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Hardy's “Mephistophelian Visitants”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Thomas Hardy's plots often introduce an outsider into a tranquil current of events to project a disturbing force into the story. This outsider turns the current and sometimes continues to deflect it to a tragic end. Critics have called the outsiders “invaders” or “human ‘apples of discord’,” but they have not considered what light may be thrown on the nature of these invaders if they are studied in terms that Hardy himself suggests. In speaking of reddlemen, the class to which the invader Diggory Venn belongs, Hardy uses the term “Mephistophelian visitants.” This term is not inapt, I think, to describe a series of invaders, three of them dressed in red and all presented in a background of suggestions that they are preternatural.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1946
References
1 For example, McDowall speaks of “those ‘invaders’ who play a pivotal rôle in the novels.” Arthur Sydney McDowall, Thomas Hardy A Critical Study (London: Faber & Faber, 1931), p. 66. Holland says that “Hardy . . . in most of his books delighted to introduce persons from the outside world into these regions of tranquillity, and these often proved human ‘apples of discord’.” Clive Holland, pseud. for C. J. Hankinson, Thomas Hardy, O. M. The Man, His Works and the Land of Wessex (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1933), p. 170.
2 “Since the introduction of railways Wessex farmers have managed to do without these Mephistophelian visitants, and the bright pigments so largely used by shepherds in preparing sheep for the fair is obtained by other routes.” Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, The Mellstock Edition, The Works of Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1920), vii, 93. (All references to Hardy's works are to the Mellstock Edition unless otherwise stated.)
3 William R. Rutland, Thomas Hardy A Study of His Writings and their Background (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1938), p. 161.
4 xiii, 175-176.
5 The Hand of Ethelberta, xxvi, 42.
6 The intervening novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes (1872-73), contains a character, the widow Jethway, whose traits seem developed in part from those of Mrs. Endorfield. She invades the story at critical points to turn the action: the engagement between Knight and Elfride is broken because Mrs. Jethway informs Knight that Elfride had had previous lovers. She is a mysterious figure flitting through the shadows of the story. On the other hand, she does not manifest enough of the Mephistophelian traits to be in exactly the same class as Mrs. Endorfield; she is vengefully sinister, rather than Satanic; no one thinks her a witch; her cloak is black rather than red; and she is scheming rather than brainy.
7 iii, 191-194.
8 iii, 195-198.
9 iii, 200-204.
10 iii, 216-221.
11 iii, 228-231.
12 iv, 32-41.
13 iv, 68.
14 iv, 53.
15 iv, 71.
16 iv, 119.
17 iv, 140.
18 iv, 200.
19 iv, 212-213.
20 The intervening novel, The Hand of Ethelberta (1875-76), contains no Mephistophelian visitant, though Hardy ascribes Ethelberta's success to her possession of “the subversive Mephistophelian endowment, brains.” xxvi, 42.
21 Diggory as “Mephistophelian visitant” is not to be taken as a literal imitation of Mephistopheles. The evidence indicates only that Hardy used the traditional Mephistopheles as a basis for creating symbolic characters to fit his own concept of the universe and of theology. This point is discussed later when the relation of the “Mephistophelian visitants” to Hardy's theological views is taken up.
22 McDowall, op. cit., p. 70.
23 vii, 9.
24 vii, 30-36.
25 See Ruth A. Firor, Folkways in Thomas Hardy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1931), p. 91.
26 vii, 90.
27 vii, 112.
28 vii, 117.
29 “Ishmaelitish” is applied to “haggard Egdon” in vii, 6, and to Diggory in vii, 183.
30 viii, 36.
31 viii, 38.
32 viii, 39.
33 viii, 40-41.
34 viii, 43.
35 viii, 51.
36 viii, 82.
37 viii, 87.
38 viii, 214-215.
39 viii, 225-226.
40 This note appears in viii, 241, of the Mellstock Edition. See Carl J. Weber, “Hardy's Grim Note in ‘The Return of the Native,‘” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, xxxvi (First Quarter, 1942), 37-45.
41 Introduction to The Return of the Native as edited by J. W. Cunliffe for the Modern Student's Library (New York: Scribner's, 1917), p. xiii.
42 David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist: An Essay in Criticism (London: Constable and Co., 1943), p. 117.
43 See Joseph Wright, English Dialect Dictionary.
44 See the New English Dictionary. The association of Venn and fen suggests the marsh-light or will-o'-the-wisp, a suggestion which is in keeping with Venn's mysterious character and his incalculable comings and goings.
45 Op. cit., p. 168.
46 Wildeve's biting of the die was the natural cause of the crack that broke it. But the suggestion seems to me strong that the chain of caused-accident is Determination working through natural means. This use of a natural means to effect the incredible suggests to me one way in which Diggory as a compound of Mephistophelian visitant and human being might be defined, as the natural means through which the supernatural works.
47 viii, 71.
48 viii, 120.
49 Herbert B. Grimsditch, Character and Environment in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (London: H. F. and G. Witherby, 1925), p. 61.
50 A slight suggestion of the Mephistophelian visitant appears in the intervening novel, The Trumpet Major (1880). Many characters in the book are soldiers in red coats, which are, significantly, not emphasized, but Festus Derriman is, in addition, red-haired and of a florid complexion that flushes easily to scarlet. But this “florid son of Mars” is more a cowardly boastful soldier than anything else; his invasion of the life of Anne Garland is comic, or farcical, and is without consequence in affecting her life.
51 Florence Emily Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, 1840-1891 (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1928), p. 188.
52 “. . . ‘A Laodicean’ may perhaps help to while away an idle afternoon of the comfortable ones whose lines have fallen to them in pleasant places; above all, of that large and happy section of the reading public which has not yet reached ripeness of years;. . .” xxvii, v-vi.
53 See Item 83, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Grolier Club Centenary Exhibition 1940 of the Works of Thomas Hardy, O. M. (Waterville, Me.: Colby College Library, 1940), p. 23.
54 xxvii, 62.
55 xxvii, 85.
56 xxvii, 165.
57 xxvii, 62.
58 xxvii, 153.
59 xxvii, 63.
60 xxvii, 165.
61 At various times Dare said: “ 'Compuesto no hay muger fea, as they say at Madrid.'” (xxvii, 123) “ 'Ogni dieci anni un uomo ha bisogno dell' altro, as they say in Italy.' ” (xxvii, 164) “'Hörensagen ist halb gelogen!'” (xxvii, 152) “'Enfin les renards se trouvent chez le pelletier.'” (xxvii, 251.)
62 xxvii, 63.
63 xxvii, 149.
64 E.g., Keats, xxvii, 201.
65 xxvii, 86.
66 xxvii, 62.
67 xxvii, 132.
68 xxvii, 150.
69 xxvii, 204.
70 xxvii, 161.
71 xxviii, 86-87.
72 xxviii, 89.
73 xxvii, 184; see Job, ii, 2.
74 xxvii, 192.
75 xxviii, 203.
76 The intervening novel, Two on a Tower (1882), contains no invader of this sort.
77 Op. cit., p. 105.
78 xxx, 107.
79 xxx, 112.
80 xxx, 166.
81 xxx, 166.
82 xxx, 212.
83 xxx, 216.
84 xxx, 119.
85 xxx, 141.
86 xxx, 158.
87 xxx, 217.
88 xxx, 205.
89 xxx, 210.
90 xxx, 158.
91 ix, 12.
92 ix, 150-151.
93 x, 115.
94 x, 163.
95 x, 170.
96 x, 176.
97 x, 181.
98 x, 184.
99 ix, 44.
100 ix, 108.
101 ix, 136.
102 ix, 136.
103 x, 22.
105 x, 30.
105 x, 72.
106 x, 127.
107 Carl J. Weber, Hardy of Wessex (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), p. 101.
108 Op. cit., pp. 211-212.
109 The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, p. 135.
110 Op. cit., pp. 212-213.
111 P. 213.
112 xi, 5.—In the serial version, the sentence reads: “'A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, in in league with the devil, lives in the place you be going to—not because there's anybody for'n to cure there, but because 'tis the middle of his district.'” Macmillan's Magazine, liv (1886), 65. The early book editions follow this text. See the discussion below and footnote 126. This revision, it will be noted, omits the idea that Fitzpiers is an ordinary doctor with a “district.”
113 xi, 32.—In the serial version, the phrase reads: “‘certain books on some mysterious science or black-art.‘ ” Op. cit., p. 78.
114 xi, 32.—In the serial version, Cawtree is named Bawtree.
115 xi, 56.
116 xi, 54.
117 xi, 159.
118 xi, 122-123.
119 xi, 201.
120 xi, 148.
121 xi, 10.
122 xi, 176.
123 xi, 182.
124 xii, 200.
125 See Carl J. Weber, “Hardy and The Woodlanders,” Review of English Studies, xv (1939), 332. Miss Owen's copy of the book is now in the Library of Colby College.
126 xii, 225. See footnote 112 and Carl J. Weber, Colby Notes on The Woodlanders (Fairfield, Me.: Fairfield Publishing Co., 1939), note on 440: 4-5.
127 The novel was not, however, dramatized.
128 Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, p. 289.—Had much change taken place in the British attitude toward the conventions in two years, between 1887 and 1889, or was the change in Hardy's own attitude as he was working on Tess?
129 It would be far-fetched, I believe, to regard Alec in Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) as a Mephistophelian visitant. It is true that he was an outsider, that he changed the normal course of Tess's life, and that when he appeared beside Tess in her garden, he called her Eve and himself “‘the old Other One come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal.‘” ii, 210. But these features are by no means worked out here.
The character of Wat Ollamoor in “The Fiddler of the Reels” (1893) exercised over Car'line Aspent a hypnotic power like that of Baron Von Xanten over Margery; he was an un-English visitant who had never entered a church, and he certainly changed Car'line's life. There are even suggestions of supernatural phenomena, as when she saw his form in a mirror and turned to find that he was not there. But his power over her resided in his fiddle and in her inability to keep her feet from dancing when he played. He was not otherwise like the Mephistophelian visitants.
Vilbert in Jude the Obscure (1894-95) can hardly be called a Mephistophelian visitant, but he is clearly related to this tribe. As itinerant peddler of pills and nostrums, he came into the novel now and then, each time with a suggestion that affected a crisis. When Arabella had seduced Jude in expectation that she would become pregnant and that Jude would marry her to save her “honor,” she was at her wit's end because she did not become pregnant. “One day she met the itinerant Vilbert . . . and she began telling him her experiences . . . before he left her she had grown brighter. That evening she kept an appointment with Jude, who seemed sad.” (v, 65.) At this appointment she made use of the suggestion the clever Vilbert had given her; apparently she lied about her condition, and Jude changed his plan for going away and married Arabella. (This advice to tell a lie resembles Mrs. Endorfield's advice to Fancy.) Vilbert disappeared until Jude and Sue visited the Wessex Agricultural Fair at the height of their happiness. There Arabella, though married to Cartlett, was jealous of Sue, and Vilbert perceived it. He sold her a love-philtre. Again he disappeared. In her second seduction of Jude, Arabella did not, of course, use the silly philtre, but she did use something for which the philtre seems a kind of analogue—alcohol. Then, as if Hardy wished to make this analogy clear, Arabella poured the philtre into a glass of wine and gave it to Vilbert when Jude had chased him from the sick-room. As Jude died, Arabella watched the races with Vilbert's arm around her waist.
130 The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, p. 266.
131 “Notes on the Form of The Dynasts,” PMLA, xxxiv (n.s., xxvii, 1919), 408.
132 Ibid., p. 413.
133 “Two Readings of Earth,” Yale Review, n. s. xv (1926), 524.
134 Iago in the first edition was changed to Dragon in the “authorized edition.”
135 Op. cit., p. 341.
136 xxxi, vi-vii.
137 xxxi, 181.—I am disregarding Hardy's italics for the speeches of the Spirits.
138 xxxi, 8.
139 xxxi, 16.
140 xxxi, 21.—The passage as quoted here suggests that the Spirit Sinister praised the decision rather than sought to influence it. But in the 1904 version, Hardy had “That it restrained” instead of “For leaving lax.” See also The Dynasts as published by Macmillan, New York, 1944, Pt. i, p. 18.
141 xxxi, 48.
142 xxxi, 51.
143 xxxi, 103.
144 xxxii, 140.
145 xxxii, 220.
146 xxxii, 229.
147 xxxiii, 255.
148 The Spirits are slightly more aggressive in the first edition, which has having instead of hearing.
149 xxxi, 28.
150 xxxiii, 192.
151 xxxiii, 261.
152 xxxii, 236, passim.
153 xxxi, 42-43.
154 xxxi, 74-76.
155 See Pt. i, Act vi, Scene vii, an entire scene in which the Spirit of Rumour acts in the disguise of a young foreigner at the bidding of the Spirit of the Years.
156 The “good” Spirits also communicate directly with mortals just as the Spirits Sinister and Ironic do.
157 xxvi, 123.
158 Samuel C. Chew, Thomas Hardy, Poet and Novelist (New York: Knopf, 1928), p. 85.
159 Thomas Hardy, “The Profitable Reading of Fiction” (1888), in Life and Art (New York: Greenberg, Inc., 1925).
160 Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, pp. 193-194.
161 Florence Emily Hardy, The Later Years of Thomas Hardy, 1892-1928 (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1930), p. 217.
162 Jo Hubbard Chamberlin, Thomas Hardy—The Influence of the Popular Sensational Novel, 1840-1880, Upon His Earlier Works (M. A. thesis, New York University, 1932), p. 2.
163 Carl J. Weber, “Ainsworth and Thomas Hardy,” Review of English Studies, xvii (1941), 193-200.
164 Op. cit., p. 44.
165 “The Traditional Basis of Thomas Hardy's Fiction,” Southern Review, vi (1941), 171.
166 Op. cit., p. 160.
167 Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, p. 13.
168 Ibid., p. 213.
169 This conjecture is given collateral support by the fact that, according to Hardy's friend and student, Rebekah Owen, Lady Susan was the original for the dead Lady Elfride in A Pair of Blue Eyes. This novel began serial publication in the same year (1872) Under the Greenwood Tree was published. See Carl J. Weber, Rebekah Owen and Thomas Hardy (Colby College Monograph No. 8, Waterville, Maine: Colby College Library, 1939), p. 57.
170 Roger S. Loomis, ed., The Play of St. George, by Thomas Hardy (New York: Samuel French, 1928), p. 7.
171 See E. K. Chambers, The English Folk-Play (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1933), p. 28.
172 Ibid., p. 85.
173 Ibid., p. 8.
174 See R. J. E. Tiddy, The Mummers' Play (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1933), p. 28.
175 Hardy, The Early Life of Thomas Hardy, pp. 217-218 and passim; see also Holland op. cit., pp. 104-106.
176 The term may include the books of words for the toy theatres. See A. E. Wilson, Penny Plain Two Pence Coloured (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1932) for a description of the toy theatres.
177 One version of a Doctor Faustus for the puppet theatre, published in English in 1850, is given in Paul McPharlin, A Repertory of Marionette Plays (New York: The Viking Press, 1929), pp. 209-241. Two other versions in English, printed in 1847 and in 1887, are listed on p. 341. I suppose it is impossible to find out what particular versions Hardy might have seen at “Wessex” circuses or fairs or in London.
178 xvii, 118.
179 xxvi, 121.
180 xi, 83.
181 i, 175.
182 P. M. Palmer and Robert Pattison More, The Sources of the Faust Tradition (New York: Oxford, 1936), p. 206.
183 xxviii, 257.
184 Pp. 246-257.
185 M. L. Anderson, “Hardy's Debt to Webster in The Return of the Native,” MLN, liv (1939), 497-501.
186 Probably Hardy did not read Faust in German, early or late, with any appreciation. At fifteen, “he attempted to teach himself German by subscribing to Cassell's Popular Educator,” but he was doing so many other things at the time that he did not get very far with his German. Weber, Hardy of Wessex, p. 9.—He uses a German word or phrase now and then in his novels; Dare says “Hörensagen ist halb gelogen” in A Laodicean, for example, and Hardy speaks of Mrs. Charmond's weltbürgerliche nature in The Woodlanders. But when the Hardys set out for Germany in 1876, Hardy still knew so little German that he pasted to the front cover of his Baedeker a home-made, 16-page phrase-book of simple expressions and their German equivalents, including the numerals. Rutland conjectures that Hardy did not know enough German to read Faust in the original with appreciation, and in reply to my inquiry on this point, Professor Carl J. Weber wrote: “I'd agree with Rutland in thinking that he never acquired any real facility in the language.”
187 Lines 1335-36.
188 I have not mentioned the Spirits Sinister and Ironic in this paragraph. The influence of Faust upon The Dynasts as a whole has been often pointed out. See, for example, Fairley, op. cit.