Thomas Hardy's Landscapes
The Geographical Setting of A Pair of Blue Eyes
Hardy set an early novel in the countryside on the coast of north Cornwall, still a beautiful area but curiously a sense of place is not a defining feature of the story.
There is a sense of timelessness in the countryside around the village of Boscastle on the north coast of the English county of Cornwall. The footpaths above rugged cliffs and on the two-mile walk up to the little country church of St Juliet are probably just as Thomas Hardy saw when he visited the area 140 years ago. The mystery is why this wonderful landscape does not play a stronger role in the story that he set here.
Early Period of a Leading Nineteenth Century Novelist
The story was A Pair of Blue Eyes, Hardy’s third published novel and the first under his own name. He visited as a junior architect at a critical period of his life, long before he became one of England’s leading nineteenth century novelists and when he was agonising over whether to continue in the profession he had trained for or focus on a career as a writer. During a series of visits he met and courted his first wife, Emma.
The novel includes parallels with Hardy’s own life. One of the main characters is an architect assigned from London to plan the restoration of the church, who falls in love with a relative of the rector.
Landscape in Literature
Identification with local country life, customs and landscape became one of the defining features of Hardy’s later and better-known works. And there is no doubt that Hardy formed a strong attachment to this part of Cornwall as a “western extension of Wessex.” After Emma died, following a long estrangement, Hardy returned to the area and found inspiration for some of his best-regarded poems.
The Cornish setting of the story is clear enough. Journeys, meetings, courtship and conflict all happen in and around actual places, though some have disguised names. There are occasional descriptions of the landscape and Hardy sets key scenes in some of the area’s most dramatic locations. And the story turns in part on the area’s relative remoteness from modern London life.
Sense of Place
But A Pair of Blue Eyes does not conjure up the strong sense of place that characterises the later Wessex novels. The local dialect hardly appears and neither the characters nor their names are recognizably Cornish.
In his preface to the 1912 edition, Hardy classified the book among his “romances and fantasies” rather than as a book of “environment and character.” Some have argued with his assessment on the basis of the novel’s skilful development of the character of the main players, but it is difficult to see a strong case for the environment.
Literary Tourism
Nevertheless a tour of the area will surely enhance the modern reader’s appreciation of the story and of Hardy’s early development as a storyteller and observer of the countryside. Regrettably the railway no longer reaches Launceston (St Launce) but much of the rural beauty that Hardy must have seen still exists, and is still accessible by a network of public footpaths.
The church itself has hardly changed, with its stone stiles still intact. Hardy would no doubt recognise the beautiful Valency Valley that runs from St Juliet to Boscastle (St Agnes to Castle Boterel) where the novel’s lovers often walked. The stream still cascades spectacularly on to the rocks of Pentargon Bay, where Elfride watched for Stephen’s ship. The cliffs where key scenes were placed are as high and rugged as ever. South of Boscastle at Trebarwith (Barwith) the surf still pounds the sand with undiminished power.
So it is all the more puzzling that Hardy did not make more of the story’s stunning geographical setting. Could it be that 130 years ago an unspoilt rural landscape was so normal while now it is so rare? This, at least, is one area where the scenic legacy of earlier centuries has not been much degraded.
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