in the section between Upper Tooting Park and Eatonville Road and is conveniently placed for the shops and restaurants of Bellevue Road, the open spaces of Wandsworth Common and the transport facilities of Tooting Bec underground (Northern line) and Wandsworth Common mainline station. Energy efficiency: Band D.
Thomas and Emma Hardy had moved to 1 Arundel Terrace, a newish house on the corner of Brodrick Road and what is now called Trinity Road, in March 1879. The house, on four floors, was virtually on the highest point of Trinity Road, with immense views to east and west. But it was thereby exposed to the elements on three sides and hence exceedingly cold and draughty.
The following day, Hardy was worse and a surgeon who lived opposite was sent for. The surgeon returned on successive days and pronounced that Hardy was bleeding internally. A very risky operation was required.
Mrs Hardy called for advice on their friend the publisher Alexander Macmillan (who lived at Knapdale, an impressive house closer to Tooting Bec Common). The Macmillans' doctor agreed with the earlier diagnosis.
The Hardys were frequent visitors — there is even a suggestion that they moved to Wandsworth to move in the circles that might help Hardy's floundering career.
It seemed that an operation was inevitable, but the second doctor asked Hardy how long he could stay in bed, not getting up on any account? Could he do this for many many months? If so, there was a chance that he could avoid an operation.
Hardy was compelled to lie on an inclined plane with his head below the level of his feet. Hs wife Emma became his nurse and amanuensis. In this uncomfortable position, he worked on a number of books, substantial short stories, poems, and correspondence throughout the hard winter that followed.
John Buckmaster, who had once been a carpenter (so knew "whereof he spoke"), often rails against the poor construction of new houses around the Common — he blames the local property speculators, of course, not the workmen. Given its exposed location the Hardy's house was particularly grim, with snow blowing through window cracks and doors.
I'll probably add some stories about the Hardys' experiences with illness and cold as they occur in the months to come.
January 1881 — my third month in bed. Driving snow: fine, and so fast that individual flakes cannot be seen. In sheltered places they occasionally stop, valance and cells of the air like hugs... It creeps into the house, the window plants been covered as of out of doors. our passage (downstairs) is sole-deep, Em says, and feet leave tracks on it." January 30 — Sunday. Dr Sdotcalled as usual.I can see bye
Hardy observes some of the effects of his enforced isolation:
January 31. Incidents of lying in bed for months. Skin gets fair: corns take the leave: feet and toes grow shapely as those of a Greek statue. Keys get rusty; watch dim, boots mildewed, hat and clothes old-fashioned; umbrella eaten out with rust; children seen through the window are grown taller.
It is not certain what Hardy was suffering from but probably some form of cystitis, causing an inflammation of the bladder, — in the absence of antibiotics, a very painful and debilitating disease. Hardy blamed it on excessive swimming on the Normandy coast in the previous July. He suffered from the disorder for the rest of his life, although not quite so painfully.
Th main work written at this difficult time was A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of To-Day — not, it has to be admitted, one his more successful books, financially or artistically.
The following spring, having eventually recovered his health sufficiently, his first walk was on Wandsworth Common [date], and Hardy records his exhilaration at the experience. But of that another time.
See the wretch that long has tost
On the thorny bed of pain,
At length repair his vigour lost,
And breathe and walk again:
The meanest floweret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening paradise.
Thomas Gray, Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude (1754)
Hardy
JUNE 27 [1879] — From Tooting to Town again. In railway carriage a too statuesque girl; but her features were absolutely perfect. She sat quite still and her smiles did not extend further than a fingernail's breadth from the edge of her mouth. The repose of her face was such that when the train shook her it seemed painful. Her mouth was very small, and her face not unlike that of a nymph. In the train coming home there was a contrasting girl of sly humour — the pupil of her eye being mostly half under the eyelid.
hardy-statuesque-girl-on-train-The-Life-of-Thomas-Hardy-p129.png
Summer 1878?
Mrs Hardy used to relate that during this summer, she could not tell exactly when, she looked out of a window at the back of the house, and saw her husband running without a hat down Brodrick Road, and disappearing round a corner into a by-street. Before she had done wondering what could have happened, he returned, and all was explained.
While sitting in his writing-room he had heard a street barrel-organ of the kind that used to be called a ‘harmoniflute’, playing somewhere near at hand the very quadrille over which the jaunty young man who had reached the end of his time at Hicks’s had spread such a bewitching halo more than twenty years earlier by describing the glories of dancing round to its beats on the Cremorne platform or at the Argyle Rooms, and which Hardy had never been able to identify.
He had thrown down his pen, and, as she had beheld, flown out and approached the organ-grinder with such speed that the latter, looking frightened, began to shuffle off. Hardy called out, ‘What’s the name of that tune?’ The grinder — a young foreigner, who could not speak English — exclaimed trembling as he stopped, ‘Quad-ree-ya! quad-ree- ya!’ and pointed to the index in front of the instrument.
Hardy looked: ‘Quadrille’ was the only word there. He had til then never heard it since his smart senior had whistled it; he never heard it again, and never ascertained its name. It was possibly one of Jullien’s — then gone out of vogue — set off rather by the youthful imagination of Hardy at sixteen than by any virtue in the music itself.
[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Thomas_Hardy/_FXLz5x2r18C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=thomas+hardy+trinity+road&pg=PA122&printsec=frontcover#PPA122,M1]
Jullien? Quadrille? There are some Jullien Quadrilles on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jullien+quadrille
Cremorne? - presumably the Cremorne Gardens at Chelsea?
Argyle Rooms, near regent Street?
Harmoniflute? A puzzle. Most references to "harmoniflutes" claim they are rough equivalents to harmonicas (mouth organs), or accordions. But this seems more likely: Possibly like this?
I tell this story as much for what it says about our streets at this time....
. .July
Since coming into contact with Leslie Stephen about 1873, as has been shown, Hardy had been much influenced by his philosophy, and also by his criticism. He quotes the following sentence from Stephen in his notebook under the date of July 1, 1879: “The ultimate aim of the poet should be to touch our hearts by showing his own, and not to exhibit his learning, or his fine taste, or his skill in mimicking the notes of his predecessors.’ That Hardy adhered pretty closely to this principle when he resumed the writing of poetry can hardly be denied.
July 8 or 9 — With E. to Mrs [Alexander] Macmillan’s garden-party at Knapdale, near our house. A great many present. Talked to Mr White of Harvard University, and Mr Henry Holt the New York publisher, who said that American spelling and idiom must prevail over the English, as it was sixty millions against thirty. I forgot for the moment to say that it did not follow, the usage set up by a few people of rank, education, and fashion being the deciding factor.
[Perhaps Robert J. White, Harvard University professor. known for his contributions to education and scholarship — for example, his pamphlet outlining his views on Greek and Latin language teaching, which is referenced in The Harvard Crimson. ]
Also to John Morley, whom I had not seen since he read my first manuscript. He remembered it, and said in his level uninterested voice: ‘Well, since we met, you have...’ etc., etc. Also met a Mrs H., who pretended to be an admirer of my books, and apparently had never read one. She had with her an American lady, sallow, with black dancing eyes, dangling earrings, yellow costume, and gay laugh.
[It was at this garden-party at Mrs Macmillan’s that the thunder-storm came on which Hardy made use of in a similar scene in A Laodicean.]
[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Thomas_Hardy/_FXLz5x2r18C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=thomas+hardy+trinity+road&pg=PA122&printsec=frontcover#PPA122,M1]
A summer storm at Knapdale features in A Laodicean
Somerset closed the hand which was hanging by his side, and somehow hers was in it. The dance was nearly formed, and heled her forward. Several persons looked at them significantly, but he did not notice it then, and plunged into the maze.
Never had Mr. Somerset passed through such an experience before. Had he not felt her actual weight and warmth, he might have fancied the whole episode a figment of theimagination. It seemed as if those musicians had thrown adouble sweetness into their notes on seeing the mistress ofthe castle in the dance, that a perfumed southern atmospherehad begun to pervade the marquee, and that human beings wereshaking themselves free of all inconvenient gravitation.
Somerset's feelings burst from his lips. 'This is the happiest moment I have ever known,' he said. 'Do you knowwhy?'
'I think I saw a flash of lightning through the opening of the tent,' said Paula, with roguish abruptness.
He did not press for an answer. Within a few minutes a long growl of thunder was heard. It was as if Jove could notrefrain from testifying his jealousy of Somerset for takingthis covetable woman so presumptuously in his arms.
The dance was over, and he had retired with Paula to the backof the tent, when another faint flash of lightning was visiblethrough an opening. She lifted the canvas, and looked out,Somerset looking out behind her. Another dance was begun, andbeing on this account left out of notice, Somerset did nothasten to leave Paula's side.
'I think they begin to feel the heat,' she said.
'A little ventilation would do no harm.' He flung back thetent door where he stood, and the light shone out upon thegrass.
'I must go to the drawing-room soon,' she added. 'They willbegin to leave shortly.'
'It is not late. The thunder-cloud has made it seem dark — seethere; a line of pale yellow stretches along the horizon fromwest to north. That's evening — not gone yet. Shall we gointo the fresh air for a minute?'
She seemed to signify assent, and he stepped off the tent-floor upon the ground. She stepped off also.
The air out-of-doors had not cooled, and without definitelychoosing a direction they found themselves approaching alittle wooden tea-house that stood on the lawn a few yardsoff. Arrived here, they turned, and regarded the tent theyhad just left, and listened to the strains that came fromwithin it.
'I feel more at ease now,' said Paula.
'So do I,' said Somerset.
'I mean,' she added in an undeceiving tone, 'because I sawMrs. Goodman enter the tent again just as we came out here; soI have no further responsibility.'
'I meant something quite different. Try to guess what.'
She teasingly demurred, finally breaking the silence by saying, 'The rain is come at last,' as great drops began to fall upon the ground with a smack, like pellets of clay.
In a moment the storm poured down with sudden violence, and they drew further back into the summer-house. The side of thetent from which they had emerged still remained open, the rainstreaming down between their eyes and the lighted interior ofthe marquee like a tissue of glass threads, the brilliantforms of the dancers passing and repassing behind the wateryscreen, as if they were people in an enchanted submarinepalace.
'How happy they are!' said Paula. 'They don't even know thatit is raining. I am so glad that my aunt had the tent lined; otherwise such a downpour would have gone clean through it.'
The thunder-storm showed no symptoms of abatement, and the music and dancing went on more merrily than ever.
'We cannot go in,' said Somerset. 'And we cannot shout for umbrellas. We will stay till it is over, will we not?'
'Yes,' she said, 'if you care to. Ah!'
'What is it?'
'Only a big drop came upon my head.'
'Let us stand further in.'
Her hand was hanging by her side, and Somerset's was close by.He took it, and she did not draw it away. Thus they stood along while, the rain hissing down upon the grass-plot, and nota soul being visible outside the dancing-tent save themselves.
'May I call you Paula?' asked he.
There was no answer.
'May I?' he repeated.
'Yes, occasionally,' she murmured.
'Dear Paula! — may I call you that?'
'O no — not yet.'
'But you know I love you?'
'Yes,' she whispered.
'And shall I love you always?'
'If you wish to.'
'And will you love me?'
Paula did not reply.
'Will you, Paula?' he repeated.
'You may love me.'
'But don't you love me in return?'
'I love you to love me.'
'Won't you say anything more explicit?'
'I would rather not.'
Somerset emitted half a sigh: he wished she had been more demonstrative, yet felt that this passive way of assenting was as much as he could hope for. Had there been anything cold in her passivity he might have felt repressed; but her stillness suggested the stillness of motion imperceptible from its intensity.
'We must go in,' said she. 'The rain is almost over, and there is no longer any excuse for this.'
Somerset bent his lips toward hers. 'No,' said the fair Puritan decisively.
'Why not?' he asked.
'Nobody ever has.'
'But! — ' expostulated Somerset.
'To everything there is a season, and the season for this isnot just now,' she answered, walking away.
They crossed the wet and glistening lawn, stepped under the tent and parted. She vanished, he did not know whither; and, standing with his gaze fixed on the dancers, the young manwaited, till, being in no mood to join them, he went slowly through the artificial passage lined with flowers, and entered the drawing room. Mrs. Goodman was there, bidding good-nightto the early goers, and Paula was just behind her, apparently in her usual mood. His parting with her was quite formal, butthat he did not mind, for her colour rose decidedly higher ashe approached, and the light in her eyes was like the ray of adiamond.
When he reached the door he found that his brougham from the Quantock Arms, which had been waiting more than an hour, could not be heard of. That vagrancy of spirit which love induces would not permit him to wait; and, leaving word that the man was to follow him when he returned, he went past the glare of carriage-lamps ranked in the ward, and under the outer arch. The night was now clear and beautiful, and he strolled alonghis way full of mysterious elation till the vehicle overtookhim, and he got in.
Up to this point Somerset's progress in his suit had been, though incomplete, so uninterrupted, that he almost feared the good chance he enjoyed. How should it be in a mortal of his calibre to command success with such a sweet woman for long? He might, indeed, turn out to be one of the singular exceptions which are said to prove rules; but when fortune means to men most good, observes the bard, she looks upon them with a threatening eye. Somerset would even have been content that a little disapproval of his course should have occurred in some quarter, so as to make his wooing more like ordinary life. But Paula was not clearly won, and that was drawback sufficient. In these pleasing agonies and painful delights he passed the journey to Markton.
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