tale.fyi

A Pair of Blue Eyes ▾
contents
  1. Preface
  2. The Persons
  3. I “A fair vestal, throned in the west.”
  4. II “ ’Twas on the evening of a winter’s day.”
  5. III “Melodious birds sing madrigals.”
  6. IV “Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap.”
  7. V “Bosom’d high in tufted trees.”
  8. VI “Fare thee weel awhile!”
  9. VII “No more of me you knew, my love!”
  10. VIII “Allen-a-Dale is no baron or lord.”
  11. IX “Her father did fume.”
  12. X “Beneath the shelter of an aged tree.”
  13. XI “Journeys end in lovers meeting.”
  14. XII “Adieu! she cries, and waved her lily hand.”
  15. XIII “He set in order many proverbs.”
  16. XIV “We frolic while ’tis May.”
  17. XV “A wandering voice.”
  18. XVI “Then fancy shapes—as fancy can.”
  19. XVII “Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase.”
  20. XVIII “He heard her musical pants.”
  21. XIX “Love was in the next degree.”
  22. XX “A distant dearness in the hill.”
  23. XXI “On thy cold grey stones, O sea!”
  24. XXII “A woman’s way.”
  25. XXIII “Should auld acquaintance be forgot?”
  26. XXIV “Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour.”
  27. XXV “Mine own familiar friend.”
  28. XXVI “To that last nothing under earth.”
  29. XXVII “How should I greet thee?”
  30. XXVIII “I lull a fancy, trouble-tost.”
  31. XXIX “Care, thou canker.”
  32. XXX “Vassal unto Love.”
  33. XXXI “A worm i’ the bud.”
  34. XXXII “Had I wist before I kist.”
  35. XXXIII “O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery.”
  36. XXXIV “Yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.”
  37. XXXV “And wilt thou leave me thus?—say nay—say nay!”
  38. XXXVI “The pennie’s the jewel that beautifies a’.”
  39. XXXVII “After many days.”
  40. XXXVIII “Jealousy is cruel as the grave.”
  41. XXXIX “Each to the loved one’s side.”
  42. XL “Welcome, proud lady.”
  43. Endnotes
English ▾

A Pair of Blue Eyes

Thomas Hardy

free · 131,506 words · 13 h 26 m audiobook, read by Tadhg for LibriVox · first published 1873

text from Standard Ebooks

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“A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
No more.”

Preface

The following chapters were written at a time when the craze for indiscriminate church-restoration had just reached the remotest nooks of western England, where the wild and tragic features of the coast had long combined in perfect harmony with the crude Gothic Art of the ecclesiastical buildings scattered along it, throwing into extraordinary discord all architectural attempts at newness there. To restore the grey carcases of a medievalism whose spirit had fled, seemed a not less incongruous act than to set about renovating the adjoining crags themselves.

Hence it happened that an imaginary history of three human hearts, whose emotions were not without correspondence with these material circumstances, found in the ordinary incidents of such church-renovations a fitting frame for its presentation.

The shore and country about “Castle Boterel” is now getting well known, and will be readily recognized. The spot is, I may add, the furthest westward of all those convenient corners wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre for these imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies near to, or no great way beyond, the vague border of the Wessex kingdom on that side, which, like the westering verge of modern American settlements, was progressive and uncertain.

This, however, is of little importance. The place is preeminently (for one person at least) the region of dream and mystery. The ghostly birds, the pall-like sea, the frothy wind, the eternal soliloquy of the waters, the bloom of dark purple cast, that seems to exhale from the shoreward precipices, in themselves lend to the scene an atmosphere like the twilight of a night vision.

One enormous sea-bord cliff in particular figures in the narrative; and for some forgotten reason or other this cliff was described in the story as being without a name. Accuracy would require the statement to be that a remarkable cliff which resembles in many points the cliff of the description bears a name that no event has made famous.

March 1895.

P.S.—The first edition of this tale, in three volumes, was issued in the early summer of 1873. In its action it exhibits the romantic stage of an idea which was further developed in a later book. To the ripe-minded critic of the present one an immaturity in its views of life and in its workmanship will of course be apparent. But to correct these by the judgment of later years, even had correction been possible, would have resulted, as with all such attempts, in the disappearance of whatever freshness and spontaneity the pages may have as they stand.

T. H.

June 1912.

The Persons

  • Elfride Swancourt, a young lady

  • Christopher Swancourt, a clergyman

  • Stephen Smith, an architect

  • Henry Knight, a reviewer and essayist

  • Charlotte Troyton, a rich widow

  • Gertrude Jethway, a poor widow

  • Spenser Hugo Luxellian, a peer

  • Lady Luxellian, his wife

  • Mary and Kate, two little girls

  • William Worm, a dazed factotum

  • John Smith, a master-mason

  • Jane Smith, his wife

  • Martin Cannister, a sexton

  • Unity, a maidservant

  • Other servants, masons, labourers, grooms, nondescripts, etc., etc.

The Scene: Mostly on the outskirts of Lower Wessex.

I

“A fair vestal, throned in the west.”

Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface. Their nature more precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours of time, was known only to those who watched the circumstances of her history.

Personally, she was the combination of very interesting particulars, whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itself rather than in the individual elements combined. As a matter of fact, you did not see the form and substance of her features when conversing with her; and this charming power of preventing a material study of her lineaments by an interlocutor, originated not in the cloaking effect of a well-formed manner (for her manner was childish and scarcely formed), but in the attractive crudeness of the remarks themselves. She had lived all her life in retirement—the monstrari digito of idle men had not flattered her, and at the age of nineteen or twenty she was no further on in social consciousness than an urban young lady of fifteen.

One point in her, however, you did notice: that was her eyes. In them was seen a sublimation of all of her; it was not necessary to look further: there she lived.

These eyes were blue; blue as autumn distance—blue as the blue we see between the retreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes on a sunny September morning. A misty and shady blue, that had no beginning or surface, and was looked into rather than at.

As to her presence, it was not powerful; it was weak. Some women can make their personality pervade the atmosphere of a whole banqueting hall; Elfride’s was no more pervasive than that of a kitten.

restoring your place…

fetching the rest…

More by Thomas Hardy

  • Far from the Madding Crowd
    You get Bathsheba Everdene, proud, impulsive, and fiercely determined to run her own life, alongside Gabriel Oak’s steady, unsentimental devotion. The rural setting feels vivid, but Hardy lets the weather, accidents, and bad judgment turn romance into something painful and morally complicated.
  • Jude the Obscure
    Fair warning, this one hurts: Jude the stonemason teaching himself Greek at night, aching toward a university that will never let him in, and Sue Bridehead, restless and contradictory and painfully real. Read it when you can handle Hardy at his darkest and most tender.
  • Short Fiction
    Hardy's stories are grimmer and stranger than the novels, little Wessex fates that turn on one bad choice, and you get pieces like The Three Strangers, where a hangman wanders into a christening party. Read them slowly, one at a time; they're bleak, but honestly so.

genres

  • Romance

—

thank you for reading

A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy. The text is in the US public domain, from the Standard Ebooks edition. Served from our own copy; read on their site for the full edition with images and typography.

Narrated by Tadhg for LibriVox, also public domain.

First published in 1873.

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