A Pair of Blue Eyes

A Pair of Blue Eyes

By Thomas Hardy.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Epigraph
4. Preface
5. The Persons
6. A Pair of Blue Eyes
   1. I
   2. II
   3. III
   4. IV
   5. V
   6. VI
   7. VII
   8. VIII
   9. IX
   10. X
   11. XI
   12. XII
   13. XIII
   14. XIV
   15. XV
   16. XVI
   17. XVII
   18. XVIII
   19. XIX
   20. XX
   21. XXI
   22. XXII
   23. XXIII
   24. XXIV
   25. XXV
   26. XXVI
   27. XXVII
   28. XXVIII
   29. XXIX
   30. XXX
   31. XXXI
   32. XXXII
   33. XXXIII
   34. XXXIV
   35. XXXV
   36. XXXVI
   37. XXXVII
   38. XXXVIII
   39. XXXIX
   40. XL
7. Endnotes
8. Colophon
9. Uncopyright

Imprint

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“A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
No more.”

Preface

The following chapters were written at a time when the craze for indiscriminate church-restoration had just reached the remotest nooks of western England, where the wild and tragic features of the coast had long combined in perfect harmony with the crude Gothic Art of the ecclesiastical buildings scattered along it, throwing into extraordinary discord all architectural attempts at newness there. To restore the grey carcases of a medievalism whose spirit had fled, seemed a not less incongruous act than to set about renovating the adjoining crags themselves.

Hence it happened that an imaginary history of three human hearts, whose emotions were not without correspondence with these material circumstances, found in the ordinary incidents of such church-renovations a fitting frame for its presentation.

The shore and country about “Castle Boterel” is now getting well known, and will be readily recognized. The spot is, I may add, the furthest westward of all those convenient corners wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre for these imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies near to, or no great way beyond, the vague border of the Wessex kingdom on that side, which, like the westering verge of modern American settlements, was progressive and uncertain.

This, however, is of little importance. The place is preeminently (for one person at least) the region of dream and mystery. The ghostly birds, the pall-like sea, the frothy wind, the eternal soliloquy of the waters, the bloom of dark purple cast, that seems to exhale from the shoreward precipices, in themselves lend to the scene an atmosphere like the twilight of a night vision.

One enormous sea-bord cliff in particular figures in the narrative; and for some forgotten reason or other this cliff was described in the story as being without a name. Accuracy would require the statement to be that a remarkable cliff which resembles in many points the cliff of the description bears a name that no event has made famous.

March 1895.

P.S.⁠—The first edition of this tale, in three volumes, was issued in the early summer of 1873. In its action it exhibits the romantic stage of an idea which was further developed in a later book. To the ripe-minded critic of the present one an immaturity in its views of life and in its workmanship will of course be apparent. But to correct these by the judgment of later years, even had correction been possible, would have resulted, as with all such attempts, in the disappearance of whatever freshness and spontaneity the pages may have as they stand.

T. H.

June 1912.

The Persons

• Elfride Swancourt, a young lady

• Christopher Swancourt, a clergyman

• Stephen Smith, an architect

• Henry Knight, a reviewer and essayist

• Charlotte Troyton, a rich widow

• Gertrude Jethway, a poor widow

• Spenser Hugo Luxellian, a peer

• Lady Luxellian, his wife

• Mary and Kate, two little girls

• William Worm, a dazed factotum

• John Smith, a master-mason

• Jane Smith, his wife

• Martin Cannister, a sexton

• Unity, a maidservant

• Other servants, masons, labourers, grooms, nondescripts, etc., etc.

The Scene: Mostly on the outskirts of Lower Wessex.

A Pair of Blue Eyes

I

“A fair vestal, throned in the west.”

Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface. Their nature more precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours of time, was known only to those who watched the circumstances of her history.

Personally, she was the combination of very interesting particulars, whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itself rather than in the individual elements combined. As a matter of fact, you did not see the form and substance of her features when conversing with her; and this charming power of preventing a material study of her lineaments by an interlocutor, originated not in the cloaking effect of a well-formed manner (for her manner was childish and scarcely formed), but in the attractive crudeness of the remarks themselves. She had lived all her life in retirement⁠—the monstrari