ABSTRACT
on that day in 1904 when Mrs. Florence Henniker brought a young friend to call at Max Gate, she introduced the young lady to Hardy as a distant relative of his. Florence Dugdale had been told by her father that the Dugdales were an old Dorset family remotely related to the Hardys, and any reader of the minor short-story, 'Alicia's Diary', may remember that an 'old feeble Mr. Dugdale' appears in it. In 1904, however, Hardy promptly made it clear to Miss Dugdale that he had little desire to talk about family matters; instead, he asked her if she had ever read Crabbe. No, she had not; but she had read something better: she had read all the Wessex novels, and she knew the short stories too. 'On the Western Circuit' was her favourite.
