And yet to every bad there is a worse.

Thomas Hardy

London is a busy place.  Trying to push your way along Regent Street on a Sunday is ridiculously difficult, not to mention annoying.  I guess it’s like every big city – they get busy.  At the beginning of the year I moved from busy London Bridge out into the western suburbs of the city where it’s a lot quieter and the view a little better. It’s still noisy of course and at certain times it’s still busy, but not so much on the road where I live. I’m not saying I don’t like central London though; in fact, it could be a lot worse.

I once read a book called Far from the Madding Crowd. The story is rurally set and focusses on the characters and their lives working their farms.  It’s all about the lives and misfortunes of these particular characters and how they overcome them, and it’s written by a man called Thomas Hardy.

Thomas Hardy lived in Trinity Road Wandsworth

Unlike a lot of the writers that I’ve researched, Thomas Hardy’s education ended at the age of 16.  In Dorchester, his father worked as a Stone Mason and local builder. His family couldn’t afford University so Hardy became an apprentice and trained as an architect in Dorchester until he left for London where he enrolled himself in Kings College. Thomas Hardy won prizes in architecture and he was in charge of the excavation of the St Pancras old church graveyard when the railway was built. This unenviable task included the removal of bodies and tombs and there is a particular tree in the churchyard there called the Hardy tree where the headstones have been arranged around the trunk. Although Hardy was a great architect, nobody can deny that he was a brilliant writer.

The Hardy Tree - St Pancras old church graveyard

In Far from the Madding Crowd, Gabriel Oak has his own property until one night one of his dogs rounds his sheep up and they all end up over a cliff.  Oak then has to work for other farmers in the district, but this guy always seems to be in the right place at the right time, kind of like Superman.  I know it’s only a story, but when you read it and think about how he could have ended up, it kind of makes you believe that no matter how bad things seem, it can always get worse.  In the case of Gabriel Oak, his life was full of ups and downs, but it got better. I could wax lyrical about the story until the cows come home and I’m pleased that Hardy tried his hand at writing and didn’t just stick to architecture.                 

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorchester and passed away in 1928 in Dorchester. He is now buried in Stinsford parish church.  His birthplace and his home Max Gate are both owned by the National Trust and I am sorry to say that I have not yet visited either.  To say that he loved London would be a lie, but what I can honestly say is, Once upon a time in the 1800’s an Englishman followed a path that led me Far from the Madding Crowd. I urge you to go there!