TESS OF THE D’UBERVILLES

Editions

This novel being one wherein the great campaign of the heroine begins after an event

in her experience which has usually been treated as fatal to her part of protagonist, or

at least as the virtual ending of her enterprises and hopes, it was quite contrary to

avowed conventions that the public should welcome the book, and agree with me in

holding that there was something more to be said in fiction than had been said about

the shaded side of a well-known catastrophe. But the responsive spirit in which Tess

of the d'Urbervilles has been received by the readers of England and America, would

seem to prove that the plan of laying down a story on the lines of tacit opinion, instead

of making it to square with the merely vocal formulae of society, is not altogether a

wrong one, even when exemplified in so unequal and partial an achievement as the

present. For this responsiveness I cannot refrain from expressing my thanks; and my

regret is that, in a world where one so often hungers in vain for friendship, where even

not to be wilfully misunderstood is felt as a kindness, I shall never meet in person

these appreciative readers, male and female, and shake them by the hand.

I include amongst them the reviewers - by far the majority - who have so generously

welcomed the tale. Their words show that they, like the others, have only too largely

repaired my defects of narration by their own imaginative intuition.

Nevertheless, though the novel was intended to be neither didactic nor aggressive, but

in the scenic parts to be representative simply, and in the contemplative to be oftener

charged with impressions than with convictions, there have been objectors both to the

matter and to the rendering.

The more austere of these maintain a conscientious difference of opinion concerning,

among other things, subjects fit for art, and reveal an inability to associate the idea of

the sub-title adjective with any but the artificial and derivative meaning which has

resulted to it from the ordinances of civilization. They ignore the meaning of the word

in Nature, together with all aesthetic claims upon it, not to mention the spiritual

interpretation afforded by the finest side of their own Christianity. Others dissent on

grounds which are intrinsically no more than an assertion that the novel embodies the

views of life prevalent at the end of the nineteenth century, and not those of an earlier

and simpler generation - an assertion which I can only hope may be well founded. Let

me repeat that a novel is ail impression, not an argument; and there the matter must

rest; as one is reminded by a passage which occurs in the letters of Schiller to Goethe

on judges of this class: `They are those who seek only their own ideas in a

representation, and prize that which should be as higher than what is. The cause of the

dispute, therefore, lies in the very first principles, and it would be utterly impossible to

come to an understanding with them.' And again: `As soon as I observe that any one,

when judging of poetical representations, considers anything more important than the

inner Necessity and Truth, I have done with him.'

In the introductory words to the first edition I suggested the possible advent of the

genteel person who would not be able to endure something or other in these pages.

That person duly appeared among the aforesaid objectors. In one case he felt upset

that it was not possible for him to read the book through three times, owing to my not

having made that critical effort which `alone can prove the salvation of such an one'.

In another, he objected to such vulgar articles as the Devil's pitchfork, a lodging-house

carving-knife, and a shame-bought parasol, appearing in a respectable story. In

another place he was a gentleman who turned Christian for half-an-hour the better to

express his grief that a disrespectful phrase about the Immortals should have been

used; though the same innate gentility compelled him to excuse the author in words of

pity that one cannot be too thankful for: `He does but give us of his best.' I can assure

this great critic that to exclaim illogically against the gods, singular or plural, is not

such an original sin of mine as he seems to imagine. True, it may have some local

originality; though if Shakespeare were an authority on history, which perhaps he is

not, I could show that the sin was introduced into Wessex as early as the Heptarchy

itself. Says Glo'ster in Lear, otherwise Ina, king of that country:

As files to wanton boys are we to the gods;

They kill us for their sport.

The remaining two or three manipulators of Tess were of the predetermined sort

whom most writers and readers would gladly forget; professed literary boxers, who

put on their convictions for the occasion; modern `Hammers of Heretics'; sworn

Discouragers, ever on the watch to prevent the tentative half-success from becoming

the whole success later on; who pervert plain meanings, and grow personal under the

name of practising the great historical method. However, they may have causes to

advance, privileges to guard, traditions to keep going; some of which a mere taleteller,

who writes down how the things of the world strike him, without any ulterior

intentions whatever, has overlooked, and may by pure inadvertence have run foul of

when in the least aggressive mood. Perhaps some passing perception, the outcome of a

dream hour, would, if generally acted on, cause such an assailant considerable

inconvenience with respect to position, interests, family, servant, ox, ass neighbour, or

neighbour's wife. He therefore valiantly hides his personality behind a publisher's

shutters, and cries `Shame!' So densely is the world thronged that any shifting of

positions, even the best warranted advance, galls somebody's kibe. Such shiftings

often begin in sentiment, and such sentiment sometimes begins in a novel.

July 1892