In Hardy's fiction and poetry,letters are ready sources of excitement and | |
suspense,harbingers of loss and disappointment.They go missing,fall to | 1.______ |
the wrong hands,or arrive too lately.Most famously,Tess's letter of | 2.______ |
confession,hastily pushed not just under the door but under the carpet too, | |
remains unread by the priggish Angel Clare,as Hardy delivers his most | |
powerful attack of the Victorian sexual double standard. | 3.______ |
Hardy's own letters were places for quite reflection and deepening | 4.______ |
emotional ties,for occasional advice,details to visitors of the times of the | |
Waterloo trains,and for public protests towards the iniquity of war | 5. ______ |
and against cruelty to animals.They ensured regular contact with their | 6. ______ |
friends and the publishing world,contained correctives to readings of | |
his work.More than any other form,letters make insight into Hardy's | 7. ______ |
many—sidedness.Writing in 1907 to the poet Elspeth Grahame, | |
he expressed admiration,and not little surprise,that she had written | 8. ______ |
verses on the top of an omnibus.Commiserating with one of his American | |
admirers,Rebekah Owen,for having to get in a plumber,he suggested | |
that she took up plumbing herself.Such solid practical advice exists | 9. ______ |
alongside Hardy the natural modernist,wrote to tell Arthur Symons that | 10. ______ |
he liked his poem“Haschisch”(the world is“the phantom of a haschisch | |
dream”),discussing timeless reality and the nature of matter at the drop of a hat. | |