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Passage Illustrated: The Return of the Outcast

Henchard’s lips half parted to begin an explanation. But he shut them up like a vice, and uttered not a sound. How should he, there and then, set before her with any effect the palliatives of his great faults — that he had himself been deceived in her identity at first, till informed by her mother’s letter that his own child had died; that, in the second accusation, his lie had been the last desperate throw of a gamester who loved her affection better than his own honour? Among the many hindrances to such a pleading not the least was this, that he did not sufficiently value himself to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal or elaborate argument.

Waiving, therefore, his privilege of self-defence, he regarded only his discomposure. “Don’t ye distress yourself on my account,” he said, with proud superiority. “I would not wish it — at such a time, too, as this. I have done wrong in coming to ’ee — I see my error. But it is only for once, so forgive it. I’ll never trouble ’ee again, Elizabeth-Jane—no, not to my dying day! Good-night. Good-bye!”

Then, before she could collect her thoughts, Henchard went out from her rooms, and departed from the house by the back way as he had come; and she saw him no more. [Chapter XLIV, 539; in volume, pp. 396-397]

Commentary: A Dignified, Tragic Departure into Oblivion

In the final large-scale illustration in his twenty-part sequence for The Graphic's serialisation of Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, "I have done wrong in coming to 'ee . . . I'll never, never trouble 'ee again, Elizabeth Jane" (529), Barnes studies his two chief figures intensely. Again the composition is highly theatrical, but again the artist conveys as much information through the costumes as through the melodramatic poses. Henchard's field-hand's dress (best indicated by his gaiters and boots, which recall his costume in the initial plate) and a peasant's soft hat (a sharp contrast to his fashionable Beaver hat in the April 3rd illustration) suggest his decline (or, more properly, his return to his former status); his raised right hand suggests his attempting to allay Elizabeth-Jane's alarm at seeing him after her sailor-father has returned as it were from the dead (for he was reported "lost at sea") to reveal Henchard's imposture. The true artistry in Barnes' depiction of the novel's tragic hero is in the fallen face and steady, internalized gaze of the former mayor, clearly one used to command. But he is also himself again, wearing a countryman's garb and speaking in those very accents for which he had rebuked his step-daughter earlier in "Did you do it, or didn't you? Where was it?" (Chapter XX). A man of the soil, he seems rough and clumsy in the smartly furnished room (note the elegant vase in the left foreground). Thus, Barnes' final illustration addresses the text's problem of directing the reader's sympathies towards Henchard's character in spite of his misdeeds, of making the reader appreciate the ex-mayor's and ex-father's conflicting feelings regarding Elizabeth-Jane and her marriage to his former protegé and recent rival. Like the printed text, the pictorial text invests Henchard with considerable inner life, showing him experiencing feelings ranging from tenderness, guilt, rage, and compassion, while giving Farfrae little inner life beyond an expression of affability. This quiet resignation is the culmination of his many moods, poses, and interactions.

Henchard has already exiled himself from Casterbridge at the beginning of Chapter XLIV when, visiting Weydon-Priors, he learns of Elizabeth-Jane's impending marriage. When he arrives back in Casterbridge, the wedding reception is already in progress, and observes the newlyweds dancing. He has brought a caged bird as a gift, but in anguish at his stepdaughter's rejection he utterly forgets about his wedding gift, which Elizabeth-Jane discovers starved to death in Chapter XLV. Despite their happy marriage, the young wife has been deeply affected by the death of Henchard in a cottage on the heath, as reported by Abel Whittle. For the philosophical young woman, as the final lines of the serial state, "happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain" (542).

The present illustration realizes the final moments of Henchard's wedding-day interview with his stepdaughter at the close of Chapter XLIV. He is as good as his word, not troubling her with even news of his whereabouts. He punishes himself with exile, physical decline, and seems to have willed his own death on the heath, if we may credit Whittle's account of Henchard's final night. In this final interview, Henchard momentarily considers explaining what motivated him to send Newson away, having tried to convince the sailor that Elizabeth-jane has died. As in the illustration, "Henchard's lips half parted to be an explanation" (511), but he merely waives the "privilege of self-defence." This, then, is the Henchard that Barnes wishers readers to scrutinise.

In this final scene, Elizabeth-Jane, at one with the room in her elegant silk dress, recoils from Henchard as if he were the villain of a period melodrama, perhaps the hard-hearted employer of The Factory Lad (1832). She has upbraided him for his deceit, flushing up and pulling her hand away from the older man who has pretended to be her natural father. From Newson she now knows the truth. Her light-coloured gown suggests not only her separation from her former father (who has, as he rightly guesses, been replaced in her affections by her real father, the genial seafarer whom Barnes has depicted in the penultimate illustration, "Elizabeth, my child, come and hearken to what we are talking about and not bide staring out o' window as if ye didn't hear"), but also her having recently married Farfrae. We note that, in both the April 17th and May 1st illustrations, Barnes has Lucetta, the first Mrs. Farfrae, wearing a similar dress. Although the sleeves and necklines of the two dresses are somewhat different, the similar textures and colours suggest that Elizabeth has taken Lucetta's place maritally as Farfrae has assumed Henchard's position politically and socially.

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "A Consideration of Robert Barnes' Illustrations for Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge as Serialised in the London Graphic: 2 January-15 May, 1886." Victorian Periodicals Review 28, 1 (Spring 1995): pp. 27-39

Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. The Graphic 33 (1886).

Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge: A Story of a Man of Character. London: Osgood McIlvaine, 1895.

Jackson, Arlene. "The Mayor of Casterbridge: Realism and Metaphor."Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981. Pp. 96-104.

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