A Rejected Fragment of Far from the Madding Crowd

Abstract

A REJECTED FRAGMENT OF FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD Clarice Short Hardy described a MS. fragment of Far from the Madding Crowd as "Some pages of a first draft (Details of Sheep-rot—omitted from the MS. when revised)."1 Richard L. Purdy says of the fragment, "These pages are heavily altered and bear no relation (in appearance, foliation, etc.) to the complete MS. as we have it. They would seem to be . . . part of a destroyed early MS. of the novel."2 As brief and tentative as the fragment is, it casts some light upon Hardy's literary economy and upon his early concept of Troy's character and role. From it Hardy salvaged a vivid descriptive passage and a dramatic conflict, both of which he adapted to the altered context of the final version of the novel. Over half of the eleven pages of the MS. fragment describe the causes and symptoms of the disease called sheep-rot, a malady that presumably could be contracted by sheep only when they were permitted to graze on swampy ground or on pastures that had been artificially watered after the month of May.3 When the vigilant shepherd Oak discovers that a part of his flock is infected, he seeks a clue to the mystery as to how the sheep could have fed on dangerous ground: One evening after having been at the other end of the farm for the greater part of the day he passed this corner [described earlier as a "fenny nook" by some springs] of the meadow and paused to look at one of the most glowing autumn sunsets which shone upon him across the swamp. The effect was indeed beautiful .... The yellow sun, bristling with a thousand spines of light which struck into and tormented his eyes4 .... Gabriel had poetical ideas, but they were all discreetly diluted with the practical. He admired the red and gold of the bristling rays, and then looked lower upon the little swamp. It was a Valley of the Shadow of Death to any ovine identity under the sky. But it was indeed beautiful to look upon. The air about it, looking thus toward the sun, had a substance and a surface visible to the eye. It was a magnificent aureate mist or veil, fiery, yet semi-opaque—the hedge behind it being in some measure hidden by its golden brilliancy. . . . Oak's thought was that this was a spot which would indeed rot a sheep, or a thousand sheep, in a very short time, and he thought that if those rotted the 1I wish to express my gratitude to Miss Irene Cooper Willis, trustee of the Hardy Memorial Collection, for permission to quote from the MS. fragment, and to Mr. Peers, Curator of the Dorset County Museum, for his courteous assistance in making the manuscript available to me. The MS. pages are numbered from 106a to 106k. 2Richard L. Purdy, Thomas Hardy. A Bibliographical Study (London, 1954), p. 16. 3Details similar to those used by Hardy appear in A Treatise on Watering Meadows (London: Printed for the Author [George Boswell of Piddletown, Dorset], 1779); and William Stevenson, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Dorset (London, 1815). 4See Thomas Hardy's Notebooks, ed. Evelyn Hardy (New York, 1955), p. 43, entry no. 45, dated November 3rd [1873[: "A sunset: a brazen sun, bristling with a thousand spines that struck into and tormented my eyes." 62 Rejected Fragment of Far form the Madding Crowd63 other day had only got in there, the cause would be accounted for ... . He went closer to see if any old sheep tracks were visible there, which would be an explanation. Iridescent bubbles, full of dark subterranean breath rose beside his feet as he trod and hissed as they burst and expanded away to join the steaming fulsome firmament above. (MS., pp. 106e-106f) noxious vapoury When Hardy discarded this fragment, he preserved the description of the sunset and the swamp and included them in the novel as features of a landscape associated with crucial moments in Bathsheba's life. She falls under the spell of Troy as he performs the sword exercise when "the...