Thomas Hardy by Andrew Norman Read Free Book Online

two stories going on – first a romance and then a murder – makes not inconsiderable demands on the reader. The story is as follows:
    On the death of their father (who is already a widower), Owen Graye and his younger sister Cytherea leave the Midlands for Budmouth (Weymouth). Here they find lodgings and Owen takes up the post of assistant to a local architect. On an excursion by paddle steamer to Lulworth Cove, Owen misses the boat back. This enables Cytherea to become better acquainted with her brother’s friend and colleague Edward Springrove (who is head draughtsman in Owen’s office), who has joined the steamer for the return journey. Edward and Cytherea fall in love, but a problem arises. Edward is, in fact, already engaged to be married to his cousin.
    Cytherea obtains employment as lady’s maid to Miss Aldclyffe of Knapwater House, whose first name also happens to be Cytherea. By now, Edward Springrove, who lives at nearby Knapwater Park, has broken off his previous engagement and has become engaged to Cytherea. Miss Aldclyffe forms a deep, emotional attachment to Cytherea (reminiscent of Julia Martin and Hardy).
    Miss Aldclyffe appoints Aeneas Manston to be her steward at Knapwater House, for reasons which only become apparent later. Although he is a married man, Manston is attracted to the young Cytherea. When he becomes enraged by the taunts of his drunken wife, he strikes her and she dies instantly. He leads everyone to believe that she has perished in a fire, but in fact he has hidden her body in the oven of a disused brew house. He is now free to marry Cytherea. Manston is a musician and when he plays some ‘saddening chords’ to Cytherea on the organ, she agrees to marry him instead of Springrove, even though she does not love him. 12 In this way she avoids being a burden to her brother Owen, who is not in good health.
    When suspicion is aroused that Mrs Manston is still alive, Manston, to avert speculation, persuades another woman to impersonate her. However, a poem of Manston’s is discovered in which he has described the colour of his wife’s eyes as ‘azure’, whereas his ‘new’ wife – his deceased wife’s impersonator – has eyes of ‘deepest black’.
    As Manston is in the act of recovering the body of his real wife and burying it, he is observed. He flees, but not before attempting to persuade Cytherea to run away with him, in the midst of which endeavour he is apprehended by Edward Springrove. Manston is detained in the county jail, where he confesses to his crime before hanging himself.
    The plot is further complicated by the fact that Cytherea turns out to be the daughter of a man whom Miss Aldclyffe once loved. It is also revealed that when Miss Aldclyffe was aged 17, she was ‘violated’ by her cousin, a military officer, and the child born as a result of this untoward event was Aeneas Manston.
    On her deathbed, Miss Aldclyffe confesses to Cytherea that the reason she appointed Manston as her steward was to bring him close to Cytherea; it being her dream that Cytherea, the daughter of the man she loved, and Manston, her own natural child, be married. Finally, all ends happily for Cytherea when she marries Springrove, now a qualified architect.
    Hardy contrived for his novel Desperate Remedies to end happily, at least as far as Cytherea and Springrove were concerned. And surely, having himself fallen in love with Emma Gifford, he hoped that his own love affair would come to a similarly agreeable conclusion.

    In March 1870 Hardy sent the manuscript of his second novel, Desperate Remedies , to Macmillan, who declined to publish it (in the same way that he had previously declined to publish The Poor Man and the Lady ). John Morley (now editor of the Fortnightly Review ) was particularly vitriolic about Desperate Remedies , saying that the story was ‘ruined by the disgusting and absurd outrage which is the key to its mystery: the violation of a young lady at an evening party, and