Aftercourses

Abstract

The funeral was not delayed. Emma was buried on Saturday, 30 November, in a grave where Hardy had planned to be interred with her; ironically, it was by the side of his parents and grandparents, and in eventual proximity to the remaining members of a family from whom she had dissociated herself, distrusting them and scorning their peasant habits and stock. Rebekah Owen attended the funeral with the Leslies (her old friend Margaret, daughter of the late Henry Moule, and her husband, rector of Winterborne Came), and noticed no others present in the lonely churchyard but Hardy, his brother and sisters, a few local people, and ‘a deputation from some Dorchester society’. Of the Giffords, only Lilian came, and she arrived too late for the service. The words on Hardy’s wreath, ‘From her lonely husband — with the old affection’, meant more to him than they could convey to others, even to Rekebah, who thought the inscription the ‘one outspoken word of a silent man’, or to Teresa Fetherstonhaugh, who later wrote to her, ‘What beautiful and well chosen words …’. During a period of conflicting thoughts and emotions, expression had come to him that was both apt and sincere.