The Better Heaven Beneath: Revenges of Time in Two on a Tower

Abstract

Featured in title and opening chapter of this third of Hardy’s ‘minor’ trio of novels from the early 1880s, and his ninth novel overall, is the architectural counterpart to Stancy Castle in AL (1881) and Overcombe Mill in TM (1880): a tower in the form of a Classical column on the estate of Viviette, Lady Constantine. A brisk narrative tempo soon emerges from the surprising but pleasant discovery by an initially unidentified lady of an unidentified blond youth, gazing at the sky through a telescope on the roof of her own tower. From the very start, venue and main characters (Lady Constantine and Swithin St Cleeve) are established by direct presentation, unlike, for instance, the tangential openings of RN, TDU and WL.

The column had been erected in the last century, as a substantial memorial of her husband’s greatgrandfather, a respectable officer who had fallen in the American war, and the reason of her lack of interest was partly owing to her relations with this husband, of which more anon. It was little beyond the sheer desire for something to do — the chronic desire of her curiously lonely life — that had brought her here now. She was in a mood to welcome anything that would in some measure disperse an almost killing ennui. She would have welcomed even a misfortune. She had heard that from the summit of the pillar four counties could be seen. Whatever pleasurable effect was to be derived from looking into four counties at the same time she resolved to enjoy today.¹