‘Madding Crowd’ Invited to Hardy Home : Literature: Dorset’s internationally famous author is finally being recognized at home. Soon, he may have a special place in the local museum.

They’re opening his home to the public and plan to rebuild the church musicians’ gallery he loved. Soon, he may even have a special place in the local museum.

Always eloquent, sometimes irascible, often inspired--Thomas Hardy is gaining at home some of the glory that Dorset’s leading literary son enjoys abroad.

“It’s a classic case of a prophet not being recognized in his own country,” said Dr. James Gibson, chairman of the Hardy Society.

A combination of local neglect and the Hardy family’s desire for privacy have contributed to the writer’s poor profile at home, despite his massive international reputation, Gibson believes.

Compared to Shakespeare, William Wordsworth or the Brontes, whose houses are popular shrines, Hardy’s homes are relatively inaccessible. There is little evidence of him at Dorchester’s museum, where staff battle to adequately store valuable Hardy manuscripts on a small budget.

“Longstanding locals like to show they are not overly impressed by his fame,” said Richard de Peyer, curator of the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester.

Nevertheless, most local towns and villages are prepared to cash in on Hardy, making the most of even the most tenuous connection. There are streets and coffee shops named “Casterbridge”--his name for Dorchester. Hardy postcards and reprints of his works abound.

“We don’t want Hardy T-shirts and we don’t want Hardy soap,” said Gibson. “But we must make more of our Hardy heritage.”

When Hardy died in 1928, his ashes were interred with other giants of literature in Poet’s Corner at London’s Westminster Abbey. But his family insisted that his heart be buried in a country churchyard at Stinsford, near Dorchester, where his parents met and where he was baptized.

There it lies, with his two wives and other relatives, and with “William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,” as he says in his poem “Friends Beyond.”

Hardy’s heart was always in the gentle green valleys where he spent most of his life and which form the appealing rustic backdrop to many of his haunting poems and to the best-selling novels which chart the decline of England’s rural culture.

Many of his characters mirror the qualities and peculiarities of local people.

But Hardy always has been unpopular at home, Gibson said, “possibly because of envy and the fact that he was regarded as mean because he did not throw his money around.” His tendency on occasion to be difficult or domineering also made enemies.

An international clamor has persuaded the National Trust to open Max Gate, the red brick neo-Gothic house on the edge of Dorchester that Hardy designed. He lived there from 1885 until his death, writing “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” “Jude the Obscure” and other works.

On three afternoons a week this summer, Hardy enthusiasts will be able to walk through the drawing room, conservatory and gardens where Hardy entertained such luminaries as Virginia Woolf, Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells and the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. Some Hardy memorabilia may be on display.

Rented as a private home, Max Gate previously only has been accessible to scholars and literary societies, by special arrangement.

“We had thousands of people coming,” said William Jesty, who moved out of Max Gate in November after 22 years. “In the last three years we were receiving large coach parties.”

Gibson said his society, which has 200 Americans among its 1,500 members, has had “letters from all over the world” asking to visit.

The National Trust had resisted for fear of damage and because of a stipulation by Hardy’s sister, Kate, who left the house to the trust in 1940, mandating that it be kept as a private residence.

David Bett, the trust’s Wessex regional director, said officials hope that the new arrangements “will protect both the fabric and spirit of the house.”

Although none of Hardy’s belongings remain at Max Gate, the rooms, including several oddly proportioned bedrooms and a set of pinched servants’ quarters, remain as he designed them--proof that he chose wisely when he turned his pen from architecture to writing.

The garden, where Hardy planted 2,000 trees, features in a number of his poems. There he buried his beloved pets, including his favorite dog, Wessex. “Faithful and True,” runs Hardy’s carved epitaph on the pet’s grave.

Just visible through the trees is St. Michael’s Church at Stinsford, where generations of Hardys worshiped and are buried.

Plans to restore the gallery at the back of the church, where a band once accompanied the singing, is likely to rekindle interest in Hardy’s works.

“Under the Greenwood Tree,” his second published novel, included an affectionate portrait of the rustic musicians who once reigned in the gallery.

The book also introduced Wessex, an ancient geographical term for part of Dorset that Hardy revived.

In this and subsequent Wessex novels, including “The Mayor of Casterbridge,” “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” and “Far From the Madding Crowd,” Hardy explored the decline and fall of the rural culture of England in the 19th Century--his “grand subject,” according to David Wright, editor of a recent Penguin edition of “Under the Greenwood Tree.”

The Dorset County Museum is appealing for funds for a permanent display of its collection of Hardy artifacts, estimated to be worth $74 million.

“Everything is poorly displayed and much of it is not properly stored,” said de Peyer, who hopes to build a $370,000 literary gallery featuring Hardy and other Dorset writers.

Valuable original manuscripts lie in unsealed containers on bookshelves in a reconstruction of Hardy’s study. Hot water pipes run close to the shelves and vital works “inevitably are deteriorating,” de Peyer said.

The museum has about 1,500 letters to Hardy, 800 volumes from his library and complete original manuscripts of “The Mayor of Casterbridge,” “Under the Greenwood Tree,” “The Woodlanders” and part of “Far From the Madding Crowd.”

There are Hardy paintings and drawings, personal belongings including furniture and a large collection of documents.

But the reconstructed study is the only memorial to him--testimony, Gibson said, to an earlier curator’s dislike for Hardy.

Gibson hopes to persuade the National Trust to make more of the tiny thatched cottage in Higher Bockhampton where Hardy was born and spent his early years--and where he wrote “Under the Greenwood Tree” and “Far From the Madding Crowd.” He came from a poor family; his father started as a self-employed mason and his mother had been a servant.

“We need more examples of his work to be on display, to evoke an atmosphere,” Gibson said. He would also like to see the cottage opened more regularly--currently visitors must phone ahead for a viewing during certain limited hours. Despite this, about 18,000 people toured the tiny rooms last year.

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