ABSTRACT
Thomas Hardy has proved a difficult, even refractory subject for biographers. His private life was comparatively uneventful (despite some wild claims to the contrary), his literary career one of steady if not untroubled success. He was reticent and at times misleading about the bare facts of his family, background and education: still more so about his personal and creative life. His entry Who’s in Who 1928 is characteristically unhelpful:
HARDY, Thomas, author; O.M. 1910; Hon. LL.D. Aberdeen; Litt.D. Cambridge and D.Litt. Oxford; LL.D. St Andrews and Bristol; Hon. Fellow Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Queen’s College, Oxford; J.P. Dorset; b. Dorsetshire, 2 June 1840; s. of late Thomas Hardy and Jemima Hardy; m. 1st, 1874, Emma Lavinia (d. 1912), d. of J. A. Gifford, and niece of Archdn. Gifford; 2nd, 1914, Florence Emily, J.P. for Dor chester d., of Edward Dugdale, and author of numerous books for children, magazine articles, and reviews. Educ.: Dorchester; King’s College, London. Pupil of John Hicks, ecclesiastical architect, 1856–61; read Latin and Greek with a fellow-pupil, 1857–60; sketched and measured many old countrychur ches now pulled down or altered; removed to London and worked at Gothic architecture under Sir A. Blomfield, A.R.A., 1862–67; prizeman of Royal Institute of British Architects, 1863; the Architectural Assoc., 1863; wrote verses, 1865–68; gave up verse for prose, 1868–70; but resumed it later. Holds Gold Medal of Royal Society of Literature; Member of the Council of Justice to Animals; is against blood-sport, dog-chaining, and the caging of birds. 1
This is not untruthful, but it is disingenuous. Both Emma’s social background and Florence’s literary standing are quietly enhanced, as is Hardy’s education – his experience of King’s College was limited to two terms in a French evening class (1865–66) – while his first career as an architect, adopted as his best and perhaps only means of escape from the artisan into the professional class, is represented as a gentlemanly combination of sketching, measuring and prize-winning, given up in 1867 while he was busy writing verses, rather than continued until 1872, by which time he had at last begun to make money from writing novels. 2