Victorian Verse - At an Inn - Thomas Hardy

It is a significant jump from Rossetti to Hardy, as the number of skipped pages in the anthology suggests.  On the way, the selection has missed significant poets such as Matthew Arnold and GM Hopkins, and does not look forward to the end of the century by covering early Yeats, Kipling or AE Housman.  One can only assume that the selection is based on the need to find links between the poets for the purpose of exam questions!   To give you a more comprehensive view of the complete sweep of the poetry of the Victorians, do read "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold, which contemplates a world without Faith, and "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of the greatest poems ever written.  Leaving GMH out of this selection is, frankly, unforgivable.  But he writes about Christ and God - and in this secular, yet multicultural, world perhaps they thought he was too scary to tackle!  He is also hard to compare with other poets, as he is simply unique. 

Hardy is probably better known for his novels than for his poetry. His novels - particularly "Tess of the D'Ubervilles" (1891) and "Jude the Obscure"(1895) - are acknowledged as some of the best novels of the era, challenging Victorian bourgeois values, exploring the plight of women, Victorian sexual hypocrisy, and the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the rural poor. However, they were considered shocking for their sensationalism - they feature rape, murder and suicide - and received much hostile criticism. In response, he returned to writing poetry.  I would describe his poetry as "highly variable".   There is a useful introduction to Hardy produced by AQA here.

It is strongly suggested that the poem "At an Inn" is based on the relationship between Florence Henniker and Hardy and a visit to the George Hotel in Winchester.  Hardy first met Florence in 1893, when his marriage was in trouble, and he appears to have fallen in love with her.  However, there is no suggestion that they had a sexual relationship; she was married to an army officer and rejected Hardy's advances.  They corresponded for 30 years, until her death in 1923, and even wrote a short story together. He described her in his letters as "One rare, fair woman". The visit that is the subject of the poem took place later in the year of their first meeting - 1893 - although it was not published until 1898 in an anthology called "Wessex Poems".  The date of writing is not known.

The poem tells of a misunderstanding, Hardy's thoughts of what might have been and, to him, lost opportunities. It is infused with regret.  It is written in regular, alternating iambic trimetre and iambic dimetre lines with a regular rhyming pattern of ababcdcd.  This gives it a conversational feel – as if he is recounting a story known to them both and that it is light-hearted and reminiscent.  However, the manipulation of the accented beats on particular words reveals the deep feelings running below the surface.

When we as strangers sought
Their catering care,
Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
Of what we were.
They warmed as they opined
Us more than friends--
That we had all resigned
For love's dear ends.

There is an ambiguity in the use of the word "strangers".  Are they "strangers" to the Inn - or to each other?  I incline to the former, as there is already an "us and them" juxtaposition in the lines which persists throughout the stanza - "we as strangers/Their catering care".  Also, if they were indeed strangers to each other - why does he care so much that there is no love between them?  Why should there be?  Autobiographically, also, it does not fit.  Hardy had become well acquainted with Florence Henniker in Dublin earlier in the year, when he had visited with his wife. The misunderstanding at the Inn is well-documented - they were even shown into the same bedroom.  It seems unlikely that owners or servants of an Inn would make such a mistake if the two had appeared to be "strangers" rather than "friends".

There is something rather unfortunate about the phrase “catering care”.  Is it ironic?  The use of the alliteration for such a mundane phrase suggests it might be – contrasting the knowing smiles and looks of the servants with the emotional intensity he is feeling.  It could, of course, just be bad.  However, the contrast between the two “strangers” and idle gossipers is present in the way the focus of the stanza switches between the two groups: “we as strangers/Their…care”; “Veiled smiles/what we were”; “they opined/Us more than friends”.  What the servants are thinking is made explicit in the last two lines – they think that the two are lovers, not married to one another, who have come to the hotel for an assignation, throwing caution to the winds ("all resigned").  This would have been quite scandalous even in late Victorian England. 

And that swift sympathy
With living love
Which quicks the world--maybe
The spheres above,
Made them our ministers,
Moved them to say,
"Ah, God, that bliss like theirs
Would flush our day!"

If there is an initial resentment or annoyance at the prurience of the servants, then Hardy becomes more charitable towards them in the next stanza.  He recognises in them a response (“swift sympathy”) to the possibility that the two visitors are lovers and transforms them into guardian angels (“ministers”) who bless their supposed love and hope for similar fortune.  “Ministers” is also a pun – servants “(ad)minister” to their guests.  So maybe his approach is wryly humorous or sarcastic?

And we were left alone
As Love's own pair;
Yet never the love-light shone
Between us there!
But that which chilled the breath
Of afternoon,
And palsied unto death
The pane-fly's tune.

In the third stanza, the true relationship between the two is revealed.  They’ve been left alone by the servants, to give the “Lovers” some privacy, but Hardy tells us quite forcibly, with the use of the exclamation mark, that they were not Lovers – far from it.  There is a coldness between them that affects the very air they breathe, even killing a poor fly buzzing at the window.  Frosty indeed.  “love-light”, meaning the light of love in someone’s eyes, was a relatively new word at this time – the first recorded use of it is in 1823. 

The kiss their zeal foretold,
And now deemed come,
Came not: within his hold
Love lingered numb.
Why cast he on our port
A bloom not ours?
Why shaped us for his sport
In after-hours?

The servants have been mistaken about the relationship between the two – there is no kissing.  “Love”, now personified, fails to deliver on the promise – he is “numb”, staying at home.  The rhetorical questions from Hardy show his frustration – they have opportunity, but the feeling is missing.  Love has made them look the part, but as if toying with them (“sport”); he does not deliver.  “Port” here means the place where they are staying – another odd word to sustain the rhyme – as is “after hours”, perhaps.

As we seemed we were not
That day afar,
And now we seem not what
We aching are.
O severing sea and land,
O laws of men,
Ere death, once let us stand
As we stood then! 

The final stanza shifts our perspective away from the apparent present or recent past, of the visit to the Inn, as we learn that he is looking back on an incident that happened some years before – “that day afar”.  Love has played a cruel trick on them.  When they were together at the Inn, they were not what they seemed – now, they appear not to be in love, but in fact, are.  But they are separated by distance and by “laws of men” – a reference to them both being married.  Hardy’s final plea is that, before they die, they stand together once more, as they did at the Inn, but this time in Love in both appearance and reality.