Hardy's Hardships

HARDY IN AMERICA (321 pp.)--Carl J. Weber--Colby College Press ($5).

Thomas Hardy never set foot on U.S. soil, doubtless never dreamed of a special immortality in the state of Maine. But Colby College, in Waterville, Me., now boasts one of the world's foremost Hardy libraries. Organizer of the collection is Carl J. Weber, 52, Roberts Professor of English 'Literature at Colby. For years Dr. Weber has been exploring the Hardy field, until he probably knows more of its little secrets than the great British poet-novelist himself ever knew.

One product of his researches was a valuable biography: Hardy of Wessex (TIME, April 22, 1940). Another is this study of Hardy's U.S. readers and reputation.

Dr. Weber is a zealous scholar, hunting and trapping the smallest details. He is also a zealous critic, going well out of his way to lambaste certain "modern" writers (T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, et al.) whose beliefs and techniques differ from those of Hardy.

The Pirates. The first Hardy book to carry a U.S. imprint was his third novel, Under the Greenwood Tree. This was pirated by Henry Holt in 1873--i.e., it was copied from the original London edition without so much as a by-your-leave. Holt, however, immediately wrote to Hardy, explaining what he had done and promising that "you shall participate in the profits." This was high-class publishing in the 18703. Until international copyright became effective at the end of the 19th Century, publishers on both sides of the Atlantic (especially on this side) simply took whatever they liked and could lay hands on, and as a rule the author whistled for his royalties. Hardy was elaborately swindled, but Holt and Harper & Brothers, his first major U.S. publishers, treated him honestly; moreover, he lived long enough to. benefit by the copyright law. He left an estate of about $450,000 when he died in 1928.

Hardy's novels as a whole delighted U.S. readers, but they gravely shocked a few. Two on a Tower, serialized in the Atlantic Monthly in 1882, was considered so "risque" and "low" that the author was never again allowed to sully the pages of the Atlantic. In 1891 Tess of the D'Urbervilles ran serially in Harper's Bazar (then a different magazine, both in spelling and in spirit, from what it is now), and this too proved shocking to what J. Henry Harper described as "a number of anxious mothers." But Tess, quite apart from its notoriety, was a success. It established Hardy's transatlantic reputation.

No Offense Meant. The appearance of Jude the Obscure in book form (1895) was the greatest shock of all. A critic for the New York World denounced it as coarse "beyond belief . . . almost the worst book I have ever read. ... When I had finished the story I opened the window and let in the fresh air." Poor Hardy, mild-mannered and at heart probably the least coarse of British novelists, thereupon threw up his hands. He told his U.S. publishers to withdraw the book if they saw fit--"it is so much against my wish to offend the tastes of the American public." Jude was Hardy's last (many now think it his best) novel. Its reception "completely cured" him, he said, of further interest in fiction. He turned back to verse, his original love, and wrote little else during his remaining 30-odd years.

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