ABSTRACT
In the manuscript, Barbara is occasionally called Mabella (see below), which was the name of Barbara Webb's great-aunt, according to the Webb pedigree in Hutchins (III, 298). Barbara Grebe's father is called Sir John, as was Barbara Webb's, and their baronetcy was created 'a few years before the breaking out of the Civil War': the Webb baronetcy was created in 1640. The story opens around 1780, when Barbara Grebe is barely seventeen years of age (like Barbara Webb). We learn that Barbara's blood, 'through her mother, was compounded of the best juices of ancient baronial distillation, containing tinctures of Maundeville, and Mohun, and Syward, and Peverell, and Culliford, and Talbot, and Plantagenet, and York, and Lancaster, and God knows what besides'. Barbara Webb also had a distinguished ancestry: Hutchins records that her maternal grandmother was a Talbot, a name which features in Hardy's otherwise invented lineage, and her mother was descended from the ancient barons of Mauley, the last of whom died in 1415. Barbara Grebe has many children in quick succession by Uplandtowers but only one daughter reaches maturity, whereas Barbara Webb appears to have had only one child, also a daughter: neither of them, therefore, produced a male heir. Barbara Webb's daughter married the Honourable Mr Ponsonby, who was later created Lord de Mauley, and Barbara Grebe's daughter, we learn, married the Honourable Mr Beltonleigh, who was later created Lord Weiland in all versions of the story before the first collected edition in 1891, when his title became that of Lord D' Almaine. It is possible to conjecture that Hardy made this revision to echo the Norman sound of the historical title.
