ABSTRACT
Edmund Gosse [Letter from Gosse to Hamo Thornycroft, 23 July 1883, describing Hardy’s new home, Shire-Hall Place in Dorchester, where he had moved at the end of the previous month. Gosse’s visit began two days before he wrote his letter]
Hardy has taken a rambling house in this town, a house of which a townsman said, ‘He have but one window and she do look into Gaol Lane’. It is indeed a kind of mole, for the entrance is almost invisible and its burrow extends to the back of everything (pp. 156-7. Gosse also describes a visit which he and Hardy made to William Barnes the previous day). [Letter from Gosse to W.D. Howells, 19 November 1886, describes Hardy’s reaction to an interview given by James Russell Lowell in which he depicted Hardy as ‘small and unassuming in appearance’ (see p. 72, and Letters, I, 156]
[Hardy] was very much wounded by what Lowell was reported to have said about him. There are circumstances in the case which would make the sneer at Hardy’s personal appearance singularly cruel: I cannot myself believe that Lowell said all that – it is quite in the Julian Hawthorne vein. Hardy, who has always been a great supporter and admirer of Lowell, is wretched at this supposed snub (p. 202).
