A Group of Noble Dames: ‘Statuesque dynasties of delightful Wessex’

Abstract

In 1863 Hardy ‘designed’ some ‘Diagrams showing human passion, mind and character’ and later stuck them on the inside of the fly leaf of his ‘Literary Notes I’ which contains entries, mainly quotations from other writers, from 1875–88.¹ Of the four diagrams, one shows a ‘Line of energy’ in which energy peaks at about age nineteen and then after a series of ups and downs to age forty steadily declines until ‘Life ends’. The two major drawings are of a tree, with trunks, roots, creepers possibly and branches. At the base, in the soil perhaps, are ‘intellect’, ‘passions’ and ‘will’. At the lower end of the trunk three excrescences are separately named ‘Impossible monster of Intellect … Passions … and Will.’ Higher up the trunk these fuse into either fungi or fruit called ‘Moral Harmony’. A main stem from the trunk is labelled ‘Affectives dominant’ and it bears four branches ‘Friendship dominant’, ‘Love dominant’, ‘Passion dominant’ and ‘Ambition dominant’.