ABSTRACT
When we came out, I took Hardy to my house, and he, as a former architect, was amused at my devices. He sate for half an hour and talked. He said he was amazed at my output. He said he couldn’t write now, only a bit of verse at intervals; he was ashamed of his little book of republished stories and surprised at its good reception.5 I said that I wasn’t an artist, only an improvisatore – no quality in my work. He said, ‘Oh, you must leave other people to say that, if they choose’. He looked tired, but bucked up, and I walked back to the Lodge with him. [...]
At the end of dinner the Master proposed Hardy’s health in a few very nice words; we rose and drank it. Hardy sate there beaming, drank and nodded back, but didn’t speak. [...] He said, ‘I should like to think I should come here often, and I mean to – but the flesh is weak!’ I liked the old man very much, so simple and confiding. He told me he had enough verses for a book, but he didn’t know whether he ought to include in it some verses he wrote when his wife died6 – ‘very intimate, of course – but the verses came; it was quite natural; one looked back through the years and saw some pictures; a loss like that just makes one’s old brain vocal!’ (pp. 259-61).
