‘Thomas Hardy: A Time-Torn Man’

They were allowed to live in one of the houses belonging to the Fox-Strangways, at Stinsford near Dorchester, and the Earl fixed a gentlemanly job for O'Brien, who became Receiver General of the taxes of the county. She chose to be buried with her husband in a vault beneath Stinsford Church. It was made by a local builder named Thomas Hardy. So the Fox-Strangways played their part, remote and heedless forces of destiny, in the meeting of Hardy's parents.

None of this was known to the young Jemima Hand. Her own family's problems took all her attention. She was her parents' fifth child, and there were two more after her, but it was not a happy family. Her father, George Hand, had married her mother, Elizabeth - or Betty - Swetman, with small enthusiasm and against her father's wishes. The young couple reached the altar in the last month of Betty's pregnancy. Both had grown up in Melbury Osmond, but otherwise they had little in common.

The Swetmans were an old established family, steady yeomen farmers with a bit of land; there is still a 'Sweatman orchard' in the village. Although the village census describes her as working as a 'spinner', she is said to have enjoyed enough leisure and money to indulge her taste for reading Richardson, Fielding and Paradise Lost, to have dispensed to the village from Culpepper's Herbal and to have worn pretty clothes. She could expect to inherit her father's savings, whereas George had nothing to offer but dark good looks, defiant intelligence and, presumably, charm.

Excerpted from "Thomas Hardy" by Claire Tomalin. Copyright © 2007 by Claire Tomalin. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Books (USA). All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

© 2008