Influence and Recollections of Architecture, Music, Painting, and Literature

Abstract

The recurrence of the architect as hero in Hardy’s early novels suggests that, with varying degrees of mutation, his own experience contributed to some extent to their background. Only in A Laodicean, however, does architecture form an important part of the story. Hardy’s observations when he was an architect in London, at Weymouth, and on his first visit to Cornwall provided the background for scenes in The Poor Man and the Lady, Desperate Remedies, and A Pair of Blue Eyes, the heroes of which were all architects. In the first of these novels, one scene (which was transferred to ‘An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress’) related to an experience of Arthur Blomfield which Hardy witnessed at New Windsor, when the Crown Princess of Germany laid the memorial-stone of a church (Life, 48). Hardy’s familiarity with the work involved in freestone cutting and carving for building and restoration is apparent in Jude the Obscure.