Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    The Mayor of Casterbridge
    Ebook484 pages9 hours

    The Mayor of Casterbridge

    By Thomas Hardy

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work.

    The tragic story of Michael Henchard and his painful quest to be forgotten-an unforgettable tale of love, greed, and loss.

    This edition includes:
    -A concise introduction that gives the reader important background information
    -A chronology of the author's life and work
    -A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
    -An outline of key themes to guide the reader's own interpretations
    -Detailed explanatory notes
    -Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
    -Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
    -A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

    Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateMar 22, 2016
    ISBN9781451686029
    Author

    Thomas Hardy

    Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorchester, Dorset. He enrolled as a student in King’s College, London, but never felt at ease there, seeing himself as socially inferior. This preoccupation with society, particularly the declining rural society, featured heavily in Hardy’s novels, with many of his stories set in the fictional county of Wessex. Since his death in 1928, Hardy has been recognised as a significant poet, influencing The Movement poets in the 1950s and 1960s.

    Read more from Thomas Hardy

    Related to The Mayor of Casterbridge

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      What’s So Great About Jane?

      Mar 26, 2020

      What’s So Great About Jane?
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Mirror of Erised: On Death, Harry Potter, and Retreating to Childhood Reads

      Aug 16, 2018

      I’d known Monica 20 years when her sister was killed in a hit-and-run motorcycle accident. We spent our childhoods in a tiny Bay Area town that I left at 14. I only went back to visit twice. In the years between, Monica and I sent each other videos,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Far From the Madding Crowd

      Feb 16, 2022

      Far From the Madding Crowd
      2 min read

    • Article

      The King Of Westminster

      May 24, 2023

      The King Of Westminster
      5 min read

    • Article

      Exceeding Expectations

      Nov 23, 2023

      Charles Dickens did not come from a privileged background, but nor were his parents without prospects. John Dickens (1785-1851), was the son of servants to the Crewe family - Cheshire gentry with a townhouse in Mayfair - whose patronage secured him a

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Man That Time Forgot

      Apr 8, 2023

      1880s portrait, fromIn 1926, the poet Hugh MacDiarmid described Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936) as ‘potentially the greatest Scotsman of his generation’, and a year later, the Sunday Post commented: ‘There are few men nowadays so well k

      13 min read

    • Article

      Finding Facts In Fiction

      Mar 12, 2021

      Finding Facts In Fiction
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Capital of Self-Reliance

      Sep 1, 2021

      The Capital of Self-Reliance
      4 min read

    • Article

      READER’S DIGEST RECOMMENDED READ: A Novel Idea

      Apr 19, 2022

      In the 1980s, something strange happened to the British literary scene: it became extremely glamorous. Out went the traditional pipe-smoking men of letters, and in came a cool new generation of authors and publishers. Suddenly writers were to be foun

      3 min read

    • Article

      Theodore Dreiser’s New York

      Oct 26, 2017

      Theodore Dreiser’s New York
      8 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of Beauty

      Jan 5, 2022

      In Search Of Beauty
      6 min read

    • Article

      Victorian Style Scandal

      Aug 13, 2022

      Tangled Souls: love and scandal among the Victorian aristocracy Jane Dismore The History Press, 2022 pp. 326 Hardback, £20.00; paperback, N/A; (Kindle £12.99) ISBN: 978-0750996624; 0750996625 Imagine: a bright young dashing politician, who thinks hi

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Most Unreliable Culture Warrior

      Jan 27, 2022

      ONE OF THE STRONGEST POINTS in J.C. Squire’s favour is the well-nigh fabulous contempt in which he was held by the liberal intelligentsia of his time. F.R. Leavis declared he was the epitome of all that was meant by the word “philistine”. Virginia Wo

      4 min read

    • Article

      What A Long, Strange Trip It Was

      Jun 1, 2022

      Born in 1890, Jean Rhys (christened Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams) lived through two world wars and in her long life observed firsthand the many changes wrought by the 20th century. She consorted with the literati of the Lost Generation in 1920s Pari

      6 min read

    • Article

      Where The Wych Elm Grows

      Jun 24, 2020

      A SMALL boy stood beside a large, overhanging tree in a Hertfordshire garden in the 1880s. According to folklore, if pigs’ teeth were found in a tree’s trunk, chewing a small piece of its bark could cure toothache. This wych elm, with its few embedde

      4 min read

    • Article

      Royal Rhymes

      Oct 7, 2022

      Royal Rhymes
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Foul-mouthed Miller And The Prim Prioress

      Jan 3, 2024

      HAT Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘drasty rhyming is nat worth a toord’ (his ‘dirty rhyming isn’t worth a turd’), the Host’s pungent dismissal in Chaucer’s best-known, but incomplete poem The Canterbury Tales, is a verdict that, with good reason, posterity has

      4 min read

    • Article

      Courage Summoned

      Aug 1, 2021

      Author James Courage doesn’t get half the attention he deserves these days, which is quite surprising given the present zeitgeist’s relentless search for LGBTQIA heroes and recognition of the black dog of depression. There was a flurry of interest in

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Mayor of Casterbridge

    4/5

    31 ratings52 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      The urban setting makes this novel very different from the author's earlier work. There are fewer trees and hills to look upon, and so the plot takes precedence over description. The story moves quickly and smoothly, and only at times did I feel like Hardy was fast-forwarding through difficulties by using reported dialogue to cover complicated scenes that I think he wasn't up to actually writing. But that only happened once or twice. Otherwise the structure of the novel is sound and without many obvious flaws. The quality of the writing tended to diminish at around the 2/3 point, but it still ended well, as all the different strands came together.I didn't find the self-improvement scheme of Elizabeth to be all that realistically described, and I didn't think the character of Henchard to be all that well-realized - often relying on repeated details of his superstition, for example, to hammer home the point that he actually has character - but otherwise I found the unintentionally awful Farfrae to to be lovingly drawn, the moral ambivalence of the narrator to be effective, and for the overall tragedy to feel like it mattered.
    • 4/5
      The Mayor of Casterbridge, focused and simple the premise has been in itself, affords a quite convoluted plot that packs with events as the memorably niched characters play out their lives and unravels the novel. The book is riddled with a well-faceted theme of conscience: the purging of conscience and its reconciliation through an allusion to deceit and characters' shameless past that ceaselessly haunt them and render them despondent and guilty. The tragic actions revolve around one man who manages to establish prestige, wealth, and authority over Casterbridge and ironically the very elite status leads to the fall of the deeply flawed man. In a fit of drunken anger and delirium, young Michael Henchard sells his wife Susan and baby daughter Elizabeth-Jane to a sailor for 5 guineas at a county fair. Over the course of the years, though he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the town from literally nothing, Henchard still affords a ray of hope in reuniting with his family, until he meets Lucetta Templeman who nurses him in America. Such black spot of his youth as wife-sale caused by his fits of spleen not only renders him ashamed of himself but also wears an aspect of recent crime: something that will shame him until his dying day. Behind his success is always lurking such shameful secret of his troubled past shielded from the public and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper. Contributing to the suspenseful nature of the novel is the return of the mayor's wife and daughter some 18 years later whom Michael Henchard believed to have perished at the sea. The sentimental reunion, which marks Henchard respectable 20-year abstinence from alcohol, brings about a heartrending revelation and an ironical sequence of events that irritate Henchard. The very truth cruelly leaves in him an emotional void that he unconsciously craves to fill. At the same time, the regard he has acquired for Elizabeth-Jane has eclipsed by this revelation. The new-sprung hope of his loneliness (or "friendless solitude" in Hardy's own words) that she will be to him a daughter of whom he can feel as proud as of the actual daughter she believes herself to be, has been stimulated by the (yet another) unexpected arrival of the sailor to a greedy exclusiveness in relation to her. All these ineluctable consequences of his past shameful transaction at the fair take a stupendous toll on Henchard and his conscience. He is also uneasy at the thought of Elizabeth-Jane's passion for Donald Farfrae, whose rising prestige and success in his independent business provoke in Henchard enmity and envy. Henchard quails at the thought that Farfrae shall utterly usurp her mild filial sympathy with him, that she might be withdrawn from him by degrees through Farfrae's influence and learns to despise him. The pricking of conscience subtly manifests in Henchard's solicitous love and growing jealousy. His fear of losing tie after the death of his wife is sympathetically understandable. Though he in his effrontery has been weaning Elizabeth-Jane from the sailor by saying he is her father, she understands that Henchard has himself been deceived in her identity. Lucetta Templeman, inescapably torn between her past disgraceful entanglement with Henchard and her love for a more refined gentleman, is also pricked by her conscience. In an impulsive moment, purely out of gratitude, Henchard proposes to the Jersey woman who has been so far compromised to him. But as the years gone by, Lucetta is more convinced that she has been forced into an equivocal position with Henchard by an accident. She has discovered some quantities in Henchard, who is either well-educated nor refined in manner, that irretrievably renders him less desirable as a husband than she has at first thought him to be, notwithstanding there remains a conscientious wish to being about her union with him. When Lucetta learns of the wife-sale, she immediately dismisses any possibility of being with him and realizes she cannot risk himself in his hands. It will have been letting herself down to take Henchard's name after such an ignominious scandal. But her past which she diligently seals, if not expunge altogether haunts her. The surreptitious history with Henchard becomes the torture of her meek conscience and the reconciling of which through a marriage with a second man remains also her secret alone. Subtitled "A Story of a Man of Character", Henchard's origins remain unexplained but he literally begins and ends the novel away from Casterbridge, where he achieves his prominent status ironically destines his downfall, through the lampooning and skimmity-ride. A psychological study, the novel accentuates the fury that causes him to lash out against both himself and those who stand closest to him. It depicts to the fullest the very self-destructive nature of the power that causes Henchard's fall, which is so obvious through his louring invidiousness
    • 5/5
      This book is beautifully written and is more of a character driven story than a plot driven. Henchard in a episode of drunkenness auctions of his wife and daughter. Takes a vow to never drink for 21 years to make amends for what he has done. He becomes a successful businessman and is made Mayor of the town of Casterbridge. Into his life enters a Scotsman that he loves, his wife and her daugher, Elizabeth-Jane. Of course there is also the "other woman". I especially enjoyed the first pictures that Hardy creates where we see the man, woman, child walking into the village, tired, with no place to lay their heads and rest. Love this quote, "one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance except perhaps, fair play." "when I was rich, I didn't need what I could have hadand now I be poor I can't have what I need." "simple sorry is better than looming misery." Love how Hardy paints this picture of late summer/fall "...hedges, tress, and other vegetation, which had entered the blackened green stage of colour that this doomed leaves pass through on their way to dingy, and yellow, and red. I love observing nature and this just range so true to me. And the book arrived at the end of fall here in Minnesota. So very fitting picture. Hardy uses references to other literature, frequently using the Bible such as Jacob in Padan-Aran and excerpts from Greek mythology, Bellerophon. Austerliz (Napoleonic War), Character of fate - even sober Henchard is "vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar without the light to guide him on a better way." Henchard is a man who is isolated/lonely; he is separated from his wife by death, his friend by estrangement and his daughter by ignorance.
    • 4/5
      The Mayor of Casterbridge rates 5 stars for all the compelling descriptions, yet only 4 for the plot which does tend to go on and revolve back around itself too many times.How welcome it would have been if young Elizabeth-Jane had just taken off back to the seaside to live with Captain Newsome until or if she decided to marry!That would have left her sad and deceitful ex-father and her tepid ex-love to sort life out between them.
    • 5/5
      his is only the second Hardy book that I have read and the other one was at least 40 years ago when I was in high school (Tess of the D'Ubervilles). I wanted to read more by Hardy so I talked our book club into reading this book. I thought it was great. The title character did something horrible when he was young but has since become a successful businessman and the leader of his community. Then his past has to be confronted and a series of events that leads to his downfall is set into motion. Hardy paints him as a very complex character, one you despise in one chapter and then feel sorry for in the next. The secondary characters are richly drawn and the description of life in this period is full of colour.Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      This dark novel begins with a man in a drunken rage, who sells his wife and daughter at a fair one evening. Full of remorse upon realization, he vows to redeem his life and does so, yet, his secret weighs heavily on him. Hardy is his usual brooding and heart-rending self here, but to a beautiful, profound effect.
    • 4/5
      I was surprised how much I liked this book. Ok, it's a classic, the font is tiny, and it looked like a long hard read. The story is about Mr. Henchard, who in a drunken state, sells his wife and infant daughter. Twenty years later, the wife and daughter decide to look for him and discover that he has become so successful that he is the mayor of Casterbridge. Really interesting plot and great characters.
    • 4/5
      In a prologue like first chapter, a drunken Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to the highest bidder, and the woman and girl go off with a traveling sailor. The rest of the book takes place many years later. Henchard has managed to rise to be a wealthy and prominent citizen of Casterbridge, and is the Mayor. Then his long gone wife and daughter return unexpectedly. Also involved are a briliant and charming young Scotsman and a woman from a nearby town that Henchard took advantage of for his pleasure. The story is sad on many levels, with all characters getting their turn to share in the misery.
    • 4/5
      Truly a triumph of Hardy's later works. Despite each of the main characters' personality flaws, one cannot help but become attached to their outcomes and trials. Hardy proves his mastery of the human condition in literature within the pages of this book, showing readers the perils of being obstinate, jealous, and vengeful. In contrast, readers are also shown how life can be nothing but misery for those who are meek and remain quiet when ill-treated. I do not agree that this is a parable regarding the evils of alcohol, as Michael Henchard, the main character, is not suffering because of his past drunkenness or due to the effects of remaining sober before returning to drink. This is a novel about human character and there is no teetotaller messages to be found. There really is not a dull moment throughout this novel and the parallels between the time periods are similar enough to keep even strictly anti-"Classics" readers entertained.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite books. Perhaps the greatest depiction of the repercussions of untreated alcoholism and the 'dry drunk' I've ever read. The faulty perceptions, the guilt, the grandiosity, the paranoia, the self-centeredness, the lies, the secrets, the horrible collateral damage, it's all here, as only Hardy could write it. I've read the book before, several times, but every time I read it I find a new layer. The depiction of the "Mayor" is heartbreaking, from beginning to end, a true tragedy in the sense he is never able to get out of his own way. It's a book I wish I'd written.
    • 4/5
      A young man, his wife, and their baby daughter stop in at a country fair after travelling through the English countryside searching for work. In a fit of alcoholic rage, the man sells auctions off his wife and daughter to a sailor passing through for a few coins. When he sobers up the next day and realizes what he's done, he searches the nearby towns trying to find them and undo his actions. He fails to find them and vows to give up alcohol. Years later, he's become a succesful businessman and mayor of Casterbridge. When his wife and grown daughter suddenly reappear, his life takes an unexpected turn. Success turns to failure, lives intertwine not always for the better, and everything he's worked so hard for look as though it will crumble before his eyes.Hardy masterfully weaves a fantastic tale filled with the consequences of secrets and lies, the excesses of alcohol, and the power of love and redemption. I had tried to read this a few years ago but wasn't in the right frame of mind. This time around, however, I was hooked from the opening scene. I found The Mayor of Casterbridge to be a powerful story that had me eagerly looking forward to each spare moment I could spend reading a few pages or even a paragraph of two. I highly recommend picking up a copy and reading it yourself.
    • 2/5
      all about the importance of your name. very true in todays world.
    • 4/5
      A classic tragedy in the truest sense of the word. Michael Henchard as the protagonist dominates this novel and his tragic flaw dominates and defines his character, dooming him to a difficult life. Hardy is able to delineate a searing psychological portrayal of Henchard as Mayor, father and friend who fails in each of these roles due to his inability both to control his emotions and to communicate with those he (sometimes) loves. As always with Hardy, the novel beautifully portrays the Wessex society; particularly the architecture and surroundings of the town of Casterbridge. In this novel Hardy reaches the beginnings of his maturity as a novelist.
    • 5/5
      Such beautiful writing and an unusual story. There is simply no way to know how it will end so you know you have to finish quickly.
    • 4/5
      Set almost entirely in a town, this novel seems to have fewer of Hardy's lyrical descriptive passages than other of his works I have read. The story reminded my of the Greek tragedies - despite all good intentions, the main character Michael Henchard is doomed by his very personality.

      The book opens with Henchard getting drunk and selling his wife and child to a stranger. He regrets this once he sobers up but it is too late. Years later, when he has become successful & is mayor, his wife returns with her daughter. His life goes downhill from this point. Henchard's fiery temper and somewhat proud temperment lead him into situations that his better nature regrets every time it seems like he might get things going his way again. For example, his lie to the sailor Newsom about Elizabeth-Jane being dead is ridiculous (and he knows it) but he can't bear to admit to either the sailor or Elizabeth-Jane that he needs her.
    • 5/5
      [edit]I loved this book, I am a complete convert to Thomas Hardy and am saddened to think I have left it this long before delving in! He has a wonderful way of painting a picture with his words! You all of a sudden can see exactly what he is saying even though the language is so unlike the way we would talk today, I love it!Henchard arrives in town with his wife and baby daughter with very little money and no job, After a very stupid drunken act he throws his and his families lives into a downward spiral that he never escapes. He moves to Casterbridge and over the years things seem to be on the up for him, but as I said he can never make right the mistake he made and he is to live a nightmare for what he did. A great story, very well thought out and written, a brilliant book.
    • 4/5
      I've been wanting to finish this for quite a while and finally did it. What to make of it? It reads to me much like a soap opera with twists and turns of the social variety that prevent final resolution until the very end. However, I liked it.
    • 5/5
      A truly outstanding book, and perhaps my favorite work of 19th century British literature.The author's style is engaging, with interesting story lines and character development that flow seamlessly throughout. Mr. Hardy has that rare ability to capture the reader's attention and maintain it with wonderfully intertwined twists and turns that make for a compelling novel. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Not Hardy's best - some nice characterization, but contrived plot.Read Apr 2006
    • 4/5
      I've always been a bit wary to read Hardy because his stories always seem so depressing and this book hasn't dissuaded me of that. He writes much more about the average person, the rural worker people and how poor and hard their lives are.Henchard sold his wife and child at a country fair after a bout of heavy drinking. Wholly repentant by the morning he bitterly regrets his actions. However, unable to find them again he wanders into the town of Casterbridge, where through hard work he raises himself up to be the Mayor - from nothing at all.I like Hardy's style of writing, his simplicity and subtle way of expressing himself and his characters. Some times it sounds very matter of fact. He gently weaves character traits into a person, and guides you through the story.I felt sorry for Henchard. I wanted to bash him around the head too. I cannot dislike him though for all his mistakes and pig-headedness. He really was his own worst enemy. In the end I respected him, he was a self-made man but he was ashamed of his background and the poverty of his previous life pervaded his thoughts and confidence in himself.The ending was powerful and gave me a sharp punch in the gut. I was already aware of the ending from watching a TV film of it a while ago, though I'd forgotten most of the story apart from the beginning and the ending. This was perhaps fortunate as the copy of the book actually tells you what happens at the end on the back cover. So a word of warning: Do not pick up the British TV-tie in edition with Alan Bates on the front cover unless you already know the conclusion!I will definitely be reading more of Hardy's works from now on, he is an interesting man and I like reading about this other side of the Victorian society you never really get to hear about.
    • 5/5
      Mayor of Casterbridge is the wickedly funny and deeply affecting account of the train wreck that is Michael Henchard's life. Much of the humor comes from the Greek chorus like interludes in which some the the local lower class give their take on the doings if their "betters." Yet, this a tragedy of character. Henchard just can't seem not to hoist himself on every possible one of his petards, sometimes taking a somewhat innocent victim such as Lucetta with him. His combative sense of inferiority constantly eggs him into rivalry with both those seem such as Farfrae and unseen such as the sailor Newsome, Elizabeth Jane's father. His need to control and own people and things ultimately leaves him alone. All if the major characters are sympathetically drawn, finely shaded and colorful. The setting is splendidly golden. The honey hues of the stone, the grains, the sunlight wash over the story at times affecting a healing balm. The ancient ruins of Casterbridge underpin themes of wrongheaded malignant rivalry over vaunting pride, and plain old spitefulness as old as Hector and Achilles, Oedipus...you get the idea. Indeed, Henchard is a deeply flawed hero in the classical mode. There is never a dull moment in the Hardy's masterful treatment of his subject. This is just plain old good stuff. Fun, dramatic. cringe worthy, fascinating storytelling at its best.
    • 4/5
      One of the few Hardy novels I had not read. Certainly you see how Hardy was developing the skill that led him to produce Tess of the d'Ubervilles and Jude the Obscure. Fascinating how the themes of the open country of the moors counterpoint the microcosm of urban life in this novel, mirroring inner human nature and social convention. It's this use of geography that has, for me, been a hallmark of Hardy's work, and certainly a major influence upon my own writing.Once again I was impressed by Hardy's modern approach to writing, employing deep character development and dark, socially unacceptable themes for the period. In this case the narrative explores an alcoholic's cruel treatment of his wife and daughter, his attempt to redeem himself only to find himself incapable of rising above his baser nature. It is a mark of Hardy's writing skill that the reader both loves and despises the character of Henchard, so that in the end Hardy presents a pitiable wretch for whom we are capable of weeping.As a side note, the film adaptation of The Mayor of Casterbridge with Ciaran Hines as main character, Michael Henchard, is a faithful reproduction of the novel, beautifully produced, impeccable costuming, and well worth seeing.
    • 4/5
      Hardy gives a good account of how one evil choice can lead to many others when a person seeks redemption without confession. Michael Henchard wants to improve himself, but he never wants to reveal his past. For Instance, Henchard swears off liquor, but he never confesses why he ha done so. Thomas aHardy really seems to understand many of our own thought processes as we decide we can make up for our past transgressions if we only really lead a good life. The mayor's past continually comes back on him, until he finally has no place to turn. From there it leads to the inevitable tragic ending. This is not a heart warming feel good book, but it is a good read.
    • 5/5
      Hardy's best novel, by far.
    • 4/5
      Eminently readable, smoother tha Far From the Madding Crowd, but thardly the tour de force of tess. Despite modern opinion, I still think Tess the best of Hardy's novels
    • 4/5
      Ah! This was my first Hardy book to read and I didn't know it was going to be like this. The plot is interesting, but as much as the characters change...I don't know, they still seem underdeveloped. I did love the theme of redemption that permeated throughout the story. Can a man really overcome his past? What if no one will let him forget? Moreso, what if his human failings will never let him transcend himself? It is a good book, but don't expect to smile at the end. The characters do so many messed up things that it sort of reminds you of the world we live in.
    • 3/5
      I had to read this in senior English. It was OK. I'm not looking forward to reading more Hardy, much of which is in the 1000 Novels list along with annotations that detail the gloomy, twisted rural plotlines.
    • 5/5
      My first ever visit to Dorchester prompted me to read my first ever Thomas Hardy novel - very few other writers are so closely associated with a specific town or city; the fictional town in this novel's title is based very closely on Dorset's county town. I loved this novel, and will certainly be reading more Hardy. The plot is simple yet at the same time captivating and timeless. Michael Henchard, an itinerant farm labourer, while drunk one day sells his wife and baby daughter to a sailor at a fair. He wakes up sober and immediately regrets his choice, forswearing alcohol for 21 years and going off to search for them, but it is too late. The ramifications of this moment of madness ring throughout the years and affect Henchard's life and those of his family and others. This is a story about fortune's wheel and how it can bring one man up and cast another man down. Marvellous stuff, full of colourful incident and some quirky minor characters.
    • 5/5

      This is the story of Michael Henchard, who sells his wife and infant daughter for five guineas while drunk at a local fair. The consequences of this one impulsive action haunt his life thereafter. Henchard is a tragic figure, doomed not only by the character flaws of which he is only too aware, but also by a malignant, inescapable fate.

      Hardy's writing is breathtaking. The novel is full of stunningly beautiful descriptive language. Hardy paints vivid pictures with words, bringing both characters and setting to life. It's a novel full of memorable characters. Henchard is the most striking, but in their quieter way Donald Farfarie, the Scotsman who wins and then loses Henchard's affection, the good and long-suffering Elizabeth-Jane and the complex Lucetta are also compelling, as are the secondary characters who form the chorus.

      This is an intensely sad novel. It had the same effect on me as a Greek or a Shakespearean tragedy: you know it'll end badly, no matter how hard the characters try to avoid their fate. And I ached for Henchard, a man who desperately wants to find redemption, even when pride, arrogance, temper and impulsiveness undo him at every turn.

      I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Simon Vance. He does a magnificient job, particularly with Henchard and Farfarie, although (in common with most male narrators) he struggles with young female voices.

      It appears that I've turned into a huge Thomas Hardy fan after steafastly avoiding his novels for more than thirty years. Who'd have thought?
    • 5/5
      Oh Mr. Hardy - canst thou ever forgive me for doubting thee?The book is finished. My heart is sore. In my grief I can't bear to put it back on the bookshelf yet. Let it stay beside me on the bedside cabinet just a little while longer.How wrong was I in my original assessment of Hardy's prose. I wept whilst reading this book. WEPT! Real tears! And not just once either. Hardy initially cut to the chase with alarming alacrity, and it almost put me off continuing as I felt he had divulged the plot before I was engrossed enough to care much for the characters. More fool me. That was merely the tip of the iceberg, for the tale that developed was to have more twists and turns than a doorknob.And the characterisation - oh, like nothing I've read before. Mr. Henchard was the most unpleasant of protagonists - harsh, proud, stubborn, jealous, cold, pompous - yet the whole way through the novel I was rooting for him, willing him on, desperately hoping he'll say the right thing here, do the right thing there. In the same way that my husband's wayward driving compels me to pump an imaginary brake as a passenger, so too Henchard's repeated mistakes had me constantly silently screaming "Stop! Look out! Take care!".I'm now 5 books into my 50 book target. How I fear the 45 others shall now pale by comparison.

    Book preview

    The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy

    CONTENTS

    INTRODUCTION

    CHRONOLOGY OF THOMAS HARDY’S LIFE AND WORK

    HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF The Mayor of Casterbridge

    THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

    VOL. I

    CHAPTER I

    CHAPTER II

    CHAPTER III

    CHAPTER IV

    CHAPTER V

    CHAPTER VI

    CHAPTER VII

    CHAPTER VIII

    CHAPTER IX

    CHAPTER X

    CHAPTER XI

    CHAPTER XII

    CHAPTER XIII

    CHAPTER XIV

    CHAPTER XV

    CHAPTER XVI

    CHAPTER XVII

    CHAPTER XVIII

    CHAPTER XIX

    CHAPTER XX

    CHAPTER XXI

    CHAPTER XXII

    CHAPTER XXIII

    VOL. II

    CHAPTER XXIV

    CHAPTER XXV

    CHAPTER XXVI

    CHAPTER XXVII

    CHAPTER XXVIII

    CHAPTER XXIX

    CHAPTER XXX

    CHAPTER XXXI

    CHAPTER XXXII

    CHAPTER XXXIII

    CHAPTER XXXIV

    CHAPTER XXXV

    CHAPTER XXXVI

    CHAPTER XXXVII

    CHAPTER XXXVIII

    CHAPTER XXXIX

    CHAPTER XL

    CHAPTER XLI

    CHAPTER XLII

    CHAPTER XLIII

    CHAPTER XLIV

    CHAPTER XLV

    INTERPRETIVE NOTES

    CRITICAL EXCERPTS

    QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

    SUGGESTIONS FOR THE INTERESTED READER

    NOTES

    INTRODUCTION

    The Mayor of Casterbridge:

    A NOVEL OF CHARACTER AND ENVIRONMENT

    In April of 1885, Thomas Hardy set pen to the final word of The Mayor of Casterbridge in Dorchester, county seat of his home region of Dorset in South England. He had left London and its promises of progress four years earlier, trading the city’s glittering allure for the quiet country town where he’d started almost thirty years earlier as an apprentice architect. But the town itself was different now. Though still presenting a sedimented record of historical change, its previous sharp separation from the surrounding countryside had given way to ragged suburbs growing out from the city walls. And on the national political front, London and the other great English cities, too, seemed to be extending themselves into the countryside. Parliament had passed the Representation of the People Act of 1884 (also known as the Third Reform Act) and the 1885 Redistribution of Seats Act, tripling the national electorate and extending voting rights to most agricultural laborers. The railroad network, still not yet reaching Casterbridge in the novel, now crisscrossed all England. In short, Hardy’s setting—both internal and external—was perfect for writing what he described as a novel of character and environment.

    The Mayor of Casterbridge turned out to be both an insightful engagement with the changes of the era and a shot in the arm for Hardy’s career. After the less-than-enthusiastic reception of his previous two novels—A Laodicean and Two on a Tower—both society romances of a sort, Hardy’s portrait of the brooding, fiery Henchard and of the environment that both shaped and reflected his character enjoyed a somewhat warmer welcome. Henchard, as the protagonist of the novel, challenged the notion of character itself, a fact that both troubled and interested Hardy’s contemporaries. Readers had difficulty relating to Henchard in a comfortable way, and one early reviewer complained that the book was the tragedy (if it may be so called) of a self-willed instead of a selfish hero.

    Perhaps, too, readers uncomfortably identify with the thoughtlessness of Henchard’s will. He is a man of action, and his periods of introspection tend to be darkly self-pitying rather than productive. So, for the most part, he does rather than thinks—and it is the tendency to heedless, even compulsive, action that is his downfall, even as it had been formerly the key to his success. A few years into the twenty-first century, in an environment that places a premium on showy actions above careful thought, we might do well to learn from the fate Henchard’s character has created for him.

    Thomas Hardy: An Improbable Author

    Nothing in Thomas Hardy’s early life and circumstances screamed author. He was born to humble parents in the rural hamlet of Higher Bockhampton, three miles to the east of Dorchester, the quiet seat of county Dorset. His father was a mason and his brother was as well, and—as he later traced it out—so too had been his paternal ancestors for at least four generations back. Apprenticed as an architect at the age of sixteen, Hardy finished his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, while still in his twenties but was unable to convince anyone to publish it. Fourteen novels, four collections of short stories, and eleven volumes of verse later, he remained gently bemused that he should, from such beginnings, have become one of England’s most celebrated literary figures.

    Born June 2, 1840, Hardy was all his life a man out of time. Indeed, he was presumed at first to be dead, his living presence discovered only after the nursemaid had tended to his mother. As a youth, he was fascinated by the way history compiled itself in the physical and social landscapes around him: the scars left by musket balls along barn walls, the linguistic echoes of Napoleon’s soldiers marching through country conversations, the Dorchester Grammar School founded by a Thomas Hardye who might or might not have been an ancestor. Later, he focused more and more on his own genealogy and on historical research, digging through both personal and local archives, which came to inform many of the historically accurate details of his fictional Wessex. The heart of Wessex, of course, was Dorchester—or, as it is better known to his readers, Casterbridge.

    After training as an architect first in Dorchester and then in London, where his work won several awards, Hardy returned to Dorset County in 1867, the year he completed The Poor Man and the Lady. Though unsuccessful in selling that novel, he received encouragement from George Meredith, novelist, poet, and advisor to several publishing houses, and published his first work four years later. This piece, Desperate Remedies (1871), was followed quickly by two other lesser novels. Hardy’s first major work, Far from the Madding Crowd, came out three years later, in 1874. The proceeds from this novel enabled Hardy to lay architecture to the side and devote himself entirely to writing novels and poetry.

    In perhaps unconscious anticipation of the success of Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy moved back to London and in 1874 married Emma Gifford, a union that was not without its frustrations. Indeed, many critics over the years have suggested that the imprisoning, somewhat asexual relationship between the two provided a pattern for the stale familiarity of Henchard’s relations with Susan, and for others of his great failed fictional marriages: most notably Eustacia and Clym in The Return of the Native (1878) and Jude and Arabella in Jude the Obscure (1895). The relationship between the two eventually deteriorated to the point where they scarcely spoke and Emma lived in the attic. Meanwhile, Hardy fell in and out of love with numerous other women. Some biographers have seen echoes of this personal dynamic in his near idolization of the character of Elizabeth-Jane and relative indifference to the character of Susan Henchard in The Mayor of Caster-bridge.

    When Hardy published The Mayor of Casterbridge in 1886, it was his eleventh novel in fifteen years, one that many critics saw as a return to a successful approach from which he had departed after The Return of the Native. This approach, which would also characterize his later novels—most especially Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure—was realist or naturalist in tone, deeply focused on the details of life in the region he knew best: Dorset, or Wessex, as he began fictionalizing the region in Far from the Madding Crowd. Hardy’s focus on Wessex over a number of years, and through novels set in different periods, allowed him to paint a portrait not just of a region but of processes of historical change as well. Thus, both individually and taken together, the Wessex novels (among which The Mayor of Casterbridge is nestled) offer a compelling sense of what change as such might mean.

    Appropriately enough, Hardy’s own life was often in flux. After 1874, he and Emma bounced back and forth between London and Dorset several times, eventually settling in 1885 into the house he had designed and his brother John built for him in Dorchester—Max Gate. Hardy would stay there through a number of more personal and interpersonal shifts, up until his death on January 11, 1928: from his own decision to stop writing novels and redouble his attention to poetry after Jude the Obscure; through Emma’s death in 1912 and his marriage to Florence Dugdale two years later; and during the writing of his autobiography, published by his widow posthumously at his direction as a biography. This final move, perhaps more than any other, offers some insight into the character of Thomas Hardy himself. This was a man who wanted to be known on his own terms, improbable as they might have been.

    Historical and Literary Context

    The Nineteenth Century and the Aftermath of Revolutions

    If the eighteenth century had been the era of revolutions, the nineteenth was in many respects the era of sweeping up. The beginning of the century was marked by the very different efforts of the French and the Americans to consolidate the gains of their respective revolutions, producing ongoing tension between Britain and the new United States and (significantly for Hardy’s imagination) Napoleon in France. The 1815 Corn Laws instituted at the end of the Napoleonic Wars to protect English producers from foreign competition form the backdrop for The Mayor of Casterbridge. The class tensions involved in different characters’ responses to growed or spoilt grain reflect the vigorous opposition that eventually effected a repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.

    The Victorian era (1837–1901, defined by Queen Victoria’s rule) was a period of intense industrialization in the cities and mechanization in the countryside. The Industrial Revolution, hitherto confined to urban centers, began to be felt throughout all England by the middle of the century. By 1886, when The Mayor of Casterbridge was published, traditional country towns like Casterbridge had long since made concessions to the modern age.

    Alongside these political and technological changes came one cultural movement of particular note. In 1859, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species ushered in a host of naturalist explanations for social, political, and physical phenomena, and offered great support to the idea that an empirical scientific method ought to be the primary approach in seeking to understand any phenomenon. This methodological naturalism, as it later came to be called, did not insist that there was not a divine being or that supernatural events did not occur but suggested rather that all objects of study could be approached using the scientific method of empirical observation and analysis. Hardy himself was an agnostic, not an atheist, and The Mayor of Casterbridge is certainly not without its uncanny moments.

    Victorian Naturalism and the Question of Character

    To understand Hardy’s and The Mayor of Casterbridge’s roles in this historical matrix, it is important to see both author and novel as transitional, not fitting tidily into one or another literary category and not simply espousing any one philosophy. Hardy’s work has often been considered realist in style, part of a movement reacting against Victorian literature’s romantic view of the world and focusing on the nitty-gritty details of life. As a realist, Hardy belonged to the same tradition of writing as Henry James and William Dean Howells. Indeed, his description of Farfrae as one of those men upon whom an incident is never absolutely lost strikingly resembles James’s suggestion to would-be writers of fiction: Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost! (1884, in Longman’s Magazine). At the same time, though, The Mayor of Casterbridge’s complex—and, some critics have charged, ponderous or even unlikely—plot structure is certainly at peace with the norms set by Victorian writers such as Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë. Writing at the intersection between these two movements, Hardy might in fact best be read as a sort of Victorian naturalist.

    As a literary style, naturalism developed out of realism but was more interested in the role of environment in shaping character. The style can properly be said to have begun with Émile Zola in France. Representative authors also included Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser in the United States. The style came to be identified with both Charles Darwin and his followers, especially Herbert Spencer, who coined the term survival of the fittest as part of his transposition of Darwin’s ideas about species evolution to the realm of human society. The philosophical naturalists of this school rejected supernatural explanations for events in the world and saw individual character as a response to, and mode of building on, environmental stimuli. Reading Henchard as a tragic figure becomes particularly interesting in this light. The classic Greek definition of tragedy highlights the personal responsibility of the protagonist for his suffering in negotiation with supernatural forces (the gods, usually). To Zola and other naturalists, tragedies are largely caused by a character’s social environment.

    Both sorts of tragedy are certainly present in The Mayor of Casterbridge, where Henchard appears not only as the agent of his own undoing but also as the helplessly obsolete representative of an era on its way out. He is the spokesperson of an oral and traditional culture that cannot help but be replaced by the literacy, numeracy, and modern efficiency of Farfrae, and the historical inevitability of this change aligns with his own decision-making process and responsibility for his downfall. Thus, a certain amount of the tension driving The Mayor of Casterbridge might be seen as stemming from the conflict between Hardy’s Victorian plot structure and character development, and his naturalist philosophical and aesthetic leanings. It is this tension that keeps readers interested in Henchard, almost in spite of themselves.

    CHRONOLOGY OF THOMAS HARDY’S LIFE AND WORK

    1840: Thomas Hardy born June 2 in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset—near Dorchester, the inspiration for Casterbridge.

    1850–1856: Hardy sent to Dorchester for schooling.

    1856–1860: Apprenticed to John Hicks, a Dorchester architect.

    1865: Publishes first work, How I Built Myself a House, in Chambers’s Journal.

    1870: Meets future wife Emma Lavinia Gifford in St. Juliot, Cornwall.

    1872: Hardy’s first request to marry Emma Gifford rejected by her father.

    1874: Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy’s first major work, serialized in Cornhill Magazine and published in two volumes. Hardy marries Emma Gifford.

    1878: The Return of the Native, previously serialized in Belgravia Magazine, published in three volumes.

    1885: Hardy moves to Max Gate, a house of his own design just outside Dorchester.

    1886: The Mayor of Casterbridge, previously serialized in The Graphic and Harper’s Weekly, published in two volumes.

    1888: Wessex Tales, Hardy’s first collection of short stories, published in two volumes.

    1891: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, previously serialized (in bowdlerized form) in the Graphic, published in three volumes.

    1892: Hardy’s father dies.

    1895: Jude the Obscure, previously serialized in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, published in one volume.

    1895–1896: Osgood, McIlvaine publishes the Wessex Novels edition, the first collected edition of Hardy’s work.

    1898: Wessex Poems and Other Verses, Hardy’s first collection of poetry, published.

    1902: Macmillan becomes Hardy’s sole publisher.

    1904: Hardy’s mother dies.

    1905: Hardy meets Florence Emily Dugdale, his future second wife.

    1909: Time’s Laughingstocks, and Other Verses published.

    1910: Hardy is awarded the Order of Merit, having previously refused a knighthood.

    1912: Emma Hardy dies.

    1914: Hardy marries Florence Dugdale.

    1917: Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses published.

    1928: Thomas Hardy dies January 11. His heart is removed and buried in Stinsford, while his body is cremated and his ashes buried in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey.

    1928–1930: Hardy’s two-volume autobiography, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840–1891 and The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892–1928, is published (at his instruction) under Florence Hardy’s name.

    HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF

    The Mayor of Casterbridge

    1815–1846: Corn Laws enacted, disputed, and eventually repealed.

    1831: Charles Darwin begins voyage on HMS Beagle; his findings will heavily influence the later naturalist movement in literature.

    1859: Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

    1864: Herbert Spencer publishes Principles of Biology, coining the phrase survival of the fittest.

    1867: Naturalist writer Émile Zola publishes first major novel, Thérèse Raquin.

    1870s–’90s: Long economic depression in Western Europe and the United States.

    1880s: The pace of urbanization is quickened by the development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobiles and electric lighting, and the construction of the first steel-frame skyscrapers.

    1882: Married Women’s Property Act passed. Married women now had the same legal rights as unmarried women to hold property.

    1884: The Fabian Society founded in London, to promote socialism.

    1884: Third Reform Act gives farmworkers the vote, though only if they own property or pay at least ten pounds of rent per year.

    THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

    VOL. I

    I

    ONE EVENING of late summer, before the present century had reached its thirtieth year,¹ a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors² on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick hoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an obviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their appearance just now.

    The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the remainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap a rush basket, from which protruded at one end the crutch of a hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture. His measured springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference, personal to himself, showing itself even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the right, as he paced along.

    What was really peculiar, however, in this couple’s progress, and would have attracted the attention of any casual observer otherwise disposed to overlook them, was the perfect silence they preserved. They walked side by side in such a way as to suggest afar off the low, easy, confidential chat of people full of reciprocity; but on closer view it could be discerned that the man was reading, or pretending to read, a ballad-sheet which he kept before his eyes with some difficulty by the hand that was passed through the basket-strap. Whether this apparent cause were the real cause, or whether it were an assumed one to escape an intercourse that would have been irksome to him, nobody but himself could have said precisely; but his taciturnity was unbroken, and the woman enjoyed no society whatever from his presence. Virtually she walked the highway alone, save for the child she bore. Sometimes the man’s bent elbow almost touched her shoulder, for she kept as close to his side as was possible without actual contact; but she seemed to have no idea of taking his arm, nor he of offering it; and far from exhibiting surprise at his ignoring silence she appeared to receive it as a natural thing. If any word at all was uttered by the little group it was an occasional whisper of the woman to the child—a tiny girl in short clothes and blue boots of knitted yarn—and the murmured babble of the child in reply.

    The chief—almost the only—attraction of the young woman’s face was its mobility. When she looked down sideways to the girl she became pretty, and even handsome, particularly that in the action her features caught slantwise the rays of the strongly coloured sun, which made transparencies of her eyelids and nostrils, and set fire on her lips. When she plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking, she had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance, except, perhaps, fair-play. The first phase was the work of Nature, the second probably of civilization.

    That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of the girl in arms, there could be little doubt. No other than such relationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of domesticity which the trio carried along with them like a nimbus as they moved down the road.

    The wife mostly kept her eyes fixed ahead, though with little interest—the scene for that matter being one that might have been matched at almost any spot in any county in England at this time of the year: a road neither straight nor crooked, neither level nor hilly, bordered by hedges, trees, and other vegetation, which had entered the blackened-green stage of colour that the doomed leaves pass through on their way to dingy, and yellow, and red. The grassy margin of the bank, and the nearest hedgerow boughs, were powdered by the dust that had been stirred over them by hasty vehicles, the same dust as it lay on the road deadening their footfalls like a carpet; and this, with the aforesaid total absence of conversation, allowed every extraneous sound to be heard.

    For a long time there was none, beyond the voice of a weak bird singing a trite old evening song that might doubtless have been heard on the hill at the same hour, and with the self-same trills, quavers, and breves, at any sunset of that season for centuries untold. But as they approached the village sundry distant shouts and rattles reached their ears from some elevated spot in that direction, as yet screened from view by foliage. When the outlying houses of Weydon-Priors could just be descried, the family group was met by a turnip-hoer with his hoe on his shoulder, and his dinner-bag suspended from it. The reader promptly glanced up.

    Any trade doing here? he asked phlegmatically, designating the village in his van by a wave of the broadsheet. And thinking the labourer did not understand him, he added, Anything in the hay-trussing line?³

    The turnip-hoer had already begun shaking his head. Why, save the man, what wisdom’s in fashion that ’a should come to Weydon for a job of that sort this time o’ year?

    Then is there any house to let—a little small new cottage just a builded, or such like? asked the other.

    The pessimist still maintained a negative: Pulling down is more the nater of Weydon. There were five houses cleared away last year, and three this; and the fokes nowhere to go—no, not so much as a thatched hurdle; that’s the way o’ Weydon-Priors.

    The hay-trusser, which he obviously was, nodded with some superciliousness. Looking towards the village, he continued, There is something going on here, however, is there not?

    Ay. ’Tis Fair-Day. Though what you hear now is little more than the clatter and scurry of getting away the money o’ children and fools, for the real business is done earlier than this. I’ve been working within sound o’t all day, but I didn’t go up—not I. ’Twas no business of mine.

    The trusser and his family proceeded on their way, and soon entered the Fair-field, which showed standing-places and pens where many hundreds of horses and sheep had been exhibited and sold in the forenoon, but were now in great part taken away. At present, as their informant had observed, but little real business remained on hand, the chief being the sale by auction of a few inferior animals, that could not otherwise be disposed of, and had been absolutely refused by the better class of traders, who came and went early. Yet the crowd was denser now than during the morning hours, the frivolous contingent of visitors, including journeymen out for a holiday, a stray soldier or two home on furlough, village shopkeepers, and the like, having latterly flocked in; persons whose activities found a congenial field among the peep-shows, toy-stands, wax-works, inspired monsters, disinterested medical men who travelled for the public good, thimble-riggers, nick-nack vendors, and readers of Fate.

    Neither of our pedestrians had much heart for these things, and they looked around for a refreshment tent among the many which dotted the down. Two, which stood nearest to them in the ochreous haze of expiring sunlight, seemed almost equally inviting. One was formed of new, milk-hued canvas, and bore red flags on its summit; it announced Good Home-brewed Beer, Ale, and Cyder. The other was less new; a little iron stovepipe came out of it at the back, and in front appeared the placard, "Good Furmity⁴ Sold Hear." The man mentally weighed the two inscriptions, and inclined to the former tent.

    No—no—the other one, said the woman. I always like furmity; and so does Elizabeth-Jane; and so will you. It is nourishing after a long hard day.

    I’ve never tasted it, said the man. However, he gave way to her representations, and they entered the furmity-booth forthwith.

    A rather numerous company appeared within, seated at the long narrow tables that ran down the tent on each side. At the upper end stood a stove, containing a charcoal fire, over which hung a large three-legged crock, sufficiently polished round the rim to show that it was made of bell-metal. A haggish creature of about fifty presided, in a white apron, which, as it threw an air of respectability over her as far as it extended, was made so wide as to reach nearly round her waist. She slowly stirred the contents of the pot. The dull scrape of her large spoon was audible throughout the tent as she thus kept from burning the mixture of corn in the grain, milk, raisins, currants, and what not that composes the antiquated slop in which she dealt. Vessels holding the separate ingredients stood on a white-clothed table of boards and trestles close by.

    The young man and woman ordered a basin each of the mixture, steaming hot, and sat down to consume it at leisure. This was very well so far, for furmity, as the woman had said, was nourishing, and as proper a food as could be obtained within the four seas; though, to those not accustomed to it, the grains of wheat, swollen as large as lemon-pips, which floated on its surface might have a deterrent effect at first.

    But there was more in that tent than met the cursory glance; and the man, with the instinct of a perverse character, scented it quickly. After a mincing attack on his bowl, he watched the hag’s proceedings from the corner of his eye, and saw the game she played. He winked to her, and passed up his basin in reply to her nod; when she took a bottle from under the table, slily measured out a quantity of its contents, and tipped the same into the man’s furmity. The liquor poured in was rum. The man as slily sent back money in payment.

    He found the concoction, thus strongly laced, much more to his satisfaction than it had been in its natural state. His wife had observed the proceeding with much uneasiness, but he persuaded her to have hers laced also, and she agreed to a milder allowance after some misgiving.

    The man finished his basin, and called for another, the rum being signalled for in yet stronger proportion. The effect of it was soon apparent in his manner, and his wife but too sadly perceived that in strenuously steering off the rocks of the licensed liquor-tent she had only got into Maelstrom depths⁵ here amongst the smugglers.

    The child began to prattle impatiently, and the wife more than once said to her husband, Michael, how about our lodging? You know we may have trouble in getting it if we don’t go soon.

    But he turned a deaf ear to these bird-like chirpings. He talked loud to the company. The child’s black eyes, after slow, round, ruminating gazes at the candles when they were lighted, fell together; then they opened, then shut again, and she slept.

    At the end of the first basin the man had risen to serenity. At the second he was jovial; at the third argumentative. At the fourth, the points signified by the shape of his face, the occasional clench of his mouth, and the fiery spark of his dark eye, began to tell in his conduct; he was overbearing—even brilliantly quarrelsome.

    The conversation took a high turn, as it often does on such occasions. The ruin of good men by bad wives, and, more particularly, the frustration of many a promising youth’s high aims and hopes, and the extinction of his energies, by an early imprudent marriage, was the theme.

    I did for myself that way thoroughly, said the trusser, with a contemplative bitterness that was well-nigh resentful. I married at eighteen, like a fool that I was; and this is the consequence o’t. He pointed at himself and family with a wave of the hand intended to bring out the penuriousness of the exhibition.

    The young woman his wife, who seemed accustomed to such remarks, acted as if she did not hear them, and continued her intermittent private words on tender trifles to the sleeping and waking child, who was just big enough to be placed for a moment on the bench beside her when she wished to ease her arms. The man continued:

    I haven’t more than fifteen shillings in the world, and yet I am a good experienced hand in my line. I’d challenge England to beat me in the fodder business; and if I were a free man again I’d be worth a thousand pound before I’d done o’t. But a fellow never knows these little things till all chance of acting upon ’em is past.

    The auctioneer selling the old horses in the field outside could be heard saying, Now this is the last lot—now who’ll take the last lot for a song? Shall I say forty shillings? ’Tis a very promising broodmare, a trifle over five years old, and nothing the matter with the hoss at all, except that she’s a little holler in the back and had her left eye knocked out by the kick of another, her own sister, coming along the road.

    For my part I don’t see why men who have got wives, and don’t want ’em, shouldn’t get rid of ’em as these gipsy fellows do their old horses, said the man in the tent. Why shouldn’t they put ’em up and sell ’em by auction to men who are in want of such articles? Hey? Why, begad, I’d sell mine this minute, if anybody would buy her!

    There’s them that would do that, some of the guests replied, looking at the woman, who was by no means ill-favoured.

    True, said a smoking gentleman, whose coat had the fine polish about the collar, elbows, seams, and shoulder-blades that long-continued friction with oily surfaces will produce, and which is usually more desired on furniture than on clothes. From his appearance he had possibly been in former time groom or coachman to some neighbouring county family. I’ve had my breedings in as good circles, I may say, as any man, he added, and I know true cultivation, or nobody do; and I can declare she’s got it—in the bone, mind ye, I say—as much as any female in the fair—though it may want a little bringing out. Then, crossing his legs, he resumed his pipe with a nicely adjusted gaze at a point in the air.

    The fuddled young husband stared for a few seconds at this unexpected praise of his wife, half in doubt of the wisdom of his own attitude towards the possessor of such qualities. But he speedily lapsed into his former conviction, and said harshly:

    Well, then, now is your chance; I am open to an offer for this gem of creation.

    She turned to her husband and murmured, Michael, you have talked this nonsense in public places before. A joke is a joke, but you may make it once too often, mind!

    I know I’ve said it before; I meant it. All I want is a buyer.

    At the moment a swallow, one among the last of the season, which had by chance found its way through an opening into the upper part of the tent, flew to and fro in quick curves above their heads, causing all eyes to follow it absently. In watching the bird till it made its escape the assembled company neglected to respond to the workman’s offer, and the subject dropped.

    But a quarter of an hour later the man, who had gone on lacing his furmity more and more heavily, though he was either so strong-minded or such an intrepid toper⁶ that he still appeared fairly sober, recurred to the old strain, as in a musical fantasy the instrument fetches up the original theme. Here—I am waiting to know about this offer of mine. The woman is no good to me. Who’ll have her?

    The company had by this time decidedly degenerated, and the renewed inquiry was received with a laugh of appreciation. The woman whispered; she was imploring and anxious: Come, come, it is getting dark, and this nonsense won’t do. If you don’t come along I shall go without you. Come!

    She waited and waited; yet he did not move. In ten minutes the man broke in upon the desultory conversation of the furmity drinkers with, I asked this question, and nobody answered to ’t. Will any Jack Rag or Tom Straw among ye buy my goods?

    The woman’s manner changed, and her face assumed the grim shape and colour of which mention has been made.

    Mike, Mike, said she; this is getting serious. Oh—too serious!

    Will anybody buy her? said the man.

    I wish somebody would, said she firmly. Her present owner is not at all to her liking!

    Nor you to mine, said he. "So we are agreed about that. Gentlemen, you hear? It’s an agreement to part. She shall take the girl if she wants to, and go her ways. I’ll take my tools, and go my ways. ’Tis simple as Scripture history.⁷ Now then, stand up, Susan, and show yourself."

    Don’t, my chiel, whispered a buxom staylace dealer in voluminous petticoats, who sat near the woman; yer good man don’t know what he’s saying.

    The woman, however, did stand up. Now, who’s auctioneer? cried the hay-trusser.

    I be, promptly answered a short man, with a nose resembling a copper knob, a damp voice, and eyes like button-holes. Who’ll make an offer for this lady?

    The woman looked on the ground, as if she maintained her position by a supreme effort of will.

    Five shillings, said some one, at which there was a laugh.

    No insults, said the husband. Who’ll say a guinea?

    Nobody answered; and the female dealer in staylaces interposed.

    Behave yerself moral, good man, for Heaven’s love! Ah, what a cruelty is the poor soul married to! Bed and board is dear at some figures, ’pon my ’vation ’tis!

    Set it higher, auctioneer, said the trusser.

    Two guineas! said the auctioneer; and no one replied.

    If they don’t take her for that, in ten seconds they’ll have to give more, said the husband. Very well. Now, auctioneer, add another.

    Three guineas—going for three guineas! said the rheumy man.

    No bid? said the husband. Good Lord, why she’s cost me fifty times the money, if a penny. Go on.

    Four guineas! cried the auctioneer.

    I’ll tell ye what—I won’t sell her for less than five, said the husband, bringing down his fist so that the basins danced. I’ll sell her for five guineas to any man that will pay me the money, and treat her well; and he shall have her for ever, and never hear aught o’ me. But she sha’n’t go for less. Now then—five guineas—and she’s yours. Susan, you agree?

    She bowed her head with absolute indifference.

    Five guineas, said the auctioneer, or she’ll be withdrawn. Do anybody give it? The last time. Yes or no?

    Yes, said a loud voice from the doorway.

    All eyes were turned. Standing in the triangular opening which formed the door of the tent was a sailor, who, unobserved by the rest, had arrived there within the last two or three minutes. A dead silence followed his affirmation.

    You say you do? asked the husband, staring at him.

    I say so, replied the sailor.

    Saying is one thing, and paying is another. Where’s the money?

    The sailor hesitated a moment, looked anew at the woman, came in, unfolded a crisp piece of paper, and threw it down upon the table-cloth. It was a Bank-of-England note for five pounds. Upon the face of this he chinked down the shillings severally—one, two, three, four, five.

    The sight of real money in full amount, in answer to a challenge for the same till then deemed slightly hypothetical, had a great effect upon the spectators. Their eyes became riveted upon the faces of the chief actors, and then upon the note, as it lay, weighted by the shillings, on the table.

    Up to this moment it could not positively have been asserted that the man, in spite of his tantalizing declaration, was really in earnest. The spectators had, indeed, taken the proceedings throughout as a piece of mirthful irony carried to extremes; and had assumed that, being out of work, he was, as a consequence, out of temper with the world, and society, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real cash the jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid colour seemed to fill the tent,

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1