‘A Two-Years’ Idyll’

Abstract

By early March the Hardys had left Swanage and taken rooms at 7 Peter Street, Yeovil, in the hope of finding a home in that region. Proofs were soon checked for the issue of The Hand of Ethelberta on 3 April, and the novel was more favourably received than Hardy expected. He had been pleased to receive a request for permission to translate Far from the Madding Crowd into German, and had also advised George Smith to reach an agreement with the Leipzig publisher Bernhard Tauchnitz for its addition to his ‘British and American Authors’ series for readers on the Continent. Tauchnitz preferred to issue his latest novel first, but Far from the Madding Crowd and most of Hardy’s other novels followed. The early arrival of the cheque for The Hand of Ethelberta made the Hardys look forward, after a holiday in London, to a tour in Holland and the Rhineland which would bring them to Brussels in time to visit the field of Waterloo on approximately the anniversary of the battle. No light can be thrown on what house-hunting they did, or what places of interest they visited before leaving for London towards the middle of May. They must have liked Yeovil, for in the 1880s, before having Max Gate built, Hardy was tempted to buy a house on Hendford Hill.