Beschreibung:

HARDY, Thomas (1840-1928). Six autograph letters signed (one with initials 'T.H.'), one to an unidentified correspondent ('My dear friend'), and five to Mrs Dorothy Allhusen, Max Gate, 26 August 1899, 6 March, 19 July and 27 September 1922, 7 May and 8 June 1926, together 11 pages, 8vo; (one page torn through at centre fold); and 14 bars of music on one page, 4to (mounted on card with the letter of 27 September 1922), and a typewritten list of quotations from the Old Testament and English poets. The letter to 'My dear friend' proposes a meeting at Stonehenge, 'you coming on your motor tricycle and I on my bicycle', with suggestions for coming part of the way by train and mentioning his paper on 'the sale of the ruin'. In 1922 Hardy sends a warm message of sympathy on the death of Mrs Allhusen's son, later expressing pleasure at an engagement and on 27 September sending 'a joyous old tune they used to sing a hundred years ago in this county set to cheerful words that might suit a wedding service'. The last letters enclose a list of epitaphs 'More or less suitable for that sweet child' (his correspondent's daughter, Elizabeth), adding 'Of course I could write one myself but mine would not be so good as one of these', and inscriptions (not present). Dorothy Allhusen (1877-1965) had known Thomas Hardy since her childhood, and his published letters include a number addressed to her including that of 7 May 1926. Hardy visited the Allhusens in Buckinghamshire and in London, and they attended balls and theatres in Dorothy's youth. In November 1912 Hardy's first wife, Emma, died, and he married Florence Dugdale in 1914. The first letter expresses the wish that 'Sir F' might also visit Stonehenge, a reference to Dorothy's stepfather, Sir Francis Jeune, who met Hardy there in September. Stonehenge, which Hardy had used as a setting in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, was put up for sale after its ownership passed to Sir Edward Antrobus earlier in 1899. (7)