Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 at the Village of Upper Bochampton. He was the child of a country stonemason. Hardy was the third Thomas of his family. His mother's maiden name was Jemima Hand and she and her husband let Hardy to have an unusually happy childhood. His early years were a seed-bed to his later creative development. His mother knew what real poverty was when she was young because she lost her father. Hardy said 'she read every book she could lay her hands on' and she grew up to be a woman of ability, judgment, and 'an energy that might have carried her to incalculable issues!' Many thought she was the dominant influence in Hardy's life but his father was a man of character also. Even though he didn't 'possess the art of enriching himself by business,' he was a fine craftsman, and a lover of music

As a young child, Hardy mastered the violin learning over 100 tunes. He also sang in the Stansford Church every Sunday. It seems to be that Hardy and his parents had a good relationship. In 1867 Hardy met Tryphena Sparks who was 16 and a daughter to a family related to his. She was intelligent and made her living as a teacher. She bore a child in 1868 and Hardy fell deeply in love with her. But in 1872 she broke his heart by returning her engagement ring. She then remarried and had two more children before dying in 1890. Tryphena had a great influence on his writing. On March 7, 1870 Hardy took an architectural trip to a church named St. Juliot. He stayed at the rectory and met the rector's sister-in-law, Emma Lavinia Gifford. She was younger and attractive, and they walked hand in hand through the countryside. They fell half in love and Hardy made many trips back to St. Juliot. In 1874 they were married and proceeded to wander about Europe until they settled in Sturminster Newton. After two years there Hardy decided to move back to London. Years later he looked back on those two years as their happiest time together.

Hardy seemed to live a peaceful and successful life, but there was a "pattern of storm beneath the tranquility." During these three decades of creation, public acclaim, and critical praise, his private life was overshadowed by what appeared to be his wife's fall to insanity. She was a victim of delusions, one of her biggest delusions is that she married a lesser man than she deserved. She also believed that she had written Hardy's work and he stole them from her to be published for himself. She also insulted him publicly by taking more pride in being the niece of archdeacon than being the wife of the greatest English writer. She even tried to stop the publication of Jude the Obscure because she felt it immoral. She died unexpectedly in 1912 and even though Hardy was with her last before she died, she never regained consciousness after a dispute they had earlier. His remorse and grief broke into the release of the most moving love poems of his or any other century. Home life became much calmer and ordered when he married Florence Ellen Dugdale in 1914.

Education wasn't the biggest thing in Hardy's life, but he was a very intelligent young student. He was an avid reader beginning to spell out titles at the age of three. He had a remarkable memory; sometimes dressing as a parson and delivering sermons from his head. He did well at the village school and he caught the eye of Mrs. Julia Martin. She thought he was a star pupil and he became somewhat "in love" with her. His parents and her had a disagreement over the decision to move him to a school in Dorchester, the young Hardy got a "a stinging foretaste of the pain and humiliation of the Victorian class structure." At 14 he was proficient in Latin, knew Shakespeare, the Bible, and Pilgrim's Progress, which were all major works of literature.

Part of Hardy's education wasn't in school. He learned how fierce the world can be. He witnessed two executions and heard tales from his father of people being burned at the stake and savage punishments. All around him people were in extreme poverty because of the poor law system. There were many skilled men that didn't have jobs.

Hardy described himself as a student in The Sun on the Bookcase. During this time he was studying architecture, and since his father couldn't afford to send him to a university, he became an apprentice to John Hicks the local architect. While apprenticing Hardy became a skilled draftsman and sort of went to college at the same time. His neighbor was William Barnes, who Hardy considered a university within himself. Barnes was a scholar, linguist, folklorist, and a poet all rolled into one. Hardy questioned him and studied his works to gain knowledge that he was missing out on. At the age of 23 Hardy concluded his training and began to write.

Hardy's first writing was The Poor Man and the Lady, which received praise but no publishing. It was in 1865 that Hardy first got published. How I Built My First House was published in the Chambers Journal, and he followed that in 1868 with his first published novel Desperate