The Life of Thomas Hardy
it was attuned permanently to a single chord, in a harmonious, but minor, mode. His was a nature that felt all emotions, but reacted in literature to only a few. His spirit became vocal only when stirred by tragedy. But this does not mean that he failed to perceive, understand and feel deeply the untragic amenities of existence.
In his Hand of Ethelberta, it is of interest to note, no less than four of the principal personages make statements which have a single bearing on the matter of the distinction to be drawn between the inner life of a writer and his imaginative works. Christopher Julian says, "People who print very warm words have sometimes very cold manners." By reversing the sense of this statement, without destroying its validity, it can be made to apply very nicely to Hardy's cold words and warm manners. Again, Ladywell says to Neigh, while discussing the common object of their admiration, "Whatever seems to be the most prominent vice, or the most prominent virtue, in anybody's writing is the one thing you are safest from in personal dealings with the writer." On the following page Neigh says substantially the same thing: "It is as risky to calculate people's ways of living from their writings as their incomes from their ways of living." The fascinating Ethelberta herself, when upbraided by Lady Petherwin for the ribaldry of her verses, defends herself as follows: "It would be difficult to show that because I have written so-called tender and gay verse, I feel tender and gay. It is too often assumed that a person's fancy is a person's real mind. I believe that in the majority of cases one is fond of imagining the direct opposite of one's principles in sheer effort
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