ABSTRACT
Sir George Douglas It would have been impossible, I fancy, to find pleasanter visitors than the Hardys proved themselves to be whilst under my roof. Country-house life was simpler in those days, and, beyond exerting ourselves to show them as much as possible of what seemed likely to be of interest, I’m afraid we had no great attractions to offer them, nor any specially sympathetic guests to ask to meet them. Hardy, by the way, was not generally very much interested in meeting people, even when they were something of notorieties – though he was always very nice to them – but Mrs Hardy, I think, was. She liked to know the people whose names are well known. Despite the homeliness of my interior, however, the Hardys threw themselves at once into the interests of our family life. A portrait of Mrs Opie by her husband hung in my drawing-room, suggesting to Hardy that I might read them one of her Simple Tales after dinner, which of course I was only too pleased to do.1 Then, next morning after breakfast, Mrs Hardy said at once, ‘Let’s go and visit the horses’, whereupon she and my sister2 provided themselves with lumps of sugar, and we trooped off to the stables, which thenceforth became a part of our routine. Mrs Hardy had been a horsewoman in her girlhood, yet I don’t remember hearing of her showing any special knowledge of horses on any other occasion except one, and that was when, having been bolted with by a cab-horse between Florence and Fiesole, and the horse having been pulled up, she and Hardy and the friend who was with them pluckily decided to resume their journey behind the same horse and driver.3 Mrs Hardy belonged essentially to the class of women, gifted with spirit and the power of deciding for herself, which had attracted Hardy in his early manhood. She had the makings of a Bathsheba, with restricted opportunities. The trifles mentioned above are perhaps no more than goodwill or good manners would prescribe. But even at that day good manners were already giving place to easy ones. * Douglas, Sir George, ‘Thomas Hardy: Some Recollections and Reflections’, Hibbert
Journal, 26 (April 1928), 385-98. For details of Sir George Douglas, one of Hardy’s most enduring friends, see p. 59. Here, he describes a visit by the Hardys to his estate at Kelso in Scotland in September 1891, where they visited places associated with Walter Scott. See Millgate, pp. 317-18.
