The reddleman re-reads an old love letter
Arthur Hopkins
6.375 by 4.3125 inches, framed
Hardy's The Return of the Native
Belgravia XXXV (March 1878), frontispiece.
He sat down on a three-legged milking-stool that formed the only seat in the van, and, examining his packet by the light of a candle, took thence an old letter and spread it open.
[Click on illustration to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
[You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned it, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Passage Realised: Diggory, Darning His Socks, Stops to Read a Letter
While he darned the stocking his face became rigid with thought. Softer expressions followed this, and then again recurred the tender sadness which had sat upon him during his drive along the highway that afternoon. Presently his needle stopped. He laid down the stocking, arose from his seat, and took a leathern pouch from a hook in the corner of the van. This contained among other articles a brown-paper packet, which, to judge from the hinge-like character of its worn folds, seemed to have been carefully opened and closed a good many times. He sat down on a three-legged milking stool that formed the only seat in the van, and, examining his packet by the light of a candle, took thence an old letter and spread it open. The writing had originally been traced on white paper, but the letter had now assumed a pale red tinge from the accident of its situation; and the black strokes of writing thereon looked like the twigs of a winter hedge against a vermilion sunset. The letter bore a date some two years previous to that time, and was signed “Thomasin Yeobright.” It ran as follows: —
DEAR DIGGORY VENN, — The question you put when you overtook me coming home from Pond-close gave me such a surprise that I am afraid I did not make you exactly understand what I meant. Of course, if my aunt had not met me I could have explained all then at once, but as it was there was no chance. I have been quite uneasy since, as you know I do not wish to pain you, yet I fear I shall be doing so now in contradicting what I seemed to say then. I cannot, Diggory, marry you, or think of letting you call me your sweetheart. I could not, indeed, Diggory. I hope you will not much mind my saying this, and feel in a great pain. It makes me very sad when I think it may, for I like you very much, and I always put you next to my cousin Clym in my mind. There are so many reasons why we cannot be married that I can hardly name them all in a letter. I did not in the least expect that you were going to speak on such a thing when you followed me, because I had never thought of you in the sense of a lover at all. You must not becall me for laughing when you spoke; you mistook when you thought I laughed at you as a foolish man. I laughed because the idea was so odd, and not at you at all. The great reason with my own personal self for not letting you court me is, that I do not feel the things a woman ought to feel who consents to walk with you with the meaning of being your wife. It is not as you think, that I have another in my mind, for I do not encourage anybody, and never have in my life. Another reason is my aunt. She would not, I know, agree to it, even if I wished to have you. She likes you very well, but she will want me to look a little higher than a small dairy-farmer, and marry a professional man. I hope you will not set your heart against me for writing plainly, but I felt you might try to see me again, and it is better that we should not meet. I shall always think of you as a good man, and be anxious for your well-doing. I send this by Jane Orchard’s little maid, — And remain Diggory, your faithful friend,
THOMASIN YEOBRIGHT. To Mr. VENN, Dairy-farmer. [Book One, "The Three Women," Chapter IX, "Love leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy," pp. 6-7]
Commentary: Diggory Venn as Dürer's St. Jerome
Reminiscent of Renaissance depictions of the saint in his cell (for example, Dürer's woodcut of St. Jerome) is Hopkins' rendering of Diggory Venn sitting on a stool in his wagon as "The reddleman re-reads an old love letter," an image which suggests the youth' wistfulfulness and innocence amidst humble, domestic details of the wagon which doubles as his business and his home.
There are a number of questions that one might use as criteria for assessing the worth of illustrations in a text, such as "To what extent do the pictures create an appropriate sense of setting, mood, and motion?" and "Does the artist's style and sense of composition complement the author's?" In applying these to Hopkins' drawings one sees that his conception of the story sharpened considerably after Hardy's February 8th criticisms. While the first drawing offers little interpretation of either setting or character, and the setting provides the interest in the second, the third and succeeding drawings highlight certain key situations, scenes, and relation-ships in the novel. Particularly moving is the gentle melancholy with which Hopkins depicts the youthful-cheeked Diggory Venn re-reading an old love-letter from Thomasin. There is a sense of a numinous spirit that pervades the humble environment, the reddleman's wagon, which Hopkins has delighted in depicting in loving detail: the pots and tankards, the bags of dye (the one in the foreground conspicuously bearing the youth's initials), the kettle, and in particular the sources of light, the stove and the lantern, are somehow reminiscent of Dutch genre paintings such as Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolas Tulp (1632).
M. E. Braddon's editorial decision to make this third Hopkins illustration the frontispiece for Volume XXXV, in which the Hardy serial is the lead piece, suggests both an appreciation of the illustrator's sensitive study of the novel's characters and backdrop, and quite possibly an awareness the popular reception of the new Hardy serial. Having introduced the primary heroine already — the brooding Eustacia in the February plate, Hopkins now realizes the novel's secondary male protagonist, Diggory Venn, whose appearance in the text would certainly have struck Braddon's London readership as both bizarre and uncouth. Hopkins renders him sympathetically, focussing not on his rubicund exterior but his intense inner life, as revealed in his reflections on the letter from the Wessex girl, Thomasin, who in her strict virtue and moral simplicity will serve as an admirable foil to the story's "dark" and doomed heroine.
The evocative scene itself, set in the reddleman's wagon after his day's labours, shows him pondering Thomasin Yeobright's rejection of his marriage proposal when he was a dairy farmer (hence, the salutation "To Mr. VENN, Dairy-farmer."). Concerned about Damon Wildeve's designs on her, Venn determines to maintain a careful surveillance of his romantic rival, the manager of The Quiet Woman Inn, and the woman who seems to be of romantic interest him, Eustacia Vye.
Related Material
Bibliography
Hardy, Thomas. Part Three: Book One, "The Three Women," Chapter IX, "Love Leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy." The Return of the Native. Illustrated by Arthur Hopkins. March through June 1878. Belgravia, A Magazine of Fashion and Amusement (London) Vol. XXXV (March-June 1878). 1-20.
Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. With an etching by H. Macbeth-Raeburn. London: Osgood, McIlvaine, 1895.
Jackson, Arlene M. Illustration and the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Towtowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.
Purdy, Richard Little, and Millgate, Michael, eds. The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy . Oxford: Clarendon, 1978. Vol. 1 (1840-1892).
Vann, J. Don. “Part Three. Book 1, Chapters 8-11. March 1878. The Return of the Native in Belgravia, January-December 1878.” Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. 84.
Wright, Sarah Bird. "The Return of the Native." Thomas Hardy A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Works. New York: Facts On File, 2002. 261-270.
Victorian
Web
Thomas
Hardy
Illus-
tration
Arthur
Hopkins
Next
Created 5 December 2000
Last modified 10 June 2025