Barrie On Hardy

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 653, 3 May 1929, Page 14

Barrie On Hardy

Addressing the Society of Authors recently in London , Sir James Barrie included in his speech the remarks on Thomas Hardy which follow.

WOULD you care, ladies and gentlemen, to have a few words of reminiscence about our illustrious pair Meredith and Hardy? The one of them has told me how he used to rush round Hyde Park three times on end, flying from his misery, and I know a gate on which the other sat and wished he had never been born. When I came to London I bought a silk hat to impress editors, and with the remainder of the sovereign I took a ticket to Box Hill, where Meredith lived.

I sat on the grass mound opposite his cottage, and by and by I saw a face at a window, the finest face I have ever seen on a man. I was to become well acquainted with both him and Hardy, and I don’t know which was the greater, but the most satisfactory thing in my little literary history is that the two whom as writers I have most admired became the two whom as men I have most loved. Hardy I met first at a club in Piccadilly, where he had asked me to lunch.

It is a club where they afterwards adjourn to the smoking-room and talk for a breathless hour or two about style. Hardy's small contribution made no mark, but I thought, “How interesting that the only man among you who doesn’t know all about stylo is the only man among you who has got one.” Style is the way the artist paints his picture. No, it can’t be so easy as that. All sorts of things seem so easy to me until I read clever works about them. Hardy could scarcely look out at a window in the twilight without seeing something hitherto hidden from mortal eye. That must have helped his style. He has been called a pessimist. Surely pessimists are just people without any root to them. Was he that? Once when I was at Dorchester he showed me a letter from a firm which had presented him with a broadcasting set. They said they were delighted to hear from him that it gave pleasure, hut that they were rather damped to learn from another source that it was not he who listened, but his dog. This was quite true. We went that afternoon to a local rehearsal of the play of “Teas,” and the dog. who was with us. behavej beautifully until the time r-nme when he knew wireless would l>e putting on “The Children’s Hour.” It was his favourite item. lie howled Tor ft so that even Tess’s champion had to desert her and hurry home with h»m. The dog afterwards discovered weather or some tiling of

the kind, was issued in the early morn- | ing. and I understand his master used i to go downstairs in the cold and turn | it on for him. Winced at Glory. Hardy could easily be hurt by not illtended pens. He had things to do, j and without meaning to they got in the j way of his doing them, but he never desired his fame, ff it could have been j separated from his poesy he would j have given it to any beggar at the | door. When he published “Tess” I warned him that he was heading straight for glory—and he winced. When “The Dynasts’’ came out I said, “Now you’ve gone and done it.” and I expect he said, “We won’t have that man at Max Gate any more.*’ Whatever angel guards the portals ol Elysium he must have had to push Thomas Hardy in. Most of them there are too dashing for that quietest figure in literature, with their Olympian revels and their boisterous talk about everything—no. not about everything —not about style. He was not quite as others are. Everyone knows that he had an intimacy with trees surpassing even that of Giles Winterbourne: but there was an eerier clement in it | than that. The trees had a similar knowledge of him. and when he passed through their wood the* could tell him from all other men. Perhaps that was the price he paid. I suppose many of you have been reading the noblo biography of which half has just appeared. There is a passage of two or three lines in it that may be more revealing than anything else in the book, that in which we are told how from his earliest years he disliked being touched by anyone. I believe I can say that outside a relative no man alive, much as Hardy drew affection, ever put a hand on his shoulder. It could not have been even on the day when he sat so unhappy on that gate. In his youth he used to carry in his pockets two dumpy volumes of verse by one whose sympathetic shade perhaps pressed so close to him that day that there were two on the gate. There are a hundred, a thousand, pencil marks on those two volumes that look now like love messages from the young poet of one age to the young poet of a past age. What in human experience can be more stainless? I think Hardy’s first words in the Elysian Fields were. “Which is Shelley?” And that then the hand fell upon his shoulder for which ho had so long been waiting. Perhaps those pencil marks on the books are the scrapings of a skylark trying to bring those two together, and succeeding at last: The lark that Shelley heard And made immortal through times to be. Though it only lived like another bird And knew not its immortality, Lived its meek life, then one day fell, A little ball of feather and bone; And how it perished, when piped farewell, And where it wastes are alike unknown. NEW ZEALAND WRITER PRODUCES SECOND NOVEL MR. MONTE HOLCROFT, the young New Zealand writer who recently went to England to try his fortunes, has been spending some months In Europe. His first novel, “Beyond the Breakers,” was reviewed a month or so ago in these columns. Mr. Holcroft writes from the Pyrenees that his next book, “The Flameless Fire.” is to appear in July. The scene is set in Sydney but, as with his first book, the background has not been emphasised. “It is the characters with whom I have concerned myself chiefly,” he writes. “One of the leading figures in the book is a research chemist who is seeking an alloy that will produce a rust-resisting steel at a reasonable cost. Rust —In more than one form — plays a big part in the tale and gives it its name.”

world completely destroyed by mysterious emanations of purplish vapour. The conception is a striking one to begin with; the treatment is magnificent. The figure of the lonely Emperor of the Universe gratifying his pyromaniacal lust on the dead cities o? the world deserves to rank high with the great literary creations of our time. And the theme is so brilliantly handled that, for the reader, the world stretches dead at his feet —for just so long as it takes to read “The j Purple Cloud.’’ Mr. Shiel has a mastery over words that has excited the admiration of writers such as Arthur Machen, Carl Van Vecliten (whose startling tabulations are equalled by Shiel), Edward Shanks, Arnold Bennett, and Hugh Walpole, w'hile Jules Claretie, with Gallic felicity, claims that “ ‘The Purple Cloud’ should live as long as the Odyssey.” It is certainly a stupendous piece of work. The occasional preciousness of the writer serves but to add to its peculiar attraction. “The Yellow' Peril” deals with a mighty conflict in which “Edward, Prince of Wales” (who has received a scientific education and who, incidentally, has married a commoner) saves Britain from Europe and then, with the help of a secret ray, Europe from the forces of Li Ku Yu, of China. The tale contains many passages of rare beauty. “The Purple Cloud" and “Tlie Yellow Peril.'’ Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 14 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London. Our copies from the publisher.