The Life of Thomas Hardy
it out; it invariably came back. And I destroyed a good deal of it."
Luncheon is announced and served by trim maids. There is cider—"Sweet cyder is a great thing,"—one remembers the swinging lyric of life-love. The conversation veers.
"You have some mighty promising poets in America. Who is Louis Untermeyer? I'm very fond of his verse. It's keen. But he's not a rebel, is he? I don't fancy revolutionaries. I never moved in revolutionary circles, even in the sixties and seventies when Darwin set London aflame. Blomfield, my architectural master, was a clergyman's son, you see. I liked the artists best. I liked the quiet galleries.
"We've just been reading Dreiser's Genius. What does one think of it?"
Mrs. Hardy, serving the custard and plum-pie: "We think it ought to be suppressed—really!"
Hardy holds up a finger: "Not because it's immoral. It may not be. But because there's no excuse for a writer's deliberate abandonment of any kind of form. One prefers—expects—some sort of structure, not a mere heap of bricks, no matter how excitingly red they may be. . . .
"Yes—perhaps I shouldn't carp. The clergy burned poor Jude in a public bonfire. . . ."
Mrs. Hardy has retired as the whiskey-and-soda begins to be sipped. Wessie romps in as the door swings to. Hardy carefully slices up bits of cheese and feeds them to the poodle.
"Worst of all, people have often tried to identify me
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