In Quiet Grave

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 254, 17 January 1928, Page 9

In Quiet Grave

HARDY GOES TO REST Majestic Abbey Service British Wireless —Press Assn.—Copyright Received 11.40 a.m. RUGBY, Monday. WESTMINSTER ABBEY was filled with mourners when the ashes of Thomas Hardy were buried this afternoon in the Poets’ Corner. Great figures in literature and art were among the many distinguished men and women who occupied the north and south transepts, while 1,000 of the general public were assembled in the nave.

A large number of admirers of the great writer were unable to gain admission and stood outside, bareheaded, in silent reverence, while the service was in progress. The King, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of York were represented. As pall-bearers, the Prime Minister, Mr Baldwin, and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald paid the last tribute to the great author on behalf of the State, while Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. Bernard Shaw, Sir James Barrie, Sir Edmund Gosse, and Mr. John Galsworthy represented literature.

While this service was being conducted with that impressiveness and majesty always associated with Westminster Abbey, another service of the utmost simplicity was taking place at Stinsford, in Wessex, where as a symbolic act the writer’s heart was being buried. While the congregation at Westminster mourned Hardy as a genius, the villagers assembled at Stinsford Church were there to mourn him rather as the friend whom a score of grey-haired men had known as plain Tom Hardy, the architect’s apprentice.—A. and N.Z.

ROYALTY REBUKED ABSENT FROM ABBEY ARNOLD BENNETT'S LETTER By Cable. —Press Association. — Copyright. Red. 1.32 p.m. LONDON, Monday. Mr. Arnold Bennett, in a letter to the “Daily Express,” condemns the arrangement by which the distribution of tickets to the Poets’ Corner at Thomas Hardy’s funeral was handed over to Macmillans, the publishers. He says the Dean and the Chapter cannot divest from themselves the responsibility of organising a national funeral. They are not entitled to say, “We consented to interment in the Abbey; invite whom you like.” “Lastly,” he says, “I must point out with regret and respect that not a single member of the Royal Family was present. One of the main functions of royalty is to represent and symbolise the feeling of the country. As a rule, the function is admirably fulfilled; but the King’s message to the widow, though a suitable sympathetic gesture, was not enough. Hardy was a citizen of the highest consequence. If it had been a military funeral of similar importance, half the male royalties would have attended as a matter of course.” —A. and N.Z.-Sun.