Dreams of Wessex

On the 2nd June, 1840 the English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy was born. Many readers have admired him throughout the ages as one of the best chroniclers of “Deep England”. This is a concept which evokes much more than a sense of a specific place and time, it is the encapsulation of a feeling of innocence and wonder, and a yearning to return to a simpler existence.

Hardy was born in Dorset. The location of his birth is significant. All of his novels were set in the South West of England, he referred to this corner of England as Wessex. This was the archaic name for a region which encompassed the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and Berkshire. Hardy was essentially a pastoral writer, illuminating the climate and landscape of the furthest fringes of England.

He defended this parochial style by declaring,

“It is better for a writer to know a little bit of the world remarkably well than to know a great part of the world remarkably little”.

He left Dorset to train as an architect in London, but he felt lost and homesick. Increasingly despondent, he retired to the college chapel to ponder his fate. Then the ghost of William Wordsworth appeared to him, almost like a talisman to guide him on his future path. This was seared in his memory as the unmistakable, yet shadowy figure of the poet appeared, “lingering and wandering on somewhere alone in the fan-traceried Vaulting”. He took this as a sign that his destiny did not actually lie in architecture. He knew that he had to pursue his literary ambitions, just as Wordsworth illustrated the magic and mystery of the Lake District, Hardy endeavoured to bring out the majesty of the West Country.

Both were part of the Romantic tradition, a form of cultural conservatism rooted in place. They understood that the landscape moulded the people who lived, worked and depended upon it for their sustenance. It was precious and there was an urgent necessity to preserve it, as it was so much more than a random patch of land, it defined their identity, perceptions and outlook on life.

Hardy declared,

“There exists a great background, vital and wild, which matters..”

Similarly, Wordsworth waxed lyrical about the magic of the Northern landscape in his book, “A Guide Through the District of the Lakes”. He imagined a lone walker wandering the lakes and fells. He described how this solitary pilgrim of nature felt overwhelmed by the beauty that surrounded him. As he contemplated the landscape, he experienced a kind of epiphany, as if encountering the sublime.

In one passage he recalled that as “the winds sweeping over the lakes, or piping with a loud voice among the mountain peaks…(he) may think of the primeval woods shedding and renewing their leaves.” This distinct landscape was haunted by the footsteps of other lone travellers, who also trod the same paths.

The land resonates with the memory of these wanderers. Wordsworth felt their presence and described the “low breathings coming after him”. The profound sense of the elemental reverberates throughout the work of Wordsworth and Hardy.

The haunting memories of Egdon Heath were revealed within Hardy’s powerfully affecting novel “Return of the Native”. In his imagination, he thought that the Heath “had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities”. Hardy maintained that all of the land possessed this tragic possibility. Hardy’s childhood on a bleak, windy corner of England left an indelible impression on him.

Outsiders were oblivious to the reality of such an existence, for them, on the surface at least, country living was benign and bucolic, unaware that horror and drama are buried beneath, and arise at the most inopportune time. When they least expect it, the characters soon succumb to their fate. Hardy lived through a time of dramatic change, the late Victorian era when England was on the cusp of modernity. He was deeply sceptical of the supposed benefits of industrialisation. In his eyes it simply destroyed rural communities and people lost their connection to the land. He maintained that it was natural to remain on the land and to eke out an existence despite the hardships.