Francis Relish

  Francis Relish
 (Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, pt. 2)

 Correspondence with the dead continues.*

 Dear Trudy,

I am writing to ask for an indefinite extension on the assignment, “inhibitions.” If it cannot be granted, I’ll have to cry off altogether. In the meantime, I recommend the OnlineEtymology Dictionary.
     Did you find a copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge? I expect to finish it today.
     I think that’s all. I trust you’re doing better than I am, who continue in a downward spiral. Which may have something to do with Hardy.

Gloomily, Ted

Dear Ted,

I do not like The Mayor of Casterbridge as well as I liked The Return of the Native, at least not this time through. I know it (The Mayor) is supposed to be the better novel, but except for Henchard, the characters are so circumscribed (and circumspect), I have no time for them, no feeling for them – except “Blah!”). I’m sorry for Lucetta; as long as she is on the make, I am rooting for her. But when she curls up and dies – rather than climbing out on a balcony and mooning the skimmity-riders – I lose interest. But I’m already losing interest as soon as she marries the cliché on-the-make Scottish stick-in-the-mud Farfrae. Of the remaining characters, only Jopp is truly interesting. Farfrae is, I repeat myself with different words, a jackass, a prig. Newson is just a jackass. Elizabeth-Jane is just a prig. Susan is a shadow.

Mayors of Casterbridge
Francis Relish (1955-1962)**

     Michael Henchard is a monster, but what a sad monster, also, by the end what a predictable monster. (Like Caliban.) Bless Abel Whittle for sitting by him when he dies. I don’t think I could have done that.
     That’s not much to say about a story with so many twists and turns, runnings forward and doublings back – and with such an elaborate and sticky sense of place – but it’s all I have right now.
     What did you think? You can tell me or not. Frankly, I’m ready to move right on to Tess.

What do you think? Trudy

 

P. S. Leslie Becket (no relation to the grim Irishman but the merry Englishman that was at Chlidonia with us, “Bucket” – did you really call him that? – he was on your floor in Mytilus, wasn’t he? And he was killed in Kristovia, bicycle accident: how the hell did he get there?) Leslie (not Les) loves Hardy because, he says, he is never afraid of the next coincidence. Crane may be right about fiction Leslie says: The writer shouldn’t be allowed more than one coincidence. But life is not like that: our histories don’t run in a straight line from that one coincidence at the left end of the chart to their end at the right end of the chart. Now, like in the novel(!), they do run ahead, and now they come running back, having forgotten the stick we threw for them. Now they drop anchor; now they are anchor, lying on the floor of the sea. Now they are flies buzzing around garbage, alive and dead in a moon, and now they are Whitman’s spider launching “filament, filament, filament . . . Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly, spreading them.” And they will intertwine, by chance. We know each other a year in a lifetime, then we die and we know each other forever. So, Bucket says. But he isn’t falling in love with me. Don’t think that. Nobody is fall in with me. Nobody is falling in love with anybody, right?

 Dear Trudy,

Let’s move on then. I have nothing of interest to say about The Mayor of Casterbridge. I tried to like Farfrae because I thought Hardy did. I tried to admire Elizabeth-Jane for the same reason – I thought Hardy did. Increasingly, I lost sympathy with both as (it seemed to me) he grew tired of them. He brings in Lucetta because he is becoming bored with them. And, you said something like this: Lucetta becomes boring, too, after she marries Farfrae.) He revives Jopp because he is bored with them all, maybe even Henchard.
     What is this about Bucket isn’t falling in love with you? Are you falling in love with him? Why are you telling me? I had assumed your last statement to be universally true, “Nobody is falling in love with anybody.” Jesus says that nobody is marrying anybody, at any rate (Matthew 20:34f.).
     A short answer to “inhibitions” is attached. There won’t be a longer one. Nothing like a book!

I am trying, Ted

 11.13.20

_______________
* This correspondence with Trudy Monae began with The Return of the Native, starting here.
§ “Yes, he was a sad – a spartan - philosopher.” – Lucilius
** “Mayors of Casterbridge” is a series of phone drawings by m ball.