She wore a 'terra-cotta' dress,
And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
Within the hansom's dry recess,
Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
We sat on, snug and warm.
Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,
And the glass that had screened our forms before
Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
I should have kissed her if the rain
Had lasted a minute more.
by Thomas Hardy.
And the glass that had screened our forms before
Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
I should have kissed her if the rain
Had lasted a minute more.
by Thomas Hardy.
Hardy’s marriage, to Emma Gifford, had taken place in 1874 but by 1893 it was going through a very difficult period. Hardy had become a famous writer who mixed with the glitterati of the London literary scene, but Emma did not have the intellectual capacity to keep up and was in turn regarded by London society as being dull and uninteresting.
ResponderEliminarThe couple therefore spent much of their time apart, and Thomas was in turn proving attractive to other women, and they to him. “A Thunderstorm in Town” recounts a moment spent alone with one of those other women.
She was Florence Henniker, the daughter of Lord Houghton. She was a novelist herself, and, if not exactly Hardy’s intellectual or artistic equal, at least she was able to converse with him on terms of mutual understanding. They even collaborated on writing a fictional piece together. Hardy described her as a “charming, intuitive woman”. He was clearly deeply attracted to her and it is probably true to say that, of all Hardy’s extra-marital relationships, and there were several, this was the most serious. However, there was never any question of her leaving her husband, to whom she always remained loyal, and Hardy, who was an atheist, could not have coped with her sincerely held religious beliefs.
“A Thunderstorm in Town” describes an incident shortly after they first met, when Hardy knew that he was becoming attracted to her but had not made his feelings fully known to her.