A 'Sleep That Burns' production (never to be taken as gospel, just another thought)

A Hardy Character!

          It was on a recent visit to the home of one of the greats of the literary world, not to my taste but great none the less, a few things made me stand up and pay attention!

       Renowned for his writings of British life as it was back then, Thomas Hardy wrote stories that were very much evocative of the day, however there were a few things about the guy that I reckon are little known! He was a man who seemed to be unable to make up his mind, he had three rooms within this rambling old house that over a period of years, he would turn into his studies, this in itself, beggars the question, how the hell did he manage to write the classic novels that he did? Was he fickle, did he suffer from a form of O.C.D well before some  psychologist had even named it...before it was even thought to be anything other than some 'after dinner' parlor game, who knows but I have my own theory as to what he was really up to!  I reckon that this man was one of the forerunners to the steam punk genre that was to come to such prominence some years later. In one of these rooms that became his 'study' at various times, which is now listed as his second wife's bedroom, of course, nothing beats creeping across the landing for an intimate liaison don't you think! Anyway, I digress, but there in this very 'unromantic', bay window is this:-

              Maybe she liked to sew, maybe they liked to sew together, maybe she could run up a nice pair of curtains whilst he was a dab hand at turning up his trousers, or just maybe this was a source of ideas for old Tom, perhaps he used this as a form of inspiration for the stories that he was yet to publish! What brings me to this conclusion you may ask, well, just nestling on an old very ornate desk just  outside the bedroom, is this wonderful piece of Victoriana:-

       Perhaps, just maybe, Mr Hardy would receive an idea, just from staring at the machine, maybe touching it, turning the wheel, absorbing the sounds that were created by doing these apparently most 'basic' of things! Just imagine him in a leather Top hat and a pair of the most ornate, sepia tinted goggles to which he perhaps maintained were the two possessions that would help him to escape from his, outwardly, staid, head of a Victorian household,  a pillar of sobriety, but in reality, he craved to be a loose cannon, perhaps he longed for the shackles of the British stiff upper lip to be released from holding him back! Lets be honest for a moment, if one of his literary peers, Jules Verne, who some might say is the originator of this genre, a man who created wonderful characters and worlds of wonder and amazement, way way ahead of everyday thought and even imagination, then why couldn't he?

        It would be so cool if this man, the epitome  of the romantic novelist,  and so very English, was in fact covertly hammering out trashy, Pulp fiction short stories, purely for his own pleasure. Maybe he could rattle them out at will and somewhere within this Victorian piece of real estate are hidden away some manuscripts, under floorboards or stitched inside drawing room curtains,  just waiting to be found and published, who knows, just a thought.
    Alas, the restraints of the type of writing that he made his name from, seemed to always win the day. It would be really cool to think that old Tom was in reality, a bit of a dude, even if only within the confines of one of his three rooms that became his study.  However, It would be so nice to think that the guy had a wicked sense of humour and whilst deliberating on the title for one of his greatest pieces of work,  he was sat in this most private of places at the end of a long passage way, working things out with a pencil, inspiration would hit,  call it a 'flash in the pan' if you will, and after the anguish and turmoil that comes with thinking of a good title, he named it 'Tess Of The T'urdbervilles' was his first choice for a title!

     I reckon that this would have ge'ed up the starched Victorian Society of the 1890's, after all, it was censored at the time for being a bit too 'under the counter' so perhaps he should have really given the literary censors something to get their starched breeches in a twist about! Just a thought, maybe a wicked one but....you never know!