Tea and sympathy.

  Tea and sympathy. 
(Hardy’s The Return of the Native, pt. 3)

 “What are you doing?” Uncle Albert said.
     “Writing,” I said.
     “I see that. What are you writing?” Uncle Albert said.
     “A letter,” I said.
     “To your dead sister again?”*
     “No,” I said, “to a friend of hers.”*
     “Live or dead?” Uncle Albert asked. I shrugged. “Does Feight* know this?” he said.

“wicker chair” by m ball*

I continue to meet with Dr. Feight, only instead of my going to his office, we talk on the phone.
     “Sort of,” I say to myself. Sort of he knows about it. But to Uncle Albert I say: “You know we’ve talked about this.”
     “Right. When was the last time?”
     “What?” I am being willfully obtuse.
     “You talked about it?”
     “I don’t know,” I say. And I ask him how his tea is. He’s giving up drinking coffee. “It doesn’t taste good anymore,” he says.
     “It’s okay,” he says about the tea, looking into his cup. “Remind me what this is.”
     “Durazno,” I say. “You had it yesterday. You said you liked it then.”
     “Yes,” Uncle Albert said.

Dear Trudy,

I am trusting you have your own copy of The Return of the Native, you have not been reading mine over my shoulder. That would feel too invasive. But your last letter does read as if it had been cribbed from my underlines and marginal notes. So, how can I disagree with what you’re saying?

     If I have a difference with you, it would be this: You seem to have little, if any, sympathy for the characters, and I ache for Eustacia and, if somewhat less, for Thomasin. I find Wildeve weak but believable (maybe too believable: who doesn’t want what he wants – and then some?). Venn, I grant you, is a prig. But I see Clym as the unfortunate result of his mother’s secular Calvinism and his own ideals. (Yes, I know, “secular Calvinism” and “ideals” – a double mouthful and a mushy one at that.) And if his dithering does cause much unhappiness, he will ultimately find his way at the end, modest and forgiving, whether this was Hardy’s intention or The Belgrave’s. I do agree that Mrs. Yeobright is a witch, but it may not be her fault. She is, after all, a clergyman’s daughter exiled in a pagan land: If she can’t hold onto the substance of the faith of her father, she must hold onto the form, and maybe the form is all he bequeathed her.

     Granted, the minor characters are “clowns”; yet we can also sympathize with their fears (Susan Nunsuch and Christian Cantle), their forgetfulness (Humphry), their senilescent bravado (Grandfer Cantle), and their yearning hearts (Charlie). At least, I find myself sympathizing.

     In answer to your question, I’m not sure I know why anybody doesn’t like anybody else. Why doesn’t Mrs. Yeobright like Eustacia? Or, is it Eustacia Mrs. Yeobright dislikes or anyone that dreams? Is it Clym’s marrying Eustacia that she can’t stand or is it what Clym has decided he wants to do? He has become a dreamer, too, if he wasn’t always one. He will always be sleeping or escaping into the back rooms of his own house. And when he comes to preaching, it won’t be any real “Gospel” but only a muddle of middle-class common sense drawn from whatever “Scripture” suits him. Though I suppose all preachers end up doing that, both dreaming and compromising. I's my experience anyway.

So, Ted

      “Yes,” Uncle Albert said again, looking into the cup. “I did like it.” He’s talking about the tea again. “Then.”

11.04.20

_______________
* My dead sister is Moira. See here. Links to the Dr. Feight story are here. The correspondence with Trudy Monaeabout matters Thomas Hardy begins here. mel ball drew the chair with SimpleDraw on an android phone. 

 Joe Biden: Do not - I repeat, do not! - be channeling Al Gore. - Uncle Albert